- Apr 7, 2022
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That's really fascinating! I'm in the thick of training a livestock guardian dog. Her name is Nora, named after a Warrior princess that won her battle against many men where she was outnumbered but still prevailed. I liked the meaning behind it. She has not been so easy to train though. I got her last winter so she is right at a year now and has killed numerous birds here. Two bantam cochins that escaped their coop and landed into her electric fence run at the time, and another separate incident where something opened the door to a grow out coop I had 2 month old Andalusian grow outs in. We were not at home and she killed about eight of them that had wandered into her tie out area. Both of those incidents happened within a short time. When she was about 6-9 months old. She is still very much a "puppy" and hasn't quite earned full trust back yet but we are definitely getting there. Adult birds and chicks are actually two separate animals to the mind of a dog so extensively training for both chicks and adults is necessary for most dogs. Reason is because they each make totally different noises and move differently.Josie the border collie I got as a puppy while we still lived in town.
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When she was about a year and a half old, we moved out to the country (8 or so years ago.) Then we got 3 chickens donated to us. She took over the job immediately of protecting them. We had no coop so they got moved to the garage every day until it was built.
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Momma hen with a few chicks under her. She saw one of our cats eyeballing them.
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If you forget your shoes in the yard, she'll guard those too.
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When Maggie the Corgi came along a few years ago, she wanted to "play" with the chickens. She would go toe to two with a broody hen that was outdoors and had so much fun being attacked but never hurt it; just played cat and mouse with it. Other than that, same as Josie, just keeping an eye out. She followed Josie's lead in patrolling the tree line and keeping predators from our yard.
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Oddly enough, both of these dogs are considered herding dogs, and neither will help herd the chickens when they travel too far or need to be moved to a new coop.They'll watch though!
I know all Border Collies and Corgis don't automatically become great poultry protection dogs, but we didn't have to teach either one of these anything. I think a few minutes of each seeing how we treat the chickens, hold them, hug them, talk to them, etc., they knew they were to be protected.
Two different neighbors have had their peacocks and turkeys come here. They seem to know the difference and won't chase them, yet when the flock of wild turkeys landed behind our coop, they knew those didn't belong and chased them off.
We also had a stray Border Collie show up on our property that I tried to locate a family for but was unsuccessful. I had originally intended to only foster him until I found his previous family or found a more appropriate home for him. He is also a chicken murderer. I am unsure of his age, I suspect he is probably about 2-3 yrs old now. I have lots of dogs here actually. All are stock safe now (except for a few I'm training now) Even ones that had injured or killed birds in their puppy days are now are totally stock safe. I have a rat terrier Chihuahua mix named Molly-that was one of the ones that people said to give up on because "once they kill stock it's over". That is actually a very untrue statement that too many believe, unfortunately. I trained molly to do rodent control before we got Nora. Molly now lives full time with the chickens and even sleeps with them cuddled up to her. It's really amazing to watch, especially knowing her past.
Buddy, the Border collie is fascinating. The personality on him is really one of a kind. I had never had border collies before and now absolutely adore the breed. He is so smart, and affectionate, and dramatic. I will be really glad when I'm done with his behavior rehabilitation and training.
Herding instincts come in different levels for herding breeds. Some take to it naturally and need little guidance while others do not and have to be trained extensively. I purchased Indian runner ducks exactly for the purpose of teaching a couple of our dogs, including Buddy, to herd poultry and goats. That breed of duck is used because they can't fly and they naturally stay in a circular group when moved around, which makes herding them much easier. Chickens have a tendency to bust up and fly away which can be a really difficult behavior to work around especially with young dogs that are inclined to chase and or grab. I'm working on getting all the foundational stuff down pat before I introduce the ducks to Buddy, though. He is pretty good at down, sit, stay, left and right in circular motions (which internationally are supposed to be "come by" and "away to me" I was having a really hard time remembering the commands in my head so I decided to use "go left/right" instead
) But I've also trained several commands that have nothing to do with herding too. I've heard though that the herding instinct actually drives the dog to go at the stock in a killing manner. It's the handler that trains the "stop" and teaches the dog to move them instead of kill them. Which makes sense to me. We have a miniature schnauzer, which is also a herding breed, and I can see a lot of the natural instincts in her behavior around my birds. She would definitely hurt them if allowed to. She is so small but "stalks" and "eyes" them as well as does the classic circular movements around them. So far I think she has been my easiest dog to train the stop on though.
I really love working with the dogs. It's amazing to watch a dog fulfill an instinct it was breed to do, especially when you can tell they just live for it. Beautiful to watch really.
