Dog breed for ‘border patrol’ and ‘driving away deer’?

PurBee

PurBee

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I’ll research this more in depth, but wondered if dog folks here had any ideas/recommendations.

I have a serious issue with deer eating all my grazing. I’m literally smack-bang in the middle of one of the largest man-made sitka forestry forests in Ireland, and deer absolutely thrive within these forests.
I have several herds pass by to graze 24/7/365 day and night, and they eat every blade of grass i have from december to may. I currently have 7 acres of moss, no grass.

Fencing the entire perimeter of the whole lands would be eye-wateringly expensive and take us a year of work at least, due to the nature of the shape of the fields/streams/large undulating dykes /drainage ditches and tree belt. It’s not a simple case of square fields to line with poles and fencing even if we could afford the high cost of materials. The preparatory ground work is immense alongside installing fencing.

So instead of fencing, i was wondering if there is a breed of dog that is territorial + prey driven but realistically trainably restrictive with both drives?
Is there a breed that will partrol the perimeter of the land, drive-off tresspassing deer, but not go beyond the lands border chasing deer to the next valley?

Since my amazing huskyXGSD died, the deer even come right up to the house eating all my pot plants - so i have to net them over now too.

The deer have destroyed so many crops (farming income) over 15yrs no matter the (various online suggestion) restrictions ive tried , and destroyed my paddocks multiple re-seeding efforts, that unless we fence the entire land for €€€€€, or have some dog(s) that are great patrollers, we have no choice but to sell-up, because im fed-up of income loss, agri crop restrictions of what to make money from and having to get many tonnes of forage to this farm yearly for just 2 horses because deer are decimating everything i try to grow. The deer grazing the land has cost me about 50k in forage for horses over 12yrs. 2 horses should have plenty from 7 acres!

My husky cross was great at chasing them, but she absolutely had no recall with deer. Everything else recall was perfect. Deer she chased yapping all the way, through acres and acres of barren unpopulated wilderness, i had a very loud whistle! She also stayed close to the house and didn’t ‘patrol’ away from the house or me when on walks, unless she saw a deer running.

Am i pipe dreaming a dog can deer patrol? I’ve been seeing the brilliant training of sheep dogs online, and it was seeing that footage that made me think maybe a different breed to husky, should be entertained to be better at patrolling the lands and stick to the lands border?
I’m a gsd/husky lover, and there’s a husky rescue constantly pulling at my heartstrings, but im being firm with myself, and considering the deer issue, being a major one….we stay or we sell, i’m having last-ditch attempts at considering a dog for land security of deer, before we sell.

Thanks to all suggestions, and permission to treat snack granted if you made it this far! 😁
 
I'd go for one of the more biddable livestock guardian breeds like Maremma, Pyrenean etc.
A GSD's traditional role was to patrol fields with no hedges/fences and keep sheep in and out of grazing/crops and protect from predators but you'd need to do a lot of research to find one with the drive to do the job but not to chase. Unless you went direct to a German herdling line breeder. Think there might be a few left in the Netherlands.
I think some of the other types of Belgian Shepherds are capable of doing the job, Gronendael, Tervuren and Lakenois all do the herding tests. Or a show bred Malinois but they are quite rare.

I'd pick a horse for the course and something trainable rather than the unknown odds of a rescue.
 
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Thanks so much for the suggestions CC, you’ve given me lots of pointers for researching more. It’s uplifting to know it’s possible a bred dog could do the job.

The fields are without fencing or boundary hedgeing, except for equine electric fencing which the deer hop over easily, or through, between the lines air-gliding through.

I’ve had some stressful incidents happen with the deer and the electric fencing that i cant utilise that as a mega-barrier and need to keep it minimum enough for horse deterrant.
Deer also chew the looser than drum-tight plastic lines/rope, manically, severing through the wires, destroying the connection of lines. The maintenance/checking/upkeep just of the horse fence due to the deer is a regular job too. I’ve no idea why they like the taste of polypropylene but other farmers have said they do the same with their lines.

If a dog could warn them off even part-time it would help. Since the death of my huskyxgsd, its made me realise how much she did put them off as i had some grass during finer months, but since her death, the hay requirements have markedly increased even over summer. There’s lots more mini herds of the deer now. Some live and sleep here now, as i see their small round flat circles under trees where they’ve had a nap!
 
Clodagh said:
Are you against lethal controls? The deer used to trash the crops on our farm, especially as numbers soared.
We ended up getting someone to cull them and they soon learned next doors was safer and stayed off ours.
Accepting that’s not answering your question!
Click to expand...

The muntjac soon cleared off from the field next to the canal when they realised Cooper was there and given any slip up on my part would chase and kill them. We went for a walk down there the other day and they have moved back in now we don't live there.

I think anything that's a threat to them would keep them away, whether that's a keen dog or a marksman.
 
Clodagh said:
Are you against lethal controls? The deer used to trash the crops on our farm, especially as numbers soared.
We ended up getting someone to cull them and they soon learned next doors was safer and stayed off ours.
Accepting that’s not answering your question!
Click to expand...
There’s plenty of hunters around this massive forestry plantation, but the trouble is shooting amidst thousands of acres of trees means they miss more than they shoot. The close planting of the man-made forests make the job for them especially difficult.
My fields are all small and surrounded by trees, so all the land isn’t visible from any one point of view, due to trees. As soon as you enter the field they scarper to the tree belt that leads to dense forestry. When you leave the field they return an hour later.

The only preventative measure that consistently worked was having my dog wandering daily with me, and likely her scent put them off coming right close to the house, as she spent more time up here, and pee scenting here.
The only trouble was she did the running them off sporadically, not by command, as some times she wanted me to go with her, and i was never sure when she did launch after them, if she’d go beyond the boundary.
Sometimes she’d stand at the top of the hill field barking at them grazing below and they’d got used to her bark and not move from grazing until she gave chase.

They’re known for being bloody bold here. My dog was chasing them off nightly for years right close-by. There’s a tiny patch of mowed green ‘garden’ 20 metres from the house they graze nightly, which was her first chase-off section, before moving lower down to the fields. She was aggressively chasing them very fast, barking at their tails all the way, for years, yet when it got quiet they’d return.

My land isn’t rough mountain land anymore. I’ve re-sown various horse friendly grass/herb species, re-mineralised the land, balanced the soil, drained the worst bogginess - and the deer have appreciated my hard work, and seem to have told their mates! There’s so many here they’re about in broad daylight casually sauntering around, and at night you see even more of them - groups of lit-up eyes everywhere!
I’ve created a salad-bowl few acres paradise in the middle of tens of thousands of acres of trees in rough scrubland - trees which help protect from gunshots due to the close planting of sitka plantations.

Many farmers near these large plantations talk of similar troubles with their grazing, using all types of deer-scare methods, and all blame the plantations for helping protect the deer from effective culling methods. They hunt what they can but it doesnt make a dent on the numbers there are. But like i said, this is one of 3 major plantations in the whole country covering an immense area, and most are a few hundred acres dotted around, where you could have scarers one side of trees and guns waiting for them the other side. In large plantations they have multiple routes of travel into more trees.

6-7 fencing works 100% - we have small areas of that protecting important perennial crops. But the cost/work is immense to do the whole boundary. We’ve never had tens of thousands liquid finances able to utilise on any one job. Its for this issue i now wish for square neat fields, no trees!
Our boundary indigenous tree belt is important wind/rain protection. We’ve thinned it but kept a minimal belt for much-needed weather protection as we’re on a valley hill. Eowyn storm proved their worth for sheltering us and the polytunnels/perennial crops/horses/buildings.
We didn’t know about the serious deer issue when moving here. We came here to farm multi horti-crops.
We’ve spent so many €K in labour and materials bit by bit over the years improving a farm abandoned for 60yrs. The deer is the main issue forcing a move.
A move which will consolidate our finances and leave us with not enough € to buy similar elsewhere, so it’s like all our efforts have been in vain.

Our last hope was maybe a proper trained dog being a vigilent patroller, similar to my last girl, but with a more consistent/reliable work ethic! She was a damn good dog though for chasing the deer, considering she wasn’t specially trained/bred for it.
I still bemoaned the deer issue when she was around, but since she died, i have seen how much devestation they’re capable of. The grazing is literally fields of mostly moss now with the odd grass shoot eaten down to the quick. It’s used for the horses for turn-out exercise rather than grazing now.
All our work seems to have been in vain and i can’t believe it’s because of friggin’ bambi!

I’ve been in touch with a GSD working line trainer/breeder about my issue since starting the thread, so hopefully will get an idea whether their line of dog would work for this. 🤞
 
I'm Dun said:
The muntjac soon cleared off from the field next to the canal when they realised Cooper was there and given any slip up on my part would chase and kill them. We went for a walk down there the other day and they have moved back in now we don't live there.

I think anything that's a threat to them would keep them away, whether that's a keen dog or a marksman.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately that doesnt work here, the trees give them boldness, and as soon as the threat leaves, they resume their activities.

The farmer below us shoots at them regularly for years in his front field, and they’re right there in front of his house, returning every night from the dense forestry.
 
My collie does a great job of seeing off deer, unfortunately she won't do the same for foxes. She roams around my rented yard but never leaves it even though she could if she wanted to, she knows what's my patch and sticks to it.
 
marmalade76 said:
My collie does a great job of seeing off deer, unfortunately she won't do the same for foxes. She roams around my rented yard but never leaves it even though she could if she wanted to, she knows what's my patch and sticks to it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the collie vote. Seeing videos of them working shows me they’ve got great aptitude for learning complexity and being very reliable.

Does she take herself off to run after the deer without your prompting? My dog would smell or hear them from within the house and rattle the door keys to be let out after them.
 
PurBee said:
Thanks for the collie vote. Seeing videos of them working shows me they’ve got great aptitude for learning complexity and being very reliable.

Does she take herself off to run after the deer without your prompting? My dog would smell or hear them from within the house and rattle the door keys to be let out after them.
Click to expand...

Yes, she does it without prompting and only goes as far as our boundary, the deer will either jump the fence or disappear through the hedge, the dog will then turn back. She won't touch anything, she once herded a myxi rabbit which gave up after a bit, she touched it with her paw as if to say "come on, play" and then left it in peace. She won't chase a fox even if I encourage her, my theory being that it's a carnivore and she has a high sense of self preservation.
 
PurBee said:
Unfortunately that doesnt work here, the trees give them boldness, and as soon as the threat leaves, they resume their activities.

The farmer below us shoots at them regularly for years in his front field, and they’re right there in front of his house, returning every night from the dense forestry.
Click to expand...

Its the same in parts of Oxfordshire. Theres just so many of them. I'd gladly see the whole damn lot culled. Is there no one locally with working dogs who wants to come and thin them out/scare them off? People are usually all over it when there's land they can legally hunt on. It would help now while you take your time sourcing the right dog at least
 
I have zero knowledge of this, but can one of the traditional European guarding breeds like the Great Pyrenees be trained to guard from deer?

We were chased by some Pyrenees when hiking in the French Alps. Scary things. We'd climbed up a hillside to create more distance from the bloody sheep, and it wasn't far away enough (the signs advise you to go back the way you came, but we were about 3k from the car, in a circular walk, and reversing it would have required about 20k of hiking and a mountain, so I am unsure of what we were meant to do). No one's messing around with those dogs.
 
Caol Ila said:
I have zero knowledge of this, but can one of the traditional European guarding breeds like the Great Pyrenees be trained to guard from deer?

We were chased by some Pyrenees when hiking in the French Alps. Scary things. We'd climbed up a hillside to create more distance from the bloody sheep, and it wasn't far away enough (the signs advise you to go back the way you came, but we were about 3k from the car, in a circular walk, and reversing it would have required about 20k of hiking and a mountain, so I am unsure of what we were meant to do). No one's messing around with those dogs.
Click to expand...

Theyre also a strong contender for the job. Saw a mini docu on flock guarding dog breeds a while back and they struck my interest back then.
I just had another look for more insights and apparently many owners report they also like to patrol the property at night, and will alert with barking.
Night-time is when the deer really move into all areas so part of my ‘fantasy dog’ is to be capable to patrol at night alone, without going beyond the lands borders chasing after the deer. Just scare them off.

I can’t imagine what that was like to be chased by them while hiking difficult terrain!
 
After that, I did some digging, and like any dog, socialisation is key. Apparently lots of French farmers don't bother socialising them as puppies because they don't care if they eat the occasional hiker, but if you do, they will keep unwanted wildlife away but not chase people.
 
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