Dog+Chicken=?

[Akane]

Certain breeds tend towards certain personalities so it does become somewhat breed dependent. You will have exceptions to every breed standard but a hunting dog is a hunting dog and a livestock guardian is a livestock guardian both for their own reasons.

50 chickens is just more fun to kill than 1. They also do this cool scattering thing with much flapping that is so exciting. My larger dog would probably be able to withstand 1 chicken easier than 50. Lots of flapping things running from her gets very tempting to flatten in to the ground. 1 flapping thing is less exciting and easier to resist. She also only bothers the guinea fowl if she gets out of the dog yard when no one is watching. The smaller dog being bred to kill smaller game can't resist any number of chickens very well. If she escaped or was left without supervision there would probably be a mass chicken slaughter that involved anything that didn't make it to the highest roost or on top of a building.

The most chickens I lost was to a miniature pinscher who wasn't even big enough to do a clean kill on my standards. It still did enough damage and didn't care how many there were. More than a dozen chickens lost their lives that day before I realized it was out there. The neighbor's aussie shep likes to follow my big rooster around but doesn't appear to have any intent to harm. She just jogs along behind him where ever he goes while he freaks out. Cats harming chickens is rare unless we are talking about chicks. We have lots of cats around and only 1 extra large feral has given us problems.

 

[gryeyes]

Dog + Chicken = heartache. At least in my case... my elderly miniature dachshund, never having seen chickens before, turned into a chicken killer. My other, younger dachshund likes to sniff them through the run fence, but is neither barky nor obsessed with them, as is the older one.

In any case, as I love them all (chickens, cats, dogs), I must just closely supervise those dogs when they're outside, plus make awful danged sure there are no loose spots in the fencing for the dogs to get to the chickens.

One of the pullets faces off the Killer Dog (his name is Zorro) through the fence, and I keep hoping she will peck his nose HARD. He pulls back in time, though.

The chickens are as fascinated by the cats as are the cats with them. More so, actually.... the cats only seem to watch the chickens when they're in their "laying in the sun" mode. Something to watch. Otherwise, no big deal.

 

[pacetruckguy]

I have to chime in on this one. I have three pugs and a boston terrier. I keep them away from the chickens. I don't think the pugs would have anything to do with the chickens, but the boston terrier can't wait to get at them, and I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty. Now my mother and father-in-law that share a large duplex "sort of" with my wife and I have a pit bull. She roams the yard and terrorizes the four cats we have. When I first put the chickens in she was quite interested, but after a while she ignors them totally. The chickens aren't free range, but they now roam a large fenced in area, that if the pit bull wanted into she would have no problem. So far so good. We used to have some free range guinee hens and the pit didn't bother them at all. I would have to agree that it is more about individual personality, than breed. Bottom line, unless you have a real sweetheart of a dog that's very passive, keep the dogs and the chickens seperated.