One of the highlights this year has been getting new additions to the livestock family on the farm. You guessed it, Goats!
 
After selling our entire goat herd due to the drought and very trying times in 2019, I finally purchased a breeding pair of goats this year. But instead of Boer goats, the breed we used to have, I decided to downscale a bit on the size, and this time round, I went for Nigerian Dwarf goats instead.
 
Putting the infrastructure in place to house these fabulous creatures has been a task and a half and is still an ongoing project. With time being a strenuous factor in the development stages of their enclosure, we have been sporadically working on its improvement.
 

Step One: Keeping the dogs out and the goats in.

Let's start with the fact that since we sold the previous herd of goats, many other changes happened on the farm. I lost two trusty dogs, which were accostomed to being around goats on the farm. My Weimerharner (Chester), who died of cancer after a long battle with the disease, and my Jack Russel (Seutjie), who died defending me from a Mozambiquan Spitting Cobra. But a farm without dogs is just not a farm. Over time our family was extended with a beautiful Africanus (Jackals), a pup that I rescued while working 1200 km from home on the coastline of Durban. Later on, a German Shorthair Pointer (Rex) was adopted. The problem was this; with them not being used to bleating animals sharing their space, they saw the goats as a threat or as food (not sure which one). Still, one thing was clear: If I did not separate the goats and dogs, there would be no hope for the goats.
 
So the first thing that needed to be done was to install a small electrical fence that would keep the dogs out of the goat enclosure while keeping the goats inside and safe from other predators. We rigged this to run from a solar panel to accommodate the constant power outages we have been experiencing lately.

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