Livestock Guardian Team Assembled


Izzy and Sophie, getting muddy and getting their "mark" on

Last Saturday I picked up a couple adult livestock guardian dogs (LGDs). They are 3 and 4 yrs old and are full sisters from different litters. Izzy and Sheba are their names. They are 1/8th Anatolian Sheperd and 7/8ths Great Pyrennes. We just refer to them as Great Pyrs, but they do have some Anatolian traits, including some darker hair around the shoulder blades. Around here the new LGDs are known as “the big girls”, becuase, well, they’re freakin’ huge! We thought Sophie was getting to be a big girl. She looks like a little peck compared to her new friends.

 
Why Get Livestock Guardian Dogs?

 

We are using LGDs because we’re in an area that has coyotes, packs of wild dogs, and other predators (potentially including a bear, although that’s yet to be substantiated). Our goats are vulnerable to predation when they’e out on pasture, especially when they have little goat kids running around with them. It's the dogs responsibility to help protect them. It's our responsibility to facilitate the dog's success as a guardian and keep them happy and healthy.

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The Temporary Goat House Solution


Mayday, Sweetbread's favorite milking doe :)

Our timing for the move to Tennessee was seemingly perfect. Winter was officially gone (although it never really came), the grass was greening up, the days were getting longer, and baby goat kids were popping out of pregnant does everywhere. That meant we could get a couple milking does and their kids pretty much right when we moved in, and we did. The only problem was that we didn’t have much infrastructure to properly house the goats. We have some plans in mind for what our final layout will look like, but we needed a temporary solution. Thus came the temp goat house project.

The Temporary Goat Barn
We probably committed a crime worthy of capital punishment in Tennessee. We turned a man’s garage into a goat barn. Complete with milking stand and hay feeder. I get a good chuckle every time I think about the day that he comes to visit and sees what we did to the place. It hasn’t happened yet, but I know it will. Probably a couple weeks into me not mowing the “lawn”, he’ll roll up to say hello and damn near have a heart attack. Old guys that lived in places for a really long time like to see things the way they left them. Well, now you have a goat barn surrounded by natural goat food growing out of the ground. It’s a good thing these goats like fescue and clover or I might even have to reseed it!

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Prepping Our Square Foot Garden Site

This past weekend we took our first steps toward getting the garden ready. The first goal was to designate a location and determine which style of gardening we would opt for (we chose Square Foot gardening for the first attempt). This afternoon I posted a bit about the preparation process on my weekly update at Farm Dreams (see the excerpt below and continue reading at the FD site).

Before and After Patio/Garden Area

This weekend we got busy laying out the garden for the two of us. We are planting ~50% more than we think we will need so that one of two things happens. Either 1.) We get too much for us, and our neighbors, friends and animals get the extras, or 2.) We still don't get enough and we sadly head back to the grocery store for food like we're doing now.

What's our plan for the garden? For our first attempt at gardening we're planning a series of square foot gardens that surround a patio that we unearthed over the weekend. When we first moved to the farm there was a big area covered in gravel with a small fire pit in the middle (see photo above). Mounds of sod encroached from the yard on the periphery. We never really paid attention to that area, to be honest. It was outside of the fenced patio and kind of in no man's land. I just figured we'd dig out the gravel one day when we had some time and grass would grow back. Eventually it would just look like the rest of the yard.  But last week Sweetbreads started digging up the gravel and low and behold there's a big concrete pad underneath. 

Continue Reading at Farm Dreams