[Market-farming] Pasture chicken run and racoons
Owsley lucy
boulderbelt at embarqmail.com
Tue Jun 9 10:47:01 EDT 2009
I have found all my guard dogs as strays. the first one took about 2
years to whip into shape and he became an incredible guard dog for
the chickens, he has even run off hawks. He also used deposit a dead
coon in the yard right next to the brooding tractor every spring
about 2 days after the first peeps arrive.
Granted that dog did kill several chickens in the beginning (and did
quit a bit of damage to the market garden including eating 25' of
broccoli) the first year we had him but with patience we got it
through his head that his job is to protect the chickens and not kill
them and once he understood he took his job very seriously. he has
trained two out of three other foundlings (the 3rd dog was old when
he came here, hates the original dog and will not listen to much of
anything he says. Fortunately he has no teeth and cannot get through
a fence, so is not much of a threat to the birds).
The dogs also keep bunnies, voles and deer from decimating the market
garden-we let them run free 24/7. We have trained all of them to stay
out of the garden beds, for the most part. They do get in them but do
far less damage than the deer and other critters.
We could not farm successfully without the dogs
> How do you find a working dog and how to care for and handle it.
> Thanks, Tom -- Hillsborough, NC
>
> On Jun 9, 2009, at 9:37 AM, DreamThymeFarm wrote:
>
>>
Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com
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