Great Pyrenees, Property listed as Ag, and "city" neighbors

[mamawolf544]

I'm sorry you are having neighbor problems. I am reading your thread all the while I can hear Bear my LGD barking.

I have 12.5 acres, all kinds of poultry, goats, cattle at times and a little pig. And Bear woofs all night, every night. He is on patrol. When he barks, I normally have a coyote, he does his job and I love him for it.
I hope it all works out for you, the dogs should not have to be put away at night.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Thank you all. We have had the LGD's in at night, but it is short. I bring them in arou d 12:30-1am, hubby puts them back out at 4am lol. Not a big deal for our schedule since he is active duty AirForce. All the hens are in 1 run together currently and the goats get the other end (for now) for the hours the dogs are in. This is not a fix. The hens are mad, the goats are making a mess.

I have to travel this week (work from home, but have an event at Disney World) so our oldest (19) will be helping out with the critters. When I get back he will also be helping me build a new flight pen around the coop. It will be 90' long x 35' (maybe 51') wide. 4x4 posts 8' long set in concrete 2' into the ground. 16' sheep/goat panels attached to posts around entire perimeter. 4x4 posts 10' long set into ground 2' interior of pen with flight netting strong long ways (90') across entire area. (found heavy netting 100' long so two panels will cover it.

Hardware cloth apron on lower 3' of perimeter sunk into the ground (to help keep out diggers). Pulsing hot wire on outside of fencing.

Inside Fort Chicknox will be:
Coop 10' x 14'

Duck houses (thinking 2 new builds for us)

The enclosure will have 2 gates 3.5' wide by 6' tall (east & west on narrow ends) and a double gate center (south) to drive through with feed ect. The west gate will open into our pasture where the goats will move to full time with their house 6' x 14' open air (eaves open with 3 open arched doors for them to climb in and out of).

The LGD have these to sleep on outside in the shade:

We use these for water here and they work great!

They auto fill, and have a drain plug in the bottom. So twice a week they can be flushed out of any dirt very easily.

The pasture is not in use right now because a canal behind us over flowed thanks to county work that blocked put flow. We had some water come in, not good for the goats. So a couple of drainage ditches and a coming pond the field should handle water better.

Of course this also includes the dogs saying out all night again. the goat house is big enough for everyone to pile in if it rains. Even the 4 "guard" Roos use it.

 

[droopy]

I would inform the nieghbor that "now that I have to keep my LGD inside at night ALL animal intruders will be shot" that will probably keep thier dog in thier yard

 

[Ivywoods]

Interesting reading. As you can see by my avatar I love my GP's. We have 3. They are worth their weight in gold. We have goats, horses, chickens, a few barn cats and several other dogs (mostly the kid's pets.)

We live on 160 acres, and most of the ground around us is corn/soybean fields and woods. We have bobcats, coyotes, all the small varmints you can imagine and occasionally a mountain lion. Our dogs run loose, but tend to stay on our property. They will, however, when on a chase venture onto other property after a coyote. Fortunately, most of the farmland around us is owned by farmers who live a long ways away. Our closest neighbor is 1/2 mile away and on the other side of the creek. They have a beautiful yellow labrador that also runs loose. She, too tends to stay on their property, but occasionally wanders a bit. She used to come up here to visit us when she would follow her owner down the road while he was on his tractor. We would scold her and take her home. (Oh, it was so hard not to coddle her!)

Our neighbor to the west 2 miles away is the county sheriff. He has St. Bernards. Occasionally his son will come by asking if we have seen their dogs. They tend to get out once in a while and take off on some kind of adventure. His dogs bark. The lab barks. Our dogs bark. I'll bet our dogs do the MOST barking. The sheriff also has a "guard donkey" in with his livestock. Now, you talk about loud! We can hear that booger from 2 miles away! None of this bothers us. I actually kind of enjoy it.

Anyway, if I had samller acreage and complaining neighbors I don't know what I would do. I don't think you can keep these GP's from barking. Ours tend to know what they are supposed to protect, (Lord, they are SO SMART!) We have service people come to the farm... trash service, propane, electric etc. The dogs will come up to check them out, but have never bothered anyone. To someone who is afraid of dogs I'm sure they can be intimidating, and I don't know that other GP's would react the same as ours do.
These guys can be intimidating to me, too. I was waking in from the woods after hunting one evening. It was pretty dark out. It worried the heck out of me when I saw these two ghosts in the night silently but swiftly circling down wind to figure out what I was. I started calling their names to let them know it was me. It wasn't until they knew who I was that they put on their happy tails.

On another note, here in Kansas a person has the right to protect his livestock. If another dog started attacking any of our animals we could dispatch it. Obviously I love dogs, but I won't hesitate to put one down that is attacking our livestock. My neighbor called me one time because he had a ferrel dog that was going after his baby goats. Up to that point the nanny had managed to keep the dog away from the baby. He didn't have the heart to shoot the dog. I didn't hesitate to take care of the job for him.

Well, I could go on and on about this subject and related ones because we have had so much trouble with ferrel dogs and dogs that people "turn loose" out here.

In closing I just want to say I understand the bind you are in with your dogs. It sounds like you are handling it as best you can and I wish I had better advice for you. I'm just thankful for the space we have and the good neighbors that we have as well.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Thanks for Sharing Ivy I love my GP's and they actually never mind a service person. Our propane tank gets filled, the pool gets serviced and they give a sniff then go back to their shade. Our pool service company came last week (yearly tune up) and said they were very well behaved. I wasn't home at the time either.

They woof when needed, raccoons have been on the move big time so they bark more right now. We had a gator the other day that set them off too. I am hoping by going to each neighbor and giving them a copy of the laws they can become more understanding. It's fairly simple, this is not residential or city. If they want that lifestyle, they shouldn't live right here.

 

[mtngrl812]

I don't want to worry you, but you need to be careful with finicky neighbors. I fear that they will poison your dogs one night. People are really funny about stuff, and greed and pride can make people do terrible things.
You need to try speaking with them about your dogs, tell them that you heard that someone complained about the barking and you were just checking with people close by to see if your dogs had bothered anyone. Tell them about the dogs and their purpose, then mention you might have to resort to Guinea Fowl or maybe a donkey or two (donkeys are really good livestock protectors too! and can easily be trained to bray when the 4:30am lights come on) but insist that you must have some thing to protect your animals which are an investment as well as your hobby. Inform them that any type of night critter can dig in, through, under or over any type of structure in a night and decimate your entire flock. Then go on to act perplexed that anyone would complain about an occasional bark from a farm dog.

As for their dog, when and only when it comes to your property, do the neighborly thing and take the dog back to their house, knock on the door and give them their dog back. The second time, tell them you saw the dog right after Animal Control drove by, whew!! you saved them money. The third time, load the dog up and take it to a no kill shelter.

If you have not already spoken to them and headed off on a bad start face-to-face, this may help break the ice and get them to understand. You can also let them know the dogs are still young and the barking will lessen more over time; as you explain GP behavior.

What ever you do, be careful and remember; you have to live next to these people until one of you moves or dies and that could very well be a long long time.

you could also consider motion sensor lights, big bright ones that aim away from your house..... If you can have something to keep critters away, maybe brightening things up will scare them off. Your neighbors wont like that either, but they are going to have to deal with something.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

We actually talked with the neighbors as we were moving in in 2009. Went over what we had, how we planned to them which included the dogs as their guardians. The jaguar driving neighbor said well if we not like the chickens we will just ave you move them to th other side of the property. Uummm, no, the coop faces narrow ends east and west, long ends north and south (less wind resistance).

It seems the "norm" before we moved in (and still currently) is/was to let the dogs run loose out here. We have never done this for our dogs safety with traffic. It also seems to have been the "norm" for the loose dogs to all come down to our property to potty. Now that we own the land and don't want everyone's dogs down here the neighbors aren't very thrilled.

 

[fishin-nole]

Did you talk with FWC? Have you been to your county extension office? Either of those agencies should help you.

 

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

Quote:
I agree with 90% of what you said except for trying to contain the neighbor's dog. The OP said it seems somewhat aggressive and I would personally not take a chance on getting bit. Rather, if it kept harassing my livestock I would SSS.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Contacted AG department we ate within our rights to use the dogs. I also want to keep the peace with the neighbors (forth most part). So the dogs will stay on their new schedule, & I am talking with a donkey breeder now about adding a new guard animal to our herd. hope the neighbors don't mind our new pets.