Our goats enter the digital age!

We’ve had goats here at the mill for more than five years now, helping us keep the land clear. They are also real characters and, while we couldn't imagine life without them, we also couldn't say that they've been the easiest animals to have in our lives! Goats are well-known for escaping and generally causing chaos exactly where you don't want them to, and ours are no exception. After years of chasing them through the brush, we finally decided to invest in virtual fencing to see if technology could solve our issues. We took a punt on the Nofence system, and a couple of months into using these GPS collars for goats, the results have been a game-changer.

We've always liked to let the goats out at least once a day to roam free for an hour or two, to get fresh forage and help to keep as much of our land clear as possible, but getting them back in again wasn't always a simple task. This worry was especially heightened whenever we took trips away and had people here looking after the property and the animals - asking someone to take the dog for a walk is one thing, but rounding up badly-behaved goats is entirely another!

Thea is secretly quite pleased with her new accessory...

Why electric fencing didn't work for us

We have tried to use technology before to move the goats around the property, investing in portable electric fencing. This only worked to a limited extent. The goats would seem contained at first, but inevitably one or another of them would get a shock and - instead of retreating - lurch forwards through the fence, upon which all the others would follow. Shocking behaviour ;)

Another issue was that there are only certain areas of our property - i.e. the flat, already cleared land - that we could easily put an electric fence on. Too much brush and the charge wouldn't work well. Too rocky and the fence won't stand up. And these describe probably about 80% of the land around the moinho.

Getting this hill fenced would have proved difficult...

What is a GPS goat collar?

Like, I imagine, many other people, we first saw the system on Clarkson's Farm. What we saw looked intriguing, but it was only a brief mention, and it wasn't clear if the system had been a success or not. So I did a bit more research, and what I found seemed promising.

Nofence is a GPS system that tracks the location of your animals via a collar (they look big when you first see them, but the goats don't seem at all bothered by having them on). You set a 'virtual fence' on an app, and as they approach this boundary the collar around their necks makes a noise, getting higher in pitch as they get close, and lower as they move away. If they ignore the sound and continue, they get a shock. And if they continue to ignore it, you get a notification that the animal has 'escaped' - so you can go down and sort them out yourself!

Does the Nofence system for goats actually work?

In our experience, after a week or so getting the goats used to the system, some - always the same ones (Thea and Archie, we're looking at you...)! - would still be 'escaping' on a fairly regular basis for the next couple of weeks. We worried that this was yet another investment that we couldn't rely on. But our worries were unfounded - they just needed time to learn. For well over a month now the goats have stayed within the boundaries we've set, having settled into the system with no more effort on our part.

Staying put in a storm: a real-world stress test

And we're very grateful they did. Just last week, storm Kristin swept through Portugal and, for us, the river got as high as we've ever seen it, even getting into the lower part of the goat enclosure and bringing down roughly half of their fence. In the time it took us to repair that, they were essentially properly free-range! Before we had the system in place, this would have been one hell of a headache. But instead, despite a power cut meaning we had no internet or mobile signal and therefore couldn't use the app, the fact that Nofence uses GPS and batteries that last weeks (or more) meant that they stayed within their virtual fence, returning to their shelter whenever it rained or got dark.

Is Nofence worth it?

All in all, this system has been something of a game-changer for us. It's by no means cheap, but for us, the time and stress it saves alone has made the investment worth it. And not only is it great to have the goats out all day, getting whatever forage they need; they are also keeping much more of the land clear, especially in areas that we wouldn't have been able to get a fence into. And when a storm unexpectedly washes away your fencing, keeping your goats in one place becomes one less thing to have to worry about!

Thanks for reading our Nofence review - now that our goats are finally staying where they’re supposed to, they are much better hosts! Why not come and meet them - check our availability at Moinho da Fadagosa and book your escape in central Portugal.