Livestock fence across a creek

[RipTide]

I bought a house with a pasture where the fence crosses a creek twice. The previous owner had a couple of horses in the pasture and where the fence crossed the creek he had a single strand of barbed wire that crossed the creek about neck high on his horses. This was all he needed to keep the horses in his pasture, but I would like to get some goats to clean up my pasture and I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can put a fence across the creek that would keep livestock in and allow the water to flow unimpeded. The creek does not have a great water flow normally, but when we get a big storm it can fill up pretty quick and we can get some wood debris that might clog a fence that is tight to the ground around where the water flows. Any suggestions?

[RichZ]

If the only livestock that you're going to have in the pasture is goats, it's not that hard of a problem. Goats hate to get wet, and won't go in water. I use woven wire fencing ( Red Brand 4 foot high Non-climb fence, held up by T-posts every 8 feet) for my goats, and where a creek goes through my goat pasture, I extend the fence into the creek only as far as I am sure it will always be filled fairly deep with water, so the fence does not continue into the middle of the creek. That way, in a drought the fence will be over whatever dry land there is. The goats won't go into the water.

[eccentricfarmer]

Richz

I hope to have goats some day and keep trying to learn about them. What do they do in the rain? Have to have a substantial shelter for them so they do not get wet? Have worked with Angoras and they seemed to drop dead if you looked at them wrong, but that was someone elses place and have not heard if they ever resolved the problem. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

Will they mess up the banks at all?

[RichZ]

Goats have to have good shelter from the rain and snow. They cannot handle getting wet in any fashion. Other than that, they are very hardy. If your friend is losing angoras easily, he's doing something very wrong. I have a 15 year old angora, and nothing stops her. The rest of my goats ( about 100) are dairy goats, mostly Nubians but also Alpines, Saneens and La Manchas.

My wife and I have a dairy goat farm. If you have any more questions about goats, let me know.

[eccentricfarmer]

Milked a couple by hand for a while and was sore for a week, but the product was well worth it and a lot of people no longer enjoyed shaking hands. [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img] Pasturized...not. Strain thru a coffee filter and enjoy!! Do you sell to a creamery or cheese outfit, for a market?

[Bird]

Rich, I grew up when all of both cows and goats were milked by hand; got more experience at it myself than I wanted, but now I guess all dairies milk cows with machines. Do you use machines for milking the goats, too?

[RichZ]

We sell our milk to a cheese company. We milk about 60 goats, and we have a regular mechanical milking parlor, exactly like a scaled down cow milking parlor. My wife and I are on the board of a large dairy goat cooperative, so we know most goat farmers over a very large area, including NY, Vermont and parts of Mass. We don't know anyone who milk by hand, and I wouldn't suggest milking a large number of goats or cows by hand.

When we first started getting our herd together, we didn't have a milking parlor yet, and we milked by hand. One day, while fixing some fencing in our horse pasture, my hammer flew out of my hand. At first I thought that I just dropped it, but I quickly realized that I couldn't move my fingers, and I suddenly had severe pain shooting up my wrist to my shoulder. I called my doctor, and he said to come right over. After examining me, he immediately sent me to another doctor who measured the nerve impulses going from my wrists to my shoulders. I had the worst response this doctor had ever seen, and he immediately sent me to a surgeon. This all happened in one day, and the next morning, I was in emergency surgery for very severe carpal tunnel syndrome. After six weeks of recovery, I had to have my other wrist operated on.

I never realized it, but I had carpal tunnel syndrome for years, and hand milking 13 goats, just pushed me over the edge. I lost over 75% of the nerve response in each of my wrists, which means I lost 75% of the strength in each wrist. I can't do any significant carpentry, for any length of time, or any activity that requires a lot of wrist strength for any length of time.

It seems most of my activities throughout my life involved a lot of extreme wrist movements. I played drums in several bands, worked my way through college by making a living as a drummer. I also did woodworking as a hobby, and it eventually became a business restoring and refinishing antique furniture. Plus as a kid and all the way through college, baseball was the only sport I really cared about and played all of the time. All of those activities involved extreme use of my wrists, and then hand milking goats just about detroyed the nerves in my wirsts.

My case is very extreme, but hand milking won't do anyone a lot of good. Milking machines now come in all shapes and sizes, and are realatively reasonably priced. Plus there are lots of old systems around that can be resotred for much less than new systems. Most of my milkhouse equipment is over 60 years old, but has all been restored at a fraction of what new equipment costs. So I suggest anyone getting involved with any milking of any sort, get the required equipment.

Well, after typing this amount, I have to rest my wrist for a while, as my fingers are starting to get numb. Typing is another activity that isn't the best for wrists. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

Bird, I know that you had carpal tunnel surgery, as well. I had asked you about yours several years ago, when I was going through mine.

[mfaley]

I saw this really great solution for cattle on one of the local ranches. There was a bridge for a seasonal stream that could really fill up and this helped keep the cattle from walking under the road to the other ranchers property.

If you imagine an opening with a heavy gauge 2-3 inch pipe that runs horizontally across the top. Welded perpendicular to the cross pipe(which ran the length of the opening) was heavy rebar on 6 in spacing running down to the ground. The rebar ran down about 6 feet and was reinforced with rebar running horizontally a couple of feet from the top.

When the creek ran just a little bit the water would flow through the vertical rebar. If debris piled up behind then the barrier would lift up and the debris would flow down stream. When the creek wasn稚 running it would hang down and the cattle would not push through it. Perhaps this would work for goats as well.

[Pat]

You can install a pipe post on either side of the creek, far enough from the water so it is not in danger of being washed out. Brace this with a stub post 8 ft away, set in the ground at least 3 ft deep and use concrete. Stretch a cable across the creek well above the highest flood stage level. From this cable hang galvanized corrugated metal (corrugations running vertically) with a little overlap like for siding a building. You want the metal to reach as low as needed to come close to (or touch) the water at the lowest level of water to be expected (or within a few inches of the creek bottom if it goes dry.)

Flood water will push the metal out toward the horizontal but the metal will return to the vertical when the water goes down. If you are unlucky and have serious flooding a tree or similar coming down the creek can cause this system a problem. Otherwise it works pretty well.

I have seen used tires strung up on or tied to descenders dangling from the horizontal cable. Cheap but... be sure to make BIG holes in the bottom of the tread to let the water out or they will be a breeding ground for millions of mosquitoes. Also debris coming down the creek is much more likely to get entangled in the tires and the descending cables they are suspended by.

Pat