sawilliams
Songster
Sorry I'm not really sure where to post this. We came home from a hike this afternoon (gone for about 6 hours) to find my barred rock dead by our dogs pool. The chickens free range and regularly are in the dogs area or drinking from the pool. Daisy is a blood hound mix about 4 years old on about a 20 foot aerial run line and great with the chickens expect that she eats eggs and wont share her dinner. Anyways back to the barred, she had issues a short while back that I though we would lose her, and she hadn't laid an egg in at least a few months that I could confirm, suffered a minor limp that was only occasional that I couldn't confirm a cuase or injury. I suspect the limp was possibly related to what ever had her acting oddly before. Symptoms before she slow moving hiding away from others and sleeping under the coop, nothing ever seemed deffinatly wrong and she was eating and drinking, eventually she recovered started roaming with the flock again and sleeping in the coop again. Just had that occasional limp and no confirmed eggs.
So when I found her, it was actually becuase of my dog that i noticed her. The daisy was acting odd about what looked like a rock about 3 feet from her pool (about a 3x5 water trough). I realized there isn't supposed to be a rock there so I went to check and saw it was the barred rock. She had clear been licked and Daisy seemed clearly distressed about the chicken. So I pick up the chicken and moved it away from the run area for further examination. I could not find any bite or injury marking but I noticed all the feathers seemed damp, and not like dog licking damp but like stood in the rain damp, or I guess in my case probably fell in the pool damp.
I mean I'm very proud of my dog for having a chicken dead in her area for an unknown amount of time and not trying to eat it. But I guess right now I can only assume the chicken was getting water from the pool, rather then walking back down to the coop, fell in the pool, managed to get back out, but soaking wet and probably having submerged dry drowned there by the pool, where my blood hound tried to revive her by licking her back to health. Funny thing is Daisy loved that chicken, she could care less about most of the others but she always wanted to smell the barreds butt. She would walk though the crowd of hens just to try to get a sniff of the barred.
Anyways I did a quick head count and all others seem accounted for.
Now to figure out how and where to place water containers so the chickens arent as tempted to drink from the pool. We plan to re-fence the back yard to make it dog safe to get her off the lead and hopefully reduce the flow of chickens, they would still have access to the front yard and most of thier shade spots. The fencing right now is 3ft vinyl with horizontal beams which daisy can easily get out of and she doesn't understand her boundaries. It's all a work in progress.
So when I found her, it was actually becuase of my dog that i noticed her. The daisy was acting odd about what looked like a rock about 3 feet from her pool (about a 3x5 water trough). I realized there isn't supposed to be a rock there so I went to check and saw it was the barred rock. She had clear been licked and Daisy seemed clearly distressed about the chicken. So I pick up the chicken and moved it away from the run area for further examination. I could not find any bite or injury marking but I noticed all the feathers seemed damp, and not like dog licking damp but like stood in the rain damp, or I guess in my case probably fell in the pool damp.
I mean I'm very proud of my dog for having a chicken dead in her area for an unknown amount of time and not trying to eat it. But I guess right now I can only assume the chicken was getting water from the pool, rather then walking back down to the coop, fell in the pool, managed to get back out, but soaking wet and probably having submerged dry drowned there by the pool, where my blood hound tried to revive her by licking her back to health. Funny thing is Daisy loved that chicken, she could care less about most of the others but she always wanted to smell the barreds butt. She would walk though the crowd of hens just to try to get a sniff of the barred.
Anyways I did a quick head count and all others seem accounted for.
Now to figure out how and where to place water containers so the chickens arent as tempted to drink from the pool. We plan to re-fence the back yard to make it dog safe to get her off the lead and hopefully reduce the flow of chickens, they would still have access to the front yard and most of thier shade spots. The fencing right now is 3ft vinyl with horizontal beams which daisy can easily get out of and she doesn't understand her boundaries. It's all a work in progress.
