The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Pets & Working Animals => Dogs => Topic started by: plumseverywhere on January 03, 2013, 11:24:02 am
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Is this a sign of a deficiency or something I'm not to worry to much about? Murphy loves a nice lump of sheep poo to start the day and any mouldy mice Snowball has left lying around he tries to chomp on too but I do get them off of him ;)
Do I need to look at his food/minerals or anything please?
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No, he is just being a scavenging dog I'm afraid.
Try to teach him the command 'leave it!' starting by teaching with a little dog treat in front of him, command him to leave it, then praise him and give him a bigger, nicer treat for leaving a little treat. Over several weeks he should be very keen to leave on command if he is rewarded well. then start giving the command to other items such a s toys. It will develop quickly as long as he always gets a nice reward for leaving what to him looks nice. You should quickly be able to establish this to anything including sheep poo or dead mice ;)
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Frankly, poo out of your own sheep is probably a lot more nutritious to a dog than a lot of commercial dog feeds and biscuits.
Seriously, dogs need plant fibre and can't process cellulose, so eating herbivore poo is nature's way. A lot of commercial dog feeds contain waste from chicken sheds to meet just this need...
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I wouldn't worry about teh sheep poo as they are wormed regularly and fed well, but I would certainly use the leave it command for anything dead. Freckles chomped on something yesterday but I was too far away from her to enforce any commands so I walked on and she eventually followed me - but boy what a stink she made all evening! :innocent: And although they were all wormed only 3 weeks ago I think I'll keep an eye on her poos for a wee while till I can worm them again.
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The only thing to do if you really hate it is to look the other way!
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Yes, sheep droppings - dogs love 'em :yum: When we lived on the outskirts of a town we had a neighbour's dog which would raid our cat litter tray - he just loved cat poo rolled in cat litter :P I think he was simply deranged because all he was going to pick up potentially was parasites - lucky for him we wormed our cats regularly.
As well as a nicely shaped sheep dropping, our dogs love their foot clippings too ??? I'm sure that as Sally says the dogs are getting nutrition and fibre from the sheep droppings, although ours eat grass and couch roots too occasionally. Cooked vegetables ie leftovers, added in to their dinner might help, if you don't like the post-poo-eating-session dog breath ;D
Dogs eating dead things is always a worry in case they have died of poison which is still active in the corpse and could poison the dog. Ours only like to chew on really ancient dead vermin which have turned into frisbees. Three day old dead crows, deer etc though are wonderful to roll in :dog: :dog: :excited:
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Dog novice here: Why do they roll in smelly stuff then? ???
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Nah, he's just being a dog :D
Well in theory they roll in the smelly stuff to disguise their scent so they can creep up on prey animals and eat them.
In practice, I just think some dogs just love muck :D
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....and they have a particularly urgent need to roll in something REALLY smelly just after a bath, to get rid of that horrible shampoo smell :roflanim:
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Absolutely :D The disgrace of walking round smelling like a girlie human :roflanim:
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Ours like horse poo, sheep poo and chicken poo; Tess likes horse and Meg likes chicken ::) ; don't do dead things so much but our cats have never left much in the way of corpses around.
It's just the joy of dog ownership - one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up :eyelashes:
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;D brilliant - thanks everyone :thumbsup: Just reassuring to know its all normal!
- one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up :eyelashes:
;D haha! oh that makes me feel a bit queasy now lol!!
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;D brilliant - thanks everyone :thumbsup: Just reassuring to know its all normal!
- one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up :eyelashes:
;D haha! oh that makes me feel a bit queasy now lol!!
My dog particularly likes the cat sick, probably because there are lods of pieces in it an not just mush. Urgh, why do we have them? :roflanim:
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Oh I remember the GSD I grew up with always eating cat sick now - ooh its all flooding back (the memory that is!!)
Murphy has just killed a mouse. He and Snowball (the cat) rounded it up between them and she left him with it. Looks like he'll be great with ratting in the barn!! won't let him eat already dead ones though because of possible poisoning etc.
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By all means take dead things off them / clear them up if you see them - but don't be overanxious if you think they may have eaten one; the amount of (legal) poison it takes to kill a rat won't have much effect on a dog.
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Thanks Sally :)
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The most discusting thing ours have eaten is !!! sorry about this...human poo...that is much more horrid than anything...it was funny as not long ago we did our walk in Devilla and there was a large camper van parked in the lay buy next to the forest, the next night our dogs walked to heel to the car, then, suddenly all ran off in a flash to the hedge and came out when called smelling horrid, the smell stays around for a while and their poo smells like it the next day, that also happened when I HAD to go on a walk, I ate something and was cramped up so went behind a tree only to see one of our dogs go back for it!!! ::) I usually can see if there is any other stuff around and they will not eat if I tell them NO but like Annie said, sometimes you are a bit far away. When I last had a cat and a litter tray, crunchy poo nuggets were a treat for our dog!!! :innocent:
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Oh Sandy, you are fab!! that's made me :roflanim:
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I remember a Lab I had years ago appearing out a hedge with a lump, she was so proud of it as well!!
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Horse poo is particularly delicious if it a bit frozen.... kind of doggie heaven
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I notice some they do not even look at, others make thier mouth water but I tell ours not to eat it...just in case
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Plums, our pup has discovered the delights of chicken poo. We've got a lot of chickens ..... won't have to feed her soon.
Rolling in fox poo was a favourite occupation of some of our retrievers ...... yuk, really stinks. Could never work out how it helped in disguising their scent ..... rolling in the poo of another carnivore ???
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Ours love horse and goat and sheep, they follow the goats and horses around waiting for them to drop ::)
then they wait till we are mucking the horses out and as soon as you turn your back on them they grab a nice hot steamy mouth full :o
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;D greatly reassured by this thread. Was starting to wonder if I needed to walk murphy anywhere but our own land, glad that we don't have to drive to a park to walk the dog now ;)
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IMO it's good for them to walk different places ...... once vaccinated. They like a change and you get to train in different places ...... they can be very obedient on your own land/familiar surroundings but very different when somewhere else. :o ::) Good to get them used to different sounds and sights too.
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George eats his own poo.
He used to be a stray and it's really common for them to do this, I believe it's also something to do with a potassium deficiency, so we started feeding him bananas as well, he still eats his own poo, he is hairier though, and climbs trees much of the time.
My border collies love sheep poo and voles/mice etc, echo what was said about them being scavengers, just keep them wormed, as for rolling in smelly stuff, Morris rolled in a rancid milk carton someone had left on the field on Saturday, now that really turned my stomach.
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Yuuukkkk ..... forgot about that one. We had Flattie pups that went through a phase of eating their own poo.
Next doors lab eats the mice/rabbits that the cat catches ...... greedy things though labs.
Are collies generally greedy then? Meg pushes my Flattie off his food and is on the look out for cat bowls to lick already. ::) Flatties tend to be fussier eaters and really slow.
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One of my OH's guide dogs loved cow pats, the runnier the better, and would lap them up. Nothing could stop her other than hauling her out. She also loved horse poo.
The next dog he had was copraphagic (ate his own poo and that of other dogs) You can get something from the vet to put in their food to make their own unpalatable but it's no good if they eat other dog poo. He taught my dog to eat poo as well. I saw him stand over her as she reluctantly picked some up. Now we don't have him, she is less inclined to eat it but does occasionally brings lumps in. I find them in her bed.
The retired guide dog we have still living with us, scavanges for anything and will not let go. He can lock his jaw so you can't force it apart to extract whatever he is eating. He also clears up his own vomit as well as that of the other dogs.
The current GD, as soon as he is let outside, rushes to stick his head under the goat yard gate to eat what he can get hold of in the way of goat poo. He also clears up if they poo on the patio at any time.
All the dogs will eat goat hoof trimmings if they get to them before I can sweep up.
I've only had one collie and she was a very picky eater.
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IMO it's good for them to walk different places ...... once vaccinated. They like a change and you get to train in different places ...... they can be very obedient on your own land/familiar surroundings but very different when somewhere else. :o ::) Good to get them used to different sounds and sights too.
Agree totally! we have lots of walks elsewhere but was worrying we couldn't use the field on our own land (when its raining and I feel lazy ;D ) if the poo eating was a problem. Murph comes to school for drop off and pick up so he can meet lots of other people and dogs and I take him into town too sometimes.
He has moved up a level today - eating dirty childrens underwear!!! :o now to train him to bring it downstairs an dput it in the machine....
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:roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim:
I get what you mean now. No, poo eating and rolling is a bit of a pastime for some I'm afraid. :dog: :yum: ;D
Thought of another lovely thing that one of our retrievers liked to roll on ...... decaying fish left on the bank by anglers. Talk about stink. ::) If they were in a bit better condition she would deliver them to hand and of course you had to take them with a well done, clever girl. ::) ;D
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Dot is very picky with what food I put in her bowl - but sheep poo, pig poo, fox sh*t, rancid old goodness knows what she finds out on our rounds... these are highly delectable. Top favourite with all the collies is the smelliest yellowest runniest baby calf poo; lambs' meconium a very close second ::)
This thread has reminded me of a thread we had on a work database many moons ago when I worked on a big computer system project. Most of the discussions were proper work-related ones but we inevitably had some light relief ones too, of which a favourite for some weeks was, "What 8 out of 10 cats and dogs really want to eat" :D
We all agreed that cats wanted mouse-flavour Whiskas and didn't want garden vegetables :P and that dogs wanted things like "Fox Sh*t, Last Night's Curry and Smelly Old Bone" flavours. :roflanim:
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If the dogs roll in anything that stay stinking after a bath such as fox pooh then smother them in Heinz tomato sauce for 30 mins then bath them. God knows why it works but it does ;D
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I can usualy stop ours eating stuff on walks until they are off hunting.....it always makes me smile when pet food is marketed to look nice to us humans when really they would choose, stinky manky rotting stuff...... :innocent: Human poo has got to be the very worset
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I have no problem with my dogs eating yukky stuff as I got over any shock of that decades ago lol but do they have to eat my bras?
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It's best not to watch and just worm them regularly. Can't understand any human leaving something behind - disgusting imo
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just had a half eaten mouse stuck in Murphys lampshade ::) He eats my bras too Jackie! and socks, knickers......
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My terriers have always eaten any mice they killed - I just let them get on with it. I've never had one attempt to eat a rat, but maybe thats because either they were too excited at the prospect of killing further rats or I just didn't leave them alone with the rats for long enough.
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...do you know what? maybe thats what we should eat too!!! :innocent:
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at least we'd know what we were eating ;D
Murphy has lost the nack of killing mice, he just catches and sucks them which probably isn't the nicest way to die, so I've stopped him where I can for now - he does eat what snowball brings him though.
Have a rat problem in th ebarn again so maybe he can practise on rats? being bigger he'd be able to shake them like he does his toys?
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You really don't want to let him be catching and sucking rats!! :o Dogs and cats who catch rats need to know how to dispatch them quickly and cleanly, or they'll get bitten - and rat bites are nasty bites.
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No, that is what I thought! He doesn't seem able to shake mice but shakes his toy (rat sized) really well :-\ how do they learn and what on?
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In my experience, mice seem to small to be shaken. My terriers always crunched mice but shook rats.
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I remember having 2 cats that fed the 2 dogs mice, all you would see is a tail hanging out the dogs mouth.
The other day (lost track of the exact day...) we went for a different walk with our 3 Labs, the Yellow is daughter to our Black Lab, they tend to be running full pelt and going through rough stuff all the time....then there is our Chocolate Lab, she will trot off and stay more around me...well they all went off and the Chocolate came back with what appeared to be half a deers head, it did not smell bad so it was reasonably fresh (poacher) she walked all the way to the end of the walk and all the way back, approx 5 miles, she kept the Deer head in her mouth all the time and walked next to me with her prize, we decided to let her take it home , when they got into the car, the Yellow Lab took it off her and ate the lot!!!! Cunning dog to get the other one to carry her lunch!!!