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.
Kim Kerns moves the mobile electric fence she uses to protect her sheep from wolves at night.
Over the last couple of decades, Oregon and much of the West has been conducting an enormous ecological experiment by allowing wolves to once more roam the landscape.
For ranchers, wolves are another predator to guard against. But unlike coyotes, bears, bobcats or mountain lions, wolves hunt in packs and can be very persistent. They’re also smart. So they learn quickly that a sound cannon, a bunch of flags, or even gunfire into the air aren’t a real danger. And they return.
Kerns remembers a two-week period last year when wolves were picking off her sheep, one-by-one. Even her dogs weren’t a match.
“We weren’t getting any sleep, the guard dogs weren’t getting any sleep, everybody was run ragged,” she said. “And it was terrifying. Like it was flat scary.”
She tried everything, from spotlights and electrical fences at night, but the wolves kept coming.
“Finally we just decided that we couldn’t take it anymore. We moved the sheep a couple of miles,” she said. “It seemed to be outside of where the wolves were.”
Rancher Kim Kerns sits in the trailer she uses when looking after her sheep up in the hills.
Now Kerns relies on the dogs to alert her to wolves. They can smell or see a wolf well before she can, and they start to bark and get agitated.
Kerns surrounds her sheep with a sturdy electric fence at night or moves them to another pasture. She is permitted to shoot a wolf if it’s actively attacking. But since they’re federally protected, she needs really good proof. Also, shooting a wolf in a herd would just as likely result in the death of a sheep.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture has a compensation program to reimburse ranchers. But Kerns said it pays little and the loss of just one ewe can cause real damage, even though it might only fetch $200 at market.
“There are some 5- or 6-year-old ewes in there that know every single camp we go to. Every single waterhole,” Kerns said. “That ewe is really irreplaceable in my flock.”
Kerns thinks the compensation program just gives the public permission to turn a blind eye to the problem.
Unlike many ranchers, Kerns doesn’t want to see wolves eliminated again. But she’
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