Security?

I have been trying to decide something for a while now... It isn't just birds on my farm that are of value, I have other things that are not locked up and would easily be stolen if someone so wished. To this point my only "security" has been that my house is impossible to find, and that I do most of my bird business at either bird shows, or my friends house. But, as our aviary and reputation grows, I find more and more often that people want to visit (which is more than understandable for someone to want to see where their bird came from). BUT, my husband is often out of town (as he is currently and will be for many weeks still), and I am alone on this farm day after day. A few things have had to change over the past year. One, I can no longer leave my keys in my car. Two, I have to lock the aviary. Three, I have to lock the house when i am not home. Four, I have to lock the doors at night when I go to bed. Now to the rest of you I'm sure this sounds like common sense, but for my community locking anything is nearly unheard of. But I am still not satisfied. I had an incident not long ago where some stuff went missing... additionally, someone also broke into one of our storage buildings. So, I am trying to figure out a way to allow people I don't know to visit and tour the aviary, and still feel that things on my property are safe as well. At one point I considered renting a store front to enable me to have a safe "middle ground", but it still doesn't solve all my problems, and only poses new issues in my already overly complicated animal life. I am just wondering if any of you have suggestions or thoughts. I need to protect myself and my family, but I also need to be able to put customers minds at ease and allow them to feel welcome. It's hard to speak to people on the phone and politely explain why I rarely allow visits anymore. what's terrible is that before our aviary got as big as it is, we use to let anyone come over and see our birds and home... But, I am expecting a Friesian foal to be born this summer along with a Shire horse foal, I've just heard of some Friesians that were stolen in Illinois, and it only confirmed that I need to either get a satisfactory security system or not allow guests out here at all. the most alarming part is if i dial 911 it takes the police, fire dept, and an ambulance all about 20 minutes to get to my place... So home defense would be me with a gun, and that raises a lot of other concerns on my part. There has to be a good option somehow, or do I just explain to all my customers why I don't allow visits?:31:

I can definitely understand your situation. I am a woman alone in a rural area as well. So far the only person who has ever stolen anything is my ex husband, but as the economy worsens, more and more people may do things like this that never would have if they had a job. I also worry about having strangers come to my home if I am selling something. So far I've been able to get a neighbor to come over if someone is coming, but that is probably hard for you with a business because a lot more people want to come.

Do you have a guard dog? That might give you some peace of mind. I admit I wasn't as worried back when I had my 3 big dogs as I am now with no dog.

I, too, need to remind myself to lock doors. I don't lock my truck, but I don't leave the keys in it either.

If you like dogs, I would get at least one. As a dog trainer, I see that most people are scared of rottweilers and dobermans if they don't know them.
Get a couple of dobies and they'll work together to watch the place. They're naturally protective, but big sweet lovable babies to their owers. The ones with the cropped ears (not that I'm into doing that to a dog) look scarier.

have you considered set visitation hours? like offering visits by appt only from 4-7 certain nights of the week or whatever, then maybe you could arrange for a friend or even pay a teen boy or someone to be there during those hours so people wouldn't think your alone.

I've been considering another large dog. I have 4 dogs now. 2 red and white irish setters, a visla, and a silkie terrier... so i know when something is amiss outside, but i need something scary. I had someone recently break out one of the aviary windows, and if it weren't for my audio monitor I wouldn't have known and the birds could have gotten sick or died from the cold. I'm already having trouble now with some dumb punk kids that love to smash windows out of a lot of the local abandoned buildings, and I just don't even want to think what might happen if lots of people knew where my place is. I've got a contractor removing the windows from the aviary and putting in sky lights instead, which just angers me to no end that I have to do that. The problem I have is that while my place is very off the normal beaten path, there is a horse back riding trail that is near by. I have to be extra careful already which pastures my horses are on during peak riding season, because their horses get so close to my pastures... last summer I wound up with 4 sick horses from being exposed to someone else's sick horse. they come with trailors, so how hard would it be for them to recognize a $20,000 horse and load it up without my knowledge? At the moment all the outdoor bird flights are hidden from view at the back of the property, and the aviary just looks like a regular steel farm building. I am thankful that so far nobody has really given the aviary a second look. But, I just don't know how to handle this. I am not originally from the country, so I am use to the safety of being around other people and within reasonable distance from the police station... But out here I feel like i live on an island and if someone were to knock on my door right now with ill intentions i would have no recourse but to shoot them. I feel like I am going nuts. So, maybe I'll have to get a store front somewhere.

visiting hours would certainly be helpful. Although I wish I could arrange to meet people in person somewhere else first. I am a very good judge of character in person, and i find that once I meet certain people i realize I'd have no problem letting them come out and see my place. Perhaps I should just explain that to certain people. the trouble with visiting hours is trying to figure out when would be best. i would prefer my husband to be around, so I guess i'll have to wait until his schedule settles down a bit.

The horse trail definitely makes for an additional problem. My other horsie neighbors are pretty vigilant about watching for trailers they've never seen before in case of horse thieves.

I think the idea of only letting people come when your husband is home is a good one. That would make me feel safer.

I second getting a Dobie. They are very obedient and easily trainable and do scare most people.

What about an outside survellience system as well to catch the punks on tape?

I will certainly start shopping around for a dobbie I agree that once my husbands schedule gets a bit more reliable (he's in the reserves and for the next year he's got a handful of classes to attend that will take him away for 2 months, and then I think 3 months.) After that it's just two weeks in the summer usually. So I will discuss visiting hours with him... I have the adding complication that his "day job" is actually third shift, so he sleeps most of the day. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I ask him to let me know what hours he prefers though I now have night time deer spotting cameras installed to catch the punks on camera thanks to my husband. I really do want to be comfortable with this, because i honestly love having people see my aviary and my horses. It makes me proud (I'm sure that sounds terrible), but I've spent a lifetime trying to get to where I am now and I am always really happy when other people get to enjoy it as well. As for the horses... I really don't think too many people would be interested in stealing anything except our friesian, and I'll keep her in the barn at night during riding season. She's microchipped, and friesians are DNA registered, so stealing one really wouldn't be the best option anyway. i will work on being a little less paranoid, and see what kinds of dogs and visiting hours will help put my mind at ease.

None of us has very valuable horses. What we worry about is people stealing them to sell to slaughter houses or to cart over to Shipshewanna, Indiana where they hold a livestock action every Friday. Many of the horses sold there are sold for slaughter. And now that the USDA has okayed horse slaughter again, it's a problem again. It's not hard to load up 2 or 3 horses, cart them over there and walk away with $1000-1500 with no questions asked. So yes, we do watch each other's places and follow a strange trailer we see going down our road just in case.

It sounds though like you have some good ideas in place. I hope you are feeling better now

I also don't think there is anything wrong with being proud of what you worked for.

I think there are a couple things you can do pretty easily. For one, I would invest in some driveway alarms. You can pick them up fairly cheap and they aren't just useful over driveways, put one over your main drive, and maybe others at other possible entry points. This will make a bell go off inside your house so that you know if anyone is on your property. I would also invest in some security cameras, they don't have to be anything fancy and really, you would probably be okay to have a few real cameras that are in "important places", like near your aviary entrance and barn, then a few dummy cameras(pretty sure they are only $10-$15) around the property. That coupled with loads of signs(no trespassing, private property, security system signs(even if they aren't real, you're the only one that would know that)). And it's always helpful to have a gun as a last ditch effort, of course you would never want to have to use it but a gun and some warning shots is usually all it takes to scare off intruders once you know they are there. I know people that also set up shooting targets around their property, they use them of course, but they are also a great deterrent for thieves, if they see targets as they are coming onto your property, they will not only know that you have a gun, but you obviously know how to use it! That's about how we have our house set up, and we haven't had any problems.

Have you thought about hiring a reliable sitter to be around when your not? Let the sitter know there are cameras on the property so they must do their job. Or there are young kids that would love to volunteer to care for them in your absence.

All good ideas. Dogs, alarms, set visitation times. Another one might be...I know it sounds crazy, but geese make excellent guard "dogs". They honk to alert you when anyone comes onto the property. My grandparents had geese on their place, and nobody could approach without the geese going off. They are not as much of a threat as dogs, but, are protective and will bite anyone they don't know. Just trying to bring a "bird spin" on things.

To be honest, I'm more afraid of large geese than I am of dogs, lol! A lot of people use them as guard animals outside, and it works! They will chase you and bite the heck out of you if they catch you. The dog would be good to have around though in the house when people do come to see the birds, but geese could do a lot outside to prevent problems.