the escape

Our baby goats are nearing a month old and they are doing great.  Since their birth I have been keeping them separated from the rest of our farm animals.  This allows the mom to bond with the babies, and we have a heat lamp in their pen for a little extra warmth.  Under normal circumstances baby goats and their mothers would have rejoined the goat herd by this age but our farm animals are pastured together and I wanted the babies to be a little more independent before turning them loose with the horse and sheep and other goats.  They also need to go to the vet on Friday and catching them in a small pen as opposed to a pasture would be a lot easier.   Our kidding pens are pretty small.  They work fine for a mom and offspring for a few days but there isn't a lot of room once the babies get more active and exercise is good for the mom too.  Our barn has a large pen with a door to the pasture and the row of kidding pens that are separated by an alleyway.  To give the mom and babies more room I opened their pen to the alleyway and made a makeshift gate.  Today I was outside working in the garden and mowing the lawn and I put the mower away and came into the barn and found the makeshift gate moved and no goats to be found in the barn.

With the mower turned off I could hear a baby goat calling for its mother.  I found the mom had rejoined the herd in the pasture apparently sneaking in the same place that they have previously gotten out.  One of the babies had gotten in with her but the other one was still outside the pasture fence.  When she realized that the baby was not with her she went back toward the east fenceline and she walked along the inside of the fence with the baby keeping up along the outside of the fence.  They went back and forth trying to get together.

I started out walking along the outside of the fence and Elke decided to come along and help.  Our dogs are guardians for our livestock but they instinctively know what to do and are not trained to follow commands and herd like a border collie or other working dogs.  And they can be independent, knowing better than me how they are supposed to be doing their job.  With Elke being a puppy, only 10 months old, I knew that it could be a disaster waiting to happen.  We could have goats scattered everywhere.

It went so much better than I expected.  Elke and I made our way around the pasture to where the goats were.  Elke was great about waiting when I told her to wait and she didn't chase the goat or get them all stirred up.  With only a couple of tries I was able to catch the outside baby and set it down inside the fence with its mom who was oh so glad to have it back.  I now have some fence to work on.

Elke and Manny watching the goats

Mom was content to be with the herd eating living green grass instead of dead grass hay until it started getting dark.  Then they were in the barn and could see their pen from the pen that they were in.  The heat lamp was one and it was obvious they wanted back over there.  The only problem is that there is no gate between the pens inside.  They needed to go back outside, over to the gate and around two sides of the barn to get back inside through the other door.  No amount of coaxing could convince her to go outside when she could see where she wanted to be.  I ended up having to drag her outside, over to the gate, through the gate without letting the others out and around the barn with her babies following along.  Once we got to the door  she knew the way to her pen and was happy to be home.