Yesterday Was Just a Prelude...

Yesterday was just a prelude to the insane breakouts we had here today.  In addition to the goats, which are by now almost a given to be out of their pen, we had three horses and 25 broiler chickens. 

I knew that the goats were out this morning.  In fact, I don't think we bothered to put them away last night, noting the futility of the act.  I didn't, however, know that the horses were gone.  My bedroom looks out over the pig pen and on to the horse pasture, but there are lots of trees out there and I figured they were in the shade.  I thought this until the neighbor called and asked me if I was missing three horses.  He then proceeded to describe them to me.  As he was talking, I took a long look at the pasture and noted that the back gate was wide open.

He told me that the police had arrived at his place around midnight last night asking about the free-range horses.  He told them that they weren't his and asked if they needed help rounding them up.  The officers thought they could handle it, but after about 45 minutes, our neighbor went back out to help.  He said that the horses were getting pretty riled up and he was afraid one of the officers would get hurt.  He caught all three horses and put them in his pasture.  The officers admitted that they weren't too useful as cowboys.

I thanked him and asked if I could come get the horses this afternoon when J gets home from work.  Our neighbor is in view, but the horses need to be led individually (except for Honey - I can ride her), and rather than make three trips, I could make two with J.  He said that was fine.  I think I'll bring him a box of produce as a thank you.

After talking with the neighbor, I went out to feed.  The goats were nowhere in sight.  Honestly, I was thankful as they make feeding the pigs a challenge.  But I noticed that I had a whole lot more chickens than normal gathering at my feet.  The goats (I'm sure) had gone over to the chain link fence surrounding the broiler chickens and rubbed it open.  They were probably just scratching their bellies, but the fence moved enough and the chickens got out.  I thought about catching them, but in the end, decided to just embrace their freedom and feed all of the chickens in the big pen.  So now I had horses and chickens to gather.

But since the goats didn't want to be outdone, they decided to up the anty and take a walk down the street.  A neighbor caught them with a bucket of grain but didn't know who they belonged to, so she called the police.  My mom-in-law saw them as she drove to our place and alerted me.  I emptied the back of the Expedition and went out to collect them.  By then, the police were there with their goat wagon.  Between the two of us, we wrangled everyone into the two vehicles and drove them home.  I half-heartedly put them back in their pen (knowing that they would probably be out in a few minutes) and hoped that the officer left before he saw them walk through the fence.

I spent the afternoon running a fifth strand of hot wire along the back part of the pasture and re-running a strand of braided wire through the other strands of tape to give it a little more zing.  I haven't seen the goats walk up the driveway from the pasture yet, but it's still pretty early.

We'll go pick up the horses tonight.  And we may or may not collect up the broilers.  The only real deficits to letting them run free are these:  1. They aren't as quick as your typical chicken so they are more likely to be picked off by a hawk.  And 2. The won't be as fat if they are allowed to run around the whole yard...as opposed to the 8x10 pen we keep them in.  We'll see what the motivation level is this evening.