Birthing pen fence up-grade?

It's not exactly the most festive of times with the current pandemic and some people have resorted to helping out by relighting their Christmas decorations. Odd as it sounds, it helps to have a little shiny in such bleak times that have really taken a toll on the mental state of a lot of hard working individuals. The rumor is that the relighting began with an individual who never bothered to remove their decorations after the holiday season.

If you are curious, our official time to remove decorations is by the first of the new year. This tradition helps to bring in the new year with a clean house; no decorations, no clutter. However, many don't follow this self-imposed custom and leave them up through out the winter... and summer... and normally back to the next holiday season. Whatever, if it helps people get their minds off the current situation and calm down, I'm all for it.

With the goats, we always put a calling out for Christmas trees after the season is over. It's a nice treat for them and it eases some of the boredom brought by the need to stay inside with the same 4 walls and boring hay pile. The winter season is only about halfway through by that point, and they can all use a little pick-me-up in the form of yummy, green, spruce, pine, or fir.

After the goats are done cleaning the trees from their spikey foliage,  I may leave one or two in the pen, but the remainder of the de-leafed previously festive evergreens are thrown out the door so I can ignore them until spring.  

Last fall, after the birth of our twin goats, Elizabeth Collins and Willie Lumas, we realized the birthing pen needed some upgrades prior to the next birthing (approximately April 1) like a higher wall. Ah-ha, something to do with the holiday offerings!

Armed with my hatchet, I took all the limbs off the trunks. That provided me with 7 or 8 posts between 4-7 feet in length.  The now-removed limbs went into the burn pile. I did try to use some of the limbs for pegging, but that didn't go as anticipated. 

(For the record, you can peg into green wood and it will cinch itself tighter as the wood shrinks with the loss of moisture. A totally dry piece of wood will not shrink and thus won't hold a peg very well at all. If the peg had square corners and some notching, it may help, but not when pounding it into an unsecured frame causing all the joints to bounce apart.)

Taking the posts, I sawed them into lengths approximately 2-foot-ish. The final length is not important, they will hang over the top edge of the frame. I found an old piece of left-over stair rail in the barn that fit perfectly between the back of the chicken coop and the inner wall of the old stanchion. 

I simply nailed the posts to the existing railing (a recycled porch railing) and to the stair rail frame located about 18 inches above it. I did start by boring and pegging it to the stair rail, but that oobviously wasn't going to work as I thought and moved on the regular wir nails. You can see the pegs in the first few posts on the left in the picture above.  I also notched the posts about the 18-20 inch mark to better set it into the stair rail.

The completed wall extension got a seal of approval from the missus and now I just have to improve upon the gate leading into the pen.

(Where are the rest of those posts? Oh yeah, I threw them into the goat pen to give them a little something to play with for now.)

Dan.