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Hello from CO! Livestock training fun!
Thank you for the invite. Excited to be here.
I’ve been using my CATCH training knowledge to train livestock, some for therapy work and others at a rescue.
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8 Replies
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Welcome, Melissa! I love your profile photo and look forward to seeing your videos of work with the livestock. What species are you training? How cool, to use them as therapy animals. We absolutely need to see lots of video. ???? Glad you are here!
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Just tagging you to be sure you see it, @Roses – we hope to see more from you and your critters!
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Thank you Catherine. I am training sheep, pigs, & goats at the moment. Only my goat & sheep are being trained as therapy animals though. The others are being trained to walk politely on a leash so that when they need to be moved from one location to another (usually for medical care) it’s as stress free as possible.
Here’s a video of training my goats early on. I don’t have a lot of videos as it’s a pain to setup the camera and not have it knocked over. I usually don’t have the extra hands to help record.https://youtu.be/IdsiVW7Noq8
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@Roses Melissa, these are wonderful clips! Thanks so much for sharing. I love how good, positive reinforcement training methods work for all species. These guys are adorable and so lucky to be in your care. I totally get the reality of trying to video and train at the same time! This is a lovely video – you did a great job. I hope we see more in the future!!
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Wow, love this and your training techniques. Thank you for great motivating ideas that are not food rewards.
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Hi Melissa! So glad to have you and your perspective joining us. Those goat babies are just too cute for words!
One thing I’m curious about – in regards to food motivation, do you find it easier working with sheep, goats, and pigs? What are their other motivators, if any? My thought is that food is probably quite a powerful reinforcer for them as (please correct me if I’m wrong!) grazing animals, they’re designed to eat consistently small amounts relatively constantly.
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The motivator seems to be quite kiddo dependent, just like with dogs. Each species – specific kiddo has their own favorite reinforcer. Some don’t love “treats” at all and are thrilled to work for a scratch/snuggle. The sheep & goats I’ve worked with love sheep/goat treats which can be purchased at a local farm supply store. I’ve worked with some goats, sheep, & pigs that LOVE animal crackers or fig bars. But some of the same species of goats hate the fig bars. I’ve done “treat try outs” to see what treats are the most exciting for a particular kiddo. Surprisingly my goat wasn’t excited about many of the things I thought he’d like, such as popcorn. Note – I do make sure the treats are species safe. One of the big pigs (she’s over 500 lbs) loves to work for watermelon. You’re correct that, in general, the right treat seems to be an excellent motivator for the browsers/grazers.
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