Horses
How are your horses managed?
Do you have trained adult horses available?
Can I come pet your horses or see your management system in person?
Goats and Sheep
How are your goats and sheep managed?
What selection criteria do you use for your flerd?
Livestock Guardian Dogs
How are your LGDs managed?
Do you have any litters available?
Horse Answers
How are your horses managed?
We manage them on pasture in summer, on a bale grazing section in winter, and in a 20′ wide graveled lane during mud season or when the pasture isn’t ready to graze. You can listen You can learn more about our approach by listening to the Humble Hoof podcast and watching a webinar I gave for the University of Maine.
Do you have trained adult horses available?
We occasionally will retire broodmares or stallions and they are green-broke to ride and drive. We don’t keep waiting lists of interested people because they’re rarely still interested when we have one available. The weanlings we sell can be trained to drive in 1.5-2 years after they are purchased from us, so I suggest getting a quality weanling with the traits you want and sending it off for professional training when it’s old enough. We maintain a list of available horses here.
Can I come pet your horses or see your management system in person?
Yes, we have an annual free event for unstructured time with the herds each year, the Fjord Open House. We occasionally will schedule pasture walks, which are education-focused events in coordination with resource conservation organizations. Private tours or educational visits can be booked for a fee outside of the public events.
Goat and Sheep Answers
How are your goats and sheep managed?
We use the goats for brush control and for creating silvopasture by subtraction, and then add the sheep into the system when the goats have opened up the woody vegetation enough to allow a good stand of grasses and forbs to become established.
What selection criteria do you use for your flerd?
Generally, we want hands-off sheep and goats; low input, low management, landscape-adapted animals. We observe which animals are naturally performing well in our system and we increase the herd and flock with their genetics. Animals that stay for breeding don’t need deworming, hoof trimming, assistance birthing, grain to maintain good body condition, assistance bonding or raising offspring, any kind of treatments, they stay in 35″ tall electronet fences, produce and raise twins or more without nutritional flushing, have good teats, udders, structures, at least 1″ between horn bases, grow cashmere or good winter fiber, are hardy enough to choose to be outside in all weather, and grow well off what naturally grows here.
The Savanna Institute produced a podcast from a presentation I gave on this topic at their Perennial Farm Gathering: Choosing the right livestock for the landscape.
LGD Answers
How do you manage your LGDs?
All of our LGDs live 24/7 with our livestock, they have bulk food available at all times, they share waterers with the livestock, and they typically sleep wherever the livestock choose to sleep. We’ve used LGDs for protecting our livestock since 2001.
Do you have any litters available?
Most of our LGDs are fixed, but we have a few intact dogs that we occasionally breed to produce new guardians for our own farm’s livestock protection. If we have extra pups with good working traits available, we will offer them. We don’t keep waitlists because people rarely still want a pup when we have them available. We don’t accept down payments. When we have a litter available, I will make a page in this website and post in the facebook groups that help let folks know about available LGDs from working parents.