What is a farm dog?
A dog that lives & works on a farm…duh!
Farm dogs are dogs that were specially bred for working on the farm, especially to herd livestock.
They have the natural instincts to herd & guard, and you won’t really be able to break them from this.
There are a few different breeds that I would personally label as the best farm dogs:
Great Pyrenees
Australian Shepherd
Blue Heeler / Australian Cattle Dog
Border Collie
Old English Sheepdog
You could defiantly make a lot of other breeds good farm dogs, in fact our German Shepards and Pitbull/Labrador Mix are great (trainable) around our chickens and goats.
It takes a lot of work to train dogs to be good around other animals, especially chicken nuggets, hahaha!
Even the dog breeds that were bred to herd cattle or to sleep in the sheep pen to protect them through the night, they need training too, you can just buy the dog and let them lose. So keep that in mind when you thinkin aout timing of getting a dog for your farm or homestead.
What Breed is Going to be Best for Your Farm?
If you own a big farm and have for a while and haven’t had dogs, please do your research on the proper training when introducing a dog to a farm full of other animals.
We have gotten all of our dogs as puppies so that we can raise them from almost day 1 and train them to how we want them to be. This has helped a lot especially having other animals around.
I personally think it is easier when you already have farm animals and then you introduce a dog because once you have a dog and then you introduce farm animals this can freak the dog out and make them angry in the sense that other animals are on their land.
We had this issue with our first German Shepard, we were still working on training when we got our chickens and we lost a couple chickens because of it. They would figure someway out of the coop and Oliver just thought “Toy!” I can’t really blame him, but he got in lots of trouble. Since then we have added lots more chickens, 4 goats, and 2 other dogs to the mix.
I love my German Shepherds and wouldn’t trade them for anything, but they take a lot of training to be a farm dog, they can have natural herding instincts but they also have very protective instincts.
They are bred to be guard dogs.
Our Nala on the other hand, is a all white German Shepard and has Great Pyrenees in her blood line, she is a natural herder and it is awesome to watch her around the goats. The chickens have taken a little more time to get used to but we’ve gotten a lot better.
Chief, our pit/lab mix is an awesome listener, and he’s our cuddle bug and hates to get in trouble so he is our winner so far. Plus he is more interested in the chicken feed or chicken and goat poop than anything.
I have used our dogs several times to help wrangle the goats into our smaller pen so that I can catch them to trim hooves, do measurement checks, etc. and they do a great job every time.
The key to finding a good farm dog is how much training are you willing to do?
You can buy a natural bred herding and/or guard dog but depending on what animals you have it could take a lot more work than just letting them loose in the fields.
Depending on what kind of livestock you have can be a big factor in this also. Do you have sheep? Cattle? Horses? Goats? Chickens? Alpaca? All of the above?
The larger animals don’t need a lot of protection, unless they have babies, that is when they are more vulnerable to predators.
You also have to worry about more training when it comes to larger animals. Dogs aren’t huge fans of animals that are bigger than them, unless they have been raised around them their whole life and grew up with them.
A lot of times the sheep farmers will keep their sheep dogs in the same pen as the sheep when they are puppies so they can learn to get along with the sheep and learn that theses are their friends and what they need to protect from wolves, coyotes, etc.
Looking for a protector breed that is going to roam outside fences at all times and not be in with animals?
German Shepherds & Australian Shepherds
Looking for a dog to be in the fences with your animals and help herd and protect?
Great Pyrenees, Old English Sheepdog, & Blue Heeler
These dogs have LOTS OF ENERGY, so if you have these dogs and don’t have animals for them to guard, or herd all the time you will NEED to play with them, walk them, have activities for them to do almost at all times.
You have to remember, they are bred to be at attention and constantly be on the move so if you’re thinking they will be okay laying around the house all day, think again.
