Regarding Collies, and to be honest any working dog breed, in the first months of bonding with your dog, they can not be left alone for long periods of time. They need to be with your for a vast amount of time daily to 1:Bond and secondly: train.

Collies are intelligent, and thus get bored very easily. Wandering around all day, while acceptable for an older, trained dog which has been part of the family/pack for some time is acceptable, a new addition to the family, no matter what breed will not understand why their owner goes away. Especially an intelligent working breed. They will view they have done something wrong, then, will get bored and find something to chew, dig, and essentially if outside...go adventuring. So no, I would not recommend a Collie at all. I view working intelligent breeds like children, and you would not leave your child alone to wander would you.

However, regardless of breed ideally when you get them, you really do not want to leave them for more than two hours alone in the first bonding months.

From my experience, if you are working through out the day, you will require a dog with less energy. Lurchers are great, however they also can pine and be destructive, sometimes more so than others. However, they are excellent escape artists. My fathers lurcher which roams the farm while he works went missing and had hijacked a ride on the dairy tanker. Turned up 80 miles away with the Dairy tanker driver.

Sadly this contradicts itself, an intelligent breed is more likely to go wandering off as its their primal instinct to explore their land, mark and investigate.

However, all dogs can be trained, and taught to stay with their master/owner. You just need the time to put in, and I am concerned by the amount of time you work. Apologies for being a complete downer on this thread.

A welsh sheepdog I had thought of as well because like you say, they are a bit more laidback. The type of farming we do is free range chicken and have 17,000 chickens. To be honest, our fields are fenced off with eletric fencing to prevent foxes from entering, and our current 2 dogs have never got through either. I wont lie and say that yes, both our 2 dogs have had a shock off the fence and once they learnt their lesson and had that first shock, they've never tried to go through again.

Funny you should say that...here are my Grandmother's dogs, both are kenelled but have the run of the estate and roam at will: 11 year old Lab, Plato, blind as a bat but still ambles about regardless.



And Alex (2yrs old), the world's best GSD.

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Hi and welcome to the forum!

Sounds like your new dog will be very lucky whatever you choose

I grew up on a farm and every farm dog I've ever met, whatever the breed generally tends to be happy to follow you around, they get so much stimulation they don't tent to want to run off anywhere.

Having said that terriers do seem to have a penchant for poo!! I know when I visit my Grandparents' farm now with my three dogs, the two terriers go off a bit more and will roll in things they find but my lab is always by my side and won't 'shoulder drop' in a dead mouse or fox poo! Also if you go for a gundog type like a lab they'll be easier to train not to go for chickens/sheep or any other livestock you may have.

Hope this helps

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Just noticed you have a chicken farm so in that case I wouldn't recommend a collie or any herding dog really as a neighbour of my grandparents had a BC and it took a lot of hard work to stop her herding the chickens. And although she doesn't herd them anymore she still sits watching them for most of the day...

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I think a golden retriever would like to live with you. They would probably not wander out of sight though, which is a bonus, they like to be with their people. Or a Bernese Mountain Dog or Greater Swiss Mountain Dog; both these dogs were originally bred as general farm dogs, so could well suit what you want.

I take it there is no livestock to worry about on your farm? That would make a whole lot of difference.

As already said, avoid anything with a high prey drive.

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