Dogs more important than Chickens?

[AGeese]

I recently had an issue come up that got me thinking. I had a few dogs attack my chickens and I contacted the owner within my neighborhood chat.

My two cents worth.

If this was a public post you just put them on the spot. I wouldn't engage in this forum.

A few people have made comments like: “a dog is my child” and “a dog is more important than your chickens”

That's relative to the owner.

“If you would shoot a dog, I hope you wouldn’t shoot a child”

It's understandable, but for some people chickens are too. Question is why are they letting their child loose to terrorize/maim/kill other people's children?

I don’t agree that a dog is the equivalent to a child. They are animals.

You're entitled to that opinion too. Why I would have never engaged on the public forum (if that's what you did)

Do you all believe it’s acceptable to protect your chickens against all predators? (Including someone’s dog)

It is acceptable. However consider if this was something you could have prevented, and without termination. A dog usually has an owner, but at the same time if you have no other options to stop and act in progress deadly force is an option.

Force is a reaction to protect your birds from eminient harm as opposed to sighting the dog on your property and immediately resorting to force. Their opinion is irrelevant when their dog is on your property killing your birds.

The law states I can kill a dog attacking my chickens. Hopefully, more people can be aware of this issue so they can protect their own animals.

Ours does too. If you have a neighborhood watch maybe invite the local authorities to a meeting for clarification.

We ended up putting up an electric fence.

 

[TOMTE]

I've only had trouble with free running dogs being aggressive once, the second time they weren't the aggressors.

I've had one show up here at the new place and he left at a high rate of speed after my dogs explained he wasn't welcome.

Had a neighbor who couldn't understand why his German Shepards, Huskies, or Wolf crosses weren't allowed to play with the neighbors cattle as they wanted to.

If you value your dogs keep them under your control.

Accidents happen where dogs who are otherwise kept contained get out and get into trouble. Humans aren't infallible. But people who let their dogs free roam are inviting trouble. Especially if those dogs are prey driven! Huskies, German shepherds, and wolf mixes? Seriously?! That's not acceptable.

 

[McChooky]

I personally do believe it's acceptable to protect my birds against all predators. If someone's irresponsible enough with their dog that it escapes and attacks my chickens, how can they compare it to a child? No one would be that irresponsible with a child and children are a lot more capable of learning and growing anyway.
Dogs are animals just like chickens, but dogs are predators and ought to be treated as such because they can harm people including children, and other animals.
My chickens are my pets and my livestock and they're immeasureably valuable to me because of all the work I've put in with them. Some are more pet than other.
So yeah if someone's dog came after my birds I would do what I had to do.

A dogs life doesn't have any inherent value- though with that said, all of life is deserving of compassion when possible

A good livestock guardian dog guards livestock. A good guard dog guards humans. A bad dog roams on impulse and attacks people, children, pets and livestock

A good dog may be worth it's weight in gold. A bad dog that attacks and kills at random is better off dead

Any dog that busts through my large fence covered by barbed wire is a bad dog. A good dog wouldn't shred itself to get on my land

Regards- someone who lives in a popular dog dumping location

We don't have a pound(only a no kill shelter with limited spots)so chances are if one shows up here its a stray .It hurts my heart to think about shooting a dog but its my duty to protect my chickens.

 

[Seaslug]

I’m guessing the dispatching of any other animal that caused death or injury to another(got that first taste of blood) would be acceptable as long as that thinking doesn’t extend to the glorious, all important dog.

I've had a mink get into my run and kill 4 of my 6 chickens at that time. I relocated the survivors and caught the mink -- on camera coming back the next night. I did not dispatch the mink, did not move it, just verified what I was dealing with. Then I made my run more secure. If the comment about the "glorious, all important dog" is directed at me, sorry. I mean it when I say I do not believe killing improves the situation.

And please, no not think that my position must be because I have never lost a chicken to a dog. My neighbor's dog, newly adopted from a shelter, killed one of my chickens just this year. They have always left their dog loose on their property and it was not an issue with their previous dog. At the time, our chickens were loose on our property. Now that we are both aware that this is a possibility, we both take precautions to make sure it can not happen again.

My great aunt informs my position on this. She was a young Russian ballet dancer at the start of WWII. During Nazi occupation she was captured and forced to entertain for the Nazis before being detained in a camp. She would talk about the Nazis using German Shepherds to attack her. She met her husband, my father's uncle, when he liberated their camp, and they married and moved back to his hometown. And she owned German Shepherds all her life; provided them with a wonderful home.

There are many wonderful things about Veronica, my great aunt; that is only one of them. But it informs my philosophy about loosing my chickens to predators. Losing my chickens is hard and I do not want to perpetuate the death as I do not believe that anything is gained by it.

Now, I only came back to this post last time because a member had a specific question for me. I am not telling anyone to do anything. I hope no one thinks that I have defamed their position; it is not my intent. I realize that I am in the minority here. I was simply explaining my thought process to someone who explicitly asked me to do so.

 

[saysfaa]

Thank you for explaining further, Seaslug.

 

[saysfaa]

My take on it...

I've been thinking about this off and on, between the other things going on in real life here. Both what I think (and why) and whether to try to explain anything. I think I will try.

My background is growing up on a dairy farm in a time and place that did not have much predator problem that could threaten the cattle. Most of the time, we didn't have livestock that were more vulnerable than cattle. Most of our neighbors had cattle, horses, or pigs but nothing more vulnerable. A few had small flocks of chickens or geese. One or two percent had sheep or goats. Those who didn't have livestock had had some in the past and had family that did.

We, like most, had a farm dog or a couple of them. Ours, like most, were more for companionship than as working dogs except "working" as in alerting us when the dog noticed something was unusual.

My dad went for a gun whenever he saw a stray dog. I don't recall him ever firing it. Nearly always, we knew whose dog it was by sight, called the people, and they came for the dog before any damage was done. We usually didn't catch the dog because we usually knew about them before they started causing damage, couldn't catch them when we tried, and knew the people were on the way.

If the people were not on the way when someone let them know, there had better be a good reason if they wanted good standing in the community. Same if they had to be called very often.

Times have changed. I think people don't care as much about good standing in the community. Or maybe it is that "community" no longer means all the people of the small area near where one lives. It is more likely to mean only a small percentage of the people living close by plus people living further away.

 

[saysfaa]

Dogs that were friendly and pettable with their people around were usually not willing to let strangers close enough to catch them when they were roaming. Or to come to a stranger calling them even when the stranger knew their name.

Dogs that never chase livestock at home often will chase when they are not home. Dogs do not generalize very well. That is why people need to teach obedience and manners in many places, times, and situations. Otherwise, you can end up with a dog that sits beautifully when asked - as long as it is in your living room in the evening.

I think many people do not realize how different their dog acts when it is not with them and not home.

 

[saysfaa]

I loved dogs (still do) and worried my dad would shoot. He explained how much damage a dog can do by disturbing the cattle. He talked about the concepts and told of what had actually happened to him - more than once.

There can be some damage just from the stress of a strange dog around them. Besides that, things can escalate very quickly - the cattle alert, that triggers prey drive (stalking if not chasing) in most dogs (more on that later). Stalking stresses the cattle more even if the dog hasn't started chasing yet. If the cattle start running, there is overheating, injuries from stampeding through fences, crops, and equipment. Also, damage to the fences and etc. The more escalated things get, the harder it is to stop them.

Among the examples he gave, was no mention of the flock of sheep he'd had as a boy. He never did tell that. He would not let us get any sheep (we had at least a couple of almost every other species of livestock at one time or another). He would never say why. Eventually, when I was a teenager, my grandpa told me to stop asking my dad. Grandpa told me a dog or dogs had played with them ("played" because nothing was eaten). It had killed some by ripping them open, some were ripped open and left mortally wounded but not dead yet, some were ripped open by running into the fence or trees, some were dead without visible injuries. They were scattered across the pasture - obviously, from the tracks and locations of the sheep, they had been terrorized for a long time. Grandpa and Dad tried to save the ones that weren't dead. None of them survived.

Grandpa said it was the first flock or herd of anything that was Dad's own and Dad had had them several years. Grandpa never had sheep again either. And never talked about it before that or after that as far as I am aware.

* more on prey drive...
This term has a specific narrow meaning, I think, at least in dog rescue circles. I'm using it in a broader sense. There are a series of parts to the instinct of hunting in dogs. It may be easiest to see in which parts are exaggerated in the various breeds, especially the working breeds. That is, the dogs in the hound, sporting, working, herding, and terrier groups that AKC divides breeds into. The parts include finding prey by scent, finding prey by sight, pointing, stalking, rushing, slashing, holding, carrying. I might have missed some steps. People developed the different breeds and types of breeds by selecting for dogs with exaggerated portrayal of one part of the hunting instinct and exaggerated suppression of the other parts. But most, if not all, individual dogs still have at least traces of all of them.

 

[saysfaa]

I also worked at animal control for a few years on the edge of a very big city far away from where I grew up. I was not an animal control officer; I just cleaned the kennels four days a week. I moved each dog every day I worked there. And I listened to the animal control officers a lot and to owners coming for their pets a little.

A well-trained and/or well-socialized (they are different) dog will act much the same in different environments. My experience has been that most dogs that end up in animal control kennels (i.e. are roaming) are not well-trained or well-socialized.

 

[TOMTE]

@saysfaa thank you for your input! I really appreciate well thought out responses, especially ones coming from experience instead of wild hypotheticals.