Consolidated Kansas

[Trish44]

Candace, I get what you're saying with the LGDs, there is a difference with just plain wandering & patroling the property to protect the stock & people within. I consider dogs who wander like you said that are found miles away from their home, not on the property where they're supposed to be watching over things. I know that they have a range that they kind of patrol & sometimes that can be more than just their own boundaries like you mentioned yours thought they needed to watch over the neighbor's baby calves. Mine I think also watch over the neighbor's horses at times because they have told me they see them up on the hill just sitting there watching. They were concerned at first until they found out what kind of dogs they are. So far anyway mine have stayed fairly close where they're supposed to be. They do cross fences like they aren't there to go to the junk pile next door & to check out the horses, but that is as far as I've known of them going. We have not allowed them to go down to the road with us unless they just happened to follow my DH down to take the trash cart down, but other than that we don't encourage them to go that direction & it is on the other side of the big hill. It's fortunate I think for us that our house & all the animals & birds are at this side of the hill & they like to sit up on the top of it to get a good view of everything. But I think what Candace is saying is that if your LGD is watching over their stock they will not just wander willy nilly just off anywhere. They will have boundaries that they patrol & protect but if they're doing their job they won't just go off for miles & not come back.

 

[chicken danz]

You know regardless of the situation a Great Pyrenees is a remarkable dog that seems to adjust to what a person needs. If you have 1 or 10 you still have a great dog. I thank God I have some really wonderful dogs that save me 100s of dollars every year. We all have opinions and that is a good thing,. If we all thought the same way we would have nothing to talk about.
Here's a couple pictures of Chopper. He just got through pulverizing an egg shell he grabbed out of a box I have by the hatcher. You can see by the floor that he is a huge mess maker. Then he started playing with his duck. Every time I pointed the camera at him he would drop the duck. He picks it up and shakes it then drops it on the floor. You can also see his taped angel wing in
the first picture.

 

[Trish44]

Oh my gosh Danz, Chopper is getting so big! He's a cutie for sure!

OK, for anybody wanting a Great Pyrenees another one just showed up on the KS Farm Animal Swap, a 2 year old Male for FREE. Go to the Farm Swap for details & contact the owner.

 

[chicken danz]

Yep he is nearly full grown size now. He gets darker colored every day too. I thought he would be much lighter. I've got to get him in some diapers. He is hard to keep up with.

 

[Trish44]

Danz, I still think you need to name you new pup Caramel, it fits.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Okay-- crazy woman strikes again! I just figured I'd use my nice scanner therm I got for xmas to use on the kids (you rub it across their temple)-- it was a $60 therm, so you'd think IT should be okay, right? So I scanned my eggs in the incubator and those eggs read at 101.3. I thought YIKES!! So then I checked the air temp with my BBT and it read at 99.3 now. Too low?!?!?! So THEN I got to thinking... I have a broody sitting on eggs, and I wonder what her eggs would scan in at? That shall be my "control". One egg under her scanned in at 101.4 and the one that is half way full of living chick-- it scanned in at 101.8!!! SO I think I'm on track now with my incubator! (I'm only two tenths of a degree off!) Now... if only I have any eggs that lived thru that ordeal... we shall see. Sigh.

Ivy.... Too much?? Or not neurotic enough yet?

I wonder how many other therms I actually have around here and didn't realize...

 

[JosieChick]

Good heavens, I get to the end of all the posts and can hardly remember what all I have read!!
MarcAustin-LOVE the schnauzer pup!!! I have a 6 year old mini schnauzer and he is a great dog. They are the sweetest pups!

Ivy, Danz, Trish, everyone interested in LGDs- Thanks for all the info and support. I am excited to go meet this girl, I wish I was going tomorrow! I am kind of glad that Candace's puppies are sold and I will have to wait a bit. It will give me time to learn and let the new girl settle in. I am hoping that she will want to hang around the barn yard area more and let the younger dog range out a bit on the property when she starts to age (not that she is a spring chicken now)

. I am sure she has some arthritis and I am sure it will get worse the next couple years so I thought if she had help she could send the "young blood" out to patrol around and only go in as back up. But, I may be surprised and she may need to run the show. I will be glad to have them out there, I worry more now than I used to after last weekend. Also, I do remember seeing a GP on the farm swap on FB but if my memory is correct he kills chickens?!? Maybe a different dog??

Candace- I will give you a buzz tomorrow if you are back on here and thanks for getting back to me!!

I am jealous of all you gardening folks!! I don't know if we are going to get one in for a while. We don't even have our square foot gardening boxes up yet!

 

[cherwill]

Holy cow you've been busy! Isn't it funny how easily thrilled we are -- a couple of sprouts, a chicken, pictures of ducks with their toy ducks ...

Our coop is not insulated and the chickens have done well for two winters in it. It is made of thick, solid wood, though, and we put a heat lamp inside when it's very cold. It's small enough that they roost close together and create a decent amount of body heat even without the lamp.

Marc, your dog is a cutie. I have one watch dog and one guard dog. They assigned those jobs to themselves. Tai hears something that disturbs her and she sounds the alarm, but it's someone else's job to actually check things out. She wants nothing to do with that part of it. Gypsy goes right for it to see if it's a potential problem or not, while Tai backs out of the room completely once she sees someone is going to handle things.

DH is in a class all week, and next week, so we only have the weekend. By the time he gets home on the nights he doesn't have to go back to work, he's tired and usually has to study. Saturday we'll be taking care of everyone else's lawns but hopefully we'll get some stuff done at home on Sunday. We need to do some weeding and get the beds ready for planting. I'm hoping we'll have time to put together the pallet planter for strawberries. My neighbor just gave me a planter she had last year where you can plant tomatoes upside down from the bottom, and plant other things in the top. She said she couldn't find a place for it that would be out of the shade in her yard. I think it might be perfect for the sorrel I'm going to try again this year.

YAY!!!

I love it when the seedlings pop up, its like the highlight of my day when I get to see a new one!!!

I am nearly done filling my raised beds with soil. I am SOOOOO behind, but I am going to make it work! My front porch looks like a made house with all of my berry plants waiting to be planted in my garden. My DH got the fence put up around the garden, I had to wait to put more soil in the beds because my dogs thought they were there for digging and sleeping in! This weekend all the seeds I had planned for March will be going in the dirt all at once, so much for succession planting. AT LEAST I wasn't sick longer!

I put 40+ strawberry crowns in peat pots Monday, I don't have the planters to put them in so I figured I could at least throw them in the pots and just bury the whole thing.

I also worked on the run that will be attached to the chicken coop, I have it 4 ft tall, 10 ft long and 4 ft wide. Hopefully that will get them plenty of room to squawk about!

I am building a 4x4x4 coop, with external laying boxes, how many hens is that suitable for. I have one bantam and the rest will be big girls. I may get another bantam down the road, but right now one is sufficient. I also have my 2 girls, and possibly leroy/lillith (time will surely tell). That puts me at 4 now. If it so happens I have to give Leroy away, I really wan't my moms frizzled leghorn, and and hoping for at least an ameraucauna. Is 6 too many in that size coop with a 40 sq ft run?

Also, I have been seriously toying with the idea of insulating the coop since we have such bodacious wind here in Ks, any opinions on that? What are some good things to keep in mind when building/designing a coop. I had it all worked out in my head, but everytime I go to sleep I seem to lose a little bit more of my magnificent plan. I tried to draw it out and write it down, but being that my carpentry knowledge is, well, non existent I had no Idea how to get it worked out.

I love reading about all the GPs and LGDs. I have always loved big, happy, protective dogs, when I am ready for a new puppy I am seriously thinking GP may be the breed for me!

Have a Great HUMP DAY everybody!

 

[checoukan]

For all the people looking for a GP puppy, on southeast kansas craiglist someone from Missouri has some really nice looking puppies on there.

 

[Ivywoods]

I never said Danz's weren't lgds

; my opinion differing on her was the need of more than one, but the wandering issue I talk about is when they wander and are found 3 or 4 or 10 miles from home; there is no bond, they cannot guard from that distane. They're not bonded to stock or to stock/place. I love Danz's LGDs, that's why I told her I wanted one (and got one)!
But the way I say it with LGDs Livestock dogs can be bonded to be a farm type LGD where they care for EVERYTHING and the place, or specialized, where they are strongly bonded to one particular stock. I have raised them as both. But whether it is fowl, goats, sheep, horses, whatever type of stock, they need to have a bond where they do not wander, yours from the way you describe don't wander as I am describing wandering. hope that makes sense!

In that case I think we are in total agreement! The way I interpretted your previous post was that it was not an LGD unless it stayed right with the herd. I agree they can't protect anything from miles away. I guess you would call our dogs farm type LGD's because they protect everything. I find it amazing at how they automatically know what belongs and what is a threat.

I just finished building the pen for my pair of royal palms I will pick up tomorrow. I had been worrying and thinking just what I would use and how I was going to build a pen for them. I talked with my DH about it this afternoon and he came up with an idea I hadn't really considered. It made more sense than any plan I had thought of, and was a lot faster to complete and will work out a lot better in the long run. I guess it is true that two heads are better than one! We will go get them tomorrow morning unless it is pouring down rain, which may be the case.