Challenges of living in the woods with chickens

[ColoradoChicken89]

My LGD has never harmed anything she's supposed to be protecting. I think most breeds naturally protect anything they're raised around as a puppy. Perhaps it's a breed thing because LGD do come from several different families of dog. When I hear about the LGD murder-phase thing it's usually in regards to Great Pyrenees

Yeah it is the pyrenees I was looking into sadly. I would take some suggestions on other breeds though! TBH this will end up being a last case scenario though, cause I know no matter what they all take some decent training, and IDK if old me has it in me anymore

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Speiden Island is not in BC and not near Nanaimo so I got that muddled up but I am not finding much info on the effect these imported exotic animals had on the ecosystem. So I have gone on a dead-end birdwalk. Apologies to everyone!

 

[Carontheroad]

It's an open grassy flat area near the dry riverbed. Which is like... a large underground river underneath that pumps like millions of gallons of water a second down the mountain, but on top it's just a dry riverbed (unless we get enough rain but the banks are high). It does slightly trickle on the top in certain spaces, which is why we see so many differnet animals, it's a watering spot for many.

It's probably about an acre or two of grassland in front of the house, then behind the house is just straight up a mountain cliff (so woods). Then off to the side of the house (it's a 43 acre property) it's mostly just woods, but a few little flatter grassy areas that peak out around the riverbed as natural flood areas (though the banks are tlal enough its never actually flood much).

It's got a decent little aspen grove on it, and some really tall pine trees... a few sparse bushes... but it's more just a really large open field for awhile. Then our woods don't really have many bushes or things to hide in. A few wild rasberry bushes, but htye are like 6 pathetic twigs. A few juniper bushes, but those grow too low too the ground to get in. It's mostly just really tall pine trees blocking out the sun to the forest floor.

The chickens were red and brown ones (idk what breed), some peacocks (about 8 both male/female), and some black with white spots ginea fowl. So tbh they were decently easy to spot (maybe not the chickens as much, but they were the last to go). They picked them off slowly though. Like 1 or 2 every other week during certian seasons (like mating season or when they had young).

Hmmm, I wonder if the chickens hung out in the open pasture or the straight up mountain woods?

Doesn’t sound like chicken color was a factor since they all got taken in the end and the colours were varied.

Our woods here in the Pacific northwest is kind of like that too, not alot of groundcover. Just really tall mostly pine trees (where I live there is also alot of Arbutus which is my favorite tree). The forest floor is pine needles and roots. Some oregan grape for low ground cover. Some other stuff as well but I’m no botanist. I’m talking the woods on my property. In the other woods there is a bit more ground cover, just depends if people have been tramping through there or not.

I’m trying to get a sense of why some woods work for people and others end in catastrophe. I think as much information as possible about the two scenarios might start to highlight or pinpoint what creates success and what creates failure. In your neighbors case, it could be that the chickens hung out in the open too much, or weren’t feral enough to have some survivor instincts, or that the terrain was not too accomodating for hiding. Probably a little of all 3 as it’s never just one thing.