Training a poultry gaurd dog.

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furbabymum

furbabymum

Songster
7 Years
May 6, 2012
1,336
79
188
Burns, Wyoming
We have a 3 year old Great Pyr. He's an excellent house gaurd dog. I'd like to be able to let him in with the poultry (we have had an influx of feral cats). Lately I've been taking him, leashed, into the coop and run while I do my chores in there. He's done well. I've held ducks and chickens and he's sniffed but shown no other interest. My concern is that they go nuts and run every direction making as much noise as possible. I can tell he's just dying to chase them when they do this. I'm not sure if he'd kill them once he caught them or not. I do know that a duckling was trying to run away and got itself crammed under the fence. Jiki was chained to the fence and could have easily grabbed and eaten the trapped duckling. He just sniffed it and went about watching the other poultry run around like maniacs. He has caught and eaten rabbits so I know he is capable of killing things if he should decide to.

How did you train your dogs to tolerate the crazy chicken ways?
 
The dog will be more of a threat to the birds than the feral cats.

Cats RARELY bother anything other than small chicks

As for a mountain lion, if the dog is "guarding the house", how will he stop anything?

A Mountain Lion is STILL a cat, and unless starving, will avoid areas where they dectect dogs
 
I feel you on that, with already having dogs prior to chickens. My small dog has no problem being inside the fowl yard, he is smaller than my ducks so he is very mellow with them. My other dog is a mid sized American Eskimo she is a great watch dog, however she goes nuts over birds & any other small animal. Because of not being able to trust her, I will only keep them near the fowl yard. So far this method has been excellent, I also set up a flood light that will turn on when I open my window. I hope you have success with your dog. When it comes time for a new dog I will be working on it being chicken friendly!


@Bear foot farm - I have one of those cats! He's a beast, birds are his favorite thing, luckily it's mostly wild birds, although he did get one of my chicken's when it was a few weeks old. Same as the dogs, great watch cat & will fight off other animals, but given the chance he'd go after them himself!
 
Bear Foot Farm said:
The dog will be more of a threat to the birds than the feral cats.

Cats RARELY bother anything other than small chicks

As for a mountain lion, if the dog is "guarding the house", how will he stop anything?

A Mountain Lion is STILL a cat, and unless starving, will avoid areas where they dectect dogs
Click to expand...
Since the moutain lion has thus far killed a goat and a horse close to our house I'm not sure dogs are a deterrent for it. The fires have killed a lot of the usual prey and pushed them into new territory so who knows what it is capable of.

I'm not sure about your house gaurding comment. We have 4 dogs total. 3 of them stay outside and the GP stays in the house. He could easliy be moved to the barn for gaurd duty.

We never had cats on our property till we got chickens. Thus far our dogs have caught and killed 2 and chased away several others. I believe they are a threat.
 
nzpouter said:
when I train mine, the one thing I never do is pick up a chicken and let the dog sniff it.
Click to expand...
Why?? I was interested in his reaction to the birds so I caught various ones and had them crawling all over him. He was fine. I did have him in there with me loose yesterday. He was sitting all pretty until they started freaking out. He then dived into the fray. He stopped when ordered. Didn't kill anything but certainly chased them a bit.
 
I don't think you necessarily messed up. My dogs are extremely trustworthy around my chickens and it started with me letting them sniff them as little chicks (me holding the chicks). Lots of training was also involved of course. I think it was the start of them (the dogs) learning that these animals were part of the pack...
hu.gif
 

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