Free ranging with dogs

[Bird maniac]

hi, I was wondering if I would be able to free range my turkeys, ducks, geese, chickens, and guineas if I had say three protecting dogs. (Maybe 2 great pyrs and an Anatolian shepherd) I have 12 acres and it would be awesome if I could free range them.

 

[lazy gardener]

A lot of hard work goes into training dogs to protect a flock. They add an other dimension to animal husbandry, and management of your land for sure.

 

[Folly's place]

You would have to fence your property to keep the dogs at home, and then buy, maintain, and train two or three large dogs. EXPENSIVE!!!
Dogs can do a great job as livestock protectors, but it's the costliest and takes the longest to get to a functional level. Maybe two years of training.
For most of us, unless we just want to have those dogs, it would just be too much, for many reasons.
Mary

 

[Bird maniac]

Thanks you two, I might fence in my property. Also I was thinking they would be a lot for airial predators, also I like dogs. (I don’t want to feed the hawks)

 

[Howard E]

Bird Maniac:

True free ranging.......no fences.........no borders.......is almost always going to result in a bunch of dead birds if you live in an area with a high predator load. Predators have to eat and are really good at finding and killing prey. Your birds will be easy to find, easy to kill prey. So once predators find them, they mostly focus on them until they are all gone. I asked my folks once what the old time farmers used to keep birds alive and the response was everyone kept a mean dog. An outside dog. Watch the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons to see the role of that dog. A lot of folks on BYC still do keep dogs for this purpose.

But even then, as it is now, folks who free range, even with dogs, still lose a lot of birds. Birds go everywhere and the threat is constant. No animal or person can be everywhere and always at the ready to intervene. So predators win......almost every time.

What you may also want to consider is to establish a zone of protection out on the perimeter. To do that, you use an electric fence.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/dogs-and-electric-fences.1210854/

Properly built, properly maintained electric fences really do work and are one of the best options for safely opening up a large area to allow the birds to roam around in relative safety. Fences of any type offer no protection from hawks and other raptors, but do work for most of the ground based stuff....at least during the daylight hours. You also will need a bomb proof coop to protect your birds at night. Where most fall down on that end is not realizing what bomb proof means. It means heavy duty.

 

[centrarchid]

Bird Maniac:

True free ranging.......no fences.........no borders.......is almost always going to result in a bunch of dead birds if you live in an area with a high predator load. Predators have to eat and are really good at finding and killing prey. Your birds will be easy to find, easy to kill prey. So once predators find them, they mostly focus on them until they are all gone. I asked my folks once what the old time farmers used to keep birds alive and the response was everyone kept a mean dog. An outside dog. Watch the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons to see the role of that dog. A lot of folks on BYC still do keep dogs for this purpose.

But even then, as it is now, folks who free range, even with dogs, still lose a lot of birds. Birds go everywhere and the threat is constant. No animal or person can be everywhere and always at the ready to intervene. So predators win......almost every time.

What you may also want to consider is to establish a zone of protection out on the perimeter. To do that, you use an electric fence.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/dogs-and-electric-fences.1210854/

Properly built, properly maintained electric fences really do work and are one of the best options for safely opening up a large area to allow the birds to roam around in relative safety. Fences of any type offer no protection from hawks and other raptors, but do work for most of the ground based stuff....at least during the daylight hours. You also will need a bomb proof coop to protect your birds at night. Where most fall down on that end is not realizing what bomb proof means. It means heavy duty.

Now we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. The line has been crossed into outright preaching. Time to step back and not spend so much forcing personal opinion on others still with open minds.

 

[Zoomie]

Now we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. The line has been crossed into outright preaching. Time to step back and not spend so much forcing personal opinion on others still with open minds.

I respectfully disagree that this is preaching. This is Howard E's thoughts on this matter. Howard E has a lot of experience and has opinions that are worth considering. OP is trying to learn about this; reading about Howard E's experiences as well as everyone else's is very educational. And I sincerely hope that you, too, will weigh in on this, as we all realize that you have a great deal of experience working with dogs and chickens together. Your input too is invaluable and I hope that you will share, both for the OP and for others who read the thread.