I go through this all the time. I live in a tourist area and even though I am 3 miles out of the main village, they still seem to find me. I have found people putting their children into my goat pen, sitting them up on the fence to pose for pictures and I even found a lady in my chicken coop one time! Plus, they constantly come to my door and ask if they can go in the goat pen and play with the goats. I always find food in my goat pen that I didn't put there as well. All kinds of crap like cheetos and even moldy onions. I do go out and try to explain to these people, but it seems to do no good and there is always another group next week anyway. I do have a few neighbors that like to come and visit and they are respectful and have asked if they can stand at the fence and pet the goats. The goats like that and they never feed them without my permission.
We used to keep our goats and chickens on a 7 acre property and my friend had her cow and horse there. One weekend some tourists decided that her cow was too skinny (they knew nothing about how a cow should look) and fed her half a bale of hay all at once, after my friend had already given her her morning feed. The cow got very sick. It is really dangerous to let these people just do what they want.
It gets very frustrating because I do not go to the areas where they live and ask to use their pool. I would never walk onto someone's property to look at something in their yard. I am liable if they are on my property, even though they are trespassing. It isn't right, but that seems to be how the law works. If one of my animals hurts someone, I am going to get sued, even though the person broke the law and came onto my property. I will be installing no trespassing signs this summer to see if it helps. Here is what I came up with. They will be wooden, hand painted signs that say.
This is private property,
As you can plainly see.
So if you step upon this ground,
Trespassing you will be!
I will also be putting up Please do not feed the animals signs as well as do not climb on the fence signs. I am also going to put up a disclaimer sign at the spot along the fence they seem to always go to. It will say something to the effect that you have chosen to willfully trespass upon my property without my permission and that I will not be held responsible for any injuries that may occur while you are unlawfully on my property. I know that sounds mean, but I am really getting sick of them. It is only a matter of time until someone's kid falls in the pen and gets hurt or gets bitten by one of my goats or makes one of my animals sick by feeding them some crap. It just isn't right that they can just stroll onto my property and cause me problems.
This might be an idea for you too. Along the street side of my pen where people kept coming in, I planted 3 fruit trees and underneath that I filled the whole area in with raspberry and blackberry bushes. I used to have my strawberries out there, but they just trampled on them. Now they don't walk through the jaggy bushes. In the winter time, the snow berm there is too high for them to climb over. I am also thinking of adding some cute picket fencing around the berries, which will keep them away even more. It is insane that I have to have double fencing and thorny bushes to keep people at bay. I think there is a severe lack of respect these days and I for one, am not going to tolerate it any more. Hope you get your situation resolved.
