Plan on taking time, as in months, at least!
Here we have about 1/2 acre fenced for the dogs, out the back door of the house. Serious fencing, after one of our adult rescues ignored the Invisible fence if chickens were available. He was the eighth dog we had on the IF system, and our first failure. We added 4' horse fencing, with electric tape above, and the IF about 3' inside the physical fence. Worked great, until a couple of years ago, when the 'mother board' failed, and a newer rescue dog dug under and killed MANY chickens! The IF was redone, and all is well since.
Our birds usually can range anywhere except inside the back yard fencing, although there are occasional losses to other predators.
This spring everyone is inside because of the avian influenza.
My chickens went right through two strands of hot wire last summer to get into the vegetable garden...
Electrified poultry netting works well, although we don't have a place to set it up effectively here. That might work to keep your birds and dogs apart.
Mary
). The company that installed our fence had a guarantee and came out to re-train him. They also turned up the intensity of the correction a bit. He hasn’t gone through since. The main issue is he seemed to have figured out that if he musters up the courage and blasts far enough through, it stops shocking. So if he starts going through again, we’re going to look into a system that will continue correcting him until he gets back in the yard. The smaller dog (who is the one with a higher prey drive that I worry about more) is TERRIFIED of getting a correction. He stays as far as possible away from the boundary and the few times my husband has carried him across without it his collar so we could take them for a walk to the pond, he bolted back into the yard. We had to get out of eyesight of the house before he finally stopped trying to get back to the yard. I just need a way to keep the chickens from getting into the dog space.
