Using livestock guardian dogs in a small-scale commercial sheep operation (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Using livestock guardian dogs in a small-scale commercial sheep operation (2014)

flyingmule.blogspot.com

59 pointsluu22 comments

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.

> Happy to share if people are interested.

Please do!

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.

Growing up on a farm we used to call this "Silence of the Lambs".

Animal husbandry is so fascinating!

My family grew up on farms in Ontario - whereabouts were you working? Do tell about the other sheep story!

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.

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.

Paragraph title: "Socialization and Bonding with the Sheep"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

What a lovely, low-stress story.

Thanks for posting it!

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

This made me chuckle despite being unpopular with other readers. Maybe to give non-working herding dogs a “purpose” there will be an ai powered sheep herd for them to protect Edit: my Malinois will just chase squirrels until then

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