Advice...

[Thenewman3]

Help! I have a small flock of hens that are about 14 weeks old. A stray dog showed up on our property a few weeks ago and we decided to give her a forever home. She' plott hound/catahoula hound mix. Never had any interest in the hens until this past weekend when she ripped a hole through the chicken wire to the coop and devoured one of my hens. Since then, we keep her kenneled at night. We just caught her this evening trying to rip through the chicken wire again. Does she need to go? Or is there any hope for her?? Any advice is greatly appreciated. I'm heartbroken over my lost hen AND the thought of having to get rid of this dog. She's just a puppy.

 

[MichaelZ13]

A hound is a hunter. Those chickens are fair game to her. And hounds can be tough to train. We have a shelty and aussie but their only ambition is to somehow herd up the chickens in our chicken tractor - they are herding dogs.

A solution, although it would cost you a bit, would be to use hardware cloth a few feet up.

 

[Toddrick]

Once it has had the taste of live chicken I bet you'll have to go to extremes to train it to stay away from them. This might be the perfect case for an electric fence, but definitely get hardware cloth at a minimum.