[HN Gopher] Using livestock guardian dogs in a small-scale comme...
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Using livestock guardian dogs in a small-scale commercial sheep
operation (2014)
Author : luu
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-05-23 06:09 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (flyingmule.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (flyingmule.blogspot.com)
| h2odragon wrote:
| > I believe that our dogs come to an "understanding" with the
| predators in their neighborhood
|
| We've got a family of grey fox living 300yd from our chicken pen.
| They've never bothered a chicken: our dogs have had an
| arrangement with them for longer than the chickens have been
| here.
| TimMeade wrote:
| One of the many reasons that I enjoy HN every day. Amazing what
| shows up on the front page. Good read. Made me miss my childhood
| Australian Sheep Dog I had in high school.... Smartest dog i've
| ever seen.
| feintruled wrote:
| Fascinating! Struck by the experiences they had over-socialising
| the dogs, ruining them for their intended job as they wanted to
| be with humans too much. It's help me make sense of something
| that I had noticed before - a farmer I know has two dogs, a
| working dog and a pet. The pet is fawned over, the working dog is
| barely acknowledged in a way that seemed almost cruel to me. Just
| another reality of rural life. Perhaps the dog is no less happy
| for it.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Perhaps the dog is no less happy for it._
|
| I've been around dogs all my life, both farm and suburban. My
| wife and I volunteer at a dog shelter on a weekly basis,
| working with a variety of breeds. Over the decades I've
| concluded that most dogs need a job. It would be hard to
| convince me that a suburban Australian Shepherd (popular these
| days) that's lucky to get a walk once a day is any more happy
| than one that is generally ignored by humans but gets to herd
| sheep all day. I'd go so far as to even say that sticking a
| herding breed in a house for the majority of the day is more
| cruel than ignoring a farm dog that gets to do what she was
| bred for.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Most people need a purpose too... anecdata, but I don't know
| anyone who does not have a purpose/calling and is fulfilled
| and happy.
| [deleted]
| giarc wrote:
| During my university days, I did a thesis project looking at
| antimicrobial resistance in sheep populations in Ontario, Canada.
| I have an impressive story about dogs protecting sheep flocks.
|
| I was on a big sheep farm (1100-1500 sheep) that was divided
| amongst 3 pastures. The farm probably had 20-30 Great Pyrenees
| dogs that guarded the flocks. Without any human intervention or
| training, they would divide themselves amongst the 3 pastures.
| One "sentinel" dog would travel between the pastures (through
| other fields and properties) and somehow communicate with the
| other dogs. When one flock would experience an increase in coyote
| attacks, this sentinel dog would go to the other flocks and
| retrieve some additional dogs and "fortify" the flock with the
| attacks. After the coyote learned not to mess with this flock,
| the dogs would then naturally redistribute themselves amongst the
| flocks again.
|
| I have another great story about a "sheep in sheeps clothing"
| that's pretty cool. Happy to share if people are interested.
| pstuart wrote:
| > Happy to share if people are interested.
|
| Please do!
| giarc wrote:
| It's a bit gory, but lots about farming is.
|
| We were in the barn at another farm and they had a ton of
| lambs running around. One looked quite a bit different than
| others, it looked like he was wearing a white sweater. The
| farmer explained that this lambs mother had died and so he
| had no ewe to milk from (ewes won't let random lambs milk
| from them). So what they do is take a stillborn lamb from a
| different ewe, remove this 'donor' lambs hide and put it on
| the orphan lamb. This orphan lamb now smells like the other
| ewes baby and can now milk from his "adopted" mom. When they
| don't have a stillborn lamb, they have to bottle feed the
| lambs which is a lot of work. Using the hide from another
| lamb allows the lamb to feed normally.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Growing up on a farm we used to call this "Silence of the
| Lambs".
| prottog wrote:
| Animal husbandry is so fascinating!
| joenot443 wrote:
| My family grew up on farms in Ontario - whereabouts were you
| working? Do tell about the other sheep story!
| giarc wrote:
| My project had me visiting a bunch of farms. I'd interview
| the farmer about their antibiotic use with their sheep
| (specifically extra-label drug use). We'd then collect stool
| samples from a variety of the sheep to test for antimicrobial
| resistant bugs. I went to University of Guelph, but I feel
| like most of the farms were on the east side of Toronto.
| zoogeny wrote:
| > If a dog misbehaves [...] I'll use a gruff voice and a hard
| look. If the dog persists in the undesirable behavior and looks
| for approval, I'll refuse to look at it or face it.
|
| I recently got an older golden retriever (7 years old) that
| didn't have a lot of training but generally had exceptional
| manners. His one negative behavior was mouthing. When he got
| excited and wanted to play he would places his mouth and teeth
| around my hand. Not biting at all, pretty gentle and more like he
| was trying to get my attention. But I do not want this behavior
| and especially did not want him to do this to any guests.
|
| I've never really had my own dog before and I wasn't sure what to
| do. I knew I had to communicate to him that this was totally
| unacceptable behavior but I didn't want to use choke collars or
| any other kind of physical punishment. What worked almost
| immediately was sternly, firmly and loudly saying "NO", standing
| up tall and puffing up my chest and crossing my arms and then
| turning my back to him and walking away from him.
|
| At first he would run around me, trying to get back in front of
| me and trying to get my attention back. I would generally count
| to 20 or 30 in my head while maintaining the alert posture,
| totally ignoring him, not looking at him, continuing to turn away
| from him and walking away. Pretty much always he would eventually
| sit still and as soon as he did I would soften my posture and
| voice and pet him and tell him he was a good boy.
|
| This was so effective, so quickly, that I use a much more
| attenuated version whenever he displays bad behavior. I just
| decrease the intensity of the NO! and the severity of my body
| posture based on the severity of his behavior.
|
| I consider now that I'm not punishing the dog, I'm communicating
| my boundaries. I'm making it clear that I am not going along with
| what the dog wants. I've thankfully never had to pin the dog or
| do any physical punishment at all. I just make it clear that I
| won't acknowledge him or be his friend if he misbehaves and so
| far that has worked very well.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| What a lovely, low-stress story.
|
| Thanks for posting it!
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You can tell it's (2014), because it is on HN and there is not
| a single passing reference to using AI powered drones to do the
| sheep herding/anti-predation
| stritafarm wrote:
| We use LGDs to protect our (still very small) flock in East Texas
| from coyotes and strays. The paragraph on animal behavior is one
| I wish everyone who works with animals, whether pets, stock, or
| working animals, would read and understand. If you think of
| animals as purely instinctual or if you anthropomorphize them and
| try to train them like children, you and the animal both are in
| for a bad time.
| dolmen wrote:
| Paragraph title: "Socialization and Bonding with the Sheep"
| aero-deck wrote:
| We have an LGD on our hobby farm and figuring out socialization
| is really hard. Despite raising her in the barn among goats, I
| did give her a fair amount of affection and now she is very
| people-motivated. What I realize now is that if you want the
| dog to be an employee then you must treat the dog like an
| employee. What makes this difficult is withholding the human
| desire/instinct to treat the dog like a pet. This is especially
| hard when friends and family come over and want to pet the big
| fluffy dog - telling them that they can't makes you seem like a
| monster.
| ryanblakeley wrote:
| You can give a working dog affection. It doesn't erode their
| ability to do a job. It's only an issue if you do it at the
| wrong time.
| stritafarm wrote:
| Depending on the breed "people-motivation" may not be much of
| a problem, especially if your hobby farm is on the same land
| as your home. In practice if the dog is around people a lot
| it _needs_ to be socialized for their safety. Also, certain
| breeds (ahem, pyrenees) are just people-motivated regardless
| and need to be explicitly trained to stay with the animals.
| (We selected pyrenees for this reason as they are far safer
| around family than most other LGD breeds.)
|
| The pressure-release paradigm is helpful here: use her
| people-motivation to your advantage. Give her attention and
| affection around the goats, praise her when she runs off
| "threats" (even birds), but if she abandons them and (for
| example) comes to beg for food from your picnic be very gruff
| and cold until she returns to her charges.
|
| One final note is that a dog on watch may look "lazy" or like
| they are not watching their charges, but dogs rely on
| different senses (less sight and more smell and sound) and
| have their own alert threshholds. Our LGDs sit on our patio
| all day unless something comes around, and then they are
| immediately alert to it and running it off. At night, they
| are patrolling.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Reading this reminded me how humans are so lucky to have dogs.
|
| There is no other species that is as aligned to humans as dogs.
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