Free range goats vs Charlie Fox

[little_leaf177]

Hi chaps & chapettes,
recently got myself a small 1.5 acre plot of woodland to play with. Im thinking of having a handful of pygmy goats to roam around and do what goats do....
However my concern is someone told me that pymyg goats are no match for a fox. So I'm in need of advice as to what measures can i take to deter the fox and/or is there any reasonably cheap way of fox proofing the woodland...
Or do i just go up a step and get a bigger goat??

regard
Leaf..

 

[British Red]

Theres only one way to get rid of a fox.......(blow its head off)

Fox proof fencing is expensive enough for a chicken coop - would cost a small fortune or an acre+. A big old billy would see off Charlie - as would a Llama

 

[sunndog]

Looking at the size of em on google images. A fox would definitely take them

Red's right on the best way to deal with a fox.....only trouble is. if you shoot one, two come for the funeral
your gonna need a bigger boat...sorry, goat

 

[xylaria]

Soay sheep will attack a fox. I had a friend that lived on farm with soay, they would butt foxes so hard it injured the foxes spine. This didnt stop charlie trying to take thier lambs. I dont know if a dog could be trained to safely cohabit with goats, but it is method used abroad to keep wolves away from both goats and sheep. Cats and foxes generally keep a wide berth of each other but if they dont you will get a bitten cat and the vets bill.

 

[neoaliphant]

Problem is a fair bit of UK plantlife is poisonous to goats.
They tend to hungrily devour the naff stuff that other animals have instinct to leave alone.

They like stripping all the outer bark off trees as well.
You didnt want to use bark for tinder did you?

 

[Stew]

Get an alpaca to look after them.

I've holidayed on an alpaca farm for the last few years and they sell most of them off as fox police.

 

[Macaroon]

If you put any number of any goats on 1.5 acres, you'll end up with a football pitch in very short order. 1.5 acres won't support any livestock for anything other than a very short space of time without a lot of very hard and expensive work, fencing and feeding.

 

[demographic]

Get an alpaca to look after them.

I've holidayed on an alpaca farm for the last few years and they sell most of them off as fox police.

Dual usage then cos I thought most people got Alpacas to get planning permission to build through change of agricultural use rules...

 

[sandbender]

"...Cats and foxes generally keep a wide berth of each other..."

I can vouch for that, back in Scotland my desk overlooked the main paddock and in the early hours I'd often watch a local fox trying to pass through, only to back off and describe a large arc when an ominous black shape started to move through the long grass.

He was a big cat though.

I know nothing about Pygmy goats but everything I have read about goat keeping would suggest that they will strip all the ground plants of green in short order and then climb the trees to do the same. Is 1.5 acres going to be enough? Maybe you should think about geese instead, I've watched those chase fully grown dogs away so a fox would probably be pecked to death.

Edited to add:

If you put any number of any goats on 1.5 acres, you'll end up with a football pitch in very short order. 1.5 acres won't support any livestock for anything other than a very short space of time without a lot of very hard and expensive work, fencing and feeding.

Cross posted.

 

[demographic]

I have no idea about goats but we used to keep sheep on our farm. In the 30 or so years my parents farmed there was only one single time when a fox was even in the picture for killing a lamb but we thought it more likely that it had died and the fox got to it when my parents arrived.

Now unless we had particularly hard as nails sheep (Swaledale and Bluefaced Leicester cross or Swaledale and Cheviot cross) which I doubt I reckon that shows that foxes don't really take lambs as long as the ewe is healthy and about.

We did have bother with crows pecking the lambs eyes out and random dogs worrying them.

I might have a different opinion of foxes if we kept poultry though...

 

[milius2]

Hi Leaf. I'd like to know more on your intentions of the "play with the property" because there is a lot of ways you can foxproof it but they are costly and man hours intense. So if you think of living there then there might be some thing you can do that would be reasonalbe to do. But if you only think of visiting it once in a while then this can be a a very frustrating experience trying to build a "natural zoo". So let us know more about the property, your intentions and then maybe something more will come up.