Chesapeake Bay Retriever

Pretty much any breed can be good around other animals if trained to be so. When my cat had kittens we took the one we were going to keep out to the coop at about 3 weeks old and set him down. The chickens looked so big and scary to him he would try to run and hide. We took him up there all the time, under supervision of course, and he is now outside almost full time and never messes with the flock. I knew he's not a dog, but my point is, if exposed to them from a very early age and taught to leave them alone, they will. 

Hi! I have two chessies, Duke and Duchess. I now have 36 chickens, 20 of them free range here at the house.  Now the Chesapeake is the smartes most under rated dog out there.  I would encourage you to do lots and lots of research on the breed, and if you do intend to buy from a breeder check their line for any hip problems.  If there are problems with the hips in the dogs line, the dog has a bigger chance of having hip issues later in life.  If you do purchase a dog with problems in the line please have it spayed or neuterd.  Ok so Duke our 7yr old Chessie is amazing.  He takes his job of protecting the home very seriously.  He is a retired hunter so now his "job" is to take care of me and our son.  I really can not get up from the couch to go to pee without him escorting me to the bathroom and then waiting till I am done.  When he was younger DH trained him as a duck hunting dog.  He was trained to retreive the bird NOT kill it.  Now I will be honest and say we have lost a chicken to Duke, although it was completely my fault.  I took him out at night right before bed, on his way back from his business he stopped to check out the noise that was coming from one of the chicken houses.  In this house we had one bantam hen with her 4 chicks.  He scared the chicks and they started moving around the house, still he didn't move, he was just looking.  I got nervous though and thought to "distract" him with the light from the flash light.  That was my mistake, I should not have done that, the beam of light hit the back of the house and duke loves the flash light.  He jumped AT THE LIGHT and the hen lunged at him.  He was not mean, he did not attack her, he simply defended himself from her claws.  Unfortunatly he is much bigger than the hen.  He didn't try to bite he kinda tackled her.  I know for sure that if he was going to go after a chicken he has had much better opportunities, every morning he walks through the garden and there is usually 3-5 chickens in that area.  Also after he laid on the hen one of the chicks ran out of the house and right past him.  He went toward it but stopped as soon as I said no.  No matter the training if a dog really WANTS to kill he or she will.  Since then he hasn't looked sideways at a chicken.  But you see Duke's job his whole life is to protect the home and bring the bird.  If you seperate the love of the chicken you can see he was simply doing his job.  Duchess is a puppy, all she wants to do is play, she fetches, jumps through her hoop and plays plays plays.  A small chick did get through her fence once, I saw it go in, I saw her "fetch" it, I told her to drop it and sit, she did and the chick ran off.  Now none of the chicks small enough to get through her fence go close enough to go through the fence.  You can train these dogs to protect thier flock, but understand it will be their flock.  A Chessie does not belong to you, YOU belong to a chessie.  He will be the most wonderful companion to your family.  Duke was actually DH's dog first.  When me and my son came along DH was nervous whether or not we would be accepted.  HA!  If we have someone over they will get the stair down the whole time, and he will sit between me and the "stranger", even if the stranger is my dad. lol

If you serious about a Chessie, I have tons more I can tell you.  But yes you can train them, stay consistant, always have another activity, and buy stock in tennis balls.  Good Luck!