Help my oes likes my livestock
 I don't know why they did it now! My dogs have never been around other livestock until about 6 months ago when we moved. If I had these animals befor I brought these dogs home would they have still gone after the pig. Please help, we are in the process of getting other livestock and I dont want to have to worry about my dogs eating them. |
|
|
| My grandfather had about 500 acres. Most of it went to cattle, but he had a barn of pigs.
He had several collie-type dogs that he used to get the cattle in and sometimes they would bother his pigs. (This was over 25 years ago.) He left some of the pigs run in the upper part of the farm by the pig barn, mostly these huge boars. The sows pretty much were in their pens. He also had a slaughter house. Well, his dogs started running the pigs more and more. Somebody told him it was because he fed the dogs scraps from the slaughter house. So he got rid of the dogs. Then he adopted a couple of dogs that always seem to wander in, so my sister and I looked up all sort of stuff about training dogs. Basically, dogs have to know who is boss and where they stand in the pecking order. Whenever there is more than one, mob rule will exist if there is no clearly established pack leader. So we taught the dogs to sit, lay, stay, come ----that sort of thing. Grand Dad taught them who was boss and put an electric fence around the pig barn. The dogs were not allowed around the chickens nor the pigs off-leash-- for about 6 months. They were fed over by the slaughter house on the other side of the farm and were taught to go get the cattle and horses. Actually, once the horses saw them they would follow the dogs back to the feeding station and the cows just followed them. Long story short, it took persistent, consistent re-enforcement of who was boss and what was and was not allowed. If they ever did anything out of bounds they were kenneled in the horse stalls. And they learned rather quickly. But if memory serves, we spent a summer helping to train the dogs because we had pet chickens and didn't want them to "disappear" as they had with the previous set of dogs. Not sure if this helps. Personally, I do not think the dogs will attack your livestock if you make sure they know that it is out of bounds. You need to kennel or limit their freedom when you are not there and demand they stay with you at all times. This may be very easily done with rewards and training seesions throughout the day. You may want to separate them from time to time, to disrupt any pack behavior that you are not able to control. Usually if you kennel one, the other will stay nearby. All dogs become bored and do bad things. It sounds like an unreasonable amount of time and effort, but if you do it while doing other stuff or as a routine---like feeding them, it becomes very easy. The more time you put into anything the better it turns out. You just need to harness that energy, put htem to work fetching, chasing of birds, or something. Also, make sure to give them toys and stuff they can play with when they are kenneled or bored. Good luck. Farming is very grueling and has many low-points as well as high points. My parents have a tree farm and catfish ponds ---they own no dogs, yet have dog problems too. Just be very persistent. I am presently having trouble getting my sweetie to not chase the neighborhood cats. |
Didn't find exactly what you're looking for? Search again here:
Custom Search
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|