Dmontgomery
Songster
I just need a place where I can brag about my dogs.
We have 5. 3 Bassett Hounds, a Pit Bull, and a Lab/Pit mix. When we first got chickens 3 years ago, the Lab/Pit mix caught and killed a couple of the birds. We were able to retrain her. All the dogs come and go indoors and out freely. The chickens free range all day over several acres. The dogs will lounge out in the yard with chickens walking all around them and not even raise their heads to look at them. Unfortunately, the bassetts will steal eggs out of the nests and play with them, if we aren't careful. Being free ranged, the chickens don't always return the the nesting boxes to lay.
We have not seen any ground predators (raccoons, possums, foxes, etc. on our property since moving here in 2012. We do get an occasional snake, but the dogs alert to it and we dispose of it. We thought we had a fox problem a couple months ago, but it turned out that we had simply miscounted hens at lockup time during the evening. The only chicken we lost this year was when our neighbor's female dog got out and killed a hen before our dogs got to her and chase her off. While none of our dogs are LGD's, they have done us a great service by chasing all other predators away.
Yesterday afternoon, a hawk swooped down out of nowhere and landed on one of the hens in the open acre between our house and my workshop. I was on the front porch but not near enough to do anything about it. The Lab/Pit mix sprinted across the yard and knocked the hawk off our chicken, saving it. Other than a pile of feathers on the ground, there was no damage to the hen. She is fine and roosted up last night as usual.
I know most people are not as blessed as we are when it comes to dogs. But in our case, it appears they are looking out for our flock.
We have 5. 3 Bassett Hounds, a Pit Bull, and a Lab/Pit mix. When we first got chickens 3 years ago, the Lab/Pit mix caught and killed a couple of the birds. We were able to retrain her. All the dogs come and go indoors and out freely. The chickens free range all day over several acres. The dogs will lounge out in the yard with chickens walking all around them and not even raise their heads to look at them. Unfortunately, the bassetts will steal eggs out of the nests and play with them, if we aren't careful. Being free ranged, the chickens don't always return the the nesting boxes to lay.
We have not seen any ground predators (raccoons, possums, foxes, etc. on our property since moving here in 2012. We do get an occasional snake, but the dogs alert to it and we dispose of it. We thought we had a fox problem a couple months ago, but it turned out that we had simply miscounted hens at lockup time during the evening. The only chicken we lost this year was when our neighbor's female dog got out and killed a hen before our dogs got to her and chase her off. While none of our dogs are LGD's, they have done us a great service by chasing all other predators away.
Yesterday afternoon, a hawk swooped down out of nowhere and landed on one of the hens in the open acre between our house and my workshop. I was on the front porch but not near enough to do anything about it. The Lab/Pit mix sprinted across the yard and knocked the hawk off our chicken, saving it. Other than a pile of feathers on the ground, there was no damage to the hen. She is fine and roosted up last night as usual.
I know most people are not as blessed as we are when it comes to dogs. But in our case, it appears they are looking out for our flock.
