Home › Forums › Forum › Livestock guarding dogs: what to do to make them effective to deter predators? › Reply To: Livestock guarding dogs: what to do to make them effective to deter predators?
What makes a good livestock guarding dog?
I would say it would have to be the right genetics (meaning good working lineages resulting from adequate functional selection) potentiated by the right environment (proper bonding and training) and enabled by good animal welfare.
The role of the farmers/owners is crucial to optimize the bonding process and the physical and behavioural development of the dogs, and to prevent and correct any problems that may occur.
There is a lot of information available on how to select, train and maintain these dogs in different contexts, so they can grow up to become good working dogs: attentive, trustworthy and protective of the livestock, well integrated into the community and with existing activities (e.g. tourism, hunting).
There is also a nice article on issue 15 of the CDPnews – Carnivore Damage Prevention News that discusses solutions to perceived limitations on the use of these dogs. It is available here: https://www.protectiondestroupeaux.ch/en/cdpnews/
Addressing Human – Wildlife interaction issues often requires a combination of diverse initiatives. While many of these already exist, they are spread out across the globe in such a way that many remain unknown and not available to all.
The ENCOSH platform has been co-created by an international, interdisciplinary team to foster and help practitioners worldwide to share their knowledge and experiences
Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information and guidance or share any suggestions to make this new platform the most suitable to your needs and expectations: https://encosh.org/contact/
Please, take into account that is an automatic translation made by a computer; the translation may not be always very accurate. If this translation is not clear enough in your native language, please let us know here: https://encosh.org/en/contact/. Donations will help paying professional translators for including qualitative translations instead