31 Days of Stories: Escape Goats

Last year I considered doing a 31 Days series, but never quite found the motivation to do it. This year I have decided to do 31 Days of stories: stories of memories, Ava, our mini-farm, our animals, family... Whatever "the muse" dictates.

Today is one I've been meaning to blog for a while now: the story of our first few days with our (escape)goats. 

We brought our goats home on a Saturday to their lovely new stall in our log barn and its attached pen made from reclaimed pallets. Little did we know that our pen was not goat proof. On Sunday I was home by myself with Ava and since she was being horribly stubborn about napping, we went down to the living room and I turned on some cartoons so that I could have a short break. As I sat down on the couch to check Facebook, I looked out the window and saw our new goats happily trotting down our neighbor's driveway! I grabbed a huge handful of treats to lure them to me and ran outside. I wound up following them across the road and through three backyards before I managed to head them off and snag Leia's collar. Unfortunately Chewy didn't have a collar yet, so I had to carry a 40 lb goat while dragging another all the way back to our house. 

Later as we discussed how they could have gotten out, we realized that Chewy was just small enough to fit through a gap in a pallet so we added chicken wire around the outside of the fence and figured we must be goat proof now. The next morning however, I found Leia out in our corn patch happily munching away. I locked the goats in their stall and headed out for more chicken wire. Once we had installed an upper level of chicken wire, I figured my worries were over: Chewy could no longer go through the fence and Leia couldn't go over it. 

On Tuesday my family stopped by to see the goats and we all headed back to the barn. As we got close though we saw Leia ON THE ROOF. Apparently the old picnic table we had given them to play on was close enough that she decided to hop onto the roof of the barn to escape. After more bribing with treats she eventually fell/jumped off the roof and we moved on to what she really wanted: getting milked. Thankfully now that the picnic table is in a better location there have been no more escape attempts, and my anxiety about escape goats is no more.