Sheep and goats are the honesty test of a fence.
Cattle forgive a mediocre fence. Goats audit it. Wool and hair insulate, the gap under the bottom wire is the one they find first, and the fence has to keep things out as well as in. Here is the whole operation, in buy order.
Three numbers that decide a small-ruminant fence
Almost every escaped-goat story and every lost lamb traces back to one of these three being wrong. None of them are expensive to get right — they just have to be right before the stock arrive, not after.
- The gap underneath≤ 6” to the ground — goats try under first, through second, over last.
- Volts at the far corner4,000–5,000 V because fleece and hair insulate. Cattle get by on half that.
- What they drink1–3 gal/head/day — small, but a ewe in milk in August is at the top of that range.
What we don’t sell, so you know before you plan
We sell fence, water and the hardware that holds both. We do not sell guard dogs, guard donkeys or llamas — and for most operations under predator pressure, livestock guardian animals do more than any single fence product will. Connie Krider’s account below is 45 years of running both together and is worth reading before you spend anything.
We also don’t stock sheep-specific loose mineral, hoof-trimming tools, drenching equipment or small-ruminant handling systems. Do not feed cattle mineral to sheep without checking the copper level on the tag — sheep are copper sensitive in a way goats and cattle are not, and that is a conversation for your vet or feed store, not for us.
And a note on the heavy mesh: the branded sheep & goat rolls — Gaucho 30, Texas Classic, MaxTight, StaTite 50, MaxLoc — are full-pallet freight items from $1,459 to $4,133, built to order rather than sitting on our floor. If that is what your ground needs, the full woven wire range is there, but call first so we can price the freight before you commit.
The reading and the four builds
The first one is the single best thing on this site about small ruminants, and it was written by the woman who built the fence at our own store. The other four are full guides with parts lists, math and current prices.
Keep them in — and the coyotes out
A boundary for small ruminants has two jobs, and the second one is what rules out most cheap answers. Barbed wire is an inconvenience to a goat. Hinged-knot field fence becomes a ladder once they ride it down. Fixed-knot hi-tensile woven wire holds its spacing, and because it can be run on self-insulating fiberglass posts, the whole fence can be hot — which is what turns a barrier into a deterrent.
Livestock Guardian Fence 7-35-18, 330’
$181.63Ships LTL freight
Woven Wire Fixed Knot 8/42/6, 330’
$302.58Ships LTL freight
Woven Wire Fixed Knot 13/48/6, 330’
$420.15Ships LTL freight
from $106.70
SunGuard Fiberglass Post, Drilled
from $10.12
Read first: Sheep & goat predator control · How to electrify woven wire · Why woven wire for rotational grazing · Predator control do’s and don’ts · The permanent perimeter
Move them in a net
Netting is the small-ruminant tool. One net is a lambing pen, a brush-clearing paddock or a strip of stockpile, and it goes up in minutes with no posts to drive. Moving stock every few days is also the cheapest worm control there is — larvae on the pasture die while the sheep are somewhere else. If your flock is trained and predators are not the issue, four or five strands of polybraid on step-ins does the same job for less money.
$60.50
Gallagher Ring Top Step-In Post
from $7.25
Read first: Netting vs polybraid vs hi-tensile · Start rotational grazing · Temporary fence posts · Strip-grazing stockpiled forage
Make it hurt enough
This is where most small-ruminant fences fail. Fleece is an insulator, so a sheep can lean on 2,000 volts and never feel it — you want 4,000 and preferably 5,000 at the far corner. Netting is also electrically hungry: it has a lot of wire in a short run and it touches wet grass everywhere, so give it its own energizer rather than hanging it off the end of a long fence. And buy the tester. A fence you have not measured is a fence you are guessing about.
Read first: Voltage requirements by species · Charger sizing guide · How to ground an electric fence · Solar chargers compared
Water them
Small ruminants drink little, which tempts people into carrying buckets. Don’t — a buried line and a float valve is cheaper than a summer of hauling, and it is what lets you put paddocks where the grass is instead of where the hose reaches. Keep the water edge low and the tank shallow, or put a ramp in: lambs and kids drown in deep open tanks, and that is the one water mistake on this page that costs you an animal rather than an afternoon.
from $331.00Ships LTL freight
$17.95
$78.43
$349.99Ships LTL freight
$511.50Built to order · LTL freight
$1,306.80Built to order · LTL freight
Read first: Livestock water systems, in build order · How water placement changes performance · Stock tank float valves · Keeping water open in winter
Start with your own ground
Draw the pasture on satellite imagery and the Ranch Builder gives you the paddock count, the cross-fence footage, the water run, the charger size and the trough — as a costed list you can price, print or put straight in a cart.
Or just tell us about the flock
Head count, acres, whether it is sheep or goats or both, and what the predator pressure looks like where you are — and we will put the list together with you. We have run both species here since 1977 and have made most of the mistakes already.
Handy to have in front of you: head count and species, acres and rough paddock layout, what you have lost to predators and to what, where the water comes from, and whether there is power at the fence line.
Seymour, Missouri — Central time. You get a grazier, not a call centre.
Go deeper — from the Grazier’s Connection
Everything above is the shopping. These are the thinking behind it, and none of them are trying to sell you anything on the way through.
- Sheep & goat predator control — 45 years of it
- Predator control do’s and don’ts
- How to electrify woven wire
- Why woven wire for rotational grazing
- Netting vs polybraid vs hi-tensile
- Voltage requirements by species
- The complete guide to rotational grazing
- Start rotational grazing
- Pasture improvement, in order
- Livestock water systems, in build order
- The permanent perimeter
- EQIP cost-share, explained
- Prices shown were pulled live from our catalogue on 13 October 2026 and are the current single-unit or starting price. Case, bundle and pallet pricing is on each product page.
- Water intake of 1–3 gallons per head per day is a planning range for mature sheep and goats, not a specification. Intake moves with temperature, lactation, class of stock and how much water is already in the forage.
- The 4,000–5,000 volt figure is what we aim for at the furthest point from the energizer on a small-ruminant fence, measured with a meter rather than estimated. Fleece, hair and dry ground all work against you; see the voltage guide for the numbers by species.
- Lambs and kids can drown in deep open tanks. Keep the water surface reachable from the ground, use a shallow tank or fit a ramp or float, and check it during lambing and kidding.
- Sheep are sensitive to copper at levels that are normal in cattle mineral. Read the tag, and take mineral and health questions to your vet or feed supplier — we sell fence and water, not feed.
- Woven wire rolls, pipe coils, tire tanks and Tusker waterers ship LTL freight rather than parcel. Tusker waterers are built to order; call before ordering if you need a delivery date.