Recently, my family and I have had two dog attacks. The first one happened about two months ago and was pretty nasty. Our hen got a bad bite on her side and was limping pretty badly. She's all healed up know, growing feathers, laying again and walking normally. Now just today, we had another attack. We heard something in the back yard so we went to look. A hen's feathers were all over the yard. She was limping and bleeding a bit from the feather loss. We have a fenced in backyard with chicken wire along the bottom of the fence to prevent hens from escaping. We do have dogs of our own, but they've never bothered our hens, not even once. We can allow them out alone with the hens. They were inside when this happened. My dad said he once saw a beagle dog attack the first hen. We live Indiana so we dog have Leash Laws. It was the same dog as the last time but we don't know who's dog it is or how violent it can be. Any idea what we can do to protect our hens further? Thanks x
Here we have a method called SSS, it stands for Shoot, Shovel, Shut up....it works 100% of the time, or you could live trap it....but be open to the possibility that it's something else either from the air or the ground that could be attacking, chicken wire is just meant to keep chickens in, not predators out.
Beagles are bred to hunt rabbits I believe, so they may have a higher prey drive. The first step would be to figure out how it's getting into your yard. Maybe there's a hole or loose spot in the fence? In the mean time, you may want to consider building a run for your birds if you don't already have one to keep them a bit safer until you can secure your yard better.
Assume not even a dog unless you see attacker in action. Bird getting away indicates to me either inept dog or a fox getting interrupted. Confine birds until you get a better handle on situation. In the end, your placement of a proper dog exclosure rather than neighbors observance of leash law will have to apply.
I believe so. At first we thought hens were getting out and being attacked so we attached chicken wire to the fence so we could prevent them from escaping. If it happens again we're going to set traps up. We're working on building a bigger run at the moment. We've had chickens before but not this many so we have a smaller run. We've had a fox get into one of the runs and set traps. Hopefully non of our girls will get attacked again!