Dozens of goats and sheep brought for slaughter escaped from a New Jersey livestock auction house Wednesday night — and the facility’s manager believes another goat who had bolted to freedom more than a year ago helped them to make their getaway.

The animals escaped through an unsecured gate at the Hackettstown Livestock Auction House on West Stiger Street around 9:30 p.m., cops said.

It took about an hour for police and locals to herd about 60 of the livestock back to their pens with a rope and cracked corn, before police re-secured the gate with a piece of rope, police spokesman Sgt. Darren Tynan told the Post.Auction house manager Bouwe Postma said that those were the only animals who had escaped — but Tynan said that between 10 and 20 more were believed to still be on the loose.

Locals jokingly point the finger at another goat nicknamed Fred that escaped from the same auction market more than a year ago and sporadically pops up around the town. In fact, cops received reports that Fred was in the area a couple of hours before the escape.

On Thursday afternoon, after the escape, Fred showed up at the facility and headbutted the gate holding newly corralled animals multiple times, in an apparent effort to let them back out.

Postma managed to shoo him away, but the sighting made him suspect that Fred was also behind Wednesday night’s escape.

“It was him [last night],” Postma declared. “I think he’s the culprit. He must have banged that fence and let him out last night. I’m almost positive. He must have put a lot of force into that.”

The auction house holds sales every Tuesday, and this herd was purchased by one owner who hadn’t picked up his haul yet due to a broken down truck.

“People tend to rally for the escapees,” Hackettstown Mayor Maria DiGiovanni said. “I kind of like when they break free, but I see both sides. It is a business.”

Tynan was thankful the animals’ bolt for freedom didn’t spark trouble on the roads.

“There could have been accidents — people could have crashed into them,” he said. “We don’t know the mind of a sheep or a goat or what they’ll do.”

The escape came less than a week after about 100 goats went on the lam in Idaho, munching their way through a suburban Boise, Idaho, neighborhood in an incident dubbed “Goat-a-Palooza 2018.”

The animals were later wrangled onto a truck by the firm We Rent Goats, which appeared to have accidentally set the animals free.

There is no known connection between the Hackensack and Boise incidents, Tynan said.

IMAGES:

“Fred” the goat Robert Miller