Goat Proof Barrier

Yeah, right.

Today, I had the goats out in the garden having a browse. Normally, the goats are well behaved and leave most of the trees alone. Of course, it is in the nature of goats, that they will see a tree and try it. If they like it, they will eat it.

There are some trees that you don’t want your goats to eat. Take my lovely wife’s hakea for example. We have been nurturing this along for a while and they usually take a while to establish and for them to flower. At the moment, the hakea is about 2 meters tall and has had one inflorescence.

The goats decided that it was at the perfect height to have a go at (tee hee) so they did.

My lovely wife was a little put out by their antics, so I had to come up with a solution.

I had a couple of 8 foot star posts, some fencing wire and some 1.5m rose-wood stakes. MacGyver time!

I drove the posts into the ground about 1.3m apart and then tied 4 stakes across the bottom of the star-posts making a box. Then I tied another 4 stakes at about 1.5m above the lower stakes.

Then I tied 5 rose-wood stakes between the cross pieces making a series of “palings” from the stakes. This gives me a 4 sided cage around the hakea that the goats can still get their noses in (some browsing of the hakea is still good). This will encourage the hakea to bush up without the goats pushing the plant over, break the main stems, strip the bark … all of the things that goats like to do when they find a young plant that they like the taste of.

There is no such thing as a goat proof fence … if you really want one of these, consider a concrete bunker.