Prancing Pony Farm Blog

The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Your Livestock Guardian Dogs and Farm Animals Cool this Summer

7/12/2023

As a Maremma Sheepdog breeder and admin of the Maremma Sheepdog Open Forum, a large Maremma Sheepdog Facebook group, one question I often hear is, "How do Maremmas handle the heat?" Summertime can be challenging for Livestock Guardian Dogs as they seek relief from the sweltering heat.

The heat is equally brutal on the livestock these brave dogs guard, whether that means goats, sheep, cattle, horses, poultry, or other species. As responsible owners and caretakers, it's essential to prioritize their well-being and implement effective cooling strategies. This comprehensive guide will provide expert tips and techniques to keep your Livestock Guardian Dogs and the animals they guard cool and comfortable throughout the summer months.

I own a small farm in Lemoore, California. I breed MSCA-registered Maremma Sheepdogs and registered Mini Nubian and Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats. I also own a variety of other animals, including horses, mini horses, donkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and barn cats. In the Central Valley, temperatures regularly reach around 110-115 degrees in the summer. We have "excessive heat watch" warnings regularly from June to September. People always say it's "a dry heat," but no matter how you look at it, that's hot! 🥵

However, my Maremmas do very well in the heat. In fact, they do better than the goats and other livestock they guard. That could be because dogs are more resourceful than goats or poultry. Or maybe dogs are just hardier. But I haven't had any real problems with the dogs or horses and few problems with the goats. Though sadly, I have lost a few birds to the heat. 😢

High temperatures can put animals at risk of heat stress, dehydration, and even death. So, I ensure that my Maremmas, goats, and other animals are kept as cool and comfortable as possible throughout the summer. Below are some strategies and tips that you can use to help your Livestock Guardian Dogs, and other animals beat the heat, too. And most of them are very inexpensive and easy to implement.

Provide Adequate Shade

One of the simplest ways to keep your Livestock Guardian Dogs and livestock cool is to provide adequate shade. Trees, barns, or other shade structures can all offer protection from the sun. Here at Prancing Pony Farm, we have almost no trees left because of the drought conditions we have suffered in Central California for over a decade. Our property had dozens of trees when we first bought it, but most died due to the drought and either fell or had to be removed. We've planted new trees that are young and don't yet provide much shade. Instead, we primarily use a variety of man-made structures to provide much-needed shade for our animals.

Barns and Other Outbuildings

Our best source of shade is our main barn, which is roughly 90' long by 25 feet wide. It's just a tall, flat roof with sides of welded steel pipe and horse panels, so it has plenty of ventilation, which is super important for preventing heat stroke. We hang shade sails to block the incoming sun in the summer.

We also have a one-sided hay barn that's usually empty of hay in the summer. (We stack our hay outside in the summer since it doesn't rain anyway.) We use that as extra shade for the animals.

We have a 16 x 8' mobile office trailer in our barnyard that we converted into a dog grooming room and backup milking parlor. It's several feet off the ground, so the dogs and goats love to lay under this to cool off, and the shadow it casts provides a lot of shade later in the day.

Our Puppy Parlor (puppy whelping room and milking parlor) was made from a 16 x 30' garden shed built on a concrete pad. It is completely enclosed, insulated, heated, and air-conditioned, with two industrial fans hanging from the ceiling. Dog doors going out to the goat pastures are on two sides, so the pups and mama dogs can come and go as they please. We don't run the AC that much, but the fans make a big difference in keeping the building cool. The dogs enjoy lying on the cool concrete floor under the fans during the hottest part of the day.

Other Shade Structures

Our property came with several horse shelters sprinkled throughout the pastures. These are tall metal structures with flat roofs and no sides. They work well and stand up to the wind, rain, heat, and animals pushing on them. A dead tree fell on one of them a few years ago, crushing the roof, but the structure is still intact enough to provide shade for our Maremmas, horses, and goats. We plan to get it repaired one of these days. But we have higher priorities right now, and an ugly shelter still works to keep the animals cool.

One thing we tried a few times for shade that didn't work well was pop-up canopies that are popular for parties, sporting events, and camping. They are convenient and look nice, but they don't hold up well to wind, rain, goats, dogs, and horses pushing on them. We gave up on that idea after buying a few that quickly ended up in the trash.

We use calf hutches from Calftel and Polydome in our pastures, but they are primarily for providing shelter in the wintertime. They are too hot to lay inside during the heat of the day, but sometimes the goats, Maremmas, or birds will lay in the shadows cast by the sun.

Easy Homemade Shade Structures

Next, we made shade structures out of t-posts and shade sails. We buy the shade sails from Amazon or Costco and the t-posts from Lowes or Tractor Supply. We learned early on that these structures must be extra tall, or the goats will tear them up. The goats stand up on their hind legs to pull the sails down so they can use them like hammocks. The silly goats love laying in them, so the posts soon get bent, the sails sag, and eventually, the sails get torn to shreds.

It works best if the posts are at least 8' tall, with 10' being better. You measure out a rectangle slightly bigger than the dimensions of the sail, pound the posts in and attach the four corners of the sails to the top of the posts. And voila, you have a shade structure!

Where we live, we get no rain for most of the year, so the ground is like concrete, and it's hard to pound posts into the ground. Because of this, we mostly do our fence work in the wintertime. Otherwise, we must water the ground for several days to soften it. I may buy a gas-powered fence post-pounder someday to make this job easier.

These shade structures aren't pretty, but they work reasonably well. It's hard to get them super tight and straight and even harder to keep them that way. Over time they start to sag, and the goats tear them up, leaving nothing but a bunch of bent t-posts sticking out of the ground.

After putting all that work and money into building those structures, we've determined there are better choices than this. But they are a quick way to provide your Livestock Guardian Dogs and livestock shade on a budget. They are suitable temporary structures that will last a year or two if you build them right. Or a day or two if you don't make them high and tight!

Another quick and inexpensive trick we've found is to attach sections of shade cloth to existing fences. Our fences are 5' high, so we buy 4 or 5' wide panels in whatever length we need in a particular area. These are made for lining patios and backyard fences and have rivets along all four sides, which makes attaching them to the fence with zip ties a breeze. This method only works for part of the day, but if you install it in the right spot, the animals can lay in the shadow cast by the sun. We use this as a backup for additional shade in a pasture, not as the only shade source.

Our Favorite Solution for Fast and easy (But More Costly) Shade

We've found that dog kennels with canvas roofs and sides provide the best shade for our Maremmas and dairy goats. We have several of these, and they can serve multiple functions. They can be used as mini "barns" for the goats or Maremmas. They provide shelter from rain, cold, and heat. We can put the goat minerals in there during the rainy season to keep them dry. They are an excellent place to feed the dogs so the goats can't steal the food, which can lead to resource guarding. And they are great when we need to temporarily contain an animal or group of animals, such as when we need to work in the pasture without the animals getting in the way. We have kennels for this purpose in most of our pastures and plan to add others eventually.

You can buy kennels from places like Tractor Supply or Lowes. We have a few of these, but the quality could be better, and they are not very easy to assemble. Our favorite kennels come from K9 Kennel Store. These kennels are much more expensive than the ones bought locally, and the shipping is costly, but the quality is worth it. They assemble with pins, like the corral panels used for horses, so it takes mere minutes to put them together or take them apart. They come in different sizes, or you can buy individual panels and use whatever you need to make different sizes and configurations. I prefer to buy configurations that use 4' and 6' panels since they are easier for me to move than the 8' panels.

You can also buy canvas roofs and side covers that provide additional shade or protection from the weather and keep the rain and sun off. These are super easy to put up and take down as needed. Much, much easier than the ones from Tractor Supply or Lowes!

There are many other ways to provide shade for your livestock guardian dogs and goats. If you are handy with carpentry work or can hire someone to build a structure, you can provide something nice. I'm not talented in that area, so I have devised other measures that work well for us. But eventually, I would like to have some more permanent structures built. Structures that are a few feet off the ground and can double as climbing structures for the goats and shade structures for the dogs and goats would be perfect.

Digging to Keep Cool

Another way most dogs like to keep cool is by digging holes. If you provide them with a place to do it, they will take care of it themselves. Usually, they will find a shady, sandy spot or a spot that is already mostly bare dirt, and they will dig themselves a nice little Hobbit hole. Then they will lay in it to keep cool. If you don't have such a spot, you could give your dogs a sandbox in a shady area or build a sandbox with a roof so they have a nice soft spot to dig and lay.

Since we don't have grass and only have an endless supply of dirt, I don't have this problem. My dogs make their own Hobbit holes to keep cool in. Usually, I manage to step in these holes when I'm out in the pastures and have fallen flat on my face many times because of these "Maremma death traps." Texting and walking in a pasture is almost as dangerous as texting and driving.

Water, the Essential Element for Keeping Animals Cool

Water is crucial for hydrating and keeping your Livestock Guardian Dogs and other anaimals cool when temperatures soar. They should have easy access to plenty of water, and you should refresh it as needed.

You may find that your Livestock Guardian Dogs like to submerge themselves in the water because it keeps them cool. (Most of my Maremmas love water, but a few don't. )Because of this, you will need to change your water regularly. The dogs will pollute the water so that no one wants to drink it, especially if you own goats, who are more picky about having clean water than dogs.

What works well is to provide drinking water for the animals and "swimming" water for the dogs in two separate containers. You can use a child's wading pool for the dogs, but using a shallow trough for horses or livestock works better. These are sturdier than wading pools and are easier to empty and clean. And they hold up better to dogs and livestock than children's wading pools do.

For providing drinking water, you want to use smaller containers to discourage the dogs from using them for wading. The easiest way to do this is to use a flatback horse bucket of approximately 20 quarts. Then you attach an automatic waterer designed for livestock to that bucket. (You can find these on Amazon or Tractor Supply, usually for less than $20.) Attach that to a hose and clip the whole thing to a fence or other stable object. That way, the water will continually fill, but the bucket is small enough that the dogs cannot usually play in it. The animals will always have clean water, and then you provide separate water for the dogs to swim in. These smaller buckets are also easy to dump, scrub, and clean periodically to keep algae and other nasty stuff out.

You can use the automatic waterers to fill the swimming water or fill those with a hose. But those need to be dumped and cleaned up more often because the dogs will get them quite dirty when using them. The animals sometimes choose to drink from them, but that is their choice. I do always provide separate water so that they have clean water available.

If you own ducks or geese that share a pasture with your Livestock Guardian Dogs or other livestock, you'll have to dump and clean the water at least daily. They make a terrible mess of the water, and it's not fit for other animals to use or drink. I will cover keeping poultry cool later in this article. 🐓🦃🦆

Of course, you can always have however many buckets you need and fill them with a hose by hand, but I have a lot of animals, so this method works much better for me. I prefer to put as much on autopilot as I can. This way, I only need to check that everything is working instead of filling the waters daily.

Automatic Waterers

In addition to the portable automatic waterers described above, I love a great tool called a Lixit. You can find these on Amazon and sometimes at pet stores or hardware stores. They attach to the faucet, and the animal learns to lick the end of it and make the water come out. I install Lixits in all of my pastures so that the animals can always access clean water in addition to the water provided in other containers. My goats, in particular, love these and prefer them over drinking out of buckets. (Remember what I said about goats being picky about clean water? 🐐) Most of my pasture faucets are 5' off the ground, so I use a 3' leader hose to bring the Lixit to a better height for drinking and zip-tie it to the nearby fence.

Another really great option we use for water is a product called a Nelson Waterer. These stainless steel automatic waterers are a bit expensive but they hold up very well to the wear and tear of dogs and livestock.

Putting it All Together

Usually, I get a four-way hose splitter and put that on my faucet. Then I have hoses going to the different water troughs and containers. I have one hose for the swimming water, one hose for the small bucket that the animals drink out of, one hose for the Lixit, and one extra hose for cleaning out buckets, filling other water buckets, and whatever else I need.

To keep your hoses from blowing out and causing the water to overflow, you can put a pressure regulator (designed for drip irrigation systems) on your faucet before you attach everything else. You can get these from Amazon or any hardware store. Make sure all your rubber washers are good quality and in good condition, and if you need to, you can also use plumbers' tape to minimize leaks.

The Zero-G brand cloth hoses last much longer than rubber hoses, and the dogs are less likely to chew on them. I've also found some metal hoses on Amazon that hold up to most chewers. But a determined chewer will even chew these up, so be aware! (Ask me how I know! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Electrolytes, Ice Packs and Animal Popcicles

In hot weather, electrolytes are crucial for animals. They help by replenishing fluids, balancing hydration, facilitating muscle function, supporting nerve signaling and cooling mechanisms, and maintaining organ function. Adequate electrolyte intake helps animals cope with heat stress and stay healthy.

Electrolytes are especially beneficial for goats (sheep, cows, or other dairy animals) if they are in milk. They can help prevent production from dropping due to dehydration. There are species-specific electrolytes for different animals. You can use them interchangeably, or you can get an all-species electrolyte. These powders look like Kool-Aid, and you mix them into the water.

The brand I like best for my goats is Goat and Sheep BlueLite, from Premier 1 Supplies. This brand is the best one on the market, and the goats go crazy for it. For horses, I usually use Red Cell or a similar brand. For poultry, I use a poultry-specific brand.

There are electrolytes made for dogs, but I only use them if I have a sick dog, and it won't hurt the dogs to drink the ones for goats or other livestock. But they may or may not like it. Whenever I offer electrolytes, I put them in a separate bucket and offer them plain water in addition to the electrolytes. I do this to ensure the animals still drink even if they don't care for the electrolytes, and so the automatic waterers don't dilute the electrolyte solution.

If the weather is especially hot you can use cooler ice packs and float them in the water. You can make homemade ice packs out of empty soda bottles or milk jugs. Before we built our puppy parlor we used the ice packs in the whelping box to keep puppies cool in the summer. It was still too hot, which is why we built the Puppy Parlor.

You can also make "popsicles" for your animals, using things like frozen broth or goat milk for the dogs and some combination of fruit or vegetables for goats, sheep, horses and poultry. Lay the "popsicle" in a dog dish or feed bucket so it doesn't all get wasted as it melts.

Misting Systems and Fans

Misting systems and fans can be a great way to keep livestock guardian dogs and other animals cool. Fans can be as simple as a box or stand fan pointing in the right direction. Or you can get fans with built-in misters. Just be sure to keep cords out of reach of your animals, as they can get electrocuted if they chew on the cords. Fans are especially helpful for cooling animals in a more enclosed building like a barn or chicken coop.

You can also install a mister system along a fence, a dog kennel, a barn wall, or some other spot. Misters provide a fine mist of water and can be put on a timer to come on and off automatically. We have used these in the past. Some systems are better than others, so definitely do your research here.

Of course, goats will not appreciate any of these methods of using water to help them cool off other than the drinking water and the electrolytes. Goats hate getting wet. They don't like rain. They don't like swimming, and they don't like misters. They would rather be hot than get wet, so if you own goats, the misters are only for the benefit of your Livestock Guardian Dogs. Your goats will watch the dogs having fun in the water and wonder if they have lost their minds.

Take a Siesta Approach to Life

Dogs are intelligent creatures. Most farm animals are smart, too. They will take a page from a book of many cultures and take a nice siesta during the hottest parts of the day. I suggest you go with this natural flow of things and allow them to do that. If you have activities such as training or husbandry care like trimming hooves, grooming, or anything else, it would be best to do that in the early morning or late evening hours.

If you have a cool building to work in, that might be a good option. But I don't suggest working with the animals outside when it is too hot. That will be harder on them and you. Allowing them to rest and stay cool during the hottest hours reduces stress on them and you as the owner.

We do most of our barn work at night, right before it gets dark and on into the night. Some people prefer to get up early to do their chores, but that doesn't work for me, so we do things this way. We also have our Puppy Parlor and an air-conditioned dog grooming trailer that we can use if we need anything done during the day. But for general outdoor activities, we do all that after it cools off.

Grooming Helps Keep Dogs Cooler

Keep your Livestock Guardian Dog cool and comfortable with regular grooming. Grooming removes mats, tangles, and loose fur and improves air circulation around their skin, allowing heat to escape more easily. Plus, maintaining clean coats helps prevent the buildup of dirt and debris, ensuring good airflow. Grooming controls shedding and reduces the risk of heat-related illnesses like heatstroke. Help your loyal LGD beat the heat and stay healthy with proper grooming.

Keeping Poultry Cool

Summertime can be challenging for poultry, as birds can be more susceptible to the heat than mammals. All of the steps already discussed apply to farm birds. Here's a recap, plus a few extra tips.

Provide shaded areas for birds to retreat from the sun. Use shade cloth, trees, or some of the recommended shelters. Keep the waterers in the shade to cool the water and refresh them periodically.
If your birds are in a coop, be sure it has good ventilation. You can use fans to circulate the air, but keep them at a safe distance from the birds.
If your birds are free range, make sure they have easy access to shade.
Provide plenty of cool water. Your birds will need access to cool water throughout the day. Consider using a large waterer, and add frozen water bottles to help keep the water cool.
Ducks and geese should have extra water for swimming. You can use the recommendations made earlier in this post. Remember to change the water often and ensure the birds don't pollute the water for the Livestock Guardian Dogs and other animals.
Misters are an excellent way to decrease the temperature and keep your birds cool. You can install misters around your coop or run area and set them to a timer to provide periodic cooling bursts.
Your birds will be more comfortable if they can keep themselves clean, so providing a dust bath is a good idea. If you have a dusty barnyard like us, your birds will make their own dust baths. Otherwise, a shallow pan filled with sand or dirt will encourage your birds to keep themselves clean and can also help keep them cool.

Conclusion

Don't let the summer heat endanger your Livestock Guardian Dogs and their charges. It's easy to keep them cool and comfortable if you follow the tips shared in this blog post. Provide shade, fresh, clean water, and consider scheduling activities for cooler parts of the day. By taking these measures and being proactive about your animals' well-being, you'll ensure that all of your animals remain happy, healthy, and protected all summer long.

Reserve My Maremma

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How to Raise and Train Outstanding Livestock Guardian Dogs - The Trick to Telling so Many Maremma Sheepdog Puppies Apart and Why it's Important to Do So!

7/9/2022

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When you breed a breed of dog that only comes in one color (white) and one basic coat length (fluffy) telling the puppies apart can be a real challenge. However, being able to do so is important for several reasons. First of all, you need to be able to track the health and weights of the puppies as they grow. Secondly, tracking the temperaments and behavior of the pups is extremely important in making placements, especially in LGD puppies. The puppy that constantly chases chickens might not be the best fit for a farm with poultry. Two puppies that constantly fight should not be placed together and a very timid puppy will need a home that won't overwhelm or stress her out. Being able to tell the puppies apart from an early age, at a glance and from far away is really useful, but how do you do it?

Over the years I have tried a variety of methods with varying degrees of success. First I tried several different types of whelping collars, made of velcro, nylon webbing or paracord. The collars either came off too easily and got lost, or didn't come off easily and presented a strangulation hazard. They got tangled in the long fur too easily and most of them were quickly outgrown. And since they couldn't easily be seen under all the fur they were pretty useless for identifying puppies from even a few feet away.

Next I tried human spray-in hair dye, sold at Halloween time. This worked pretty well but was hard to find most of the year. I tried human hair chalk, sharpies, pet dye and a variety of other things - none really showed up or lasted on the thick Maremma fur, or they were too messy or too expensive. Then somewhere I found some sheep marking dye, available in sticks (like big crayons) or spray. The sticks were useless but the spray worked ok. The only problem was the ones we initially found either didn't last more than a couple of days or didn't come in more than a couple of colors. Foiled again!

Then one day while perusing one of my favorite livestock supply websites I saw a product called Sprayline sheep marking spray. It comes in 6 colors in big cans and wasn't too expensive. I ordered a couple of cans and tried it. It worked great! It was bright, crisp and clear and it lasted at least a week. This was it! I found that by combining colors or marking different locations (head, shoulders, tail) I could mark even Gianna's litter of 13 and easily tell the puppies apart. I simply reapply the paint as it starts to fade and it works great. I even occasionally use it to mark older dogs so we can tell who they are from far away, or to mark our dairy goat kids.

In February 2021 we had two litters born about 2 weeks apart, so I carefully kept them separate so as to not mix up the puppies. But this year (2022) I ended up with two litters that are two DAYS apart, and each litter has exactly 5 males and three females. One litter belongs to Marisa (sired by Simba) and one to Polar (sired by Sevro) and while the puppies do look very different (Marisa's puppies have Simba's fluffier coats while Polar's have slightly "plusher" coats) I didn't want to risk mixing the puppies up. And since female dogs sometimes fight or may hurt another dog's pups I kept them apart for safety, anyway, for the first 9 weeks.

But the puppies were getting bigger and I knew that eventually combining the litters would make training and management a lot easier. And having 16 fluffy white puppies all sharing one space would be a lot of fun! As Polar and Marisa were getting closer to being ready to wean their pups I knew it was about time to turn them over to Genevieve, my amazing puppy mentor, who's raised 4 litters of her own (including the litter Polar came from) as well as helped train many other dogs' puppies. But how would I tell the puppies apart? Well, I had a plan!

And what I did is this. Each litter got the same 8 colors or color combinations (Blue, green, orange, pink, purple, blue/green, blue/orange, pink/purple) of Sprayline but Marisa's puppies (the older litter) got marked on their shoulders while Polar's litter got marked on their tail ends! And to be extra sure I don't mix up the puppies I microchipped them all with the Datamars/Petlink microchips we always use, but did so before putting the pups together, noting the color and litter for each chip number in my Breeder Cloud Pro software. Then Polar and Marisa went back to work (they can come visit the puppies if they want) and Genevieve took over. And oh boy, was it ever an exciting event! The brightly painted puppies had a grand time running around, meeting the pups that until now they had only interacted with through the fence, barking at Genevieve, playing in the mud, and in general having a blast. Genny looked at as if I had truly lost my mind giving her this many puppies to care for, but she took it all with her usual placid attitude and good nature. The puppies played themselves out and crashed all together in the Puppy Parlor yard, while Genny watches over them like the great puppy mentor she is. This is going to be a fun adventure, for me and Genny!

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Archives

The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Your Livestock Guardian Dogs and Farm Animals Cool this Summer

Provide Adequate Shade

Barns and Other Outbuildings

Other Shade Structures

Easy Homemade Shade Structures

Our Favorite Solution for Fast and easy (But More Costly) Shade

Digging to Keep Cool

Water, the Essential Element for Keeping Animals Cool

Automatic Waterers

Putting it All Together

Electrolytes, Ice Packs and Animal Popcicles

Misting Systems and Fans

Take a Siesta Approach to Life

Grooming Helps Keep Dogs Cooler

Keeping Poultry Cool

Conclusion

How to Raise and Train Outstanding Livestock Guardian Dogs - The Trick to Telling so Many Maremma Sheepdog Puppies Apart and Why it's Important to Do So!

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