Dogs vs. chickens

[humpbacks1962]

I have a German Shepherd and she never attacks the chickens. She will instinctively try to catch the birds when they freak out and take flight though.
As a puppy, she grabbed the leg of a chicken I was holding, breaking her pelvis. She thought it was play time.

Good chicken as she was she gave me a fresh egg daily fr five years, even when she could not scratch the ground or walk without using her wings as crutches!

So I say, just train your dog not to chase them, not to steal the eggs (mine did) and watch them.

 

[humpbacks1962]

B. Saffles Farms :

Herding dogs most deffinetly can not be trained to protect.

This is too false. My German Shepherd eventually came to sniff and see the chickens as part of her "flock" and family​

 

[Gerry2011]

It is soooooooooo dependent on each individual dog and while some might be trained to ignore, but I'm not sure I'd trust those entirely. Until now all my dogs except for an Alaskan malamute completely ignored all the farm animals and I re-homed the AM. Now I have a 7 y.o. lab and a 2 y.o. beagle cross that thinks anything other than another dog is fair game. So all possible means will be made to make sure the canines and chickens don't meet.

 

[2hot2chicken]

Quote:
This is too false. My German Shepherd eventually came to sniff and see the chickens as part of her "flock" and family

I agree and disagree.
My border collie blue heeler mix I actually do trust completely with my chickens 3 BR, 3 EE I raised in my home. She gets introduced to them as babies and is allowed to sniff them from our hands and she loves to sit and watch em in the brooder. Especially if they are making a bunch of noise or fighting she will try to break em up. Now that they are grown and outside I watched her close for weeks and the most she would do is bump them on the butt with her nose if she was herding them and they stop to scratch. Pretty funny to watch the chickens reaction but even they were not affraid of her and would walk up to her sometimes and peck at her fur out of interest.

Then 1 day I brought home a grown silkie hen........ Not thinking about it after having her for a day I let her free range the yard with the rest of the girls. in the afternoon I let the dog out and luckily went out with her. See I forgot to introduce the dog to the new silkie and the girls had not come to the back door to nap yet so the dog had not seen the silkie. Once off the porch the dog saw the silkie near "her babies" and she darted between them and chased the poor silkie away from the other chickens and would have killed her if I had not been there to be able to stop her. The way she got inbetween the girls and went after only the silkie I still trust her completely with my chickens... Except the silkie.

I think it has to do with the chickens as well as the dog. She is a loyal protector who I have had for almost 13 years. All I have to do is say ow and she is at my side growliig. She has been throuugh the addition of many things from kids to kittens (who she will steal from their mom!) down to rats and hamsters. and the chicks raised in the house were my babies thus hers to protect, yes she has had pups before and was a great mom.

2 my chickens were raised around dogs (her and the neighbors old blind nonsense mix) and they show no fear of them.. In her previous home the silkie was tormented by a dog constantly running around the run barking and I have a feeling she had killed chickens before thus everr chhcken in the pen went bolistic when we walked up to the run with the dog on oo heels. I thiink the silkie saw my dog as a threat immediatley and panicked and ran.

After much correction and training I got it through my dogs head that the new silkie is a baby and thus she ignores her now. But I still will not trust them alone becuase the silkie still panicks/runs and I don't want it to trigger my dog again.

Make sense?

Its the same with cats and my dog. She is fine with cats but if they run she will chase them and if they are strang probably kill them if I am around to protect me. But we have a cat and have had many other cats in the past who she never messed with. She has even stole young nursing kittens from their mom before to try to take care of them.......LOL

 

[Schnayke]

If you have to ask this question it is clear you don't have controll of your dog, so I would say in your case keep your dog away, you probably don't have the abilitys in training dogs to get it where you need it.
Not a knock on you most people that own dogs have no controll over them.

 

[Yonaton]

B. Saffles Farms :

Quote:
Herding dogs dont PROTECT. The "herding " instinct is an offshoot of PREY DRIVE
LGD's (Livestock Guardian Dogs) are the breeds that instinctively protect.

http://www.lgd.org/

Ive had several Herding dogs, Aussies, and Heelers, that do protect livestock. And i know someone who got a Greart Pyr. as a pup raised it with the chickens and geese, and one day he takes a notion to kill some birds.

My moms Great Pyranese(sp?) would chase down and kill and eat rabbits...adult, newborn...didn't matter. Same with small birds. Once my chickens were full grown I didn't *have* to watch him, but I did anyway. I never trusted the dog nor the breed...my reasoning being that our dog, in particular, was truly pure bred. Unfortunately this breed was brought back from the literal brink of extinction of only something like 30 left. That meant an awful lot of line and in breeding. Ours showed it with a pretty severe overbite which made it slightly difficult for him to eat out of a bowl. He also couldn't be trained to save your life. I can train almost any dog I want to do what I want...this dog could not even be trained to 'sit'. He was, well, stoopid! Every chance he got, he'd try to get out of the fenced in 7 acres we have and run for a day or two. Wouldn't come if he was a hundred yards away and looking right at you and you standing there calling him with a bowl of food in your hand.

I had an Australian shepherd that I'd trained almost to do anything I wanted with just hand signals. He'd even sit at my side like a retriever and I could shoot the cow birds/grackles/starlings in the chicken yard and he'd sit there until I signalled he could go get it and make sure it was dead. One day I hear a ruckus and go to the door and here he is with a dead chicken in his mouth. I wasn't happy and did some rough 'training' on him. He did it once more and I 'trained' him again and that was it. He never bothered the chickens again.

I have a dog now that's been around full grown chickens and never even looked twice at them, but not me raising chicks. I can see by his posture and attitude that he'd eat one of these in a heartbeat. This dog is the kind of dog who even a loud voice makes him flinch. He's a fantastic dog otherwise, doesn't even go outside the open gate! I'll have to watch him though when I decide the birds are old enough to let free range.

Like others have said though, many dogs, no matter how 'nice' or 'good', can and often do go after chickens, and no amount of training will stop them (my brother had one like that and he gave it away when I told him it was that or I put it down). There's just no 'rule' on what one dog compared to the next will be like around chickens, unfortunately. You're (the OP) just going to have to play it by ear and hope for the best.

 

[Yonaton]

Quote:
Far too unfortunately true.

 

[English Teacher]

I definitely would not leave a dog alone with chicks. However, my Schnauzers hear me sweet talking to the chicks that have just arrived and have to live on the inside porch because of the heat. They did not understand this and the chicks' peeping was unpsetting them. I allowed them to look at the chicks and sent them back in the house. The young one wet on the bathroom floor. I think she is stressed over the chicks. Oh, goodness. Some say dogs do not have emotions, but I disagree. My younger dog is jealous.