Every dog has its day: indigenous Tswana dogs are more practical livestock guardians in an arid African savanna compared with their expatriate cousins

Title:

Every dog has its day: indigenous Tswana dogs are more practical livestock guardians in an arid African savanna compared with their expatriate cousins

Creator:

Horgan, Jane E., Van Der Weyde, Leanne K., Comley, Jessica, Klein, Rebecca, and Parker, Dan M.

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:6378da83-7205-4359-bf6c-65caca4c9059
uuid:6378da83-7205-4359-bf6c-65caca4c9059
doi:10.25225/jvb.20104

Subject:

livestock guarding dogs, human-wildlife conflict, carnivore conservation, landrace, Botswana, and Canis Africanis

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Format:

počítač and online zdroj

Description:

Livestock guarding dogs (LGDs) have been used for centuries to reduce depredation on livestock and, more recently, to facilitate the conservation of threatened carnivores. Conservation organisations in southern Africa promote the use of Anatolian shepherds as LGDs. However, livestock farmers in Botswana use a variety of breeds for this purpose, including local landrace “Tswana” dogs. Our study sought to test the overall effectiveness of these local breeds as LGDs. Irrespective of breed, all LGDs reduced livestock losses, with 47.9% of farmers experiencing no losses after obtaining a guarding dog. Owners with more LGDs, and LGDs of a single sex, had greater reductions in livestock losses. Anatolian shepherds displayed more behavioural problems than other breeds in our study. The health of LGDs was reliant on them receiving a balanced diet, and owners with fewer dogs reported fewer health issues. Moreover, Tswana guarding dogs were cheaper to purchase and feed than their purebred counterparts. Our results show that local landrace dogs can be considered a cheaper and more practical alternative to purebred LGDs for reducing livestock losses and for mitigating human-wildlife conflict in Botswana.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

1-16

Source:

Journal of Vertebrate Biology | 2020 Volume:69 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false