My dog is killing my CHICKENS!

[cassie]

Chickens and rabbits really bring out the prey drive in dogs. In your case the only thing you can do is to keep the chickens and the dog separate. The chances of you training the dog to leave the chickens alone are slim and none. Sorry.

 

[Things Yet to Be]

A lot of people will fight me on this, but I'm a big believer in genetics. And your's a Heeler mix. On top of that, you have not trained her to be somewhat tolerant of them. Locking her up with the dead chicken does absolutely nothing, not sure where you picked that training advice

Yup, I believe the general breed plays big in behavior... shes grown up around the birds tho. Thankfully, now I have a friend helping me train her on this level. She is very rowdy, but smart as a whip and I have trained her myself since I've adopted her, she knows about everything I can think of to throw at her! Always am proud of our progress.

 

[Things Yet to Be]

Chickens and rabbits really bring out the prey drive in dogs. In your case the only thing you can do is to keep the chickens and the dog separate. The chances of you training the dog to leave the chickens alone are slim and none. Sorry.

Well, it seems that way sometimes. They are separated of course ( don't think I would ever let my dog range with the birds, that's just asking for issues). The chickens fly out of their run, and (dog is in her kennel when I am busy) into the dog kennel, seems really dumb... That was my problem, was keeping them separated!

 

[lomine]

My dog killed a few of my ducks and chickens. It took time and training, but he hasn't hurt any in a couple years now, so it can be done. The leave it command is a lifesaver, literally.

In your case, it sounds like it's the chickens that are yeeting themselves into danger. Have you tried clipping the flight feathers are one of each of their wings to prevent them from being able to get high enough to get over the kennel? Or maybe putting a top on the kennel?

 

[SamCO]

My dogs are all trained on a shock collar in combination with positive reinforcement . Some might not agree with this method but it has worked well for us. The important thing is to teach the command “leave it”first. You can look up videos as to how to do this with treats. Make sure your dog knows what it means in many situations. And then you add in a shock to the leave it command. We started doing this when our first dog Was 99% reliable with recall and “leave it”command. We had her in the park one day fetching a ball and something caught her eye and she took off running. No matter how we called her she couldn’t be off of it. She ran across a busy road , a great distance from where we were. Luckily, she didn’t get hit as the car was driving slowly enough. After that, we decided to add in shock collar training. My dogs rarely get a shock, but it is still helpful to teach them things that they are NEVER to do (like chase chickens or cars.)

This is just an idea and obviously not for
Everyone. You have to really train yourself as the how to utilize an electronic collar. Otherwise it can become abuse and confuse your dog more. I trust both of my dogs 100% with my chickens, and leave them outside with the birds when they’re free ranging because the dogs still chase birds in the sky in addition to keeping out other animals from the yard. My dogs are a vizsla mix and a heeler/Aussie/ border collie mix.

 

[cassie]

A lot of people will fight me on this, but I'm a big believer in genetics. And your's a Heeler mix. On top of that, you have not trained her to be somewhat tolerant of them. Locking her up with the dead chicken does absolutely nothing, not sure where you picked that training advice

You are right about genetics. I once saw a striking example of this firsthand. The Borzoi is a sight hound. The breed was developed by crossing cold tolerant breeds with African sight hounds because the African dogs could not tolerate the Russian cold. The object was to develop a sight hound that could. The Borzoi was the result. Among the dogs that went into making up the Borzoi was the rough coated Collie. One day I was visiting a farm where the owners had a Borzoi. I was intrigued because the dog was colored exactly like a sable Collie. My mother bred collies when I was little. The dog was running around purposely, and as I watched it became clear exactly what he was doing. He rounded up and was herding a flock of chickens exactly like my collies would do. Apparently, it wasn't only the coat color that came through, but behavior as well.