Anna is one of our livestock guard dogs. She is a very peculiar animal.
She is not overly aggressive like the typical watch dog. Instead,
she attempts to solve
problems through submissive behavior.
For example, soon after we got her, we saw her out in the back field,
playing with the coyotes! She was supposed to be protecting the
sheep from the coyotes, and here she was fraternizing with the enemy!
But whenever the coyotes would move toward the sheep, Anna would be
in the way. Eventually she played them all the way out of the field.
Before we got Anna we were losing several lambs a month to coyotes
and dogs. Since then we haven't lost one!
She also guards everything else on the property, except for the chickens and ducks and geese. I don't think she likes them very much, because they won't play with her. So they have to fend for themselves. Consequently, we lose a lot of ducks to the river otters and racoons. Once a bald eagle nested on our property and fed an entire year's worth of baby ducks to its babies.
My mom thought it was really neat.
I was horrified.
The mama duck agreed with me.
- Kevin
Some of the animals on our farm are not strictly pets, nor would we eat them.
In fact, some of them we don't even pet... He's kinda cute, though. (And I
wouldn't argue the point with him!)
kevin@fink.com