Common Issues with Livestock Guardian Dogs
Last month, I wrote about my early experiences with livestock guardian dogs. It may have sounded a bit like a fairly tale story. Oddly enough, our first dogs were named Prince and Cinderella. To be fair, owning livestock guardian dogs also comes with issues that must be dealt with.
For a livestock guardian dog program to be successful, a person must commit to the process of making it work. In this article, I’ll discuss the common issues ranchers deal with when using livestock guardian dogs and methods to overcome these issues.
Guard Dogs at Redden Ranch. Photo by Hattie Barham 2011
KEEP THEM ON THE RANCH. Many of the problems ranchers have with livestock guardian dogs arise when the dogs leave the ranch. For instance, they may go onto the neighbor and be accused of harassing livestock or wildlife, among other things. The dogs may be pushing predators further away, trying to guard the neighbor’s livestock or seeking food or a mate. When dogs leave the ranch, they often end up a public road and could be hit by a vehicle or picked up as a lost dog.
There are a few things to try to prevent wandering from occurring. First, bond the livestock guardian dogs to animals within the flock/herd they are meant to protect. This will reduce the likelihood the dog will look for other stock to protect. Second, ensure the dog has access to quality dog food, so it is not seeking another food source. Third, neuter male dogs so they are not lured away by a female in heat. And last of all, never reward a dog for leaving the ranch with food or affection. When caught off premise they should be verbally scolded and returned to their pasture. Some people suggest kenneling the dogs for a few days as a source of punishment.
CORRECT ROUGH BEHAVIOR WITH LIVESTOCK. Often, young dogs will be too rough with livestock, particularly the young and the weak. They will chase them, chew on their ears and tails, and knock them down. The dogs can kill livestock if this continues for too long. Most often, they are playing with them as they would play with each other. But, sheep and goats can’t retaliate as another dog would retaliate. And if the livestock are small or weak they cannot get away from the dogs.
We do not recommend using small or weak animals in bonding pens, so this behavior does not occur when the dogs are not supervised. But we do want the young dogs to be exposed to newborns when the dogs are 2 to 6 months-of-age. Under supervision, introduce a young dog that is being bonded to new livestock. If the dog, exhibits chasing behavior stop the behavior by verbally scolding the dog. Continue to expose the dog to new animals, until they no longer chase. Also, we like to expose young dogs to ewes or does with newborn animals, who are just a few days old. When the dogs get too rough with the newborns, their mothers will butt the dogs and discipline them for this behavior. If the dams don’t stop the behavior, the handler should stop it. We don’t like bonded dogs to be in the pens with dams that are giving birth, until we are confident the dogs are not going to be too rough with young animals. Most all livestock guardian dogs will eat afterbirth and newborns that are born dead or die shortly after birth. If left unattended, we don’t know if the dog ate a dead lamb or the dog killed a newborn lamb.
Guard Dogs at Redden Ranch. Photo by Hattie Barham 2011
DON’T RAISE A WILD DOG. Many dog breeders recommend very limited human contact or no human contact at all to ensure the livestock guardian dogs stay with the flock/herd. This is a mistake and not the reason dogs leave the flock. Without human contact or only negative interactions with humans, livestock guardian dogs will become fearful of people and become too wild to be caught. They may be an effective livestock guardian dog but the ranchers lack the ability to manage them. The dogs cannot be treated for health issues or may not be able to be relocated to a new ranch or pasture. In some cases, wild dogs will evade people to the point they will hide out and folks are unable to determine where the dogs are. This is particularly a problem in large pastures that are densely covered with brush. If a wild dog leaves the ranch it is even more of a problem to get them home.
As a point of consideration, these dogs were bred for thousands of years in herded operations and are accustomed to guarding livestock and being around a shepherd. However, in most cases, Texas ranchers need these dogs to work unsupervised.
I believe livestock guardian dogs should be bonded to livestock and socialized with humans. Ideally, livestock guardian dogs will stay with the livestock but as soon as a person enters a pasture and approaches the flock, the livestock guardian dogs will come and great them. This starts with socializing the dogs with people during the bonding phase. To keep these dogs from becoming too wild, it helps to feed livestock guardian dogs a treat when checking livestock, but only when the dogs are present with the flock/herd. Some ranchers use canned dog food, dog treats, or leftovers. But don’t reward a dog for leaving their stock and seeking food or affection from people.
Predation is the number 1 issue for the range sheep and goat industry in Texas. It costs our industry tens of millions of dollars in lost production. As such, we are committed to helping the ranching community use guardian animals to help prevent predation. Let us know if you have ideas about how we can help the industry with livestock protection animals.
To provide feedback on this article or request topics for future articles, contact me at reid.redden@ag.tamu.edu or 325-653-4576.