Lauren craig

Wes Hunter wrote:The following comes from someone who just bought two pups himself, for what it's worth.

We raise upwards of 1000 birds per year, processed as table poultry.  It's a large part of our income.  This year, we lost a lot of birds to predators, primarily coyotes.  Part of this is due to inadequate fencing.  I'll be upgrading some fencing this winter, but making each field coyote-proof is not going to happen, because of the layout of our farm and because I just don't want that much fence subdivision.  Perhaps long-term, a thick hedge in places would work, but that's another topic.  Part of it is due to shelter upgrades that need to be made.  But the largest part of it is due to the oft-observed fact that pastured poultry producers tend to see a dramatic increase in predation after a couple years as the local predator population figures things out.

We also just recently purchased four ewe lambs and one ram, the beginning of a breeding flock.  That really precipitated the dog purchase.

But the dogs cost us $50 each, for 6-month old, partially trained, Pyrenees-cross pups.

By comparison, we lost somewhere around 200 (!) meat chickens this year.  That's what happens when they roam freely, and when they prefer the brushy, shaded, insect-and-worm-rich area behind the pond.  (Or, more specifically, when ol' Coyote learns they prefer it.)  At a projected net of $8 each, that's $1600 in lost potential profits, not to mention the cash we had in them up to the point of their deaths.  Then there are the killed guineas, turkeys, ducks, geese, and laying hens.  And the now potential for sheep and lambs.

Then, we process birds regularly from about mid-April through December, pigs in January, deer in November, and other game throughout the year.  That's a lot of offal, which can greatly reduce feeding expenses.

So, expenses for a couple dogs could easily be offset by reduced losses.

With the amount of livestock you have, however, keeping and feeding two big dogs does not sound like an economically reasonable decision, if one looks at cold numbers.  The goats could perhaps be housed in a portable shelter, such as four cattle panels wired together (maybe on PVC skids).  That's what we're currently doing with out sheep.  Or forego the skids, cut the panels in half, attach stakes to the ends, and you've got a mobile and flexible hurdle system, and your goats are safe for one up-front cost of maybe $100.

Pigs... they should be fine without the help of guard dogs.

And as for poultry, what is the value there?  You're spending hundreds of dollars on dogs to protect what I'd think is a poultry collection valued at a fraction of that.

If you want dogs because you like dogs, then by all means get dogs.  But if you want dogs solely for the protection they offer, I'd take a long hard look at the numbers to determine if it'll benefit you financially, or if you're just adding that much more to your expenses.


On another note, concerning acquiring economical meat, I'd suggest being on the lookout for (freshly) roadkilled deer, and ask your local friends to do the same.  They're especially plentiful this time of year, as breeding activity and animal movement start to increase.

Thanks so much for your feedback, Wes! You make great points. Agreed. We are dog people and do love dogs. We have an older small dog who is raised as a pet, but we said that any future dogs we get will be working animals so they serve a purpose here on our land. Thus, we believe our love of them will offset any economical headaches incurred. With that said though, we are still in the brainstorming phase and haven't fully arrived at a decision. I'm an external thinker and like places like Permies to get my gears turning fully before committing to anything.

After some of the responses I received, I actually got in contact with a local butcher who is going to start saving about 20 gallons of organ meat from pigs and cows for us each week. We have a large freezer, but will have to cap off the collection at some point due to lack of space, of course. Thus, I was thinking that perhaps we can switch our current dog and cats over to homemade food soon to begin saving money and stocking up some already mixed up in our freezer and perhaps canning some as well. I just ordered the following book to ensure that what I made would be nutritionally balanced: https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Canine-Ancestral-Diet-Healthier/dp/1929242670

We don't have normal "past-times" or "hobbies" here. Pretty much everything we do on our land happens to fall within our interest range and adds something of value to our lives as well. I realize it may sound crazy to take two of these dogs on, but I think I'll enjoy the process of making their food and watching them work. As long as this butcher source pans out, it looks like we can set the rabbit-raising aside for the time being as it won't be necessary. Also, as you mentioned, we can be on the lookout for roadkill deer as well.

Travis Johnson wrote:I might rethink getting the dogs at all.

I have a Great Pyrenees now, but only because it came from a sheep farm that was selling out of sheep and the dog was $50. For 9 years I raised sheep commercially without an issue. While I understand people want to get a dog just to get a dog, doing so for so few livestock animals just does not make a lot of sense. There are a lot of factors that go into predadation, but a lot of it has to do with size of the herd/flock being protected, and location.

For instance, two goats are not going to raise much smell as to attract coyotes, and predators like to work along large bodies of water. If a farm is away from that, small and has fences good enough to keep goats in, that is probably all they need. In my opinion it is kind of silly to buy (2) $700 dogs to help guard $300 worth of livestock.

Instead...and because predators like coyotes are opportunistic, and relatively small in size, use other deterrents that are far more productive to a farm. I have used cows for instance to "guard" my sheep, their large size being intimidating to coyotes. And when they got older they went in the freezer instead of a dog that nets little in return. If a farm is too small to support a larger animal like a cow, don't get anything to protect the goats because such a small area will not take much to install good fencing.

Farming can be a very vicious cycle, a farm getting livestock, dogs to protect livestock, then rabbits and chicken to feed livestock...etc. The problem with all that is, after awhile the farmers realize they are doing an awful lot of work that is not all that productive for the family. As Paul Wheaton himself advocates, doing earth work around the farm first is paramount. In my opinion, that is far more important and more productive then caring for animals (bunnies) that feed animals (dogs) that care for the original animals (goats).

....

Aside from that though, my Great Pyrenees eats a lot. Maybe it is just her, maybe because she is active and 5 years old, but she eats a lot of food. Rabbits cannot fully supply that though because they are too lean. Because of a lack of fat the dog would eat and eat on rabbit, feel full, but would eventually die due to a lack of nutrition. I have no idea what an ideal of rabbit to other feed sources would be, but a strong rabbit diet would kill a dog. Because you mention getting goats, this phenomenon can also happen with lambs and kids if given the wrong food stuffs; it is called Rumen Pack. It occurs with high moisture diets.

Travis, thank you so much for your feedback! The goats were the precipitant to the idea of adding these dogs to our lives, but we actually have 5 pigs, 30 chickens and 5 ducks all scattered about our land that could benefit from some added protection. Our main flock of chickens is housed on the far end of our property in our tree-line while the rest of our animals are near our home in the center of our land. We've had issues with coyotes getting to our animals in the past and would hate for that to happen again. We'll start breeding our pigs next year with our goats the following year and want to ensure they're protected. I like your idea of having a cow onsite, but we don't have enough true pasture to support one at this time. The dogs we're getting are on the lower range of what you'd expect- less than a third of what you quoted at $200 each- and come from a working dog family. They will be raised outside with their mother and father among goats from the start and their LG success rate is nearly 100% of the offspring! Anyhow, we're just trying to find the most economical and nutritionally sound way to feed them. At this time, we're thinking more along the lines of perhaps buying a boar for slaughter and combining that with rabbit, chicken offal, brown rice, discarded produce, etc., to make feeding them work for us. We've been wanting to get into raising rabbits anyhow, so it seems like a good way to get into it sooner rather than later! We're interested in doing a little bit of everything and have found that everything we've taken on takes far less time than we originally anticipated because we stay small-scale.

How have you found it most economical to feed your Pyrenees?  

Thank you everyone for your helpful feedback! I'm thinking that it makes the most sense to start small with the rabbits; perhaps with 2-3 does and 1 buck, breed them, begin amassing some some meat in the freezer for them [even if it is only a tiny fraction of what they will need] and then have other sources as well. We raise meat birds for ourselves and will again next year, so that would be an additional protein source as well as the offal from all the chickens raised. Our pigs won't be ready for slaughter for quite a long time as they are a small, slow-growing breed, but any unwanted boars will be a future source of meat for them too. Perhaps I can just talk my friend into going out to hunt some deer for us. We have 5 acres and do have deer that run through here with regularity. Our friend lives in a tiny home on our property and so as long as he's ready for action when it strikes, maybe we could get lucky on our own land! Additionally, we get roughly 75 gallons of produce food scraps from a local grocery store that could be added into our pup's diet as well! I feel silly not having considered the fact that they are omnivores!

I guess what I'm gathering from everyone's feedback is to simply gather their food from a wide variety of sources. I will speak to some local butchers and put feelers out with friends about obtaining unwanted cuts too. I appreciate the balance and wisdom in all of your answers!

We are planning on getting two Great Pyrenees puppies in Spring 2018 to watch over our livestock. We will be getting two Nigerian Dwarf goats for milk and have pigs, chickens and ducks for them to guard as well. However, we'd like to steer clear of kibble this time around and are in the "brainstorming" phase of the most sustainable manner of supplying raw meat for our dogs. We've considered an aquaponic setup that raises fish for them though this is much more labor-intensive and likely to take a long while to become established. I've heard rabbits are incredibly easy to raise for meat and reproduce rapidly. Does anyone have experience in this realm? I need to do the math to figure out how many rabbits they would need in a week, and whether this would be feasible. In a perfect world, I'd raise them on raw meat we've caught or raised on our own from the start, but I don't want to dillude ourselves. If we'd get dogs in the Spring, we'd need meat for them immediately and I don't know how quickly we could get the rabbits set up and have enough slaughtered for them... We are surrounded by deer here in rural Ohio, so that could be an option though, we'd have to rely on our friend who hunts to fetch them for us as we have no experience here and don't have the time this year to dedicate to collecting meat. Anyhow, I'm tossing a hook out there into the Permies world in the hopes that someone may have a sustainable solution.

Redhawk, thank you so much for your insight!  I very much appreciate it  

We have 5 acres of flat and fairly wet (in points) old farmland here in Ohio.  We should have our earthship home fully completed this year (after 3 years of work...) and want to get 200-300 trees in the ground here this year.  The catch is, that because we've been focused on establishing shelter, we haven't fully planned out our land and want to ensure that we've thoughtfully prepared for our trees.  We plan on using swales to make the best use of the wet areas and have quite a bit of land sculpting to do as a result.  We will be ordering a large amount of our trees from our county's annual tree sale and had the idea that we could create a nursery for them right in front of our house so that we can get around to planting them when we've thought through all the possibilities.  The upside to this is that we'd be able to keep a close watch on them; keeping them mulched and watered appropriately and keeping deer fencing around them for protection.  The plan would be to get them in their final location a year from this upcoming spring.

Would the plastic tree guards be something that we should apply upon receiving and planting the trees in their temporary location or should we wait until they are in their permanent location to affix it?  We've not used them before but have heard that they speed up growth due to creating a warm, moist, micro-climate for the tree, however, I'm not sure how easy it would be to keep on when we transplant.  Any thoughts or considerations to creating this nursery would be much appreciated!

Su Ba-   Thank you so very much for your response!  I appreciate the training and size considerations you mentioned.  We were thinking of using the electric tape fencing option and putting two rows of it low to the ground.  I believe this is a low cost, easy-to-move fencing option recommended by Joel Salatin.  I will look into the breeds you mentioned to see if I can find a local breeder to obtain our pigs through!

William-  We have chickens in our tree line now and they aren't doing a very good job of clearing it out, so it'd be great to add in some more voracious, sizable eaters to decimate it!  I got poison ivy in the eye this past Summer and so to say I'm in a hurry to get rid of it is a huge understatement .   We hadn't at all considered chopping the honeysuckle for biochar.  How interesting!  We'll have to look more into that option.  Thank you for your response.

We'd be moving them often, so we'd be plotting out the areas we'd want to tractor them around in; first focusing on our future food production areas and then moving them on to do other work on our land.  We have lots of spare materials on our land that we'd use to construct their shelter and the portable fencing that would surround them.  Once the area was prepped for annual food production, we'd add in some compost and then mulch it prior to planting in it.  Once they had taken care of those areas, we'd move them on to the other work...

We have a quarter of an acre of woods that is essentially comprised of honeysuckle and poison ivy that we'd want them to clear out as well as a pond we'd love them to seal (we have clay soil so it shouldn't be too difficult for them to accomplish).  We'd probably run them through different parts of our future two-acre food forest to prep for large plantings of fruit and nut trees and bushes, etc.  Basically, we have a lot of work for them to do but also know that plantings and land planning can take some time.  Thus, we don't want to take on too many at the start.  We'd rather be waiting on them to do the job as opposed to be trying to keep up with them.

We would be interested in goats though we have a very particular neighbor who would lose his absolute mind if one of them was found on his property eating his boring lawn.  And so, they are on hold for the time being.  That is, until our living, thorny, hedgerow grows up enough to keep them from climbing over    

We'd like to create a living fence in Zones 1 and 2 of our 5 acres and would like to use fruit and nut trees.  Would it be possible to create this fence with any size tree (dwarf, semi-dwarf, or standard)?  Also, if you have experience in this arena, could you provide suggestions, pictures, etc?  Thanks so much in advance!  We live in Zone 6A.

We live in an earthship home on 5 acres and are now in a position to begin focusing on our land and food production now that our home is done(ish).  We want to spend 2017 amending the soil in the areas we plan on growing annual produce and are seriously considering getting some pigs to do some work for us.  We live on old farmland that has been resting for at least the past 5 years without being bush-hogged.  Thus, we have waist-high grasses, trees, shrubs everywhere and could use some serious work-horses (or pigs) to prep our food production areas, clear out some poison ivy and honeysuckle and seal our pond for us.  

I know that most people who use pigs for such purposes slaughter them when they've reached weight.  However, we're vegetarian and while we aren't opposed to eating meat humanely and sustainably raised, we're not huge fans of pork and have no desire to slaughter them ourselves.  So, my question is, would it make sense from a cost-perspective to have a couple hogs permanently to do work for us in helping to heal our land even though we wouldn't be eating them?

I know our land is full of insects, critters, clovers, grasses, thistles, etc. that they would gobble up and could make up the majority of their food.  I can also contact several local breweries to try to obtain their spent grains as I hear pigs love them as well as give them all of our household rubbish.  If I wasn't concerned about weight, could I get away with raising happy, healthy, working pigs on these things alone?

If the answer is yes, how many would you recommend for our land?  We'd have them in and out of about 2 out of 5 of our acres, I imagine.  What breeds would you recommend for our climate? (Yellow Springs, OH Zone 6A).  Any other considerations would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!