The Guardians of Wilding…
5,000 years in the making!
It was a deceptively quiet morning. Kari, RSVnapa’s farming operations manager, noticed the sheep clustered in the corner of the paddock. They didn’t run over to greet the truck as normal. Instead, they stood there, stunned. As she dismounted the truck, she saw the reason. Carnage! Seven Bodies of our best breeding ewes and lambs lay strewn across the field. It was a crime scene.
The temporary paddock had been defined by an electric fence that followed the creek bank. This was a fatal mistake. Unbeknownst to us, mountain lions were using that creek as their stealth highway. The “CSI” folks at Fish and Game developed a theory that two juvenile male mountain lions had just left their den on their way to claim their own territory and happened to stumble upon a food source. Since so many sheep were killed, they assumed the lions were young and undisciplined and killed for fun instead of for food.
Our first reaction was revenge… but that was misguided. Our point of view (see, I got that in!) is that Wilding Farm is a place where nature is to be embraced as a farming partner. As long as I have been in Napa, almost forty years, I have never seen an indication of mountain lions in the Carneros region. However, I have seen an increase in other animals and birds. Wild turkeys were almost unknown in the early days but now run in flocks of as many as seventy birds. Deer have their way with the vineyards and gardens. Jackrabbits, ground squirrels, coyotes, and other potentially destructive animals have all overpopulated. If we are to partner with nature, we need to help it find a balance, and alpha predators, like mountain lions, have been the missing counterweight.
We considered several options to safeguard the sheep. One was hardening the paddocks with tall, permanent fencing, but that would turn Wilding Farm into a prison instead of open land. We want wildlife to thrive and be able to move through the land and find habitat while we also maintain the ability to move sheep and other animals to prevent overgrazing.
Lacking permanent tall fencing, we then turned our attention to guard animals. Donkeys would be a fun addition to Wilding, and they would provide some comic relief. Though they aggressively protect their territory, they aren’t compatible with the forage preferred by sheep and can suffer from bloat. Llamas are cool and are more compatible, and they, too, are very protective but they turn mean as they age with bites, kicks, and spit directed at their handlers.
We settled on the age-old solution of working dogs, but which breed? The ideal breed would not herd the sheep but instead live with and proudly protect them. This led to the oldest breed on record, not created by humans but by natural selection, dating back over 5,000 years, evolving to be the guardians of their family’s most vital treasure… their animals!
We have added two Central Asian Shepherds, Demetrius (Demi) and Nicolai (Nico), to our menagerie. They will grow to between 100 and 150 lbs and will work together to fend off any known predator. Their funny-looking cropped ears and tail are practical in that their adversary has less to grab in a scuffle, but hopefully, their presence alone will avoid conflict. Central Asian Shepherds have evolved to compensate for their cropped ears with thick, wiry hair protecting their ear canals. The loose skin around their neck allows them to move and counter even when something has latched on. They are formidable yet lovable creatures that, from our point of view, are the best solution to a natural problem.
Rob Sinskey
