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Miniature donkeys as livestock guardians?


juliepoudrier
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  • 2 weeks later...

Julie,

 

I know I'm late answering your thread. My experience on a relatively small piece of land (15 acres) and with multiple species is that the dog is preferable. I had a llama; he was difficult to worm (menigeal worm requires 30 day interval for worming), aggressive toward my Border Collies, aggressive toward me when I had to handle lambs, in short, a lot of trouble. My neighbor lost 70 lambs in 2 weeks with a stud donkey on duty. That donkey sure chased people though!

 

My Maremma came from a long line of working dogs who demonstrated traits that were important to me. The adults were aloof but not aggressive toward me when I visited and the breeder had several small children and a bunch of border collies (like me) I used electronet to train the pup to stay with her sheep and out of the yard. She's really the perfect farm dog. She's friendly to the family and our guests, never leaves the pastures/paddocks, stays with her flock, likes the horses, especially my daughter's pony, and doesn't bark except when predators threaten the flock. She ignores cars, etc. She's the least trouble of any dog we've ever owned. I know some guard dogs fail, but I believe many failures are due to lack of attention to detail during the early training of the dog. Our guard dog has been an asset and a pleasure.

 

Jeanne Bell

Fly, Glen, and Isabelle Maremma

Snowshoe, WV

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Originally posted by DeltaBluez Tess:

Our Guard dog, Kodiak, a Great Pyr just saved 20 sheep from a barn fire. He is awesome. I highly recommend a Live Guardian Dog.

Diane Pagel

He is definitely awesome, Diane! I was starting to tell my fiance about your horrible experience, and stopped me and asked if I was talking about the fire in Washington. I was surprised that he already knew about it. In our local newspaper, he always reads the "Weird News," and your story was in the Weird News - because of the wonderful actions of Kodiak!

 

All of you are in our hearts.

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