# High tensile for goat fencing?



## cooper101 (Sep 13, 2010)

I have an acre I would like to put a couple of goats on. I have a couple customers who would gladly buy goats from me and I'd really like to try it. I'd like to use electrified high tensile wire for the fencing rather than woven wire. What spacing and height, and how many strands would you recommend?


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## hihobaron (Oct 5, 2015)

Hello Cooper101

Stay away from high tensile fence for goats even if you put a charge on it.
#1 it requires Very solid anchor points, corner post braces, post set in concrete.
#2 6 stands and fiddle sting tight with all the electrical insulators required in every wire.
#3 Goats can not see a wire that fine and if spooked and run into it will slice them up. 
I have seen horses with very bad cuts from high tensile wire fence. 
They can not see it and run into it, not as bad a barbed wire fence but bad enough.
#4 Use a product from Horseguard.com called Bi-Polar tape fencing. 
It was developed for sheep and is electric fence that carries both hot and ground side on the same ribbon, 1 1/2 wide so it can be seen by stock even at night.
It is very durable and suitable for main line fencing dose need to be kept tensioned like any good fence but NOT the major requirement that HT wire or woven wire require.
3-4 strands spaced properly will keep goats in.
The biggest thing to keeping goats in is keep them well fed on your property.
So they don't go walk about. Build Goat toys they can jump around on/play on.
Or like I do my goats are working goats, Pack Goats that have been trained to carry a load and stay with me in camp were ever that may be. No fence needed except for at night to keep predators away from them.
Happy Trails
hihobaron Pete and Sam


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## marusempai (Sep 16, 2007)

Our perimeter fencing is five strand high tensile electric. Works great to keep our dairy goats in. They learn what it is and avoid it very quickly. One suggestion is, if your goats don't know what electric is, put them in a pen with a solid fence with a line of electric around the inside. That way they can learn what it is without accidentally charging through it.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

*True* "High-Tensile" is a special steel wire that has a minimum of 250 pounds of tension per wire.
It is meant to be a *physical* barrier to large animals.
True High-Tensile is harder to build and cost's more to install

Typical "electric fencing" is *not* "High-Tensile", and is *not* so much a "physical" barrier as a psychological one. 
It only needs just enough tension to keep the wires from sagging between the line posts

For goats I'd want at least 6-8 strands spaced so they can't get their heads through at the lower levels and a total height of 4-5 feet. I'd also want the most powerful charger I could afford, rated in "Joules" (at *least* 3) and not miles.

Once they are *trained* to electric fence they won't touch it anyway.


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## DisasterCupcake (Jan 3, 2015)

I see lots of people use the high-tensile wire to keep their goats in, mostly dairy goats. Seems to work just fine. Most of them are 5 to 6 strands, about 6 inches apart. The top ones can be farther apart than the bottom. 

As an aside, though, I think that a goat could get out of just about any type of fence if it wanted to, bad enough. I've seen my little mini's jump 4 feet from a stand still. I can't imagine what full size could clear. 

This is just to say that, the barrier whether physical or psychological, has to be more of a deterrent than their will to get out of the enclosure. Make sure you train your goat to an electric strand before letting it loose in a field with only electric fence as a barrier.


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## Ford Zoo (Jan 27, 2012)

We use hot HT "White Lightening" brand 6 strand on one of our pastures and we have kept in dairy and meat goats, along with the Livestock Guard dog that loves to dig under other fencing. The White Lightening is coated with white plastic, more expensive than non coated, and probably harder to see when the snow flies. 

It has worked so well, we are planning on using only 4 or 5 strand of the uncoated HT wire with our next pasture expansion. We are in sand and have never concreted posts in, we just use three 4x4 posts or the equivalent, strengthened with horizontal 2x4's, to make reinforced corners. A few corner posts we have out there are even 8 inch hardwoods that we cut from our woods. 

For our goats, the HT fencing does not have to be strung banjo tight to contain a herd as long as the fencer is well grounded and the goats are trained to it. We do install those wire ratchets here and there on every strand depending on the length of run, because the wire tends to settle and sag over time, even when the animals leave it alone.


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