Joshua Colt

TS,

Not sure where you are located but here in MO pure bred LGD are going for 400 - 600 each, a few may be a little more. If you look on Craigslist you can often find mixed LGD that are just farm bred with maybe not the purest genetics but they still do the job and save you a few bucks. Anyone with sheep, goats or chickens have them around here as the coyotes are pretty think and we have our share of bobcats, now mountain lions are making their reappearance too. However, I will concur with most everyone else on this post, are pure bred is going to be best. We had a Great Pyr that we got from a puppy and he did an awesome job guarding our chickens and ducks. When we moved last year he went to stay with our friends who were having problems with racoons getting their chickens. They loved him so much we left him stay and we're hoping to get a puppy from him for our new homestead.

All that being said it doesn't mean that other dogs can't do the job, there just isn't a guaranty. I have a mixed breed dog we got from a shelter as a puppy (Lab/hound mix maybe?) can't tell for sure. Anyhow she is a great companion, rodent dog and even helps herd at times, but she doesn't have the same characteristics as the GP, and she'll get cold on a snowy night and needs to be brought in when the GP will happily just lay out in the snow.

Hope this helps.

Here is a drone pic of our homestead with zones of use marked up. It was taken in the summer (I intend to get more pics now that the leaves are off) so it's a little hard to the stages of succession. The picture is taken from the south facing north.

The zone 4 woodland in the middle of the property I intend to let mostly untouched as it is mainly mature hardwoods with a cedar thicket on the north end. I want to use it for foraging and wildlife habitat.

The zone 3 food forest to the north of the shop was once old pasture, but now has 10-15 years of tree growth. I intend to have part of that as a willow coppice area and set the rest aside for a mixed food forest that could include coppicing existing trees, which in this area is mainly ash and a few oak.

The pastures in the back of the property have about 10+ years of growth on them. About 50% Cedar with the balance a mix of ash and oak. I want to convert it into Silvo pasture, so I'm planning on removing the cedar and coppicing the oaks and ash. Any thoughts or potential issues you see with that?

The hedge row on the west side of the properties and has a lot of younger oak growing in clusters and that is where I'd like to have my primary oak coppice, again with the main focus being use for mushroom log production along with firewood.

The Food Forest behind the house is mainly mature hardwoods where I'm planning to have my log yard, along with various layers of trees and shrubs like persimmon, paw-paw, elderberry and hazelnut. (There are a few areas that get a decent amount of sun). I also plan on thinning out some of the mature ash for use in building projects. The ash borer recently showed up in our County so I figure I'd harvest the wood before it gets destroyed.

Thanks again!

Good day Mark! Thanks for being available for questions.

We just moved onto a 20 acre homestead in SW Missouri. The property is about 5 acres of woodland and 15 acres of old pasture in various stages of succession surrounded on 3 sides by grown up hedge rows. I have a pretty wide variety of trees species growing naturally including various types of oak, ash, various hickory nut trees, pecans, cherry, persimmon, paw-paw, osage orange and of course eastern red cedar.

I'm working on removing the red cedar for posts and bed edging and only leaving a grove of them in the center of the property for a future "living barn" for future stock.

I'm looking to remove thick stands of mostly ash that are around 3 - 6" ABH for firewood and using those for firewood coppice. I'm also wanting to clear enough of an area to use as a willow coppice for my wife's basketry.

But one of my main objectives is to coppice the oak trees for use in mushroom production. There are a significant amount of oaks that are perfect size for mushroom logs right now 6-8" ABH. Many of them are growing in clusters of 3 to 8 is a small area, so I could thin most of them out and still leave one to grow up. From my understand oak regrows best from a stump less than 15", is this correct? If I have an area that I want to use mainly as coppice for mushrooms am I better off to take them all down to allow more light to reach the new growth? Any suggestion as to how high I should cut them from the ground?

Also do you have suggestions about good tree species to plant (or maybe something I already have) for use as tree hay for cattle, sheep and possibly horses?

I look forward to your reply and hope to be able to check out your book!

Best regards!