Our Dogs
Why Do We Have Guard Dogs? Our pasture raised hens go outside on fresh, green grass. This is great for our chickens but makes it very easy for predators to prey on our hens. When we started we were losing a large amount of our chickens to eagles, coyotes, and other wildlife.
Our Solution for Predators
We knew we had to do something to keep our chickens safe so we decided to bring in some Great Pyrenees dogs. This breed is native to the Pyrenees mountains in France and was originally bred to protect livestock from wolves and bears. We raised the dogs alongside our chickens from the time they were puppies in order to insure that the dogs were friendly towards the chickens and that the chickens were comfortable with them. The dogs have been a major success and have done a great job of keeping our hens safe! We currently have 15 guard dogs on the farm and plan on getting more.
Hartley Wilcox welcomes our new guard dogs to the farm. The pups grew up around chickens and were trained to guard them from predators such as eagles and coyotes.
Learn from Andy Wilcox about the brave dogs who protect the Wilcox chickens from predators
Hartley Wilcox & our chicken guard dogs enjoying a snow day on the farm.