- Mar 29, 2011
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My experience has been with Great White Pyrenees two on separate occasions, and an Anatolian. First I would like to start by saying that I would not have a dog just for
guarding chickens it really is not in a dogs nature to care for chickens. However, I would make an exception if it was a grown dog and already guarding them. There is no point in buying a puppy and hoping it works out since relocating the dog can be very hard on you and stressful for the dog. With that said the following is my experience with LGDs.
We lost half of our Cornish cross chickens about a week before processing to our first LG, a Pyrenees. She was great with the sheep but we had to give her to our neighbor (who raises sheep) due to the fact she would scale the fence to get to our chickens.
2nd GWP was also a chicken killer and killed all my silkies. Needless to say, she also went to a good home. We will never get a GWP again as they are great with sheep and goats, but generally they are not good with small animals, including cats and sometimes they will even kill lambs and kids (baby goats) not children! Of course this is not true of all GWP, some are awesome with small animals but I am done with experimenting. I also want to point out that GWP are big roamers, ours spent long periods of time away from the sheep and instead would roam completely away from the sheep marking and sniffing around which allowed coyotes time to come in and snatch lambs. I would not recommend you have any LG if you don't have atleast 2 acres since they do need "territory" to guard. BTW: we did keep our sheep contained to just 3-5 acres at a time but again, the GWP would scale the fence and one was even found guarding another neighbors sheep almost mile away!
The next LG was our Anatolian. Her father was over 200 lbs fully grown and at 6 months she herself was 75-80 lbs. She was great with our chickens and sheep, never scaled a fence, and didn't leave the sheep to roam except within the 3-5 acre that contained the sheep. My only complaint with her was that she decided at a young age that she was alpha over me; she would wait till I was distracted with sheep, bound from behind and knock me to the ground or grab hold of my arm with her teeth to try force me into submission. However annoying this was, I blame us for this behavior and not the dog since this could have been easily avoided by simple going with a different litter mate, one with a more compatible personality. She was better suited to a farm where a man had charge over her not a female. However, DH wanted the biggest puppy out of the pack and even though I explained to him that she showed all the signs that she was going to be a very dominant and difficult dog to teach, size was more important. Lesson learned!
In all I would have an Anatolian again however, I have my eye on two other breeds, the first is a Kommondor and second is a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. I have seen both breeds doing their job and I think they will be exactly what we are looking for. Though again we are using them primarily for sheep, I would like to be able to free range the chickens with the sheep if the dog/s turn out to be compatible with chickens. I also forgot to mention we had a donkey and an alpaca as guards for the poultry and neither worked out, infact one night when a coon tried to raid our Rouen ducks the donkey tried to intervene but ended up killing my favorite duck instead of the coon.
But she did try! lol
guarding chickens it really is not in a dogs nature to care for chickens. However, I would make an exception if it was a grown dog and already guarding them. There is no point in buying a puppy and hoping it works out since relocating the dog can be very hard on you and stressful for the dog. With that said the following is my experience with LGDs.
We lost half of our Cornish cross chickens about a week before processing to our first LG, a Pyrenees. She was great with the sheep but we had to give her to our neighbor (who raises sheep) due to the fact she would scale the fence to get to our chickens.
2nd GWP was also a chicken killer and killed all my silkies. Needless to say, she also went to a good home. We will never get a GWP again as they are great with sheep and goats, but generally they are not good with small animals, including cats and sometimes they will even kill lambs and kids (baby goats) not children! Of course this is not true of all GWP, some are awesome with small animals but I am done with experimenting. I also want to point out that GWP are big roamers, ours spent long periods of time away from the sheep and instead would roam completely away from the sheep marking and sniffing around which allowed coyotes time to come in and snatch lambs. I would not recommend you have any LG if you don't have atleast 2 acres since they do need "territory" to guard. BTW: we did keep our sheep contained to just 3-5 acres at a time but again, the GWP would scale the fence and one was even found guarding another neighbors sheep almost mile away!
The next LG was our Anatolian. Her father was over 200 lbs fully grown and at 6 months she herself was 75-80 lbs. She was great with our chickens and sheep, never scaled a fence, and didn't leave the sheep to roam except within the 3-5 acre that contained the sheep. My only complaint with her was that she decided at a young age that she was alpha over me; she would wait till I was distracted with sheep, bound from behind and knock me to the ground or grab hold of my arm with her teeth to try force me into submission. However annoying this was, I blame us for this behavior and not the dog since this could have been easily avoided by simple going with a different litter mate, one with a more compatible personality. She was better suited to a farm where a man had charge over her not a female. However, DH wanted the biggest puppy out of the pack and even though I explained to him that she showed all the signs that she was going to be a very dominant and difficult dog to teach, size was more important. Lesson learned!
In all I would have an Anatolian again however, I have my eye on two other breeds, the first is a Kommondor and second is a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. I have seen both breeds doing their job and I think they will be exactly what we are looking for. Though again we are using them primarily for sheep, I would like to be able to free range the chickens with the sheep if the dog/s turn out to be compatible with chickens. I also forgot to mention we had a donkey and an alpaca as guards for the poultry and neither worked out, infact one night when a coon tried to raid our Rouen ducks the donkey tried to intervene but ended up killing my favorite duck instead of the coon.
