Transcript

3.19.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I would be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated March twenty
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twenty six. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first part of the article
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titled when coyotes threatened livestock on Central Texas ranches. The
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solution was to unlock an ancient ability in dogs. Killing
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the predators is not nearly as effective as the intimidating
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presence of well trained guardians or roles some breeds have
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played for five thousand years by Chris Pomorski. Robin Giles
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did not quite believe the rumors that passed among his neighbors.
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He couldn't yet picture the carnage pastures bloodied by the
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carcasses of sheep and goats with highly distinctive wounds, bite
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marks at the throat, abdominal cavities, emptied of lungs and
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liver in trails left to rot in the hill country
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sun coyotes. It was the late nineteen sixties and Giles
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was in his twenties, a big man with dark curly
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hair and cool blue eyes. His family had been raising
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livestock on their ranch in Kendall County, about fifty miles
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north of San Antonio for nearly a century. In by
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gone times, Texas ranchers had waged a war of extirpation
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against coyotes, and Giles believed the war had been won.
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A coyote had scarcely been seen in that landscape for
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more than forty years. The Hill Country makes up part
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of a vast region known as the Edwards Plateau. As
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a matter of both geography and legend, there is no
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place closer to the heart of Texas. Occupying tens of
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thousands of square miles an area more than twice the
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size of Massachusetts, the plateau encompasses the intersection of central,
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South and West Texas. It is bordered by Austin and
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San Antonio to the east, and to the west by
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the Pecos River and the Chihuahuan Desert. Its history is
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exceptionally violent. By the seventeen hundreds, the Tunkawa people were
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driven out by the Apache, who were in turn nearly
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exterminated by the Comanche. For much of the nineteenth century,
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the plateau was a site of the Texas Indian Wars,
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which resulted in the destruction and displacement of numerous Indigenous
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nations and became fodder for countless westerns, including John Ford's
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The Searchers. Until the Civil War, white settlers primarily raised cattle.
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As overgrazing depleted the once rich grasslands, they brought in
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increasingly large herds of sheep and goats, whose diets were
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well suited to manage brush. Alfred Guiles, Robin's grandfather, was
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an architect from England who arrived in Texas in eighteen
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seventy three, seeking a more agreeable climate to help him
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deal with the long term effects of rheumatic fever. He
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established a practice in San Antonio and made his name
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designing stately court houses and homes, many of which now
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appear on the National Register of Historic Places. A ranching
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boom was on stoked by high prices for sheep's wool
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and for the mohair produced by Angora goats. In eighteen
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eighty five, Alfred and his brother in law began buying land.
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They amassed more than thirteen thousand acres, and the property
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became known as Hillingdon Ranch, after the rural English parish
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where Alfred was born. It was soon home to thousands
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of sheep and goats and a similar number of black
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Aberdeen Angus cattle. Texas wool and mohair production concentrated on
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the Edwards Plateau reached their respective peaks in the mid
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twentieth century. The growing foreign competition and punishing drafts made
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the business more ch challenging. Many ranchers got out of
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shearing and clipping altogether in favor of lamb and mutton,
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and overall production declined. Still, Texas remains the largest source
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of sheep and goats in the country, and for decades
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Edward's Plateau ranchers did not count predation among their most
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pressing concerns. For Robbing Giles, things changed in nineteen seventy.
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That year, more than four hundred of his sheep and
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goats were killed by coyotes. Before that, I kind of
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thought everybody was exaggerating, Giles said recently. And then boy,
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when they hit me, who I realized we had to
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do something. He enlisted a US Fish and Wildlife trapper,
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and together they killed fourteen coyotes, but the damage was done.
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The losses that year came to roughly ten thousand dollars,
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more than eighty two thousand and to day's dollars, or
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seventy percent of Hillingdon Ranch's potential income. Giles became an
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expert in anti coyote measures, steel traps, helicopter hunts, a
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bait activated sodium cyanide gun called the M forty four.
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He improved his fencing and stalling snares below and barbed
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wire on top to deter climbing. In response, the animal's
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dug holes and shimmy beneath the fencing on their sides,
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creating characteristic hollows known as coyote slides. Coyotes are so smart,
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Giles said, the more you deal with them, the more
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you realize how they're going to be here when we're
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all gone. Giles got a reputation for the intensity of
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his campaign against predators. He shared his acquired wisdom with
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his son Grant, and for several decades it was enough
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to keep them afloat. But in the meantime, a massive
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transfer of land was under way as historical ranches were
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subdivided and sold off by a new generation who preferred
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nine to five town jobs to agricolure. Some properties were
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developed as exerbs of the state's expanding cities. More frequently,
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they became commercial hunting preserves or lux getaways for wealthy
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residents of Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. As the
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ranchers who once kept coyotes in check by killing as
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many of them as they could sold out and moved on,
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the predator population exploded, Grant Giles forty and his wife
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Misty forty four are now the primary stewards of Hillingdon Ranch.
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Not that long ago, there were many many landowners doing
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what we do. Grant told me when there was a
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predator issue, they would all work together and try to
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nip it in the bud. As the region reconstitutes itself
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among modern lines, the plateau is becoming ironically more wild.
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Strange and macabre scenes are common. Sharp beaked, crested caracara
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birds devour the eyes of newborn calves. Black vultures carry
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away kid goats. Feral hogs gobble up lambs, leaving nothing
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behind but hoofs. There are bobcats and mountain lions. Coyotes
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easily the most significant threat seem to be getting wilier.
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Grant told me, I've seen coyotes defecate on top of
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an M forty four as a message, I see what
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you're trying to do, and I'm not buying it. By
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twenty sixteen, it was clear to Grant that the status
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quo wouldn't hold. He was losing as many as twenty
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percent of his lambs and kid goats to predators, and
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he knew things could get worse. On the Edwards plateau,
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fifty percent and even ninety percent losses were not unheard of.
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Coyotes were driving some stockmen out of business, others to
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the brink of collapse, and generally threatening a way of
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life that is integral to Texan identity. It's like having
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an ever increasing size hole in your canoe and you're
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trying to bale out water, Grant said. In desperation, he
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decided to go see a fellow rancher about a decade
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younger than his father, who was reputed to have cultivated
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an ancient knowledge largely neglected in the United States, that
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had allowed him to prosper while his neighbors flailed. His
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name was Bob Buckholtz. He was a man who knew
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about dogs other than hunting. Protecting livestock may have been
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the first work assigned to domestic dogs. They probably got
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the job more than five thousand years ago. The ancestors
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of modern livestock protection breeds, of which the white and
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downy Great Pyrenees is perhaps the best known in America,
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are thought to have arrived in Europe in the sixth
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century b C. Accompanying shepherds from the Caucasus. Roman farm management.
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The Treatises of Cato and Varro, which compiles agricultural knowledge
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from the first and second centuries b C, describes dogs
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as of the greatest importance to us who feed the
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wooly flock, for the dog is the guardian of such
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livestock as lack the means to defend themselves, chiefly sheep
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and goats, for the wolf is wont to lie in
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wait for them, and we oppose our dogs to him
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as defenders. Geographical isolation and selected breeding, mostly by shepherds
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in mountainous regions of Europe and Asia, have since yielded
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roughly forty distinct livestock guardian breeds, how distinct, is a
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source of contention among breeders and kennel clubs. These types
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include the Italian Maremma, the Balkan Sarplananac, the Afghan Cucci,
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and the Caucasian of Charca bred for cold weather hardiness.
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Many are on the fluffy side, but they vary considerably
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in appearance within and among breeds. Their coats may be
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long or short, black, brown, fawn, white or gray, pure
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in colored, or brindled or spotted. The breeds are uniformly large.
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Ideal specimens generally stand about thirty inches tall at the
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withers and weigh between eighty and one hundred fifty pounds.
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Certain breeds seem to perform better against wolves, others against coyotes.
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Some dogs prefer to cruise the perimeter of their pastures,
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while others stay close to the herd, but there aren't
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any hard and fast rules. In Europe and Asia, live
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stock guardian dogs have been used to fend off, in
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addition to wolves, the brown bear, and the coyote like
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golden jackal. In recent years, they've been fielded to protect
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African goats, sheep and cattle from cheetahs and leopards, and
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in Australia to defend the world's smallest penguins against red foxes.
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But with the exception of the Navajo, who likely learned
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from Spanish missionaries to use dogs to guard sheep. Ranchers
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in the US were slow to adopt live stock guardian dogs.
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When Buckholtz was growing up in the nineteen fifties and
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sixties in a tiny ranching town that has since been
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subsumed by Greater Austin, they were largely unknown on the
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Edwards Plateau. Had they been prevalent, Buckholts would have noticed.
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Ever since I was a little beauty kid, that's all
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I ever dreamed of ranching. He told me. The people
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I grew up knowing were my heroes. They were pure stockmen.
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Their livelihood depended on the quality of their lamb and
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kid crop, their pride in that product, their ability to
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manage the land. After college, Buckholtz worked as a day
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laborer on ranches and as a breaker of horses. He
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and his older brother David saved some money least a
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modest acreage and bought a few hundred goats. They soon found, however,
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that their dream looked doomed. They were losing too many
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animals to coyotes. Still, Buckholts was determined to make a
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go of it. In the late seventies, he heard of
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a dog trader out of Lumpassas, and he and David
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bought five Great Pyrenees, a breed that has long protected
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flocks in the Pyrenees Mountains. To educate himself on their use,
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Buckholts visited several libraries, but he could find virtually no
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practical information. You found out the Pyrenees dog and the
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Anatolian shepherd dog and the Turkish akbash dog were so
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many inches of the shoulder, and they weighed so much
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at maturity, and they were used by shepherds and the mountains.
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Buckholts recalled, and that's all. There was no printed material
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that would enable me to figure out how they worked,
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or why they worked, and such as that. For a
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year or so, the Buckholtz brothers, both single at the time,
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rarely left their pastures, observing the Pyrenees and how their
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herds interacted with them. At night, they lay in sleeping bags,
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listening to their dogs bark and to the howl of coyotes.
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They began to discover for themselves what shepherds in Asia
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and Europe had passed down for thousands of years. They
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saw how the dogs established dominance over a pasture through confrontation,
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scent marking and barking, enforcing a buffer zone between live
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stock and coyotes. The dogs were not territorial. As such,
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their domain and their protective instincts shifted with the flock,
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and their dialog with predators only rarely resulted in violence.
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Of the first dogs, the Buckholtzes acquired only two, a
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male and a female, proved to be effective livestock guardians,
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but that was enough to significantly increase the survival rate
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of their goats. By breeding the pair, they produced about
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forty similarly skilled Pyrenees. The dogs gave the brothers a
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competitive edge, allowing them to lease property at a discount
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in South Texas, where coyotes were especially numerous. Nobody else
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could use that country because of the sheer amount of predation.
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Buckholt said, we expanded our operation because of the dogs
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acquiring properties no one else could operate. He and David
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returned to the Edwards Plateau and amicably went separate ways
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in the business. With his wife, Mary and three adult sons,
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Buckholts now runs several thousand sheep and goats on more
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than a half dozen properties spread across the region. Two
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are family owned and the others least with roughly one
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dog for every one hundred to one hundred twenty five
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head of livestock. The ranches are patrolled by dozens of
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guardian dogs, many of whom share common ancestors. Since the
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nineteen eighties, Buckholts has also been breeding dogs for sales.
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The Great Pyrenees is still his favorite breed, but its
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heavy coats liable to attract the burrs and thorns that
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grow abundantly on local vegetation, and is otherwise ill suited
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to Texas weather. After some trial and error, Buckholts developed
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a more streamlined mix, predominantly Turkish Akbash with hints of
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Pyrenees and Anatolian shepherd. But genetics offer no guarantee. Even
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among dogs with venerable bloodlines, almost none will ever make
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effective livestock guardians without a proper upbringing. More important than
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partage are the first few months of puppyhood, when the
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dog's brains grow rapidly and become imprinted with the social
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bonds that either will or won't attach them to live stock.
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It's imperative that those pups are with their companion animals
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between six and twelve weeks of age. Buckholt said it
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affects them for the rest of their life. Buckholts and
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his brother devised a system that Buckholt says he hasn't
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much tinkered with. Sometimes you roll the dice and you
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get the right number. They built simple bonding pens, enclosed
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areas measuring roughly forty feet by forty feet and isolated
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from people and other animals. That female that's fixed into
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whelp she will helps with the sheep or a goat
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in the pen. Those little bitty puppies, once they open
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their eyes and start crawling around, they will interact with
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that companion animal. Normally, that companion animal has already raised
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numerous litters. That's what their job is. To stay in
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the whelping pin. When the puppies are six to eight
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weeks old, their mother is removed. The puppies are looking
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for mamma, and that enhances their bonding to the companion animal.
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Buckholts explained, too much interaction with people risks diluting the
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dog's bond with live stock and increasing their inclination to rome.
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Too little, and they may become difficult to manage when,
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for example, their owner needs to vaccinate them remove porcupine
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quills from the snout, or load them into a trailer
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to move them from one ranch to another for several weeks.
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Buckholtz's dogs are fed by hand, providing them with limited
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friendly human contact, with few exceptions sickness, injury, ex dream
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cold live stock. Guardian dogs live outdoors, and while still
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in the pens, the puppies learn to eat from the
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automatic pasture feeders they will rely on while dwelling with
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their flocks. Guardian dogs often have litters of eight or more,
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and at about ten weeks, Buckholts places the pups in
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groups of two or three in separate pens to ensure
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that they bond with species, not individual animals. Sheep and
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goats rotate through. You're always looking for that instinct to
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interact with live stock, Buckolts said. You're looking for a
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pupp that's trying to lick 'em on the nose, trying
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to be close to 'em, trying to rear up on them,
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and such as that. Puppies being puppies, some roguishness is
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to be expected, and Buckholts favors mature, sturdy companion animals
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that won't hesitate to dispense disciplinary head butts. The dogs
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are neutered. An unfixed dog has more incentive to roam,
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and they complete their education in the pasture, where idea
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they join experienced guardians whose example they will follow. If
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a dog isn't going to work out, it's usually apparent
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by the time it reaches adolescence, between around six and
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fourteen months. Common teenage mischief includes chasing, chewing, and even
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killing livestock, often inadvertently. Buckholts might place a problem dog
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in a pen with the humorless billygoat, nanny or ram
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for a remedial lesson in manners, but inevitably some dogs
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are culled. Buckholts knows this can offend modern sensibilities, but
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he makes no apologies. He guarantees his dogs and knows
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that their quality can make or break a customer's business.
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Those shepherds in the Pyrenees Mountains or on the plains
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of Turkey, what would they have put up with? He
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asked rhetorically. What would keep them profitable? What would keep
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their families and their flocks alive? When Buckholts got his
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first Pyrenees back in the nineteen seventies, he was one
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of perhaps a few dozen ranchers in America using guardian dogs.
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By twenty nineteen, nearly thirty percent of sheep ranchers had
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gotten on board, and today Buckholtz is one of the
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most prolific breeders in Texas. The largest property the Buckholtzes
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currently operate is called Angel Ranch. It spans nearly twenty
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thousand acres, a lease near the heart of the Edwards Plateau,
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about fifty miles east of the family headquarters in El Dorado.
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The area remains extremely rural, with rolling hills and vast
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flat valleys punctuated by tiny ranching settlements and ghost towns.
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El Dorado is the only municipality in Schleiker County. At
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one thousand, three hundred and eleven square miles, Schleiker is
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about the size of Rhode Island. At last count, two thousand,
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four hundred and fifty one people lived there. Angel Ranch
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is overseen by Buckholtz's eldest son, Robert, who lives on
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the property and runs more than two thousand goats. Robert
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thirty three, is a voluble, easy going, rosy cheeked man
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with a neat mustache. In his father's clear blue eyes.
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On a bright January morning, Buckholts, Robert and I had
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coffee in the kitchen of the little one story house
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in which Robert and his wife Meredith were then living.
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They have since added a baby girl, Caroline, and moved
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to a newer house near by. Robert was dressed in
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a dark wool vest over a mustard colored wolf's sweater
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buckholts and a dark blue denim jacket over a faded
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blue Denham's shirt. Both wore jeans, wire rimmed glasses, and
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scuffed boots. Two cast iron skellets rested on a well
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used stove, and the room was fragrant with bacon. Robert's
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brothers flirted with real estate and banking, respectively, before returning
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to the family business, but Robert never seriously considered another profession,
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notwithstanding the goatherd's place and the ranching high. The cowman
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generally looks down on the sheep man, he said, laughing,
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and the sheep man looks down on the goat man,
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and the goat man don't really have anybody to look
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down on, because we're at the bottom. The ranch had
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a very good year in twenty twenty five, with the
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kid crop of one hundred fifty four percent, or an
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average of one point five baby goats for every breeding nanny.
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If we have any success in our operation, it's due
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to the dogs, Robert said. He and Buckholtz donned tan
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cowboy hats, and we went outside and squeezed into the
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cab of Robert's flat bed truck. Two cheerful border collies
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lay atop bags of dog food and livestock mineral supplement.
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In the back. Robert drove over bumpy dirt roads toward
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a north lying pasture. The country was seer papery, blonde grasses,
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clusters of cactie, bare witchy mesquite white tailed deer fled
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before us through the brush, leaping fences. A road runner
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sped by. Robert slowed and opened his door, pointing to
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a coyote slide beneath a fence. As we drove, we
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discussed A unique project at Texas A and M University,
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founded in twenty seventeen, is the only university affiliated program
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in the country devoted to the study and training of
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live stock guardian dogs. Bill Costanzo, a former high school
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ag teacher, has been at the Helm since twenty nineteen,
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seeking to perfect, standardize and disseminate the sort of information
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Buckholts obtained the hard way. Costanzo oversees a bonding program
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that places dogs with ranchers, as well as a blog
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and a YouTube channel. He visits stockmen, documenting their difficulties,
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making recommendations, and incorporating what he learns into shareable best practices.
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Feeding stations resistant to varments, cost effective GPS trackers, fencing
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strategies to decrease roaming and strengthen dogs bonds with live stock.
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Costanza differs with Buckholts on some points. He shows more
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faith in correcting adolescent behavior, but they're largely in accord.
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His work builds on a scattershot body of research that
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dates in the US to roughly the time Buckholts got
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his first Pyrenees. When Raymond and Lorna Coppinger married, biologists
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at Hampshire College imported two dozen livestock guardian dogs from Italy, Turkey,
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and Yugoslavia. They bred them, placed several hundred of the
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offspring with ranchers, and published more than a half dozen
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studies on the topic. Along with research by the U
23:39
s Department of Agriculture in the nineteen eighties, their work
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sparked a surge of interest in guardian dogs, but this
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nascent popularity engendered questionable folk wisdom. It became widely held
23:53
that to be effective, guardian dogs had to be unneutered
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and have virtually no contact with people. Fueral hath wild
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dogs aren't known for selected reading habits, and few ranchers
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understood bonding protocols. The result was a glut of live
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stock guardian dogs with little interest in guarding livestock. In
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some ranching communities, they came to be regarded as ancients
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of chaos. It got to where you couldn't give a
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dog away, buck Holdst said. Aided by a trickle of
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blogs by guardian dog advocates, most of them ranchers, and
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a growing body of academic studies, the reputation of guardian
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dogs gradually recovered, but there was still a lot of
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misinformation floating around and no central source of reliable practical advice.
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When I stopped by his office, Costanzo told me that
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after he took the job at Texas A and M,
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he started cold calling ranchers he'd heard were struggling with predators.
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I would call him up and say, I'm the live
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stock guardian specialist at the center, do you need some help?
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He recalled nobody ever said no. Over time, Costanzo developed
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a rancher survey that he uses to create customized plans
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of action. I write up a list of recommendations and
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send it back to them. This is what I think
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you should do, and here is the timeline. He now
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gets inquiries from about ten ranchers a week. Some come
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from places like Wyoming and Montana, where wolves and grizzlies
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can require the use of larger, more aggressive guardian breeds,
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but many are local. It seems like most of Texas
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has my cell number, Castanzo said. Back at the Buckholtz ranch,
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we reached a pasture occupied by three hundred goats. Two
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of the four dogs assigned to the group loped toward us.
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One dog named Sherbet, with a longish coat and rust
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colored ear patches, appeared inquisitive but friendly, wagging its tail.
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The other, Captain Ahab, was one of Buckholtz's best guardians,
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A trim, powerful off white dog with a brown, protrusive skull.
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He barked deeply and continuously, bounding back and forth. I
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like a dog that barks a lot. Buckoldts later told
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me the goats wore bells when rung excitedly. These would
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alert the dogs to trouble. Now they chimed pleasantly in
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the breeze. The goats bleeded and blue, waiting for Robert
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to turn on the live stock feeder attached to his truck.
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Goats famously will eat almost anything, including encroaching juniper and mesquite,
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but winter calls for supplemental feed. All of the goats
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on the ranch were pregnant, part of a cycle designed
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to ensure that virtually every berth happens within a forty
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five day window. You are going to overwhelm predators with
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the numbers of kids on the ground, Robert said, they
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can't kill em all. By contrast, a more diffuse breeding
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season creates a conveyor belt effect, delivering regular bite sized portions.
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They'll wn you to death, Buckholts explained, but it was
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still a vulnerable period. The livestock typically separated into two
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large herds that Gray's relatively circumscribed pastures were now divided
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into small groups across multiple pastures to give birth, making
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it nearly impossible for the dogs to cover every flank.
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The next morning, we drove to another least property outside
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El Dorado. Buckholds declined to show me his bonding pens
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at the home ranch, citing concerns about canine paravirus, a contagious,
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potentially lethal infection that commonly travels on the soles of
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shoes and has previously wiped out his litter. We got
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out of the truck beside a trough where a flock
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of ewes had gathered with their lambs, attended by several dogs.
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I shivered in the wind, and Buckhols fingered my fleece,
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a skeptical merchant appraising an inferior product. This concludes readings
27:58
from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has
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been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a
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great day.