Yes... but... you >>>>CAN<<<< fault other people for letting their dogs run loose to terrorize other people's pets and livestock at will, especially those that have been caught doing it previously. Anyone who thinks their dog won't return to a farm where they had fun chasing and killing a chicken (or a cat or a sheep or a calf... etc) and do the same thing again is fooling themselves. It's not the dog's fault (it's just instinct), it's the owners fault. People need to take responsibility for the actions/outcomes of their dogs' behavior if they are allowed to go off their property unsupervised. And while it might seem "silly" to shoot a dog over *a* chicken, you have to consider that rarely just one chicken is killed but more often it's several, sometimes an entire flock decimated, and what are the chances that the owner will handle the dog any differently in the future? Consider the "going rate" here locally for a young laying hen or one about to lay, which is around $12-15 depending on the breed.
I have rarely had a dog kill only one chicken.
And, even though I have never had super expensive chickens, and I guess the going rate for chickens might be the $12-$15 you quoted.....
But, a dog climbed over my fence, jumped through my netting, pushed its way through a small chicken pop door, and killed over thirty chickens. All of my chickens. In Late January.
I spent at the most, maybe $40 a month on feed, but I had eggs that I gave to various fixed income people...as well as the over a dozen eggs a day that my growing boys would eat.
And the little pet bantams that my kids adored.
Now....we eat so few eggs....they are over $4 for 18 (I think that is what it was).
I had to wait until April to buy more chicks (way too cold before that), and now I have a bunch of chicks, in breeds I didn't really want (because ordering chicks in late January for an early spring delivery means that most are sold out), that still aren't laying.
I might get some eggs this fall...but often, because of my MAJOR daylight changes, I often don't get any eggs from pullets until January. Interestingly, my hens do lay all through the fall, it is just the little pullers that have trouble adjusting.
So....one dog that was allowed to roam about as it willed....that visited my coop in the fall and killed three hens, that then returned in January to kill every single one of them, and I probably will have no eggs for an entire year, the low fixed income people will also have no eggs.
The amount of money I have lost is way greater than $12-$15 per hen. And where I am, I couldn't have bought replacement hens locally, would have had to ship them.
While I completely understand the need to spend multiple thousands of dollars in good fencing to protect a few $3 a chick chickens, it also makes me furious. My property wasn't free. I paid good money so that I would own this land. To have someone else's pets come onto my property, poop all over, and break into my coop to kill my chickens, makes me very angry.
I can slightly see free roaming chickens as an "attractive nuisance" that might entice a normally well behaved dog into trespassing and slaughter.
But, for a dog to rip apart fencing, bite at it and yank so that the wire welds pop apart, for a dog to repeatedly jump up against a coop door trying to get it to open, etc etc
People who think that their dog should have the right to roam free, as it wishes, wherever it pleases, and whenever it pleases....
Well, it is so understandable that dogs are a very inflammatory topic on a chicken site.
I could understand it better, and be happier about it, if I needed the super strong double layer fence, all roofed with strong wire or solid roof, and multiple strands of electric, if I needed that to keep out the bears..... But a domestic animal, that has an owner.....
Obviously I am ranting..... Sorry, I am just still so very very upset over the entire thing.
