On my way back into the driveway from taking the girls to school yesterday I came around past the West gate and saw something out the corner of my eye. It was the billygoat taking a run at the Ford. Luckily he was tring to take out the wheel and not body panels. I went after him to get him to stop. Going after him is not a run and a chase. It is a gentle walk, and follow. He went through the electric fence and into the llama pen. That was good enough for the time, and I got a look at the fence on his pen to see just what had gone wrong.
The goat rubs himself against the fence as though he were trying to scratch himself, which maybe he is, and the fence slowy curls upwards over time between the posts, and from them where they are not pinned at the very bottom. To prevent this, I decided to attach some old hog fence from the pig days on the farm to the horse/goat fence on his pen. I attached it with wire to the fence and used it to curl the goat fence down again. The hog panel is very rigid and ought to stay from curling itself. As long as it keeps the goat fence from curling, then I should not have trouble with the goat escaping that way anymore. This project required I also repair the fence between the goat and the dog. They have been travelling freely from pen to pen for a few weeks now, and it has never been high enough a priority to worry about it.
Oh, and also, something that could be of benefit in the future for metal fence: I have a wire feed welder on order. It should be here on Thursday or so. It will be coming along with a Honda motor. My plan is to build a Cyclekart as a means of learning to weld, or at least as a purpose to learn it and try to do it fairly well. Watch this space. The welder is a multi-process welder, so can do stick, Tig, and Mig. I’ll be happy to do some flux-core wire feed. But the other options are there when needed, and to learn. I will probably send the current stick welder off with one of the kids. I have some repairs and upgrades to do on the trailers in the meantime, as well.
I was so tired after all the messing about with the goat pen, which took my full working day yesterday, that I must have laid down last night, and started to bring up YouTube on the bedside tablet when I fell asleep. I woke up again at almost 5AM and found the tablet in that situation still. It was a great night’s sleep!