I first started to think about stretching a dollar by cooking, when I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home. It never occurred to me that the banks closed, that week on Wednesday and that food service at college was closed …
We got into Muscovy ducks, almost by mistake, in 2003. One of our kids said they’d like to get some ducks. I drove past a homemade sign, out on the highway, which read “Ducklings $4.00 each,” and decided to check …
Do it yourself hot packs Hey all, Winter is upon us. This time of year is when I struggle most to stay warm, and the lyme disease that I deal with tends to affect my joints the most. Hot packs …
I hobnob with our livestock guardian dogs every day, for a significant part of the day. I refer to them as my “buds.” They seem like “big mushes” to me. It’s easy to forget that livestock guardian dogs protect people …
In our experience many livestock guardian dogs have a favorite species to protect. They will protect almost any number of species, but they have a favorite and gravitate to it. Most Livestock Guardian Dogs Seem to Have a Favorite Species. …
On our homestead Guerrero’s “claim to fame” is simply that he is a faithful livestock guardian dog. His father was our Bravo. Bravo had fire. He was strikingly beautiful. Bravo was alpha. Guerrero’s mother was a 3/4 Anatolian 1/4 Pyrenees owned …
Guardi the Pyre (Great Pyrenees) was our first LGD. He was given to us within two years of our arrival in Oklahoma and acquisition of goats. Having spent a significant part of our lives in Mexico, we tended to name …
Moses was an old Pyrenees. As a pup he freely roamed the fields around his farm, warding off coon, coyote and hawks from his beloved sheep and poultry. As he grew older so did his neighborhood. A housing development sprang …
A common misconception about livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) is that they regularly KILL intruders: a predator ventures onto the homestead and… the LGD kills it, end of story. As a general rule this is not how they work. Bravo, one …
Some years ago, I stepped out the back door to start milking and found Bravo (pictured above) eating a white bird right outside our door. He was still a big puppy and I struggled to train him as a livestock …