- Joined
- Nov 30, 2017
- Messages
- 153
For those that don't know me from the PS fiefdom, my wife and I recently purchased 11 acres and are planning to build a house on it this coming spring. In preparation for getting the current house up fixed up and my doctoral research, we decided earlier this year to scale way back in our efforts. The majority of that materialized in the form of 1) leaving the 100'x100' garden untouched (will become regular lawn when I can smooth it out), 2) not raising any "meat" chickens or turkeys this year, and 3) processing our "egg" chickens and ducks.
While it has certainly helped us free up the time to devote to other efforts, we realize that when we start back up again, it will be from scratch, animal-wise. Our plan is to get right back into chickens/turkeys and add some "permanent" sheep (and potentially some "annual" pigs - no sows).
We've already had issues losing small animals to raccoons, weasels, wild dogs, etc. where we're at, and we've heard that it's worse where we're moving to. The wife and I have been talking about getting one or two LGD pups (favoring Great Pyrenees at the moment), but we have some concerns about having brand-new LGDs-in-training with animals that aren't used to having a predator-looking protector among them.
If anyone has any advice, insight, humorous stories, and/or cautionary tales, I'd certainly appreciate anything you're willing to share!
While it has certainly helped us free up the time to devote to other efforts, we realize that when we start back up again, it will be from scratch, animal-wise. Our plan is to get right back into chickens/turkeys and add some "permanent" sheep (and potentially some "annual" pigs - no sows).
We've already had issues losing small animals to raccoons, weasels, wild dogs, etc. where we're at, and we've heard that it's worse where we're moving to. The wife and I have been talking about getting one or two LGD pups (favoring Great Pyrenees at the moment), but we have some concerns about having brand-new LGDs-in-training with animals that aren't used to having a predator-looking protector among them.
If anyone has any advice, insight, humorous stories, and/or cautionary tales, I'd certainly appreciate anything you're willing to share!