Bartholomew Olson

Thanks for the input everyone, I really appreciate it. I'm still waiting to hear back from a breeder friend who may be able to help, so I haven't made a decision yet.

A couple responses to some questions -
Yes she was young and it was my fault she killed the lambs - that's why we let it slide. She was introduced to all the animals and had been great with them up to that point - she'd been living with the sheep and two other guardians for about 8 months at that time. It was a real shock when she killed the lambs.

As for the fence - yes I'm new to this and continually reinforcing the fencing to keep it safe. I have two good LGDs in the pen who had a rash of escapes a week ago, so I had to go fix it up a lot. This LGD however is kind of next-level. When we were lambing she was digging tunnels under fencing and the sheep barn that divides two sides of the pen, just to get to the other side. I haven't had her in the main pen for a while since she had puppies and we're intending on getting her fixed, so I'm worried she's going to find new creative ways to escape from the main sheep pen when she's back in. At this point I can't afford for her to escape even once.

The aggression feels different from being defensive - she's a very 'slippery' dog who if she feels like she's being contained, needs to escape. As soon as I fumbled the leash last night she picked up on it and ran. I'm fine if she bites people while she's in her sheep pen protecting - that's what she's for. I'm not ok with her seeking out strangers outside her pen to bite. I think my situation is different from most peoples' in that we have a busy trail and a busy road bordering two sides of our property - we're not a 50+ acre farm in the boonies.

Hi Folks, I need some advice

I have an almost 2-year old female Great Pyrenees. She's currently unaltered, but going in in a couple weeks to get that done. So, she's been a problem ever since we got her as a puppy - personality-wise she's always been pretty anxious and neurotic; she has been good with my wife and I, but always seems distant and stand-offish when we're around her. She's lovey, but also always seems like she's about to turn; it's just a kind of gut feeling you have looking at her. A lot of that sounds contradictory, but that's just how she is...

The first real problem for us was when she killed three newborn lambs. She's an escape artist as well, and slipped through fencing and got to the newborns - I don't think she killed them out of aggression, just kind of licking fresh fluids, and kept licking and chewing until suddenly she had eaten half of 3 lambs. I take most of the responsibility for this - she was too young and my fencing wasn't up to snuff to keep her away from them, but it was obviously very upsetting to have my first lambing season turn out that way.

The other problem is that she's become really aggressive with humans. We've had her next to the house since she had puppies recently - we've sold most of them, and have been keeping her and the last puppy inside while we wait to get her fixed. She's nipped a couple friends inside the house, and we have to be VERY careful with her. We assumed it was her protecting the house, but the last straw came tonight. We live next to a busy walking trail, and I was out with her letting her pee on-leash, and I fumbled the leash and she got away from me. She likes to roam (Great Pyrenees) and she ran down to the trail where she found a walker - she ran up to him and almost immediately bit him on the calf when he glanced away from her. It didn't break the skin, but will she on the next bite? and will it be a kid or something?? So the biting doesn't seem like defensive biting - she's just aggressive.

Basically, I can't trust her with my sheep, or to stay in the sheep pen, or to not bite random strangers when she inevitably gets out of my sheep pen. It doesn't make sense to me to keep her as a livestock guardian at this point. I'd be happy to give her to a rescue that thinks they can deal with her, or someone with a big farm and no baby animals? Honestly I'm mad enough to put her down myself tonight, but I'm trying to reach for other options first.

Thanks for the help

Hi Louis, no problem!

So I don't have experience using ducks to seal a pond - do you have some resource you're using to learn about that? My pond was already here, and we have dense rocky clay soil here, so I don't think it was hard for it to seal itself once it was dug. (I believe mine is man-made as well) I've heard of people using organic material to seal ponds before and always assumed it took quite a bit of material. I don't think ducks are going to perform as well as you might hope on this project. If you wanted to get this done quickly, I would guess you'd need several hundred ducks all working in a tight area to fill it in, which is going to create unhealthy conditions for the ducks themselves! It sounds like you might be better off finding clay soil to seal it, or a lot of partially broken-down organic material to put in it. The other thing with duck poop is that it's mostly organic material, so in pond conditions it's going to break down further into CO2 etc, and literally float away, so you're only getting a certain percentage of that material sticking to the pond bottom anyway.

To give you an idea of how much organic matter mine produce, I usually have 15-20 ducks, and keep them in a little shed at night, which is maybe 4x3 meters. I keep straw on the floor so they can dry out especially in cold weather, and try to get a new layer down every 2-4 weeks when it gets wet and gross. I'll shovel that out every few months, and end up with maybe a 6cm thick layer of straw+poop. I just pile it outside of the shed, and have been doing that for about 2 years now, since I don't have a good garden to put it on yet. The mound is pretty small still, like I could probably move it in 2-4 wheelbarrow loads, which just means it's breaking down a lot, composting away all the organic material.

Can you give an idea of how the soil in the pond drains now? Like if you throw a bunch of water in there, will it drain into the soil in a few minutes/hours/days? What's your starting point like? You mentioned your soil is sandy, and it looks very sandy to me, so this might be a tougher project than you have planned for!

I would post this question on the pond area of permies as well, since this question is getting outside my area of expertise. ;) My advice would be to find a new permies friend in your area with clay soil to seal it (I'd be happy to help but I think shipping costs might be prohibitive for us lol), or a LOT of organic material. I think if you got like 5-10cm of fallen leaves on the pond bottom and filled it with water, that would be a really good starting point to add more organic material and get that delicious organic slime on the bottom!

And your coop design looks great! (for a few ducks, don't put hundreds of ducks in it lol)

Hey I'm from that area! I was born and raised on the Kenai Peninsula, in Homer and Ninilchik. I live in Washington now, and have Icelandic sheep, so maybe I can help here. :)

So first off, obviously the climate is quite a bit milder down here. The worst we've had was 15 degrees for about two weeks last winter. The sheep did fine in it, but your minimum is probably closer to -30, so I would say some kind of good barn is a must. I just have a little 3-sided shed until I get a barn built, but they seem to be just fine with that. In fact they sleep and wander around in the rain all the time - their wool is thick and they really don't seem to notice the wet and cold here. I believe in Iceland they pretty much lock them up for the winter and they don't spend a lot of time outside. Probably you can gauge that by what their preferences are - provide them a barn and see how much they use it during the real cold times.

As for food, I would really encourage you to get creative! Hay isn't the only answer! If you check my post history, I have a long post from last year (that I've been meaning to update) covering what else my sheep eat and what their preference seems to be for each forage as I have them clear out my forest. It's not as useful for you since your forage is different, but it will give you an idea of what they're willing to eat. Icelandics are great foragers; they'll eat almost everything they can reach, and push over stuff they really like. If you've got a big meadow of fireweed or something my guess is that they'd love that! (probably watch out for pushki, that plant is a hazard to everyone lol) I'm deep in a fir forest, so I'm using them to help work on getting it cleared of small trees and useless brush, grass planted on the bottom layer, and expanding the old orchard that was there to provide coppice trees.

So that's my next point - tree hay! There's a couple threads on here about that - basically trees can be just as nutritious as grass. In fact in medieval times that was pretty much all ruminants ate was tree hay. Most deciduous trees can be coppiced pretty easily - cut them off at about 4 feet and let the shoots grow up for a couple years, then keep chopping a few off each year and drying for winter, or feed directly to the sheep in the summer. Like I said I'm working on an orchard that's against a tall fir forest, so I'll be putting in coppice trees as I clear out the smaller stuff. We have a pretty wide variety of trees down here, but I'd guess you're looking at spruce, birch, and alder? I don't have birch here so I can't say for those, but I was disappointed they don't like my red alder trees here. Evergreens are like the very last option, but I was surprised to see them strip a cedar tree in the middle of last winter. Sometimes all they want is something green and juicy lol. However if you have willow or cottonwoods, they should love those! Plus they coppice really well and are super vigorous, so that would be a great option.

To give an idea of how much the sheep eat, I was going through almost a full bale of hay per week for five sheep, 3 of whom were pregnant. That was really expensive, so I switched to haylage, which is available in the area. I realized I was buying REALLY nice hay that was for horses, but sheep are ruminants, so they can process lower quality stuff and still get nutrition from it. The hay bales were $40 apiece, vs $65 for a haylage bale that lasts around 1.5-2 months.

One thing I heard when I was a kid was that goats and sheep don't do well in your area because the soil is really poor (probably low nitrogen?). I heard people say that a goat could starve to death with a belly full of grass. I have NO idea if that's true or not, it's just some kind of old-timer rumor I heard when I was a kid, but I would talk to anyone with livestock to see what their experience has been!

Livestock guardians! I have 3 plus puppies right now (for sale if you wanna come to Washington!) and they've done a great job. We have black bears in the area - each spring there seems to be a new yearling exploring the area, realizing there's too many damn dogs around, and moves off into the mountains later in the summer. We also have cougars, which have been a serious problem for all of my neighbors. Everyone has livestock around here, and everyone has lost animals to the cougars - my next door neighbor said she watched a cougar in the middle of the day stroll through their yard and casually grab a chicken right in front of her lol. Another neighbor has goats and a 'guardian donkey' and they had 3 cougars corner the donkey one night - luckily they noticed and were able to chase the cougars off themselves. Anyway, my dogs seem to have kept the cougars at bay, which is really nice. I haven't lost anything, and these dogs are super vigilant. I'm also somehow the only one to use livestock guardians correctly lol - they live OUTSIDE WITH THE LIVESTOCK! They're fine in just about everything, mine just slept in the snow and rain all winter. My neighbors that do have guardians lost livestock because they felt bad for the dogs and brought them inside at night lol.  If you feel like they'll actually have a chance of facing down a bear/wolverine/coyotes/wolves (vs just spreading dog smell/noise), then you should definitely have more than one. They work together, so having more than one is kind of a multiplicative effect. I think a cougar could take one livestock guardian if it came down to it, but they won't mess with two or three. They're expensive dogs to get, and expensive to feed, but I feel good having mine.

Hi there!

I have muscovy ducks, and can answer some of these questions!
Are you planning on doing anything else to the sandy 'pond' to seal it and capture rainwater, or what's your plan there? Muscovies poop a lot, but I reckon it would take a long time to line an entire pond, especially with 3-4 ducks!
A shelter is good, they don't need much. I've found them to be pretty sturdy ducks. I think my climate is colder/wetter than yours and they do all right here in a little shed with just straw on the floor. They don't like the snow, but I don't think many ducks do!

I feed mine a brand of bird feed called 'all flock' - just a broad-spectrum bird feed that they really love. I guess it depends how much kitchen scraps you produce, but I'd keep a bag of commercial food (or however you can get grain) on hand to feed them if your family doesn't produce enough for them. It could be hard to tell on adults, but I have a sense of how fast they should grow now after a couple years of having them, so I can tell when to increase their food as they go from chicks to adults. Keep an eye on how much they seem to successfully forage in your area as well. Your pond looks pretty dry right now, but normally they'll forage through grass and clover and bugs. Mine dig around in the muck at the bottom of the pond, I have no idea what they find to eat down there! As for kitchen scraps, I've seen my ducks eat just about everything even remotely resembling food. They will probably surprise you lol. Chicken bones, peach pits, every kind of fruit and vegetable skin, they eat EVERYTHING. I don't compost anything, the ducks get it all and put it in the pond haha!

My neighbor has a nice electric fence that is a flexible net-type thing, on movable posts, so he can move the fence around for his sheep. That would probably be great for them, especially as you get a feel for what they like to do on your property. You might be moving them around a lot as you get them settled, so a mobile fence would be convenient. I don't know what it's called, but you're in France, too, so you and Google will have to have a chat to see what's available!

There are also two sort of kinds of muscovies, there's a breed that's been very domesticated, and usually comes in white/brown coloration, and more wild ones that are typically variations of black. The white/brown ones are slow and heavy and don't fly well. The black ones however are pretty spry, and without a net covering over their area they'll likely be able to escape pretty easily, especially if there's more forage outside the fenced area! I let mine free-range, and with a pond available to them to jump onto, the predators have only caught a few. They reproduce really well so I've been able to keep the flock going. I'm currently mixing white/brown genetics with the black ones to see if I can get fat and spry ducks! Anyway, if you're feeding them, they likely won't have a good reason to escape, so the fence is mostly to keep predators away, if you think that will be a problem in your area. My ducks are really friendly, and follow me into the shed every night to get locked up so they don't get eaten while they're asleep.

You should definitely keep water out for them! Ducks have pretty delicate sinuses that need to be kept wet all the time. They also like to wash down all their food with water, and splash and bathe themselves constantly. People without a pond usually keep a 'kiddie pool' full of water for the ducks - it's like a big plastic pan, maybe 2 meters across and 30cm deep. They'll turn it to mud in a day or so, so you'll have to refill it every day probably. Ducks are really dirty!

I got lucky and my property had a little boat shed on edge of the pond that I use to keep them in at night. I feed them to get them in it at night, so I give them a big bowl of water to drink, and it's always gone by morning, but I've never had problems limiting their water like that overnight, so they don't HAVE to have access to a lot of it at night. Any chicken coop style shelter should work, I'm sure there's lots of designs on here! I keep the bottom covered in straw, since they're constantly wet. I try and dig it out every couple weeks, which is a great source of mulch/fertilizer. They produce a lot of poop, and I think it's pretty high in nitrogen, but I'm still getting things in order to be able to use it, so it's in a big pile outside their house.

Oh breeding - if you're new to ducks or birds in general, they can be kind of nasty to each other, so I'll just prepare you now. Try to keep your ratio of male to female around 1 male to  3-5 females. The males will fight if there's not enough girls to go around. And - to be blunt - ducks are pretty rapey. The males will mount the females pretty aggressively, and when they have water they'll do it there, and really dunk the females - like you'll be worried they're drowning. They're probably fine (I haven't had any deaths because of that) but I do yell at them or poke the males off with a stick if it's clear they're done and still on top of her. That being said, the eggs are delicious, and they are pretty good mothers! I've had girls go broody on anywhere from 4-19 eggs, and hatch almost all of them. They may need some help keeping everyone together, but I've *mostly* had really good mothers!

Ok that's all I can think of, good luck!

Hi folks!
I've been brainstorming a way to control Himalayan blackberries for quite some time, and I'd like to do a sanity check here, and/or see if anyone has done anything similar. I got sheep some time ago, with the chief aim of reclaiming and expanding an orchard/soon-to-be-food-forest on my property from invasive blackberries and other various native brush that had gotten WAY out of control. I think I've managed that pretty well, and now that I'm re-planting the orchard, I'd like to set some space aside for blackberries! I'm curious about ways to cultivate, encourage, and control them!

Containment is the first step, and the sheep have been doing a great job - whatever I build, anything that gets out will be immediately eaten; turns out the sheep love them, so low maintenance on my end! :D

The next step is to allow them some space to grow the parent canes - I think I read that only year-old canes will flower and bear fruit. I crushed everything down for the sheep to eat this year, so all the canes are basically cut back to the ground and will be trampled all winter. I think what I'll do is fence around a 4-foot wide strip with lots of parent canes in it, probably in the East/West direction so everyone gets lots of light. The sheep can eat any canes that escape, and keep the whole mess growing upward. I have lots of leftover 4-foot tall fencing, which should be enough to direct them upward for the next step.

The third step is the one I feel like I need help on - what's the best setup for harvesting?? I've picked them in several different locations and setups, but it's hard to determine which was the most fruitful. It feels like the plants like to present their berries in a specific way for a specific purpose, so I'm trying to use that to my advantage - but what is that purpose? Is it for birds to pick so the berries are on top, or better out the sides of the thicket? The worst method of picking is definitely slashing into a thicket to pick - the berries are evenly distributed, and it's hard to find a 'motherlode'. It feels like the best opportunities have been when they're arranged on a wall of some kind, either trailing down or poking out of a brush-wall of their own making. I like the idea of an overhead trellis, but I'm not sure the fruit would hang down through like I would want, and that maybe it would just use it to climb even higher and start it's thicket 8 feet high! Another idea is a slanted fence-wall/trellis thing. I think I would slope it towards the North if I were to do this - shoots would be eaten on the bottom side in the shade, and fruit-producing shoots would come up through on the sunny side, I think? I'd have to limit the size to make it actually pickable, and it might still require some management from me. The last technique would be the simplest I think, just an 8-foot vertical fence. I imagine the brambles would mushroom out the top, and I'd have plenty of pickable fruit at ~3-10 feet high. It might require occasional trimming, but really the sheep should take care of anything that gets really out of control, without the brambles really ever escaping.

That's all I can think of! Does anyone else have any experience or observations on how they behave in containment/propagation? It seems like all we do is slash them back, but gosh darn it those are some delicious berries!

I found an article that explains some more of the how-to, and is a project from my area!
https://crosscut.com/environment/2021/12/swinomish-tribe-wants-resurrect-us-clam-gardening

Thanks for sharing!
I grew up in Alaska, and live in Washington State now, and have always been a little bewildered by how bountiful the sea really is! Even when you're on the very periphery of the ocean, digging clams at low tide, there's just an incredible amount of delicious food there. I grew up on the coast in Alaska, and we'd dig razor clams on low tides. The beach was only a few miles long, and there'd be hundreds of people out digging, but the limit was ~50 clams per person per day, and it wasn't hard to reach that limit. The big razor clams were 6+ inches long. Just an insane amount of food living in the sand - I wish we had some of the indigenous knowledge of what else was edible, because we'd see all manner of snails and other clams out there.
Now that I'm older and live in Washington, I think a lot about how the native people survived here, and I've felt a little disappointed with foraging in the forest - the berries are small and weird/bitter, and most of the vegetation is pretty disappointing. But I'm reminded just how easy it would be to survive if you lived along a nice beach, especially near a river with a salmon run! I've been out with friends several times and slurped a wild oyster from a shell. Just a few weeks ago we were walking a beach and saw clam signs, so assuming it was a steamer or razor clam I decided to show off my Alaskan Skills and dig it up by hand. To my surprise it was my first Geoduck, which is like a gigantic version of a razor clam - the thing was easily several pounds! It and some kelp would easily make soup for a few people, and it was like 2 minutes of digging in soft sand by hand. (for those of you concerned, I didn't have a license for it, so I gave it to some folks that had a license and a bucket full of them)
My point is, the ocean is crazy bountiful, and I can only imagine how much better it would be with indigenous management practices! Modern practices seem to lean toward "harvest the natural surplus, plus some" without the intentional management to increase the potential harvest in a more natural way. I'll have to look around for some of these projects in my area and see how they're going - I love seafood!

I'm in a similar situation to you - Western Washington with a ~1/2 acre clay-bottom pond that doesn't have a natural inlet of a creek or spring that I've found. So no natural aeration. I suspect the pond is man-made but it's been there for quite a long time so I don't know for sure. I'm coming at it from a different direction than you - I started with ducks on the pond (Muscovies) and have been having trouble with the babies dying soon after they hatch. Every pond person I've talked to has suggested that the pond is probably anaerobic at this point, basically with too many nutrients and not enough oxygen to break it down, so we may be having a problem with bacteria or algae being toxic. I got an aerator sized for the pond, have salted it, dyed it blue, and seeded with aerobic bacteria. No visible changes yet, but we have a lot of ducklings hatching soon, so I hope it's safe this time! I want to do some climate-appropriate aquaponics on the pond as well, so I've been looking into that and thinking about it.

As for natural oxygenation, I'm not sure how much oxygen plants release into water - I suspect it depends on the physiology of the plant, since my understanding of plants is that oxygen is released through the stomata on the leaves. So like a hair algae that's totally underwater will certainly release oxygen into the water, whereas something like a lily will release it from the leaf on top directly into the air. So maybe certain plants will be better at oxygenation than others! This might be a thing you'll have to experiment with. I'd start with things like cattails or iris whose leaves rise through the water. If you can keep a large shallow section with a lot of those, that might be enough to oxygenate properly based on your fish load. Duckweed is another amazing plant, and if you can get it to really proliferate on your pond, the leaves will build up and push each other underwater where they'll release oxygen. Some people may recommend against this, since duckweed can be pretty intense - it's one of the fastest growing plants that in the right conditions, can double its biomass in 24 hours. But it's actually a great low-fiber, protein and carbohydrate rich green that humans and basically all animals can readily eat. I can't think of other water plants right now since I'm not well-versed in them, but just look for anything whose photosynthesizing portions are submerged. I think this is a thing you'll have to either start experimenting yourself with, or reading white papers on individual plants to see who oxygenates best. Until you find a good solution, maybe electricity is a good way to get started, and try improving naturally from there? I find I work on a project more if I just thrust myself into getting it started and start seeing the problems I have.

As for aquaponics, I've been looking at a rafting system for that. You can build floating rafts that hold plants just above the water, where they dip their roots in as much as they need. The basic design is a floating ring (rectangular or otherwise) with a net or something across it that holds plants just at the water's surface. My plan is to anchor them in the middle of the pond, where they'll get the right amount of sun and not disrupt the bank ecology. Keeping the ducks away from my lettuce is another problem entirely. But with just ducks living on the pond right now I should have plenty of nutrients, which you can tell because my pond looks like chocolate milk lol. Once I get it a little clearer I'll start adding some fish into it. I'll probably start with Channel Catfish, since they seem hardier, and should take care of the leeches I've been having problems with. (see my other posts for horrible pictures) .

Oh I forgot to mention fencing - I put up T-post fence with 4 feet of No-Climb woven fence, and the sheep haven't bothered it at all. The oldest livestock guardian was getting out so I added a line of electric at the top and bottom, and that stopped pretty much immediately. I imagine a sheep or two has probably found that, but I haven't seen it.  One thing I'm really happy I did was to have two gates set up like an airlock into the pasture. So you have to pass through both to get to the animals. It helps for keeping dogs in, isolating sheep for whatever reason, pulling a vehicle with hay in, etc.