LIVING HARMONIOUSLY WITH COYOTES PART 2

HELLO

FIBERuary   Day 8   Jill Horton Lyons part 2

Keeping the Sheep Alive or Living Harmoniously with Coyotes

Part 2

I spent lots of time that winter talking to farmers with guard dogs and reading about them.  Many shepherds in New England have Maremmas- great big white dogs that look similar to Great Pyrenees.  A friend put me in touch with a Maremma breeder in upstate New York.  First I read Jackie Church’s book, and then I went out and spent a day with her.  Although we’ve always had dogs and I grew up with dogs (my mother bred St. Bernards for awhile) I found the guard dogs pretty intimidating.  Because of their size, because of their bark, and because of the not friendly way they eyed me when I approached their pasture.  These dogs are not pets; they live full-time and year round with their stock.  Which was also intimidating:  What sort of a relationship does one have with a dog who lives with stock and not in the house?  Would it work to have these dogs with all the kids who come to our farm?

 

These dogs are expensive (about a thousand dollars for a puppy, at least twice that for an older dog).  And everyone I spoke with said that, given the intense predator pressure we had experienced, we needed at least two adult dogs.  Way more than we could afford!  I really liked Jackie’s Maremmas, and I liked the way her four homeschooled kids worked and played with them- the kids would be OK.  But the money was impossible.  I looked into rescue livestock guardian dogs.  Many had problems, and we knew we didn’t know enough to consider taking that on.  In the spring we got very, very lucky.  An experienced breeder suddenly had a working female available.  She’d gotten sick after whelping her pups and needed an emergency spaying. So she’d be available, as would one of her pups.  We jumped at the chance, even though we knew we’d be sleeping with the sheep for yet another grazing season.  (Too many coyotes for one dog to handle, and pups can’t handle adult work until almost two.)  So Alka and her puppy Boro came to the Leverett farm in March of 2012

Immediately we had complaints from our closest neighbor.  The dogs and sheep were right next to our house at night- but the neighbors wanted no barking between 10pm and 7am.  We explained again about the 17 killed sheep; they explained that barking was not tolerable to them for any reason.

Now Leverett had passed a Right to Farm Law which clearly stated that recognized agricultural practices were allowed.  The selectboard, however, initially treated the neighbors’ complaint as a dog nuisance problem.  So there were meetings with the Selectboard, meetings of the Agricultural Commission, talks with the Farm Bureau.  Things became quiet when the sheep- and dogs- and one of us after dark- went off to pasture.  But of course grazing ended, and the dogs and sheep came home.  And the complaints resumed.

 

So now what?  We were legally in the right, but our neighbors were making our lives very difficult.  Do we now just stop raising sheep?  We decided we weren’t ready to give up!  But we realized that to live in peace we would have to move.

 

The winter of 2012-13 started the serious farm search.  We finally found a hillside farm on 50 acres in Colrain and a buyer for our Leverett house.  We moved in late October 2013, jerry-rigging shelters for sheep and guard dogs, goats, and poultry.  We’re gradually getting settled; there’s now a small sheep barn, poultry and goat house.  We’ve had several open farm sheep shearings and we’re beginning to offer farm and fiber programs again.  We’re tired a lot (starting a new farm when most of your friends are retiring is a challenge), but living in a farming community is a wonderful treat.  And we’ve not lost one sheep to coyotes since the dogs arrived!

Now for a little factual information about livestock guardian dogs:

Various sorts of livestock guardian dogs (from now on, LGDs) have always lived with shepherds in any part of the world still inhabited by large predators.  In many places, shepherds take their animals into the mountains to graze in summer.  These shepherds are accompanied by herding dogs (like border collies, keeping the flock together) and by guard dogs. The LGDs are large, fierce when they need to be, but very much part of a unit with the shepherd and herding dogs.

In places where large predators were killed off (western Europe and the US), the LGDs gradually were transformed into people guarding dogs or simply companions, with  livestock guarding abilities lost.  In rugged terrain, though, old world shepherds still used both types of dogs.  Dog breeds are a modern convention; these shepherds worked with the same kind of large dogs used by generations of  local shepherds before them.  Now many of these different types of dogs have been given breed names.  In the book Livestock Guardians, Janet Vohrwald Doehner identifies 32 breeds of LGDs.  Many are rare or not even available in this country, but she describes the dogs’ differing guarding styles, their relative ferocity, their weather tolerances, and other variables.

In the US, LGDs were not used until after 1973.  The Endangered Species Act and a more nuanced understanding of ecological systems made the hunting and trapping of all large predators no longer possible.  Predation, particularly in the west, became a major problem.  Farmers and ranchers here were slow to consider LGDs, chiefly because American livestock practices had come primarily from Great Britain, and Great Britain was the earliest place wolves had been eliminated.  Ray Coppinger at Hampshire College was responsible for bringing several breeds of LGDs into this country and placing them with ranchers throughout the west.  People learned a lot about working with the dogs and they are now used in rural areas throughout the country.

The dogs bond with their livestock (initially with help and supervision) and understand that their job is the protection of their stock.  Since canines are territorial, they chiefly work by keeping other canines away.  This is done mostly by barking.  They notice and will bark at any change in their environment. If necessary they will physically challenge any predator who continues to threaten.

They learn who belongs on the farm and will often accept a known herding dog moving their flock.  They can be used to protect alpacas, horses, cattle and even poultry.  It’s important to us that our farm is able to co-exist with our local coyotes.

Our oldest LGD, Alka, was pictured in part 1.  She is a Sarplaninac (pronounced shar-pla-NEE-natz).  These dogs originated in Macedonia (the name means “LGD from the Shar Mountains”).  Her son, Boro, is half Maremma.  And our youngest dog, Grisha, is also a Shar.  He came from a ranch in Alberta, Canada.  More photos follow.

We welcome farm visitors with appointments if you would like to meet the guard dogs. We also welcome phone calls or emails.  Visit winterberryfarm.org for more information.

 

FIBERuary-LIVING HARMONIOUSLY WITH COYOTES

HELLO

FIBERuary Day 7 with Jill Horton Lyons  – Sheep breeder, Angora Rabbits, Guard Dogs, Herding Dogs , Spinner and Weaver and so much ore

Part 1

ALKA

Keeping the Sheep Alive or Living Harmoniously with Coyotes

 

We’ve been raising sheep since 1985.  First in Leverett, then in Deerfield for six years, then back to Leverett for thirteen years.  And then in 2013 we moved to Colrain.

 

Our place in Leverett had only ten acres (which seemed a lot, coming from suburbia).  We fenced about half with hi-tensile wire and built a small sheep shed.  And began to search for unused fields in Leverett and nearby towns for summer grazing.  Over the years we grazed something like twenty properties.  Some arrangements worked well, others not so well.  And since we checked each group every day we did a lot of driving. The six years at Woolman Hill Retreat Center in Deerfield were lovely- we had fenced fields, places to graze with electronet and even a hay field.  Coming back to Leverett with sheep was not easy.

 

Now our first coyote experience was early on….probably about 1990 in Leverett.  Our four geese (white Chinas) free ranged.  Jim looked out the window one day and saw a coyote carrying off a goose.  He dashed outside, yelled and gave chase.  The goose was smart- she spread wide her big wings and the coyote couldn’t pass through some brush.  So the coyote dropped the goose (named Coyote for the rest of her days) and Jim brought her in to heal. And that was it- we don’t even remember hearing coyotes during the early Leverett days.

 

We did hear coyotes in Deerfield.  But our fencing was good and the sheep were fairly close by- very close by in winter.  We also had Abby- a big farm dog (wolfhound-akita cross).  Abby liked to circle our end of the acreage- especially early morning and late evening.  Which undoubtedly helped.

 

While we were in Deerfield the Leverett coyote population had evidently grown.  We heard them more often, and several times saw some rather mangy ones in our driveway.  But we co-existed just fine until 2010.  One day in August that year the ewes and ewe lambs were in electronet at Gordon King’s in East Leverett . (These fields were part of the land Gordon gave to the town which became conservation land.) There had been a drought, so we were feeding hay.  After some rain the fields were greening but we still fed hay, wanting the fields to recover.  Now electronet is something you train the sheep to- it’s mostly psychological.  And sheep love fresh grass much more than so-so hay.  So the night of the attack the sheep busted out.  The neighboring coyotes seized their opportunity- somehow all the sheep survived, but we lost seven of our eight ewe lambs.  Even though Gordon’s was our best and largest grazing, we moved the survivors that day.  In part hoping that the coyotes would forget about their feast.  (The good thing about coyotes is that they eat what they kill and they kill pretty efficiently.  Nothing like a domestic dog attack.)

 

The winter of 2010-2011 was fierce, with lots of snow.  Snow completely covered our perimeter fence.  So the sheep were fed in the field each day but came in at dusk.  But one day I left two of the wethers we use for dog training out in a back field.  They were dead in the morning.  Score is now coyotes 10- and they ate a couple of geese as well.

 

We researched and decided to buy a guard llama.  Supposedly quite effective and looking not at all threatening to all the walkers on Gordon’s land. Very expensive.

 

Sam the llama was a beautiful guy but absolutely no match for the now even larger coyote pack.  Who well remembered the taste of lamb.  So this time they stampeded the sheep through the fence themselves- and picked off another seven- six lambs and my favorite ewe.  (Sam did just fine later that summer guarding lambs in North Leverett.  The resident coyote was respectful of both fence and guardian.)

 

Do we stop raising sheep?  We sure can’t afford these losses!  So we spent most of the summer and early fall taking turns sleeping in the truck next to the sheep fence. (And dusk comes early in fall.)

 

We decided we wanted to keep the sheep.  Many of our friends used livestock guardian dogs to stop predation.  We were concerned that the dogs would frighten the walkers.  But we couldn’t figure out what else to try.

Part 2 tomorrow