Colorado rancher Shilo Whitney has had her livestock guardian dogs kill a mountain lion and scrap with bears and, most recently, a wolf.
Livestock guardian dogs are one of the latest deterrents being used in Colorado to keep wolves from killing or injuring livestock on the Western Slope.
By most rancher accounts, the dogs are doing their job, but at an expense.
“I have had wolves all around me, within a mile of my house, and they have chased the wolves,” Whitney, who lives near Yampa, told the Coloradoan in November. “I haven’t had one (wolf) around for a while and I feel the dogs are the reason why the wolves haven’t been around.”
Colorado ranchers are taking advantage of a program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services that offers livestock producers up to two free guardian dogs to protect against predators, coverage of the first year of medical costs and assistance with training.
The federal program, along with state funding, pays for other nonlethal livestock protection, including range riding, fladry and electric fencing.
‘First experience they had with a wolf’
Whitney has 12- and 8-year-old Anatolian Akbush crossbreed dogs to protect her sheep, goats and cattle on her small ranch at the base of the majestic Flat Tops mountain range.
More recently, she acquired a free young Turkish Kangal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture program and said she will request another in two to three years after the first one is properly trained.
She isn’t sure which of her dogs fought with the wolf, but there were dog prints on top of wolf prints and blood around where the fight occurred.
“I’m guessing it was the two older dogs,” she said. “It was probably a pretty good fight. It was the first experience they had with a wolf. When they got home, they shook and shook and were scared to death. That’s a new predator to them and they will learn and get stronger each time they face them.
“They are only fighting a wolf or two now, but when those packs get bigger, then you are feeding the wolves your dogs.”
She said once the two Kangals grow up, she will sleep even better. The dogs normally are used to chase off wolves, not attack them.
“Sitting in a truck watching cattle and sheep every second isn’t doable for me,” she said. “I sleep a little better having three dogs that will make a pretty good effort to let me know if something is off.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has confirmed wolves have killed three working cattle dogs and ranchers have had pet dogs killed by wolves.
There have been no reports of wolves killing guardian dogs, but it is suspected guardian dogs may have injured the breeding male of the Copper Creek pack in Grand County.
When captured Aug. 29 as part of the removal of the pack due to repeated livestock depredations, the male had a severely injured hind leg caused by an an known attacker. It died several days later in captivity. The wildlife agency said due to its injuries the wolf would not have lived long in the wild.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Travis Duncan said in an email to the Coloradoan that if a wolf is determined to have been killed by a livestock guardian dog, the owner would not be held liable.
The dogs are free but feeding them and veterinarian costs add up
Ranchers told the Coloradoan they are grateful for the program that offers free guardian dogs.
But program expenses that aren’t covered — large amounts of food it takes to feed several dogs that can weigh more than 150 pounds, GPS collars and veterinarian care after the first year — cut into their bottom line.
Jackson County rancher Johnny Schmidt has had guardian dogs since early 2023 — two Kangals he received free from the USDA program and two Great Pyrenees he bought at a cost of $1,400 for the pair.
He said a bag of dog food is $70 “on the cheap end” and his two Kangals alone eat a 50-pound bag every three days.
He also bought two GPS tracking collars out of his own pocket that cost $700 with another $100 per month for a subscription for the collars.
He said vet bills can add up when his dogs get in fights with predators.
“Having dogs definitely has its ins and outs,” said Schmidt, who has lost cattle to wolves on the ranch he manages west of Walden. “You have to love dogs or at times they will make you angry.”
He said he followed the guidelines training the dogs and bonded them with the ranch’s cattle and sheep. He added the training instructions failed to include one piece of key information, that “the dogs will chase anything that is among our livestock and not a sheep or cow.”
That fact cost him a citation from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which he said fined him after a hunter reported his guardian dogs chasing elk that were among his cattle on the ranch’s Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment.
“They are doing what they are suppose to do,” Schmidt said. “You can’t have it both ways, CPW wanting us to protect our livestock but fine us if the dogs chase wildlife.”
Duncan confirmed in an email that owners of livestock guardian dogs can be fined if the agency determines the guardian dogs were “harassing wildlife and not protecting livestock.”
‘You don’t want them to be pets’
Grand County rancher Jani Wood bought two livestock guardian dogs in August after spotting a wolf 150 yards from the family’s ranch house in late July.
That came around the same time members of the Copper Creek pack were confirmed to have killed eight sheep on a neighboring ranch. During that encounter, the rancher said its guardian dogs likely prevented more deaths.
Wood paid $1,400 for a pair of eight-month-old Anatolian Kangal cross guardian dogs from a Colorado breeder. The family bonded the dogs with their livestock but knows it will be two to three years before the dogs are fully trained.
“We felt we needed to get started with these, specifically for wolves that have already been targeting our sheep, our daughter’s 4-H lamb and our son’s goats as well as for protection for our kids,” Wood said. “We had the close-to-home interaction with a wolf and so we are hoping to have the perimeter of our house protected when they get older. And I know they would absolutely protect our kids.”
The main problem the Wood family and other guardian dog owners experience is the dogs wander miles as part of their job. That can lead to people believing the dogs are lost. Wood said she’s had several incidents where people have found them miles from their small ranch across the road from Williams Fork Reservoir, which draws campers and anglers.
She had Kurt Holtzen, predator conflict mitigation specialist with Western Wildlife Conflict Mitigation based in Idaho, provide motion-sensing collars that light up as well as identify them as guardian dogs with a phone number if people see them.
Ranchers said they have had people find their guardian dogs and pet and feed them.
“You don’t want them to be pets,” Wood said. “And people should not pick up the dogs, pet them or feed them but leave them alone.”
Whitney said she minimizes interactions with her guardian dogs but worries about her dogs when approached by others.
“My frustration is I live on a road that leads to the Flat Tops and there are hunters and bikers that stop on the road and try to pet them,” she said. “I’m concerned one day when they are petted someone is going to get badly hurt. Those big sheep dogs are never to be touched.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends ranchers put up signs that there are livestock guardian dogs in the area and not to interact with them.
Creating ‘phantom’ wolf packs could be future of mitigation
In addition to promoting the use of livestock guardian dogs, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Department of Agriculture are funding programs to provide more range riders and are looking at ways to help ranchers to dispose of their dead livestock so as not to attract predators.
The move is to prepare ranchers before the state’s next planned release of up to 15 wolves from British Columbia, Canada, early in 2025 on the Western Slope.
Holtzen has been working mainly with sheep producers in Colorado the last several years to help them coexist with wolves.
He said it would be best for Colorado to pause releasing more wolves given the number of livestock depredations in the first year after releases, but added that isn’t likely. He said without a pause, arming ranchers with nonlethal and lethal tools is key to coexistence.
He said Colorado is a couple years behind on getting range riders on the ground, but added range riders are one of the more effective wolf mitigation strategies for cattle.
The state eventually set money aside this year to fund a range rider for Grand County, where the bulk of wolf depredations took place. The range rider was effective on the limited amount of territory they covered.
“It was a very unusual year for ranchers in Colorado, and a lot of the stuff (nonlethal wolf deterrents) they have tried has not been super effective,” Holtzen said. “Colorado has to be flexible with conflict management that includes nonlethal and lethal control.”
He said guardian dogs aren’t a “silver bullet” but can be effective when used in a pack of four or more for sheep and in certain situations cattle. He added it helps when neighboring ranches also have guardian dogs.
He said other strategies he used with Colorado sheep ranchers with some success were collared lights on guardian dogs that flash when the dog is moving or barks and glow-in-the-dark ear tags on sheep. With all deterrents, he said the goal is to “break the confidence of wolves.”
He said he’s been working with Jeff Reed, a Montana-based researcher, looking at the use of wolf calls, known as bioacoustics, to create “phantom” wolf packs as a depredation deterrent.
Holtzen said the idea is to create the appearance of a pack occupying an area by broadcasting howling sounds that show pack strength along with scent markers to use against the territorial nature of wolves.
“The upside in Colorado is it can’t get much worse,” he said. “They had a pretty rocky start and it was uphill from there. “We have to get past the ideology of managing feelings over science and wildlife management and stop polarizing everything. Lethal and nonlethal are justified when you are dumping a predator in an area.”
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