Meat Goat Blog

Guardian Pups Chase Kids - Quick Tips

If you get a new livestock guardian pup around kidding season, be careful to tag the kids when the pup isn't looking. Puppies like to play - no matter their breed. If they see you chasing the baby goats to put tags in their ears, they will likely start to help. Well intentioned as the pup may be, baby goats make expensive play toys!

Protecting Goats from Predators

As I can tell you first hand, coyotes are a big problem for goat ranchers in Oklahoma. It doesn’t matter how healthy or parasite resistant your goats are if a pack of coyotes comes through. There’s only so much the goats can do to protect themselves and their young by hiding and fleeing. This video by Justin McDaniel, as part of the Goat Boot Camp seminar, is a good guide for beginning goat ranchers to watch. He addresses both lethal and non-lethal methods of predator control and explains the advantages of both. He also compares and contrasts the use of livestock guardian dogs (LGD’s) and llamas or donkeys for avoiding predation.

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

Livestock Guardian Dog Directory

We're happy to annouce our new Livestock Guardian Dog For Sale Directory! If you've been in the goat business for very long, you probably know how important it is to protect your herd from predators and how difficult it can be to find a Livestock Guardian Dog or Puppy. This directory is free to post and view. The main Livestock Guardian dog breeds (although there are many more than just these) are Anatolian, Great Pyrenees, Akbash, and Komondor. Just send me an e-mail ([email protected]) if you have Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale. Check out the directory here!

Defending Your Herd with Livestock Guardian Dogs

What do coyotes, cougars, wolves, and thieves all have in common? They are all major threats to your goat herd! So how can you protect the livestock that you have worked so hard to raise? Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGD's) are the solution that we like best!

Aside from hiring a professional security guard to stay with your herd at all times, there is no more effective way to defend your herd than a good set of Livestock Guardian Dogs. LGD's are great because they stay with the goats all day and are not afraid to chase the predators off of your property. But they will also cut down on the two-legged predators as well! While a llama or donkey will do just fine defending the herd against coyotes and wolves, a potential goat thief would probably be undeterred. But throw in a pack of dogs, and the criminals will have to think twice before tampering with your livestock!

Finding a good pack of dogs is a difficult task though (believe me). Odds are you'll need to go through quite a few dogs to find the right ones. If you're just starting out in the goat business, I suggest you try to find a herd dispersal where they wouldn't mind parting with one of their experienced guardians. But after you get a good adult, pups are usually the best option - that way the older dog can train the pups without the clashes that occur when two bull-headed adults have a disagreement.

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

LGD's: Here Come the Kids!

I know I have talked about this before, but it's been on my mind since we recently got a new Livestock Guardian Dog pup. As a puppy, when kidding season hits, it is a GREAT time of year! The grass is growing, the weather is perfect, and there are all these fluffy little toys running all over the place. You've been looking for some fun lately and these baby goats seem like just the thing. Besides, you know it's okay because you've seen the rancher chasing them around and poking tags in their ears. So why not just do what feels natural? Let's chase'em!

This has been a big problem that we've run into in the past; but we're trying to avoid it this year. LGD pups learn by example. When they're little, they watch mama eat dog food, so they eat a little bit too. They watch mama bark at predators, so (after they get to safety) they growl a little bit too. Since this is how life works, they don't understand why they can't play along when you start "hunting goat kids." As they mature, they start to get the picture - but that's at least a year away. Until then, when the pup is around try to avoid doing anything with the kids that you wouldn't want to teach your puppy. Otherwise, you might have just shown them a new form of entertainment that will be very hard to forget!

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

LGD's - Livestock Counselor Dogs?

There's a lot more to being a Livestock Guardian Dog than just killing coyotes and chasing cougars. Sometimes you've just got to be there to talk when one of the goats needs a friend. I imagine this conversation went something like this:

"Mr. Guardian-Dog, how do I get big like all the other goats?"

"Well, Little Goat, like I've told thirty times now, you just need lots of milk and a little time. Try to be more patient, you're giving me a headache!"

McCoy Meets a Goat Kid

We were out tagging kids earlier and saw our new Livestock Guardian Dog, McCoy, meeting this baby goat for the first time. At first we were afraid he might think of the kid as a 'new toy,' but he was as gentle as a lamb towards that little goat!

Finding the Perfect Balance of LGD's

When you have livestock, especially smaller ones like goats, you've got to have some protection against predators. While some people use llamas and donkeys, we have found that Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGD's) work well for us.

The only issue we have is finding the right balance in the number of personality types. As with all animals, there are LGD's that are aggressive towards potential threats and others that are more laid-back. To have the perfect LGD team, you must have a balance of leaders and followers to prevent fights and to make sure all the work gets done.

If you have too many dogs (or too many of one personality type) problems start. We recently lost our oldest LGD who was an aggressive worker and really loved guarding the goats. Because she was such a passionate guardian, she would sometimes discourage the other dogs from working so that she could do their job for them. So, while we are sad to have lost such an enthusiastic dog, there has been a big change in the other dogs. The laid-back and lazy dogs have started working harder to make up the gap. While the loss hurt the safety of the herd at first, when the "side-kick" dogs started being productive, the animals actually became safer.

So if your dogs are fighting, roaming, or just slacking off, try trading dogs around until you find the best match for keeping your goats safe.

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

Training Your LGD: Whether You Mean to or Not

A couple months ago, we started a Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD) pup to begin running with our grown dogs. We were surprised by how focused he was on staying with the goats at such a young age. But we were even more impressed because he didn't try to play with the babies that had been born just before we got him. As time wore on, we became more and more impressed by his ability to learn by example. Unfortunately, that ability to learn had another side to it. We had made to mistake of waiting a couple weeks before tagging the newborn kids. This is a BAD idea! To catch them, we had to chase them all over the pasture. But what we weren't thinking of as we did this, was our fluffy little audience.

Because we were not careful to avoid teaching the pup bad habits, we now have to re-train him to NEVER chase the goats. So remember when you have a LGD in training, they learn very fast but do not forget quite so quickly!

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

Big Hole Panels Cost You Goats

This morning was a good reminder that big hole panels cause loss of livestock. We used the big hole panels when we built our buck pen. It covers about 7 acres and we have not wanted to spend the money to redo it. Since we run principally bucks in the pen, we don't have much trouble. The bucks tend to have bigger horns and can't put their heads through the holes.

One of our yearling bucks reminded me about earlier losses. He decided to stick his head thru and got stuck. Good news for us, one of our LGD's decided to stay with him. I heard a dog howling and figured it was a neighbor dog. Our LGD's don't howl much. But I kept hearing a goat from the same direction and decided to investigate to be safe. Sure enough, one of our most promising yearlings was waiting for the coyotes to come for breakfast.

I like the LGD's. They really watch out for the goats and this one  was ecstatic when the goat was released. He was clearly unhappy with the goat caught in the fence and apparently howling to tell us about the situation. Moral of the story, don't use the big hole fencing unless you regularly check it to avoid losses.