WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. (AP) – A Corinth man jailed because of repeated problems with his marauding goats has been freed and says he’s planning to move.

A judge warned Chris Weathersbee, 64, that any more goats escaping their pens could be subject to impoundment by the town.

He was held on Wednesday night at the St. Johnsbury Regional Correctional Center for lack of $5,000 bail.

State police arrested him after getting a report that about 20 of his goats had escaped onto the neighboring property of Ken and Susan Penn, a violation of last month’s court-ordered conditions of release following an arraignment at which he pleaded innocent to 15 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.

“It’s no small matter to have 15 or 20 goats” in the road or neighbors’ yards, Vermont District Court Judge Harold Eaton Jr. told Weathersbee at his arraignment for violating conditions of release.

Weathersbee pleaded innocent Thursday to the charge of violating the condition. Eaton kept the original conditions for Weathersbee’s release in place, as well as adding one for Weathersbee to make two daily inspections of the fence line.

The judge also said that the town could impound any goats that escape. If Weathersbee can’t pay a fee for the impoundment, Eaton said, the animals can be sold.

The escape of Weathersbee’s goats onto a town road and into neighbors’ yards has been a source of contention for more than four years, but neighbors’ push for relief has heightened in recent months.

Dan Sedon of Chelsea, Weathersbee’s attorney, said his client wanted to comply with his earlier conditions of release but “compliance at this point is practically impossible. It can be difficult to find (electrical) shorts in the fence.”

State and local officials, as well as neighbors, worked Sunday afternoon to help repair the fence.

Weathersbee said after the hearing the goats had escaped through a section of the electrical fence that lacked a significant charge.

Sedon told Eaton that his client was working on a “long- range solution” involving a vegetation management project run by Vermont Electric Cooperative.

Weathersbee said he won’t pay his mortgage this month, and said he was so confident that he’ll be out of town before winter that he has told the mortgage company to let the house go to foreclosure.

“There’s no point trying to fix something unfixable in Corinth,” he said.