English Shepherd as Poultry Guardian

[dan26552]

Ben is a wussy. I caught a male opposum by hand from my new barn. It is not able to get at birds but it did get my stash of eggs collected this morning. I brought it back to house to see how Ben would react. He did not even bark. Opossum briefly stood its ground then tried to make a run for it. My almost 3 year daughter runs faster. Ben chomped it once in shoulder area causing it to play dead and produce the stinky green stuff that comes from the back end. Lucy is normally very unpleasant to such critters but simply watched. Once opossum put on the act Ben lost interest. Scoob would have obliterated the opossum. I dispatched it myself.



Ben is going to need some work to develop the killer in him. We can not give a predator a pass just because it does not fight back effectively.

Interesting.

 

[centrarchid]

Some dogs require a few rounds of experiential learning to get into the job. Currently we do not have many opossums around to provide the needed training. This is the first opossum in nearly a year and it looked sort of crappy.

 

[dan26552]

Some dogs require a few rounds of experiential learning to get into the job. Currently we do not have many opossums around to provide the needed training. This is the first opossum in nearly a year and it looked sort of crappy.

True. Oh.

 

[aart]

Stinky green stuff?

 

[TalkALittle]

Stinky green stuff?

Possums release the contents of their anal glands when they "play dead" to further convince their attacker that they would make a nasty meal.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

Do you not have opossum in Australia? They are the only Marsupial we have. It would be funny if you do not.

 

[TalkALittle]

Possums release the contents of their anal glands when they "play dead" to further convince their attacker that they would make a nasty meal.

Do you not have opossum in Australia? They are the only Marsupial we have. It would be funny if you do not.

I should have written opossum in my post. Or perhaps 'possum as I was writing of the North American species.

Possum (no o or apostrophe) are native to Australia.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

Possums release the contents of their anal glands when they "play dead" to further convince their attacker that they would make a nasty meal.

Do you not have opossum in Australia? They are the only Marsupial we have. It would be funny if you do not.

I should have written opossum in my post. Or perhaps 'possum as I was writing of the North American species.

Possum (no o or apostrophe) are native to Australia.

I see! I am not one to get hung up on spelling

 

[centrarchid]

IMAGE BELOW NASTY











Dogs had moved carcass after I left for work but did not do much damage. As I pulled into drive at end of day I flushed a Turkey Vulture off the carcass. It must have invested a lot of work into opening the carcass up.

 

[centrarchid]

Opossum carcass above attracted something into yard in the early AM. Ben actually got me out of bed which is a first. He and Lucy lined out scent and ran almost a mile to the NE then after about 10 minutes ran back with tails held high huffing and a puffing where they revisited tracks in the yard. They did a lot of scent marking as well. Either a fox or coyote came in.