The power of resident livestock guardians

Being out in the country, we have vultures overhead every so often. During the winter, we have a large family unit flock of black vultures that usually roost across the street during the winter (150 birds or more). One of the things that I look for in my shelties is the ability to keep an eye out for predators - raptors, vultures and crows being the top flying worries. If we ever have a pond with fish, I'll add herons to that list - the dogs alert to them, but then turn to ask me, and I've always said to not worry about those, so those don't get the full chase and bark routine.

Pow and Brick are the best aerial predator dogs, alerting to vultures I can barely see, crow calls, hawk whistles, etc. Frost alerts to vultures by scent. Our farm is a no fly zone pretty much - if they try to roost for any length of time in the oak, the dogs exert enough pressure from the ground that the vultures get uncomfortable and leave.

I hauled a sheep carcass down to the clearing and it had been just sitting there for 2 wks, with nobody touching it. The vultures would come and look, but never come down to feed. Reason?
The dogs were being run in that area for an hour every other day. That's all it took for them to push on the vultures to not take the risk to come down.

We go on vacation, taking one of the vulture dogs and leaving one on mostly crate rest, with the other being at a neighbors house? Carcass is gone.

So basically, when the dogs are allowed to do their jobs and monitor their stock, the stock is pretty safe. I'm not sure what I'll do if we get coyotes - I may move to getting another collie in that case with strong guardian - I'd hate to have to get a one task dog like a pyr or akbash.

Last year, when the flock came in for the winter, animal control came by to ask if I was causing it I suppose, me being the only one with animals. The vultures were roosting on all my neighbors roof peaks, in their trees, all over the place, except our place. I kept telling him that they don't come in my yard hardly at all, and don't dare roost overnight because the dogs are trained to scare them off. He had a hard time understanding that, but eventually believed me when I assured him that they just didn't roost on our house or trees - he could see for himself at the time he came that our property was the only one without them.

And really - it wasn't anyone's doing. Black vultures aparently roost in the winter in family flocks of large numbers of related birds, and it isn't related to a food source being directly where they roost. They are storks by the way - not related to hawks and owls - makes sense of you look at them. I like them actually, and miss the flock not coming in this winter.