Dog attack ....please school me

[ashyndin]

I know this is a a popular post title but it happen to me tonight. I was out at the movies (star trek, yeah go see it, greatness) and my father sent me a message. it read "tobi in coop, one chick down pulled youngest goose from his mouth. goose seems to be ok chick wont make it." ok so i get home after the movie and expect to see a wounded goose and a dead chick. the chick is a 10 week old dom cross. she (i think she) is laying down on the floor of the run and 14 chickens and 3 geese are piled on top of her like they are trying to hatch her. i pull her out and she is alert as can be so i remove her from the coop and bring her in. she wont stand up all she does is make a sound like a little chick. I went and inspected the geese they are fine and annoyed that i disturbed them, they are 4 weeks 5 weeks and 6 weeks. when i got back to the chick my instinct was to put it into the brooder for the night. My logic here was that when i had quail if there was a weak or sick one it was dead, they pecked it to death, i didnt want that to happen. but my brooder is occupied by 34 6 day old RIR chicks atm. my fear then turned to if this 10 week old dom gets better over night will it kill my chicks, so i decided to take it down to the elevated closed in coop that the chickens dont seem to like. i stacked hay in a nesting box and laid the chick in it. the dom kept her legs stretched out and laid on its side. i felt bad that she was all alone but i thought 14 was a little to much of a crowd. i went into the coop and grabbed two of the other doms and took them to the nesting box as well. at first they were not happy so unhappy in fact that the hurt one got up and tried to run a little bit. after about 5 mins they settled down and all three snuggled up together. i placed a feeder at the mouth of the box and sprinkled some food near them as well.
i am a novice at this. i have had these chicks for 6 weeks now. 10 dom crosses ,5 RIR's, 3 geese and 1 turkey with 0 deaths so far. i gave a pretty annoying play by play there, what did i do wrong besides to much detail? school me so when and if (wont be tobi, that dog may see craigslist tomorrow or the end of a rifle..kidding about the rifle, maybe) this happens again i have a plan of action.

 

[pichuris]

I'm sorry this happened to you. And most chicken owners go through this unfortunately.
#1 - predator proof
#2 - all predators (dogs, cats, etc.) need to be supervised and trained to not harm chickens

I've been lucky 4 dogs later all I had to do was tie them to my belt while feeding, cleaning and doing anything with the chickens. At first very excited to sniff & be around the chickens and then it got boring to them. When I saw my dogs not react much to being pecked by a chicken, meaning they didn't try to bite the chicken that pecked them. And when they didn't even bat en eyelash towards one they would be let off leash. But still very much supervised and monitored at all times. Then I would leave them alone for 5 minutes but hiding and watching. Increasing the time little by little. However, I still don't leave the chickens out when I will be longer then 2 hours.

The cat well I didn't really do anything. She just knows that mice are ok to kill but not chicks or chickens.

Good luck.