Our Hearts Have Been Stolen...

 We've been looking for several months for the right teammate for our livestock guardian dog (LGD), Miller.  There have been an increasing number of predators in the area, and although Miller can handle the size of our goat herd now, we were concerned it might be too much for him with kidding season coming.  Our herd will more than double in size, and the barn cats just aren't up to the task. (: 

Miller checking for signs of predators.  Behind him, Tiger, the barn cat, clearly indifferent to any threat.

We knew he needed backup, but didn't want to just run off and get any old dog.  We wanted the right dog.  We knew we wanted a girl, because male/female LGD teams usually work best.  We'd considered a full-grown dog, but determined we would prefer a puppy, because Miller is such an excellent guardian, and we wanted him to be the unquestionable alpha dog, so he could help us train her.

As much as we loved our first livestock guardian dog, Daisy, we learned some valuable lessons about how training an LGD is significantly different than training a house dog, and how certain personality traits make dogs easier to train as LGDs.  We determined we wanted a puppy who had been born and raised around goats and poultry, and we wanted to observe them with the rest of the puppy litter so we could get an idea of the pack dynamic.

It took us awhile to find something that fit the bill, but we found some Anatolian Shepherd mix puppies that were raised around goats, mini cattle, pigs and chickens.  The breeders said we could come and observe them, and they would reserve the pup we picked (at the time we contacted them, the puppies were still a bit too young to take away from Mom).

We saw that the pups' parents were excellent guardian dogs, and all the puppies were healthy and well-socialized.  After some discussion, my husband and I made the decision to get two puppies instead of just one.  We hoped they would be good playmates, and we could get the benefit of Miller training them both.  We picked the only female in the litter, a light beige, lively, affectionate little girl (the runt in size, but definitely not personality!) and a fluffy black and brown, bright-eyed, but easy going male.  We scheduled with the breeders to pick them up the Saturday after Christmas.   

Picking up our LGD pups. Two is better than one when they're this adorable!

Miller seemed a bit annoyed with us the first few days after we brought them home.  After all, how dare we put two strange dogs in with his goats!  He quickly established himself as the alpha dog, but after a few days of putting them in their place, he was nuzzling them, looking out for them, and showing them the ropes with guarding the goats.  I love that dog!

Below are some of the puppies' first pictures.  When the kids first saw them, they thought it would be fun to name the girl Sugar and the boy Spice based on their coloring.  My husband and I laughed and said, "You may want to get to know their personalities first.  The little girl isn't really much of a Sugar - she's a little more feisty, and her brother is very calm and cuddly.  The names would be opposite of the personalities."  After playing with the pups a few hours, the kids all agreed...we'd name them Bonnie and Clyde.

                                                                  BONNIE

                                                                   CLYDE

**This post has been in the drafts folder since late January.  I debated whether or not to post it, because unfortunately, Bonnie disappeared about three weeks after we brought the puppies home.  All we know is she got out of the fence.  When we confirmed this, we quickly made repairs, so Clyde wouldn't have a similar fate (the space was too small for Miller or any of the goats to get out).  We talked to our neighbors, contacted local shelters, posted flyers, put lost ads around the neighborhood, in the local paper and online, but we never found her.  Given that Miller goes after all predators that try to get into the goat yard, including people we haven't introduced to him, we know whatever happened to her, happened outside the fence.  It could have been coyotes, it could have been someone taking off with her, but we never had any leads. 

We miss our puppy girl!  The whole family was sad, Miller and Clyde mourned her and laid around the goat yard, not eating for nearly two days. For awhile, I didn't want to post this entry, because it just felt depressing. Then, we got into kidding season (pics soon to come), spring gardens, etc. and things got so crazy, I didn't have time to post anything.  I finally made the decision to post it, because the whole point of this blog is to tell our farm's story, and if there's anything we've learned, the wonderful blessings of living on a farm are balanced with some pretty hard facts of life.  Fortunately, the story of our LGD team has a happy ending - one I'll share in an upcoming post.

We love you, Bonnie!  You made us smile every moment you were ours.

Ice is Nice

The past week we've been slowly digging out of the worst ice storm I've seen since I moved to Texas.  We got a lovely, thick layer of ice over everything, and then below freezing temperatures for days afterward, so none of it was melting. School was closed for three days (not counting the weekend), Church was closed and most local businesses, so our family hunkered down for the long haul. We were fortunate to never lose power or water (many people did), but we found that living on a farm brings unique challenges in this kind of weather, such as:

• Animals have to be fed and watered no matter how often you slip and fall on your rear on the way out to the barn.
• When outdoor faucets are frozen and you don't have a heater in your water trough (and how many people do in warm and sunny Texas?), you have to haul gallons of warm water from the house out to the animals multiple times a day...increasing the risk of falling on your rear on the way out to the barn.
• Every time you leave the house, barn cats scurry across the ice to be petted and loved, and they rub your legs and get under your feet...increasing the risk of falling on your rear on the way out to the barn.

And my personal favorite...

• You find yourself standing precariously on top of an ice-covered dog house, holding a pool pole with a hair dryer duct taped to the end of it, trying to melt the ice off the loafing shed roof.  Why?  To save the life of a not-so-bright guinea fowl that roosted on the top of the loafing shed overnight and froze to it.  I asked my daughter to spot me for that one, because there was a lot more risk than just falling on my rear.  Fortunately, both the guinea and I survived. 

However, even with the cold and all our slipping and sliding, it was actually a wonderful week.  We got some great family time in, made some holiday treats, put up our Christmas decorations, snuggled up with fuzzy blankets to watch movies, went 'sledding' on our ice rink of a driveway, made a few cozy fires and more than one pot of homemade hot chocolate.  I love my family, I love our little farm, and I love that this ice storm helped us slow down and truly enjoy the holiday season together.

People and animals coming out to play a few days after the ice storm

Cold outside isn't bad when it's so warm inside.

Greenhorn Tips:  Regardless of the climate you live in, having at least a few weeks worth of extra food and water storage for your animals is always a good plan.   Otherwise, when bad weather hits, you risk making an unpleasant run to the feed store on flooded, icy or snowy roads.  On top of that, you have to unload several 50 pound bags of feed in bad weather...increasing the risk of falling on your rear on the way out to the barn.

Just Because

As I was going through pictures of our chickens, I found the two shots below, and I couldn't resist. :)

Another chicken story: The Four Stages of Broody Breaker Grief

My last chicken story was about Red, the first chick we hatched at our farm.  This story is about Red's Nest Momma, Kate.

Kate, was a chicken that went broody so often, it became a standing joke at our little farm.  She was absolutely determined to fluff up her pretty little bottom and sit on a nest - it didn't matter if the nest had eggs, golf balls, or absolutely nothing.  

Puffed up and protective - broody, not moody!

The first time she went broody, it was 'cute' - she was the first hen we had go broody, and the idea of hatching chicks seemed like a fun, pastoral, hobby farm sort of thing to do.   We let her sit on her small clutch of 6 eggs, which became 4 eggs about a week later when she moved them from one nest box to another.  Some people claim chickens don't do this, but I promise some do!  They tuck the eggs under their wings, and then move with them.  Obviously, it doesn't always work well, because 2 of her eggs fell out and rolled far enough away that she couldn't get them back into the nest box before they got chilled.  She successfully moved the other four, but only one hatched - Red.

We removed Red from her care when she started pecking him excessively, and when it was clear he needed food and water and she wasn't leaving the nest anytime soon.  We allowed her to sit on the other three eggs a few more days, thinking her instincts would tell her the eggs weren't going to hatch, and it was time to get back to pecking and scratching with the other chickens.  No such luck.  We removed the eggs from the nest, but she still didn't budge.  She was content to pass the time fluffed up in an empty nest. 

Looking for answers, we turned to the Internet, and found just what we needed on the Chicken Chick's website:  http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/05/broody-breaker-when-hens-mood-to-hatch.html.  The Broody Breaker was the answer!  Many chicken owners do something similar, but in a nutshell, you remove the chicken to a place that's cool, but not cold and drafty (you don't want a sick chicken).  You put the hen in a cage or kennel that allows open airflow, especially under her, and you leave nothing in the cage that can be used as nesting material or a nest. 

For our Broody Breaker, we picked a dog crate with holes drilled through the bottom of the plastic floor to allow better airflow.  We put it on blocks next to the chicken coop, so the other chickens wouldn't forget Kate, (it can happen with chickens) and so it would be easier to reintegrate her into the flock.

The reaction I got from Kate was surprising.  Chickens are not an animal many people associate with emotion, but she seemed to go through several emotions rather rapidly.  I got pictures of most of her expressions, and when I looked at them all together, the first thing that came to mind was the 5 stages of grief.  I only captured four, so here for your viewing pleasure are...  
 

The Four Stages of Broody Breaker Grief

These pictures were taken within the first 10 minutes Kate was in the Broody Breaker for the first time.  The light is a     little bright on the first picture, but she's still fluffed up, just like she's sitting on a nest instead of nothing but plastic.

It took awhile to get Kate to cool down - literally.  Broody hens have a higher body temperature than hens that aren't broody.  After a little over a week, she was ready to rejoin chicken society. The Broody Breaker worked great, and has been used successfully many times since then.  Thank you, Chicken Chick for your helpful advice!

Greenhorn Tips (i.e. things that should be obvious, but sometimes aren't):
When creating your Broody Breaker, not only should you leave nothing in the cage that can be used as nesting material, but you need to be careful about the types of food and water dishes you put in the cage.  Dishes/containers that can attach to the side of the cage instead of sitting on the bottom of it are best.  We used a regular bowl as a food dish once, and found the chicken tried to nest in the bowl! 

The Little Red ... Hen?

Back in the Spring, our overly-broody Wyandotte, Kate started to sit on a small clutch of eggs.  After weeks of sitting, she only hatched a single chick.  Since Kate was a Silver-laced Wyandotte and Dad was a Speckled Sussex, we were fairly certain the chick was a girl (see notes on sex-linked chicks in Greenhorn Tips at the end of this post).  We planned to let Kate raise  the chick in the traditional way, until she started pecking the baby's head ... a lot, much more than the normal 'get under my wing' momma hen pecking.  

Red with Momma Kate (before Kate went crazy)

We removed the chick, brought her into the house, and made a brooder box. Although it wasn't terribly original, we started calling the chick 'Red.'  Red loved to be held and cuddled, and she bonded to all of us to the point she cried whenever she couldn’t see someone nearby.  We gave her a stuffed chicken to sleep with at night, but we knew that wasn’t enough; it was important to socialize her with real chickens.   

Totally adorable, but kind of sad.

Putting her in with the adults was out of the question, so we immediately went looking for some chicks we could buy locally.  We found a breeder that was selling Black Copper Marans that were the same age as Red, so we bought ten chicks and tried to integrate her.  It didn’t work.  At first, they just ignored her, then after a few attempts by Red to nestle into the group - we were hopeful for a few brief minutes - she started aggressively pecking at the other chicks, almost taking out an eye on one of them.  Several of them returned the favor, pecking back, and eventually it got bad enough we had to put her back by herself (unless you count the stuffed chicken as company).  

Socially awkward ... it's not just something people experience.

I know that some people would consider culling a chick for overly aggressive behavior to other birds, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it.  We all cared about her, she was the very first chick we hatched, she was healthy, and although she didn’t like other chickens, she was very sweet with people.  However, between our adult chickens and all our new chicks, we knew if she couldn’t socialize, we wouldn’t have the housing or space in the long run for a loner chicken like her.

I reached out to my sister Stacy and her husband, Doug, asking if they wanted a pet chicken.  I let them know it would likely be a chicken that wouldn’t ever do well with other chickens (in all the research I'd done to that point, I'd learned chicks who weren’t well-socialized often didn’t do much better as adults).  They agreed to give it a try.  They set up a brooder in their bathroom, while they made plans for a chicken run they could put her in when she had feathered out.  

Red at our 2-week visit to Stacy and Doug's

We were happy Red was with people who would care for her the way we did, and we enjoyed going over for visits to see how she was doing.  The big surprise for all of us came when she was about 4 weeks old.  Her legs, which were becoming noticeably longer, started to develop spurs.  Our Little Red Hen was actually a rooster! 

Apparently, Momma Kate, had hatched out another hen’s egg; a common occurrence since chickens are communal nesters.  What we thought was a red-sex link pullet was actually a New Hampshire Red/Speckled Sussex cockerel.   If the spurs didn't seal the deal, the humorous attempts to crow a week or two later did.

Under Stacy and Doug’s care these past six months, Red has grown into a beautiful rooster.  My sister and I had heard of cases where a poorly socialized cockerel did well with a few hens after he was a little more mature, so when Red was a few months old, Stacy and Doug decided to try and re-social him.  They got him a few Speckled Sussex hens to care for, hoping that his natural rooster instincts would kick in, and fortunately, they did.  The once socially awkward chick became a genuine ladies man.  He takes excellent care of his girls, and is the kind of rooster that every chicken owner would love to have in their flock.

Still getting all his rooster bulk and his tail feathers, but a handsome boy for sure!

Red and his ladies

The happy ending to the story doesn't stop there - Red was also the humble start of Stacy and Doug's chicken adventures.  They now have over 20 chickens:  Ameraucanas, Marans, a Black Australorp, a Buff Orpington and several Brahmas.  They even plan to breed a few of the rare Brahmas they’ve acquired in the last several months.  Who would ever have guessed what a little red rooster could start?

Greenhorn Tips (i.e. things that should be obvious, but sometimes aren't): 

• 'Sex-linked' refers to breeding two specific types of chickens to create chicks that have color variations between the males and females, so you can easily tell them apart at hatching.  Many chicken breeds are difficult to sex until the young chickens crow or lay eggs.  Red sex-link chicks are all red female chicks and all white male.  For a great explanation of sex-link chickens, complete with pictures and charts, check out this thread:  http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/261208/sex-linked-information. 
• When bringing chicks hatched from different hens/incubators together, put a tiny dab of vanilla on each chick (a Q-tip works well for this).  When they all smell the same, the chicks are less likely to peck at each other.  This is something I unfortunately learned after the problems we had with Red and the Marans, but it worked great when we combined two different hatchings of Marans.

A Doggone Good Fit!

Blessings come in unexpected ways.  Although we knew we couldn't keep our last livestock guardian dog (LGD) Daisy, we had been concerned about how our goats and poultry would fare with the coyotes that frequent our area.  We really needed a full-grown dog that was already trained, but we hadn't counted on that type of purchase in our immediate budget (well-trained LGDs can start around $300, but I have seen some that cost more than $1000 and most are somewhere in between).  The biggest concern was that we didn't want to put out that kind of money and not get what we needed in a dog.

A friend surprised us shortly after we surrendered Daisy by telling us we could have one of her LGDs (she has several).  She told us Miller was an excellent guardian, but one of her other, larger male dogs was constantly beating up on him - to the point she had to take him to the vet for injuries.  She completely took us by surprise when she said that she didn't want any money for him; she just wanted him to have a good home.  We could even try him out for a few weeks and if it didn't work, she would take him back.

It only took a few days to see that Miller was the perfect fit for our little farm.   He has such a calm disposition, we were able to put him in with the goats as soon as we brought him home.  Our does had been a little skittish around dogs, even Daisy, but they warmed up to him quickly.  He's fantastic with the chickens and guineas (that was something new and different for us), and even though he's a big boy, he's gentle enough I'm completely comfortable with allowing my one and a half-year old goddaughter in the pen with him.

Sassy, one of our doelings, checking out Miller when we brought him into the pen for the first time.

Miller leaving the chickens alone - even when they get right up in his space                            (you'll notice the smile on my husband's face).

My brother asked me if I was confident Miller would be able to effectively guard since he's so calm.  I told him the best thing about most LGD breeds, is that if properly trained, they can be the sweetest, gentlest animals with the people and critters they protect, but they are fierce with predators.  We haven't heard a peep from the coyotes these past few weeks.  Since LGDs work best in teams, we'd like to get him a buddy in the future, but for now, we're just happy to have a dog that's both an effective guardian and a loving companion.

Hard to believe this cute, cuddly guy can open up a can on coyotes, but it's true! :)

Greenhorn Tips (i.e. things that should be obvious, but sometimes aren't): No matter how healthy a new puppy or newly adopted dog seems, or what vaccinations they have, always take them to the vet for a basic checkup.  Miller was very well cared for, and was on monthly flea and tick treatment; however, the fleas and ticks are so bad this summer, he came to us with a few extra friends anyway.  During the exam from the vet, we not only got him stronger pest protection, but we found out he had two tick-born diseases that we were able to treat with antibiotics before they took any major toll on him.

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” ― Ann Landers

What an emotional roller coaster!  Yesterday we drove Daisy to her new foster home with Texas Great Pyrenees Rescue.  She was a bit nervous around the other dogs at first, especially since they all ran up to us at the gate.  With a strange dog coming into the goat pasture, they were just being protective (as they should).  The Alpha dog, Thor, greeted her with some loud barking.  He was only putting her in her place; he didn't hurt her, but because he's as big as a small horse, it was still a bit intimidating.

After Susie, the rescue foster mom, assured Thor and the other dogs that Daisy was ok, Daisy immediately went over, greeted the goat herd, and than ran around exploring the area and making friends with the other dogs.  Susie has chickens, but they're in a large run behind a good fence (Daisy isn't the only dog that chases them), so Daisy had free range to run several acres of the goat pasture, complete with a pond for her to play in.  Susie remembered that we said Daisy liked to play in water, so she led us over there, and Daisy jumped right in for a swim.

My husband and I were so happy to see her playing and having room to run again!  It was just such a sense of relief and peace, to know that not only were we able to avoid taking her to a shelter, but she was now in a place better suited to her energetic personality.  Susie explained to us that they have an adoption process where they carefully match dogs to owners based on the owners needs for a guardian dog and the dog's personality, so Daisy would be sure to go to a family who had goats for her to guard, space for her to run, and either no birds, or fencing that would keep her away from the birds.

The most difficult part was hearing Daisy whine for us as we walked away from the field.  However, we stayed for a few minutes after leaving the goat pasture to fill out paperwork and talk with Susie, and I was relieved to see that Daisy didn't pine for us too long.  She was running around the goat field again before we left.  As we drove away, I got choked up, and even my stoic husband had to wipe away a few tears.  Susie said she'd keep us posted on how things go with Daisy; I pray they go well.

Daisy, a little nervous when we first arrived, with one of the other dogs coming to greet her. 

Feeling more confident as she checks out the goat yard.
 

**UPDATE - As of early November 2013, after working with experienced livestock guardian trainers and a pack of successful LGDs, Daisy was ready for a new home.  She was adopted as a team with one of her friends from the rescue, and they are now the proud guardians of a sheep farm!