Oregon ranchers turn to bigger dogs to protect livestock from wolves

The larger breeds don’t necessarily fight wolves, but they do help alert ranchers to predators lurking nearby
For the last few weeks, rancher Kim Kerns has been living in a 1970s trailer, up on a high meadow, with 550 sheep as they fatten up on spring grass.

Her family has used livestock protection dogs up here since the 1980s when she first got a Maremma guard dog from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But that was before wolves returned.

“We’ve actually kind of changed the type and size of dog we use,” she said. “We’re using a bigger and more aggressive guard dog now than we did in the ‘80s and even the ‘90s.”

Now her dogs are a mix of Akbash, Kangal and Anatolian, three massive, ancient breeds out of Turkey. All of them can be 100 pounds or more and have a bite pressure of 740 pounds per square inch. Statistics vary, but a wolf’s bite force is between 400 psi and 1,500 psi.

Kerns runs eight guard dogs at a cost of $500 a month in feed. But she said the animals pay their ways by reducing the labor of controlling sheep and reducing predator kills.