# How to train GSD not to eat our livestock?



## bwibwigouza (Apr 14, 2017)

Carmie is currently 2 yrs old going to be 3 at the end of the year. She was raised on raw diet when she was with the breeder but because of her "hunting" tendencies we've taken her off raw diet. She currently lives on a farm with different livestocks that's all fenced in separate areas. 

When she was about 1 yr old, she did attempt to "hunt" our ducks. At that time we were able to intervene since she was not allowed to run free in the yard by herself. Now, her recall is much better we let her run free around our yard which is fenced all around the property line in addition to the separate livestock fences. A few months after she's set to run free, we've noticed she's back to her "hunting" behaviour. 

Most of the time she hunts mouse and birds which is good for the farm. However, recently she has ate one of our newborn lamb that got out of the area we fenced up just for the sheep. She also ate a rooster that jumped out of the chicken run. 

Before these 2 incidents she had been caught 4-5 times sneaking inside the sheep fence cornering the herd. Every time that she's caught she's been removed from the area and taken to her kennel to chill. After the 2nd time she was caught she knew she did something wrong and headed to the kennel herself. However this didn't stop her from trying again few weeks later. Is there a way to teach her not to "eat" our own livestock?


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## maxtmill (Dec 28, 2010)

Ate a lamb? Wow. I have no wisdom to offer here, but do you think it was because she was on a raw meat diet?


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## LuvShepherds (May 27, 2012)

If you let her hunt mice and birds, she will continue to hunt roosters and other animals. How can you expect her to know the difference between roosters and birds?


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## thegooseman90 (Feb 24, 2017)

Back when I was hunting, I had dogs that lived on a "farm" as well. Mostly chickens with a few cows. Most of them were raised around the animals sense they were pups and the first thing they always loved to chase was the chickens. Something about that frantic flailing and awful noise they make when you scare them really turned the dogs on. Anyhow the pups got a correction. Depending on the dog a verbal correction(that grunt you use for no) might be enough or a physical one might've been needed but they learned pretty quick that live stock was off guard. Most of the adult dogs I got came from friends and were well behaved around livestock already. Except one. A male BMC(black mouth cur) and this sob would go crazy over the animals. Especially baby cows. Not surprisingly since they were used for herding dogs in days past. But with him he was well behaved if he was with me. No chasing etc. so I used an e collar on a high setting (remember this is a hunting dog. A very hard dog and light correction wouldn't make him flinch) but after a few times he learned that wasn't ok and he actually ended up being the dog left to run the yard to keep the chickens safe from other predators. Mostly *****. And just as a note this had ZERO impact on his drive to hunt. He was still one of my best strike dogs but he learned to play nice with live stock.


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

Maybe you can put an e-collar on her and use an invisible fence around the areas you do not want her in. Also have collar control on you, and if she starts stalking lifestock, give her a correction from afar. I think the leerberg site or Lou who was banned had some training technique for crittering. 

I do think a GSD is smart enough to differentiate between wild and domestic, those that belong and those that don't. However, baby animals within the first few days might be special. One should not leave a new bitch alone with her young until the umbilical cords fall off because they might eat the puppies. New babies are kind of different, and I am not sure if that is what you had with the lamb. But the rooster? I don't know why your dog would eat a rooster. 

My dogs were good with my cat -- she belonged. But the neighbor's kitten was fair game, my brother's bitch got it. And I got it out of her mouth, but it did not survive. Jazzy then went to live back with my brother -- a year or so later. My brother had 3 cats, and Jazzy was fine with them. 

Sometimes a dog will dispatch a sick animal. And wild animals. If it is any and all animals and you can't figure out how to stop the dog, maybe you can look into the e-collar thing.


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## cliffson1 (Sep 2, 2006)

A German SHEEPherd dog inside a sheep pen cornering sheep sounds very normal to me and most German Shepherd dogs. I find it difficult to believe the dog thought it did something wrong, as they are instinctively created to do this behavior. 
The killing of certain animals reflects a lack of training or clear boundaries established to dog to show dog which animals are off limits to his predatory predilection. You can't do that without exposure to these animals with appropriate training/corrections to let dog know what is off limits. Isolation is a tool that may protect the animals but doesn't teach the dog to differentiate between what they can kill and what they must respect.


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## Chip18 (Jan 11, 2014)

Oh well ... Op if you allowed the dog to hunt and kill small creatures at will ?? That kinda sort says your in over your head?? Most likely your best options are to "Hire a Trainer" and it's likely they will "E collar" train your dog and at some point institute a "Crittering Protocol." And again at some point they will deliver a "high Level Correction" for inappropriate behaviour towards "creatures" ... behaviour modification.

Game Chasing (Crittering)


Or rehome the dog to a non "prey owning environment" ... and that would be no cats. So sorry about your lamb.


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## Thecowboysgirl (Nov 30, 2006)

Sounds to me like this dog has had a lot of time on her own to practice her hunting skills, complete kills and get to eat her kill. I seriously doubt if this dog is ever going to be able to be safe alone with livestock.

You can train her not to hunt/kill your livestock, I did it with a Dogtra 1900 field star and Lou Castle's crittering protocol. While I was working on it, I had double fences between the dog and the stock, and he absolutely never went anywhere near where they were without me, a leash, and a muzzle. All that stuff was justified with that dog because he would kill an animal with lightning precision whether a person was standing there or not.

The end result was that he was able to be out with me on the farm, in the barn and other places where the animals weren't loose, and I could see his mental commitment to not hunting them in front of me. It was put to the test when two goat kids popped out in front of him after crawling through a hole in the fence, and when i told him to leave it, he did. Same thing happened with two of my young bucks who weren't adult sized yet, came crashing through the woods from my neighbor' place. They had escaped over there and he chased them back over without warning me so my killed dog was standing there in the driveway with me when the two of them popped out in front of him. No leash no muzzle, he did not go for them. He could walk through pastures where the chicken flock was foraging, as long as I kept him a reasonable distance and he knew under those circumstances he was not allowed to venture away from me.

If I had ever left him alone with access to my animals, even after all that training, I have very little doubt he would have killed every single animal.

I doubt that roaming your farm unsupervised any time soon is a realistic goal for your dog, OP. Your dog needs to you tell it right from wrong and make it so.


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## Dainerra (Nov 14, 2003)

This is a raw fed dog. One of his favorite foods was rabbit. His favorite game? chasing wild rabbits and squirrels


Raw feeding is not going to cause an animal to want to chase livestock. German Shepherds are a herding breed. What is the desire to herd but directed and controlled prey drive - the desire to chase and corner prey. There are some dogs that can never be trusted around livestock unattended but the majority can be trained to not chase livestock when they are supervised. Chasing chickens especially is an awesomely fun game. Most dogs that kill chickens don't even do it on purpose. They simply get caught up in the fun of the game and OOPS smashed that one. Oh look! Another one, game on! That is what makes them so devastating to chickens - they don't stop until the fun is over.

First, the main problem is that you are giving her the opportunity to chase livestock. It's a self-rewarding behavior - it's fun and that in itself is a reward. She didn't know that she did something wrong the second time that she was caught in the sheep enclosure - she knew that you were upset. A very big difference. Putting her in the kennel to chill doesn't do anything as far as teaching her not to chase livestock. At best, you might teach her to not get caught!

Step one is that she does not have unsupervised access to any livestock. Not even for a moment. If that means that you need to fence off a section of the yard just for her, so be it. 
Step two is beginning the training. She is redirected and corrected if necessary for showing any interest in the livestock. You already know that she's capable of killing so I would teach her to ignore them. Start at a distance where she knows they are there, shows a bit of interest and work on the "Leave it" command as well as "watch me" and other obedience exercises that keep her focused on you. If she has trouble keeping her mind off the livestock, you are too close - move farther away and start again. 
Over time, you will gradually move closer. Then, once she is reliable on leash and a long line, you can try her off leash. Again, starting at a bit of a distance. 

Above all, do not let her have any opportunity to fixate on the animals you don't want her to chase. Even more, make absolutely certain that she never has an opportunity to leave your property off-leash. Harassing/killing livestock is a justified shooting in almost every jurisdiction. Even the few places that consider it a grey area, most farmers practice the 3 S - shoot, shovel, shut up.


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## Thecowboysgirl (Nov 30, 2006)

I *doubt* raw diet had anything to do with it, just my opinion. when we butchered our meat birds, we fed parts to the dogs as we were doing the work, toss em a raw neck right there while we were cleaning and storing the meat. The dog can eat anything I give him to eat. What's off limits is going and killing it himself.


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## Dainerra (Nov 14, 2003)

yes, the idea that feeding raw causes a dog to kill is an old wives tale. Now, the fact that this dog has been allowed to eat (through lack of supervision) things that he has killed is a different and separate issue. He knows that not only is there a fun game in the chase and the kill but that there is a tasty reward at the end.


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