Sleepy and friendly, these seemingly docile dogs are proving capable of protecting hundreds of sheep and lambs from wild dog attacks in outback Western Australia.
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After enduring years of her livestock being killed by wild dogs on her pastoral property near Yalgoo, Gemma Cripps was at the end of her tether.
"We thought we were going to give up, it was too hard and too heartbreaking, knowing that you are losing that many animals to something you can't control," she said.
"It was just devastating, we had given ourselves in to becoming a cattle station.
"The big driver was in 2020, we started off with 830 ewes in a paddock, we only got 620 ewes back, and from those 620 ewes we had 17 lambs for the year.
"We had been going backwards for many years, but that was the worst result we had had."
After seeing maremmas working on a cattle station, Ms Cripps brought in four pups and two adult maremma dogs to her property, Gabyon Station.
The dogs were mixed with the sheep to bond them and were then put out into a 6,000-hectare sheep paddock in early 2021.
A subsequent improvement in ewe and lamb survival has led Ms Cripps and her mother Helen to consider expanding their sheep flock.
"We still lost five per cent of the ewes, but we ended up with a lambing rate of 65 per cent," Ms Cripps said.
"It's a bit of a funny time to be considering buying more sheep with the risks that we have got in agriculture at the moment, but Mum and I have decided that 600 sheep isn't a viable number to run as a flock.
"I'm confident enough that the maremmas are having a pretty good crack, so we are looking at buying in some more sheep."
Pups 'think they're goats'
Ms Cripps currently has a group of eight young dogs born in March, which are running with goats of a similar age. They will be introduced and bonded with sheep next before joining nine other adults in the paddock.
"Whatever you introduce the puppies to when they are very small is what they think is their job, so it's just letting them know that they have to protect them," she said.
"I don't know if the goats think they're dogs, or if the dogs think they're goats."
Adult maremmas can weigh up to 45 kilograms, and will live in the sheep paddock with the sheep, drinking from the sheep trough and eating from feeding stations set up near water points.
"Our reason for having so many maremmas is because the paddocks are so big, you want some of the dogs to be walking the boundary of that paddock, putting the pressure on the dingoes," Gemma said.
"We are still not sure sure yet if they fight with the dingoes or just displace them, and it doesn't matter what the answer is there, so long as the dingoes are not with the sheep."
Not the silver bullet
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development research scientist Tracey Kreplins has established a movement trial at Gabyon, placing tracking collars on sheep and dogs to monitor their movements and interaction, as well as stationary cameras monitoring for wild dogs in the sheep paddock.
Dr Kreplins said the maremmas were making a territory around the sheep, however given the paddock size that was proving difficult at lambing times when ewes isolated themselves to give birth, and during peaks of wild dog activity.
"We've noticed that the maremma's activity peaks overlap with wild dog activity peaks, which shows that the maremmas are also going after the wild dogs," she said.
"However it's not going to be a perfect thing, and with maremmas you really have to look after them and set them up so they can do the best job protecting their stock."
While the maremmas at Gabyon were proving to reduce wild dog predation, Dr Kreplins cautioned they were not an easy solution, and landowners considering introducing maremmas needed to consider factors such as baits being placed nearby for wild dogs or other wild dog control measures.
"You cannot bait where you have got maremmas working, so you'd have to be in agreeance with your neighbours, they definitely work but you're going to have to put an effort into your maremmas as well as your stock."
