Escaped goats start having kids

You can see the fence at right as it goes along the creek.

In this case, the grass was greener on the other side of the fence.

I knew the goats were out and I knew where the hole in the fence was. I just hadn't had time to do anything about it. A creek runs along the western border of my property. A net wire fence runs along the far side of the creek and on the north and south ends, we have to keep panels to keep the goats from escaping out the creek. We use panels so that we can replace them whenever a big rain washes them away or buries them in silt.


The panels on the south end had washed out last fall, but I had not fixed the hole. The goats had been content to stay in my pasture and not go wondering off. That was until the grass REALLY was greener on the other side of the fence. My neighbor has 300 acres of pine trees, a few hardwoods and numerous deer plots. Way too tempting once the goats got over there. They were in no hurry to come home.


I finally found a day to go searching. Daughter Lindley, her baby Lane and I got into the Mule with buckets of corn and range cubes and started driving the fire lanes looking and calling for goats. About a half hour later and about a mile from the barn, we could see them through the pine trees. We had to drive down one lane and back up another to get to them. But there they were, 10 does and two new buck kids. 


Finding kids is usually exciting, but on this day, we were a quarter mile from the nearest gate back into our place. The babies were too small to walk that far and the momma didn't want to leave her birthing spot. So we loaded the mom and twins onto the Mule and rattled a bucket of corn to get the other goats moving. After several starts and stops, we finally got all the goats and babies back into the right pasture.


My helper Roland and I reset the posts and wired the panels back up to keep the goats from getting out again. At least until the next rain comes along.

Lindley has a handful of babies; it looks like

they are getting ready to share a kiss.