Neat thread!
My dogs are bird hunting dogs. The older one is a college grad even, she went to a fancy Ivy league boarding school for hunters. They are by far the best hunters I have ever had. Now they are a different kind of bird dog. They get along well.
I have no worries with my dogs at all. I have chicks in the house that sleep in a cage next to the dogs beds, they ignore the chicks. The dogs lay amongst the birds outside and ignore them. I did introduce them slowly to the birds when I got them and I did install the electronic brains on the dogs keeping them separate with a "electronic fence at first and warning beeps if they got too excited about them.
Now I try to make the dogs spend as much time with the chickens as they can to ward off other predators. I trust them completely. I leave them outside for hours at a time to protect the birds. They only way they can really be much protection is if the chickens stay on the deck. Lucky for me they do. I will have 20 chickens and 2 dogs on the deck, with turkeys on the rails. The only one really bothered by the birds on the deck is my wife...
BC It is getting pretty bad when I recognized Roger and your dog, before I saw who the post was from. I came to this post of the home page and did not even check the date on the original post. When I saw your old dog, I scrolled back to your name to see when you posted this thinking your post was a couple years old..
My dog and bird pictures...
My dogs are bird hunting dogs. The older one is a college grad even, she went to a fancy Ivy league boarding school for hunters. They are by far the best hunters I have ever had. Now they are a different kind of bird dog. They get along well.
I have no worries with my dogs at all. I have chicks in the house that sleep in a cage next to the dogs beds, they ignore the chicks. The dogs lay amongst the birds outside and ignore them. I did introduce them slowly to the birds when I got them and I did install the electronic brains on the dogs keeping them separate with a "electronic fence at first and warning beeps if they got too excited about them.
Now I try to make the dogs spend as much time with the chickens as they can to ward off other predators. I trust them completely. I leave them outside for hours at a time to protect the birds. They only way they can really be much protection is if the chickens stay on the deck. Lucky for me they do. I will have 20 chickens and 2 dogs on the deck, with turkeys on the rails. The only one really bothered by the birds on the deck is my wife...
BC It is getting pretty bad when I recognized Roger and your dog, before I saw who the post was from. I came to this post of the home page and did not even check the date on the original post. When I saw your old dog, I scrolled back to your name to see when you posted this thinking your post was a couple years old..
My dog and bird pictures...