Last summer I got the idea in my head that it would be a good idea to get some goats.  I could put them in the vacant chicken housing, they would eat the weeds and all would be right with the world.

I found someone who was selling 3 dwarf goats so I loaded my 2 dog kennels in the back of the pickup truck and headed out to get them.  The two smaller ones went into one kennel and the larger one in the other.

The chicken housing consists of a coop and a run.  The coop has 2 doors.  One leads out into the yard and the other into the run.  There’s also a door between the yard and the run. In the past I’d ignored the door from the coop into the yard.  I’d always used the door between the yard and the run.

On the morning of the day I got the goats, I used the door between  the coop and the yard to expedite cleaning it out.  Unfortunately, I forgot to close it.

I arrived home with the goats and backed the truck up to the door between the run and the yard.  I got the first goat, the mama, into the run without a problem.  She didn’t seem panicked.  In fact, she calmly walked into the chicken coop.

How nice, I thought. She’s going into the coop to find a comfortable spot to rest. So I turned around to get the next goat into the run.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement.  It was the mama goat walking out into the yard.

I figured that if the other two goats were in the pen then she wouldn’t go far so I dismissed her, closed the door and started to get the other two goats into the run.

It was a struggle to get the second goat out.  I had my hands full so I couldn’t latch the kennel.  I put the goat into the run… but I didn’t latch the gate.  My knew that my hands would be full with the third goat so I wouldn’t be able to unlatch it.  And it would only be for a second.

With goats, seconds count.  In the time it took me to put the second goat into the run and turn around to get the third one out, goat 2 had pushed open the door and started down the path towards the first goat.  A second later, goat 3 had pushed open the kennel door, jumped off the back of the pickup truck and started following the second goat.

I chased those goats for over an hour, trying everything I could to get them back on my property and corral them but they constantly eluded me.  If I’d had help I could have done it. I didn’t so I finally gave up.

I caught sight of the goats every now and then for the next couple of weeks but then they dropped from sight.

I’m not sure if a coyote or a neighbor got them.