Somebody has been letting my animals loose at night!

[Ariel301]

A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday we were all away from home until late at night. When I got home at 11 or so, I did my nightly animal check, and the stall I have a bunch of chicks in was standing wide open! I usually keep a piece of plywood across the doorway diagonally wedged in with big rocks, so that I have a "safe" corner to stand in to feed the chicks so I don't step on them--that was dismantled and moved to the side, sitting nicely against the wall. Two really powerful heat lamps were laying tipped over in six inches of straw! Fortunately no birds were hurt or missing and nothing caught on fire!

This morning I heard a weird goat noise from a weird direction. I went out to check it out, and ALL of my pens plus the chick stall and the adult chicken coop were standing wide open, and 100+ chicks and chickens were running loose on our unfenced property, plus all the goats, including one very aggressive and dangerous horned buck! Some boards had been moved from next to my milk stand to in front of the bad buck's pen, so I'm thinking he may have taught them a little lesson and they had to fight him off.

Nothing else was moved, gone through, or stolen, even though we have several unlocked vehicles and a storage shed. No animals are missing or obviously harmed, though the does were all extremely nervous when I found them, snorting and startled by anything and hard to catch.

Scary. I'm going to be buying locks for every gate we have. I didn't think any of our neighbors even knew we had animals, none of our roosters are very loud, you can't even hear them in our house, much less the nearest house a half mile away!

 

[lilhill]

Stuff like this is why I have locks on every gate, LGD, property completely fenced in with exception of driveway where the gate is kept open mostly because hubby hates to lock out the UPS man, and a driveway alarm. The Judge I used to work for also didn't call me a pistol packing Assistant for nothin'.

 

[ksalvagno]

I wonder if it is kids who think they are being funny or "freeing" the poor animals locked up. Hopefully the locks will take care of the problem. Too bad you don't have cameras to catch who is doing this.

 

[jodief100]

Locks, cameras and be viligant. Motion sensor lights are also a good idea. They may just be pranksters but they also may be testing your defenses. Kids playing pranks can do some serious harm to an animal, even unintentionally. Your barn could have burned down! I would file a complaint with the police so they is a record of trouble should it come to something worse. Perhaps it is time for a BIG LGD? Whatever you do, take this seriously, it may be nothing but it may be the start of something very bad....

I have a sign at the end of my drive:

Warning: Homeowner doesn't bother calling 911. With a picture of my S&W in hand below.

I have never had a problem on the actual property. The neighbor kids smashed my mailbox that is out on the main road once. The second time they were hit with a pepper spray bomb that went off on impact. I haven't had any trouble since.

Good Luck

 

[cmjust0]

That's terrible!

I hope your buck put a horn up somebody's butt!

 

[elevan]

I had a neighbor that kept turning our dogs loose, so that he could complain about them. That resulted in one of our beautiful doelings being killed.

The neighbor escalated until he was threatening us. When he exposed (as in his privates - ahem) himself on our property in front of 4 witnesses, the sheriff's office charged him.

We now have locks on our gates and do regular patrols of the property.

Get some locks. And maybe a motion activated camera. You need to catch the perp before things get worse.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

Stuff like this is why I have locks on every gate, LGD, property completely fenced in with exception of driveway where the gate is kept open mostly because hubby hates to lock out the UPS man, and a driveway alarm. The Judge I used to work for also didn't call me a pistol packing Assistant for nothin'.

aint that right

'ceptin' our UPS guy knows not to get past the fence. he just leaves stuff on the other side.

dont rule out neighborhood/town teens who are 'freeing' your enslaved animals. you might want to call around the nearby parents. and file a report in case it gets worse.

sorry
:-(

 

[freemotion]

When we lived in a two-family home we had trouble with kids messing with our cars (the usual annoying prank stuff involving vaseline or eggs or shaving cream.) Our upstairs neighbor waited up quietly in the bushes with his well-trained Dalmation and a hose. The kids got very wet and very scared and never bothered us again.

Locks make me nervous after experiencing a barn fire once. You can't get the doors open fast enough with locks. And locks won't keep kids from messing with things if they are visiting the animals and possibly feeding them. They may be enjoying your animals in an ignorant (and illegal and dangerous) way.

Hose 'em down!

 

[Ariel301]

We don't have the money to get a camera right now, but I am going to put up signs that say we have one, and also "beware of dog" signs. We can't have a dog currently, due to lack of money to feed it, not owning our place, and my head doe has a bad habit of severely injuring dogs that get near her. When she passes on and we can move, a couple of big scary dogs are going to be moving in.

The fences are too tall for kids to climb, but I do worry about them feeding the animals something poisonous through the chain link. The pens are 6 feet tall with another foot of barbed wire on top. If someone wanted in bad enough, they could take the gates off the hinges easily enough, but I think this must be just teenagers or young adults having some fun, since animals have not been stolen or harmed, they could have done either so easily, my does will walk off with anyone.

I can file a report about them, but the police aren't really going to pursue anything even if it becomes a problem. Our city is passing laws to make it harder to keep animals, fortunately our livestock are not affected yet, but they just passed something allowing only two pets per acre without a special permit to run a kennel, and the rules for having a kennel are so complicated that it's impossible, animal shelters are being closed down and people are going to have to give up their pets, but now there are not enough shelters for them...and we already had a problem with pets and livestock being abandoned out in the desert. :/ They don't really care much about dealing with animals, my sister in law had a cat and a puppy poisoned in the spring and they wouldn't do anything.

 

[mistee]

maybe you have a poultrygeist!!!