dogs and chickens

[anubisnut]

Tyson is so cute! He looks like he's sleeping in every picture, lol! What breed(s) is he?

I totally agree, such a wonderful dog! What breed? Pit mix?

 

[anubisnut]

With our two Belgian Sheepdogs we started out showing the eleven year old male the chicks in the incubator box. He was only mildly interested. Later when the chicks were older, and the box moved to the inside of their first coop, the chicks got use to the noise of the dogs going in and out of the house barking. Once when the chicks were out of the box and loose in the coop they didn't seem to mind the dog noise. Now they are quite content to be with the dogs on the lawn. They pay little attention to each other.
Our fifteen year old female does not like anything in her face, snarled at one of the RR that got to close, she lost a feather, no damage, lesson learned.


I've got a GS pup and far to young in the play stage to not chase. How old were both your dogs when they were first introduced to the chickens?

 

[nicolemac]

My dog is fantastic with the chickens. Apart from food pinching, which they do to each other, they get along just fine. I think it's because my dog was introduced when the hens were just 1 week old. On the first day they were put in the brooder, he stayed beside it all day, like a doting mother hen, peeking behind the curtains every 5 minutes when he heard a cheep, bless him.

I'm never worried about him hurting them, ever. He has had rabbits and hamsters and even children crawl around on top of him and pull his tail and chase him round till his feet hurt. But he is such a compassionate dog, he's never once growled or even bared his teeth. Border Collies are known for their intelligence though..

Nowadays, he stays out in the garden with them and acts as a cat and predator bird deterant. It's great! I don't have to worry if i leave them free roaming in the garden for an hour or two. Cuilean is the perfect protector for my chooks and his reward is sharing porridge with them in the morning.

Aww, I mean, come on, does this look like a killer to you?

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[heybarb]

Our dog, Reo, just likes to clean up after our chickens. He spends all day outside, unsupervised, with our chickens. He is not much of a guard dog (we've lost a few to hawks), but he sure does like to follow them around and clean up after them!

 

[anubisnut]

Mannn, everyones' dogs are super! I wish mine was out of her puppy stage and calmer.

 

[tcmstalcup]

My mini aussie walked in the coop and an older hen flogged him and he ran out. He shook it off and made another go at it with the same result. Now he is very cautious of chickens and is perfectl
y safe around them supervised or not. Occasionally he tries to herd them in the yard with not so positive results.

 

[areilly143]

Any advice on training my dog not to eat the chickens? I have two purebred Siberian huskys. The male (jack) is 2yrs old and the female (zoey) is 7weeks old. Jack likes to pee on them and chase them and zoey thinks they are play toys. The girls retaliate and peck at them but it doesn't help much. Any ideas?

 

[Joe.G]

Here is a link with my Rotties and there chickens. I have found little chickens in there mouth before but they were just carrying them around, no harm or injury just a tad wet.

My Dog's eat whole raw chickens, but they are ones that I buy or butcher for them, they don't kill the pet's.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/646049/my-rotties-first-time-meeting-3-week-old-chicks

 

[DeepFriedBacon]

Glad I found this thread! Only had chickens a few months, but I have 2 older dogs, a mutt that looks like a pit/lab/rot mix, and a boxer.

They appear so far to just want to sniff, they have been fine with every other animal(cats,other dogs,lizard) the mutt just wants to smell whatever it is, then after a good sniff, doesn't seem to care anymore. Only problem is the chickens don't wanna let her get that sniff in. Both dogs will just stand there when we're out together but I have to keep telling the boxer to stay. One chicken got a lil close and he went to sniff, chicken freaked out and ran flapping, and he kinda chased her a bit. Soon as I yelled he stopped.

So obviously not letting them roam when not around, but I do have a question, would it be wrong of me to put a sock over the chickens head for a minute to let my dogs get their exploratory sniff in while I hold the chicken?

The boxer finds toads and "carries" them around the yard. Kind of prances a bit, like" I found a friend" and has never actually harmed a toad(aside from the mental anguish of course).

My mutt would pick up kittens when we had them and place them next to her, and would even growl at momma kitty when she caame to get her kid back...
It's more the flight aspect of the chickens that I worry might get the dogs to chase and accidentally harm them. Boxers use their paws for everything(hence the name) and while he wouldn't hurt a fly, he will smack things, so I don't want the chickens to immediately scurry when he comes close to them.

 

[ChickensRDinos]

I have a 4 dogs and all of them get along just fine with my 6 chickens. They act like they don't exist and are completely uninteresting. It certainly did not start out that way. You really need to make sure you have good basic training down first and work a lot on impulse control overall. If you want some training tips, feel free to PM me and I can send you a whole long thing. I firmly believe you can train any dog to be fine around your other animals, even if they have killed a bird in the past. It just takes a time commitment and a dedication to work on training EVERY day until it the dog has it completely down.

This is my pit mix Lou (who is a rescue from an urban shelter and had never seen grass before I brought her home)