The Escape Artist

Here is the door to our barn.  We always keep it closed and locked as we don't want the hens scratching around in there.  We'd rather them be out on the pasture searching for worms and bugs.  The only time we open it, of course, is when we bring the cows and goats in for feeding and milking.  In the evening, it is a real rodeo in the barn.  Rosie, Clarabelle, and Luna come in with Aussie and ClaraBULL following closely behind.  Then Buckwheat, Annie, and Oreo come in, followed by Oreo's kids, Salt and Pepper.  That's a lot of animals in the barn, but it is necessary.

In the afternoon, once the animals are fed, we escort them all out except for the two bulls.  They stay locked in the barn at night so that the cows make milk all night for us.  We don't put them together with their moms until after we've milked them.

We mentioned back in March that Annie, the Nubian goat, had figured out a trick.  She turned into a goat version of "Pop-A-Lock," using her nose to push the latch upward to enter the barn.  In doing so she allowed the bulls to escape during the evening and drink up all of our milk.  Imagine our surprise to go out to milk in the morning, only to find that their udders were empty!

IN THIS POST BACK ON 03/31/2019 I posted that I had discovered a goat-proof 'fix' for the latch, but I never explained what the fix was in detail.  As I moseyed down the aisle in Tractor Supply, I found a latch invented especially for nosy goats.  Here it is:

It's a little fancier than the original latch.  As you'll notice, the new latch has a clip that falls (using gravity) and effectively locks the latch in place.  One must lift the clip with your thumb and push upward in order to unlatch it.

As crafty and clever as goats are, they don't have thumbs and/or the coordination to perform the two-step function of opening the latch. 

At $7.88 per latch, it is a little more pricey than the normal latch that we originally had on the barn door, but the new latch quickly pays for itself once you consider the value of the milk we were losing due to Annie's escape artist routine in which the bulls were sprung free to drink up their momma's milk.

Problem solved.  Now if we could only find a fool-proof rat trap, we'd be in business!