Dog and chicks

[Shane17]

I am trying to get my 2 year old lab used to the 1 month old chicks. And Vice verse. At some point they will need to co-exist outside. I honestly do not think my pup will intentionally hurt the chicks. The chicks have been out in the coop/run for about a week already full time. My dog is just a big baby and very play full and is so curious of the chicks. She chases then around the run area and sometimes will get in the run if I'm in there with them. So how do I go about getting them used to each other so the dog doesn't flip out and chase them around and bark at them. Any suggestions or advice???

 

[Othylocke]

I've been taking it slow. I have one dog that flips out whenever she gets close to my chicks and two others that just don't care about the chicks at all.

Basically I am trying to slowly acclimate the one dog slowly. A sniff here, a sniff there. One chick at a time and a ready hand to beat the dog senseless if it tries to bite a chick.

 

[DCasper]

I am doing the exact same thing with our lab. Every couple of days I sit down with one of my chicks and pet it while our dog watches. He seems to understand that when I am holding something that he isn't supposed to bother it. I love labs, but they love birds.

 

[heybarb]

I used my dogs favorite treats...Pupperoni...when he started walking close to the chicks, I called him over and gave him a treat. He cautiously approached the chicks again and I gave him another treat. Any positive behavior was rewarded with a treat. Within about 30 minutes he ate a lot of treats and knew exactly what I was asking him to do. Now he'll even lay down in the yard while the chicks are out and they'll walk all over him. One pecked his nose when he was sniffing around behind him. It really made me laugh.

 

[nickie]

Your dog first need to know the leave it command... In my case my dogs know leave it and MINE!

Never leave your dog unsupervised with your chicks or chickens unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their training surpasses their prey drive. It takes work, but it can happen.

For my dogs (2 pit bulls) I had to give the leave it and mine commands a total of 5 times and one got a swat on the snout 3 years ago when our first 2 ducklings came home. Now all of our animals hang in the yard all day with an occasional check up by me. Un fact, they all enjoy the same dirt pile when it is hot.

 

[greenbottle27]

A leave it command ... Now that's funny! Teach that to a greyhound ;-) my dogs sniff the brooder and stalk the chicks but the true test will be outside, together... I'm stressing already!

 

[Frost Homestead]

I did basically what everyone else says they've done. I spend a lot of time with the chicks around the dog, I let her get the idea that this chicken thing belongs to ME and that it's not a toy or something she can mess with. I've found it to be pretty effective, we have a big Golden Retriever and she lives out in the yard with my free range birds, I never worry about her, she could care less about them. She knows they're mine and she knows I'm the boss so messing with the chickens isn't something that would ever cross her doggy mind lol

 

[Tigertrea]

My Husky has a very good, solid "off" or "leave it" cue. She also has a decent "drop it". I will still never be leaving her and my chicken unattended together! Huskies are very prey driven though. I have had ones I believed would be OK with small animals but, even then they were never outside with any small animals. (In the house they were fine, outside was another story)

I agree, you need to work on it. Rewarding positive behaviour and first teaching a solid leave it is the way to go. It is a LOT of work, if you are persistent you may be able to trust them together at some point.

 

[Horse Love Rio]

Well, our first chicks did not go over so well with our dogs, but, I think they have realized that the chickens are part of the family

What we did is let the chickens out into our dog yard, then we put our dogs on a leash and walked around the yard with the chickens.
At first our lab thought they were chew toys, but after a while she settled down. We did that every day for about a weak, then we put
both our dogs on 10 foot leashes and left them out there alone while we watched through the window. The chickens didn't go near the dogs,
which was probibly a good thing. Pretty soon we were able to leave the dogs (still on the long leashes) out with the chickens without us watching.
When the chickens started coming over to the dogs and checking them out, we knew it was time for the next step. We let the dogs off the leash,
and... They did fine!!! The dogs and the chickens have been BFFs ever since!

 

[ChickaCheeka]

The first time I had chickens, my dog went nuts. He is a six year old, very intelligent german shepherd. He was so insanely jealous of them. He goes outside to his huge kennel during the day, and is inside with us in the evening and at night. We decided to use his old puppy crate for the chicks and put it off to the side in the kitchen. We figured with both the dog and the chicks in the house, Luka would get used to them. Luka would sit outside that crate and watch them all night long.

If I played with the chicks, he would yelp, squeak, do his Michael Jackson "Ow!" etc. When the chicks moved outside to their coop permanently, it was the first place he RAN to check when I let him out in the morning - dash around the pen, scare the daylights out of the chickens, then chase the squirrels etc. Leave it, drop it and No! worked for everything EXCEPT the chickens. I could never have them out together.