Hercules is our Pyrenees dog that we recently brought home. They are most famous for being live stock guardian dogs. This breed is laid back, getting along with humans of all ages and many animals, while warding off predators. Since they have such a sweet personality towards humans, numerous people keep them as house pets.
I first heard about this breed about a year or two ago. Ever since we first started raising chickens in 2015 we have been dealing with predators. The common predators for us have been: raccoons, foxes, possums, stray dogs, and hunting dogs. We do have coyote in the area but we haven’t seen any on our property. However, we can hear the coyote howling in the woods by our house, sometimes it’s super close. We also have a hawk that appeared about a year ago but I have never seen it swoop down for our chickens. We have three roosters and several goats which could be deterrents.
I like to do research, reading how other people care for their live stock. During these times I often saw Pyrenees dogs mentioned as a source to protect their animals. How do they protect the animals? They mark their area, they do late night patrols on their property, and have thick fur that allows them to be out in the cold and snow. The thick fur even offers protection for them if they get into a fight with another animal. I brought it up with Jacob, but we decided maybe later down the road we could get one. Fast forward, we had several fox attacks which resulted in Little Roo (our red rooster) to be badly injured with several chickens go missing. Not many months after that we had a hound dog with a bright orange collar during turkey hunting season kill a black chicken, our brown duck (Brownie), and injured our hen Speckalena (which you can click here to see her in a video with the kids). We only know this because we had security cameras installed a couple of months before the attack. We don’t know if this was a hunting dog or not but we have had in the past hunting dogs with a visible tracker on their neck kill chickens and carry them off.
Right around the time Speckalena was injured we had started our search for Nigerian dwarf goat does to add to our herd. During my search, I saw farms were creating waiting lists for Pyrenees dogs that were going to be born in the future. We didn’t sign up for any, deciding the time wasn’t right. However, since then we have had another dog and fox come onto the property. Luckily, both were scared off. Jacob had gone to work one day, visiting a house where there was a pyrenees dog that would be pregnant soon! We went over the pros and cons of a pyrenees dog. The cons for us were: no fenced in back yard, another dog to take care of, potential barking through the night. Our pros were: having a guardian to watch over the goats, chickens, and ducks, having him trained when we move to a bigger property, and hoping to get better sleep at night since the chickens won’t be (hopefully) squawking because of predators nearby.
Check out our video below of Hercules!
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