Stuart and Gabrielle write a lovely post on their blog about their beginning adventures with goats. I was particularly interested as we've also been thinking about acquiring a couple of goats, and I know too little about them. I left a small comment on their blog, asking them to follow-up, and mentioning some of my own musings on Matters Goaty.
With no warning, all of my questions were answered1 in depth, breadth and heighth, to a degree unexpected on a blog's comments, by Val Grainger (who has immediately been added to my reading-list!) Stuff worthy of an entire article in its own right.
If there's anything you want to know about keeping goats on a tether, go and read it there -- there's no point in me regurgitating it here; I could only detract from Val's exposition.
But, to (briefly) address some of the gotchas mention by Val, in thinking about tethering, I have only ever considered a running tether to make sure that the animal have a sufficiently large area to roam. The other possible solution for confining them is an electric fence -- a solution that has worked well for me with horses and cows. For goats, though, I will have to get better poles for supporting the electric fence...
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[1] Well... all my questions about Goat Tethering, anyway.