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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Anyone Tried This?

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  • From: Owsley lucy <boulderbelt AT embarqmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Anyone Tried This?
  • Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:30:26 -0400

Mutts. Right now a lab/boxer (maybe) cross. we just lost a poodle/ German shepherd/chow cross who was about 8 months and because she was so smart was just a few months away from being fully trained and one of our best was the Rottie/german shepherd cross. I like having a variety of breed mixes as they all excel at different skills. Anything with chow will be almost pathological about running deer. German Shepherd mixes are good raccoon hunters and excellent guard dogs for livestock. Digging breeds (terriers) are good for voling/ moling/mousing. I believe poodle mixes may be smart enough to teach to weed;-)

I train them by spending a lot of time with them and doing a lot of correction early and often, there are no short cuts. All our dogs are rescues most come to use as pups around 5 to 7 months, one came to us at age 13 (he was the hardest to deal because of age and the fact he was a city dog and had been a lone dog so he had many problems such as no canine socialization and no farm skills like hunting, but he did catch on pretty fast)

Chickens are the hardest to get across but all of our dogs eventually stopped killing them, some much more easily than others (one, a chow/ newf cross, had exactly one run in with the chickens-charged the fence, was told no and the next day was sleeping with week old chicks walking all over him and he never harmed a bird.)

And as I mentioned when you have older, seasoned dogs around, they will teach the new comers a lot and do it quickly so it really is the first dog or two that take the longest to train.


On Aug 17, 2010, at 12:54 PM, Richard Sherrington wrote:

What kind of dogs do you have?
Richard






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