Topic of the Week - Dogs and Chickens

JackAyla said:

my german shorthair just killed all 3 of my chickens and I am going to keep her on a tie out when my new ones arrive. Sad. my other gsp ignores the chickens.

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I don't know if this works. It might be worth a try if it happens again.
A 10 minute you tube about a problem dog.
Watch from 5:57, linked here.

Ponypoor said:

Having had animals in the family all my life I know 2 things to be true.
1) never trust any animal no matter how much you think it is a perfect angel. Esp predator animals (dog, cats) around children and livestock.

I cannot count the amt of times I have heard people say ‘I can’t believe Old Roy bit that child, he has never done that before’.

Even prey animals are capable of killing, a horse or cattle can be a serious danger, so can a chicken - just ask my eye dr, who although laughed with glee when I told him how my eye got pecked, did inform me the scratches on my cornea were very bad.

2) an animal has its own agenda (same as you or I), yep you may think you have them ‘trained’ but it only takes one time for that training to fall apart. Dog, cat, horse, chicken, cow, etc. they are living creatures and they have good and bad days just like we do, if they are having a crappy day you can bet your sweet petunias they will take it out on something. And even if the chicken is not the intended victim they can and do get caught in the cross fire of other animals disagreements.

Trust me - been there and have the scars from being ‘accidentally’ caught between 2 scrapping horses, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, and yep people!

Remember - living creatures need to be respected, which means keeping an eye on.

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True.

So I have a pit bull that’s completely not interested in them and my neighbor has a lab who spent 5 hours running around the whole run to play with them didn’t trust him fully but I do now

I have two Shetland Sheepdogs that are absolutely amazing with my chickens and I never had to specially train either one besides the occasional fussing at them if they did something I didn't like.

My older Sheltie male, Fiasco, was raised with my first 6 chickens. He was immediately obsessed with them. I think it helped that he was just very good with all animals from the get-go. Very friendly personality to anyone who lives in the household. He's a wonderful watch dog by nature. Nowadays I use him to guard the flock. Any noise besides the usual chatter gets his attention, even when they egg song, he thinks something's wrong. But he's a bit insane about guarding the property. If he even hears the crunch of leaves from a frog in the front yard, he goes ballistic. He also keeps the neighbor's cat, that likes to stalk and spook my chickens, away. Plus he amazed me when he started to break up any fights that start between the chickens. And he also tries to stop the roosters from mating.




My female Sheltie, Ramona, I got when she was about 7 months old. She was spooked by the chickens at first. Can't blame her when they were practically her size and she wasn't raised around other animals. But she warmed up to them quickly and over the past 8 months she's turning out a lot like Fiasco. She's obsessed with them to the point that she, too, will stop the roosters mating. I guess they see it as the chickens fighting. She will watch over them when free ranging or in their run. She doesn't bark when they egg song but she does like to go see what's up.


I don't know if it's a Sheltie thing or if I got super lucky with these two.

HowIsItDone said:

I don't know if this works. It might be worth a try if it happens again.
A 10 minute you tube about a problem dog.
Watch from 5:57, linked here.

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I watched the video you linked. The first thing I noticed is that when the female owner told the dog "stay" and then walked away to get a chicken, the dog immediately broke its "stay" command and followed the owner. There was zero reinforcement or repercussions for the dog after it disobeyed the command. Secondly, the man said they left a dead chicken tied to the dog for "several hours", and then, after "four days" had passed, the dog hadn't killed anymore chickens. Retraining an undesired established behavior takes a whole lot more time than "several hours", and the dog's chicken-killing habit was well established. In addition, four days isn't nearly long enough to determine if the retraining was successful. I'm not criticizing you for posting the video, and am not going to comment on the method used in the video, just saying that "several hours" and "four days" wasn't nearly enough time on either count to prove anything.

PingoBags said:

I have a labrador which can be used for waterfowl and upland game.

When the chicks were in the brooder, he showed a lot of interest but was never aggressive towards them so I would let him have
a nosy but with me by his side.

Later when they were in their coop, I would let him investigate while they were in the run.
This went on for a couple weeks without an issue.

Once the chicks were brave enough to free range, the only thing between him and the chicks was me.
Any time he approached them, I would say no in a firm voice. It was clear to me from the start that he didn't want to hurt them,
he just wanted to be friends.

He has never been aggressive towards anyone or anything in his life, that's why we got that breed of dog.
He never gets chained up and is allowed to free range with the chickens unsupervised. He shows zero
interest in them. I've watched him from a window while he plays with his sticks in the yard, he acts like there is no chickens there.
I have seen him chase porcupine and raccoons up a tree though, so that's a bonus.

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How old was your lab when he stopped acting interested with the birds? I have a golden puppy and I won’t let the birds out unless I, there with him. Unfortunately, my birds found an ole in a fence and made their way out. He ended up killing one when he as able to trap her in a corner as she tried to get back in. He is 9 months old now. We have been strictly telling him no when he is around them and there are times he doesn’t look interested and times he does. He is particularly piqued when they run. I am 99% sure he is not interested in just killing them, but rather sees them as a toy. In fact, the poor bird was still alive when we got to her after he had played with her for 10 minutes.
I was planning on moving the electric fence to exclude the chicken area. I was also thinking of one way doors so that if a bird gets out they can get back in. I know where they run when they are trying to return.
As background info we have an 8 foot fence enclosing 1/4-1/3 acre. I recently bought netting to put over the top, but haven’t had a chance to install it yet. I have a few that fly over the fence daily. I will let them out to roam the rest of the acre+ when I am outside doing work. I originally got them as tick control.

We have had 3 different dogs with our chickens. Our English Setter, who is no longer with us, was ridiculously smart. She wanted to hunt them, but she knew they were ours and never touched them. FWIW, she would snatch song birds out of the sky and kill any rabbits that unfortunately ventured onto our land.
Our Coon hound doesn’t care about them at all unless they are tiny chicks. We have bantams so I firmly believe it is their peeing that draws him in. Once they lose the peep he is uninterested. He does go after coons (of course), wild turkeys, bears, coyotes, deer, porcupine, and any other wild animals. He just leaves our birds alone. He is not a particularly bright dog, I think it’s just n his nature.
We recently got a golden retriever puppy. He has been uninteresting in the chicks, but we are having a challenge training him to not go after the chickens, particularly when they run. I’m hoping that if we keep after him he will learn. He recently liked one of my girls when they escaped their enclosure and I wasn’t outside.
I did try to introduce him to our rooster first, as I hoped they would give him a good peck. They all just ran away. My most defensive rooster would attack hawks, but died recently. My next most defensive has gone nearly blind and just isn’t able to defend anybody. The other roosters seem to be less than protective, other than getting the girls to hide.

This is Waylon Jennings. He's a bull Mastiff, American Bulldog, Australian shepherd mix. As he chases wild chicken's off from the flock he also loves our birds as his family. Waylon will even walk slowly around them those they don't get upset. He just did that behavior on his own.
I showed him baby chicks and told him " iz minez". As they grew he just watched this strange new family grow up around him. He will herd cattle and goats but not the birds. He's just so gentile with them other than Uno bird eating his food.
As baby chicks wander in the yard he seems to go lay where they are at as if he knows they need to be kept safe. My cat will also stay with baby birds. She's never harmed one but hunts everything.
Waylon is a 101lbs Frisbee dog.

I have a german shorthair pointer who has never touched a chicken. These are the safest chickens on the country block! Thanks to him, we have full time pest control on site 24/7. He actively pheasant and rabbit hunts with my husband but has always been respectful of our birds. We introduced him when we first got chicks. We allowed him to see them in the brooder. The first few times, he got excited but we reinforced the "leave it" command and he backed down. We did this for many days (although after the first 3 days, he showed no more interest in them). Eventually they moved out of the brooder and into the coop, at this point he was still no longer interested. We did supervised interactions for many days (with virtually no interaction from him, as he showed no interest) until we felt confident. It was so easy with him and I think we got lucky as he is very smart and loyal. He now lives side by side with the flock and I trust him completely, best "bird dog" around!

On the flip side, we had to rehome a bloodhound as we could not break him of killing chickens. Very sad situation and we tried many things but nothing seemed to deter him. It was to the point that either he had to be confined or the birds had to be confined and that just doesnt work for us. He has an awsome life now, living as a bachelor in a chicken free home so a good ending for him.