Took all of 20 min. or so when he was around 5 mo. old. Before I trained him on chickens, though, he was trained on basic commands and taught who buys the feed around here.
I first held a chicken on my lap and called him over, let him sniff the butt end all he wanted(Jake's a huge proponent of the butt sniff) and let him really get his nose in there, then I switched ends on him...and that hen pecked his nose, but good! First lesson. When that happened, I told him these were MY chickens, in a stern voice.
Then I tied a chicken's legs and let it lie down in the yard next to the dog's living area and watched what he did when it flapped or flopped around, any interest in the actions of the chickens got a stern "MY CHICKEN", which would make him duck his head and move away. Then I just turned and went in the house, leaving the chicken out there, still occasionally hopping and flapping for balance on his tied legs. I sat by a window and each time Jake would turn his head towards the antics of the bird, I'd yell out the window "MY CHICKEN!!!" in my most stern voice...he would duck his head and run back to his house. A little time went by and he ventured out and walked by the chicken, a very casual stroll and carefully not looking directly at the chicken...when he got level with the bird, I shouted the whole "my chicken" correction and he ran back to his house. The next time he came out of his house, he walked by the chicken with his head carefully averted in the opposite direction. And that's all it took..he never really looked at the chickens again with any degree of interest or eagerness to approach them.
That's how smart these Labs and Lab mix dogs can be...once they know you are boss, then you let them know it upsets you if they pay any attention to a chicken, they seem to remember that for a lifetime. Jake is 8 yrs old now and has never broke training, though he does pay attention to their antics now and again and will walk between two adversaries to break up a fight...just stands there and looks at them like "Really? You wanna do that here, guys?". It's cute.
I do allow him to defend his food, though not aggressively...he's allowed to lunge in their direction and bark if they steal his food, but not allowed to follow through with any kind of chase or bite. I trained him on that in the same way...a stern voice if he took more than a couple of steps in his lunge in their direction. He got the picture really quick...he's a pretty smart dog. Easy to train, those Labs. "Will work for food" is their motto!
