Impact of early life experiences on the efficacy and behavior of livestock guardian dogs

Commodities

Practices

Sheep welfare is related to their capacity to contribute to a sustainable agricultural system. A primary component of ensuring sheep welfare while on range are livestock guardian dogs (LGDs).  These LGDs are trained to protect the herd from predation and can facilitate herd movement into areas where the sheep may not graze due to predators. They fill a unique niche as working animals, and how they are trained early in life can have lifelong implications for their ability to ensure sheep welfare as adults. This project integrates wildlife management techniques with agricultural sustainability. We will evaluate the impact of hot wire during the bonding process while juveniles on the LGD’s efficacy and roaming behavior as adults.

Dogs will be reared at the Texas A&M AgriLife San Angelo Research Center, half will be housed in their bonding pens with hot wire while the other half will not. When dogs because adults, they will be fitted with GPS collars and their location recorded for 180 days.  This project aims to identify socialization and bonding strategies that increase LGD efficacy as measured through flock predation rates and dog movement patterns.

Developing early life strategies that set up working animals for success is paramount to the long term sustainability and use of LGD in sheep production. 

Roaming can lead to premature death, increased sheep production costs, and loss of livestock to predation. Establishing a strong bond between LGD and livestock is paramount to long-term LGD success and subsequent sheep welfare. The efficacy of LGD is dependent on their early life experiences and bonding strategies.  Dogs have a critical period of brain development in which socialization and bonding must occur, thus the strategies employed to bond the dogs to their livestock as juveniles can greatly impact the behavior of the dog as a protector when they become an adult. The bond that is created between dogs and livestock will influence the long-term efficacy of the LGD, subsequent sheep welfare, and the perseverance of rural stakeholders in the underserved sheep industry.

The objective of this research is to evaluate the efficacy of post-weaning management on the efficacy (e.g., predation control) and roaming behavior of adult LGDs. 

We propose to evaluate the impact of hot wire use (HWIRE), compared to a control (CON) during the bonding process, on LGD efficacy and roaming behavior as measured by GPS coordinates as adults. We plan to test the efficacy of housing dogs with their respective livestock during the bonding phase using hot wire compared to an unelectrified control on their roaming behavior as adult LGD.  Adult behavior will be monitored using GPS collar data.  The project results will show that properly trained and bonded LGDs cost less over time as they do not have to be replaced as often thus lowering overall production costs and increasing revenue through higher lamb crops.