Chickens and Dogs

[Folly's place]

And electric fencing is much less expensive than maintaining a dog!
Mary

 

[ChickChic00]

I have German Shepherds and I keep them seperate from my goats and chickens due to their prey drive. While the breed is trainable and mine have had several brief (accidental) encounters with my livestock without harming them, my GSDs are very people/family-oriented and I doubt they would be happy living 24/7 with my flocks. I am contemplating adding a guardian dog(s) someday--but would pick one of the livestock guardian breeds. Have you researched any of those? I think adding electric, like someone mentioned, sounds very wise if your birds are valuable and the predator load is high.

Downside to the electric fence is that they are very expensive. We use fencing and pallets for our pens.

 

[ChickChic00]

And electric fencing is much less expensive than maintaining a dog!
Mary

Not from what we have been doing. We grow our own food and we butcher chickens every other day or at least 4-5 weekly for dog and cat food.

 

[SandyRiverChick]

put them in the pen with our chickens.

To eat chicken poop and chicken food? This is not good for puppies. Look into flock protection breeds like Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepards. But don't raise pups in a coop, raise them in your home with training sessions with chickens. Eventually the flock protection dogs prefer to be outside guarding the flock. I mean no offense but I would politely decline to sell you one of my puppies if I knew it was getting it's start in a coop.

 

[ChickChic00]

To eat chicken poop and chicken food? This is not good for puppies. Look into flock protection breeds like Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepards. But don't raise pups in a coop, raise them in your home with training sessions with chickens. Eventually the flock protection dogs prefer to be outside guarding the flock. I mean no offense but I would politely decline to sell you one of my puppies if I knew it was getting it's start in a coop.

We had a great Pyrenees before and it was a huge disaster. It was uncontrollable, it was a year old male we got from someone too tho. The dogs will have their own pen inside of the runs. It's a huge chicken area, I'm gonna portion a big chunk and they are gonna have their own building to go into. For a month, I will have them in the buildings and let them out every morning to watch them interact with the chickens. Sorry if I didn't explain it right

 

[ChickChic00]

To eat chicken poop and chicken food? This is not good for puppies. Look into flock protection breeds like Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepards. But don't raise pups in a coop, raise them in your home with training sessions with chickens. Eventually the flock protection dogs prefer to be outside guarding the flock. I mean no offense but I would politely decline to sell you one of my puppies if I knew it was getting it's start in a coop.

It's a big big rectangular pen, with a building on one side. I'm gonna fence it off from the chickens for now, and build a door to open and close. Then the dogs can see and smell the chickens and get used to them. I'm gonna wait a month before introducing them with close contact with them.

 

[bhaugh]

None of the breeds you asked about would be ones I would recommend. I’ve had or worked with most of them. If you want dogs to protect your birds, the dogs can easily protect from the Outside of the pen. Not too many predators start from the inside. Chicken poo is not healthy to live in or breathe especially for a dog. If your are addiment for a dog, I’d stick to lgd’s. The two worst chicken killers I had was 2 aussie brothers who as someone else mentioned egged each other on and made it a game to take down livestock.

 

[The head hen]

I am looking to buy 2 puppies at 8 weeks age hopefully, and put them in the pen with our chickens. I have two Chihuahuas that guard the outside of the pen, and a lab mix that watches and guard the whole 5 acres. What breed should I get to raise around the chickens, and safely have it running around with them? I was thinking, Australian shepherd, Texas Heeler, blue/red Heeler, German shepherd, or border collie. Any ideas and tips would be very much appreciated!!

We have 2 great Pyrenees/border collie mix 10 month old pups. Super smart. Were easy to train, so far so good with the guarding/protecting the yard and flock. I started training around 4 months of age, and by 6 or so months, they were fine with the chickens.

Check out this video. We followed this method with good success.

 

[McChooky]

Downside to the electric fence is that they are very expensive. We use fencing and pallets for our pens.

An electric fence is the way to go if you want an effective barrier against predators esp bears. They'll tear up jack once they decide to attack and usually destroy the coop.