In this farm‑visit video, Greg Judy walks viewers through his integrated approach to raising sheep and guardian dogs on Green Pastures Farm. He explains why sheep must never be allowed to eat dog feed, detailing the economic and behavioral risks of doing so, and describes his winter feeding regimen for dogs that includes meat scraps and bone recycling. Judy outlines his dog‑training philosophy, emphasizing a strict hierarchy, minimal human contact, and the use of older dogs as surrogate guardians to shape puppies, warning that over‑petting can turn dogs into predators. He demonstrates a gravity‑flow dog feeder built from pig panels that keeps sheep out of dog feed, and discusses the importance of rotating sheep daily to prevent parasite buildup, spread manure, and avoid grain feeding, which he argues degrades meat quality and causes hoof overgrowth. The video also covers predator protection strategies, noting a single well‑trained dog can protect up to 200 sheep, and provides details on his business model—selling fixed guardian dogs, breeding stock, and offering farm tours—while directing viewers to his website greenpasturesfarm.net.
Chapters
Don't train them to eat dog feed. It's $20 a bag. You can't afford for your sheep to be eating your dog feed, and your dog's going to go hungry. And then guess what you've done? You've trained him to be a predator. He's going to kill your sheep. There he is.
Good morning.
Good morning. How you doing? Good.
Another beautiful day on Greg Judy's farm.
We're up and at 'em.
We're gonna move the cows this morning from there to there. So beautiful here. Got all the kids now. We're gonna go move some sheep, but first, blackberries.
You didn't like it?
You like them?
Yep.
Let's see you eat one. You like it?
Yeah.
It's not too bitter for you?
Nope. Okay.
Some of them like them, some of them don't.
I don't like that. There you go. You want to try one of these?
This one loves them.
Tearing it up, man. You look like a little piglet eating corn. I found a bird's nest.
Oh yeah, look at that.
Nice.
Those your dogs barking, Greg?
He, uh, he's— he doesn't act like he likes us being here, and he's doing his job. We've never had a dog that would actually attack anybody, but we want him to do that.
Yeah.
Um, you know, for a coyote to come up and kill our sheep He's got to be focused on killing the sheep. Well, we've got puppies in training, we've got some old dogs. This dog is, uh, about 8 months old. We do discourage people petting them. We'll give them a good boy maybe once, just reach down and say good boy, but then when you leave that paddock, you got to make sure they don't follow you back to your truck.
Look, guys, puppies! Happy little guys. You'll train those puppies up to be guard dogs?
Yep. See what they're doing there? The older dogs are like surrogate guardians for them, and those puppies have already been whipped. There's a pecking order in a wolf pack, and you know, they're part wolf. They all came from wolves. They kind of know where they stand in the pack, and if they don't yield to the older dog, that older dog will just chew them up. I mean, he'll grab them by the neck, he'll throw them around.
Here they come.
Look, you could ruin those pups pretty quick by just putting somebody around them that petted them all the time. Okay. And then you would have a pet, and I'm sorry, but if you got a pet, your sheep are gonna die. The pets are gonna be looking for humans. You know, you still need to be able to handle your dog, and that's why we do handle them.
All right, Mr. Brown, we're gonna go find the sheep. You move the sheep every day too, Greg?
The sheep are moved about every day to day and a half. The sheep are gonna find the highest point right up there, and that's where they're gonna spend the night at. And that's because they can observe predators coming up to kill them. They always get up on the highest point. Well, what do you think they do all night long right there? They're pooping. And so if you leave your sheep on a paddock for 5 to 7 days, maybe 2 weeks, a month, whatever, the sheep are reinfesting themselves. So you want to keep moving them, and that allows you to spread your manure out more, and they're not camping in their manure. This is their dog feeder. This is drug from paddock to paddock.
Okay.
And all we did was took pig panels, and the dog, he doesn't jump over this. He comes in here and he slides under here.
Ah, excuse me.
This is a magnet. So as they eat, it's gravity flow. You fill it up up here and it just keeps going down.
And this, guys, keeps the sheep out of the dog food.
Yeah, sheep won't go in there. In the wintertime, you can save yourself significant money. The biggest cost to your sheep is the dog feed for the guardian dogs.
Do you ever feed them any grains?
Absolutely not. Well, when you feed grain to a sheep, there's several reasons you don't want to do that. One is it builds fat Of course, it builds fat intramuscular, and it makes your meat rot. It destroys the shelf life of your lamb. Oh, um, a grass-fed lamb chunk of meat that's frozen in your freezer will last, my gosh, 2 or 3 years if it's vacuum sealed. The other bad thing about feeding grain to sheep is it grows hoof. Yeah, when you start feeding grain, you— people say, you mean you don't trim the hooves on your sheep? I'm like, we never have. Well, if you feed a lot of grain You got to remember, grain grows hoof and horn. And you start feeding a lot of grain, you're going to be out there with your trimmers trimming the feet on your sheep because they can't walk. And the other thing is, it's expensive. You can't afford to feed your sheep grain and make any money. If it's a hobby herd and you don't care about making any money and it makes you happy to feed them grain, well then do that. But you're not going to make any money doing it. I've sold sheep to people. I'll go out there and I'm like, where's your feeder at? Well, we hand-feed our dog. I'm like, what? Yeah, we hand-feed him. Well, they put the feed on the ground and the sheep are up there just devouring it. The dog might get 2 bitefuls. That's not hand-feeding your dog. That— you're feeding your sheep, and you've already trained them now to be dog food eaters. I'm not sure they wouldn't get in that once they learn what dog feed is. Our sheep have never tasted dog feed. Don't train them to eat dog feed. It's $20 a bag. You can't afford for your sheep to be eating your dog feed, and your dog's gonna go hungry. And then guess what you've done? You've trained him to be a predator. He's gonna kill your sheep, 'cause he's hungry. Folks, these dogs work hard for you. By God, feed 'em. Feed 'em, and in the wintertime, it's especially crucial. 'Cause these dogs are laying out on these hills, 10 below zero, you know, in snow. They got a big long hair coat, so they're comfortable, but they're burning more calories. And you're not feeding him? No. That's when it's really critical, I think, to give your dog some meat scraps. Because our meat scraps have about 30 to 40% bone and fats and different things where they've trimmed off, and man, that's good for them. Here, open your hand up. You always hear about, what'd the dog do with the bone? Well, he buried it. We're feeding hundreds and hundreds of pounds of bones out here. And so they're recycling these bones, which is adding calcium to our soil.
Look, that's around. We're gonna feed the dogs some meat scraps.
There's your trimmings of your ribs. That's a, that's a pretty good treat for a dog. Oh, that big dog, he gets to eat first. So he'll come up here, and if any dog comes up here around him to try and get a bite, he will whip them. I mean, he'll whip the snot out of them. Then when he's done eating, then the other dogs, it's safe for them to come in and eat, but That's the way it is. I mean, the head guy in the pack, the alpha, yeah, he's first. And then your younger, less experienced dogs, they get what's left over. So you can see the sheep, they're shaded up right here. We're not going to walk down in there. I don't want to spook them out because they're all— but most of these are St. Croix, uh, sired.
Oh, look! Yeah, where's the big guy?
Well, he won't come up here with us here. We back off, he'll be up here and he'll whip them puppies.
Look at them, they're taking advantage of that. You taking advantage of the big guy not coming?
Oh, I'm getting a little too close, getting a little too close there.
Oh, is this the big guy?
They kind of make it.
No, there's a whole pile of meat right there. She had to take it just because.
I think it's the instinct of a dog. I mean, they're going to whip the younger dog. He's not gonna let him eat until he's full. That's not— I think that's her right here looking at it.
How many dogs do you have per sheep? What's the ratio?
You could get by with one. One good dog can protect probably 200 sheep.
Hard not to.
Don't, don't pet them. Don't pet them if you can help it.
Yep, just look that way. That way they won't follow you.
That's right. I tell people, yeah, puppy got too close to the feed.
That's a whipping. Didn't hurt it.
But now see, as that dog gets older, that little puppy gets older, sometime he's gonna come up and do that to him and he may get whipped.
Incidentally, all those dogs that you see there are fixed. They cannot breed. Greg buys them as puppies, raises them up, trains them to be guard dogs, and sells them as livestock. That's one of your main things, you sell livestock, the guardian dogs, the cows. The sheep.
Yep.
If you guys are interested in maybe getting livestock from Greg or any of his resources, his books, his workshops— you do tours or anything? What else do you offer?
We sell, we sell post breeding stock, uh, of course that's in hair sheep, um, the South Pole. We do farm tours here on request.
What's your website?
Greenpasturesfarm.net.
Okay, and I'll link that down below. Okay, here it goes, guys.
We had a good time with Judy this morning.
Did y'all know it's hot in Missouri? Blazing.
You notice something?
We're now in swimming suits. We are at a public park. We're gonna get cooled off.
Y'all ready?
Let's go.
Well, we're cooled off now. That was so much fun. Going back to Maple. Gotta get up early. Big drive going north. To Iowa, VersaLand. Grant Schultz, you heard of him? Awesome permaculture place, lots of trees, swales. It's going to be an amazing place.
