(GRAPHIC) Neighbor's dog got through my fences, killed them ALL

[RooStar Chicken Gang]

Crazy, crazy you had a bear come into ya yard too once. Look at the end of the day and in this day n age teenagers the vast majority are just useless at everything, if you told em keep an eye on the dog as to not get the neighbours chickens they would just go do whatever regardless all the technology phones ect has messed with there brains lowered there attention spans and emotional behaviour. Maybe have a talk with there parents at least get some cash for the dead birds or something.

 

[McChooky]

The sheriff's deputy said he went over to the dog owning neighbor's a couple of times, nobody answered the door. No doughnuts or "Real Police" episode in the offing, not a priority for him. He would not CALL them on the phone either.

In 13 years of owning property next to theirs, they have never answered the door when I knocked either- Which I've done, in relation to a couple of their PREVIOUS dogs which they let run free all day, as those dogs liked to run out 1/4 mile past their property line to come bark at me in my deer stand at dawn during rifle deer season.

They have also never picked up on a phone call, never responded to notes taped to their door regarding their dogs on our property, didn't ever respond to mail sent to their address.

I can see their house from our property. Seen the lights come on/off, seen adults and kids come and go in the driveway. Saw the kids playing with horses and 4 wheelers. Including driving 4 wheelers WAY off their property into ours. Then when we had property surveyed, lines marked and put up "no trespassing" signs- The signs on THEIR border disappeared. None of the others disappeared. That's all in the past 3 years or so. Cost me $100 to get surveyor back out to mark line again, I set up a LOT of stakes on line this time and set some steel in the ground to locate with metal detector if signs "vanish" again.

4 days after the birds were killed, I was working on the garden next to chicken yard/orchard. And that dog ran up from behind me, sniffed my hand, wagged and trotted towards home.

I had a rifle in the truck, 10' away. But instead of shooting her, I took out my phone & videoed the dog while saying "there's the dog that killed all our chickens last weekend". Then I TEXTED the video to the number that never picks up and never returns a voice mail...

2 minutes later, I get a text back asking who the hell I am? We exchange a couple of texts (he still won't answer a voice call). He says he doesn't RECOGNIZE that dog. I send a couple of screen grabs from video and that it's his brown & white German shorthaired pointer. Also the responding deputy's name, Sheriff's office case # and sheriff's non emergency phone #, and that he needs to CONTACT SHERIFF. Silence.

Next day, Thusday afternoon. I send a text saying that unless he has contacted Sheriff by Friday at 4:00pm I will be meeting my lawyer Monday at 10:00am. Also give state and county law section & paragraph references, his exposure being triple damages + all costs, legal fees & any civil suit awards.

He texts back: "It's my FIANCE'S dog, talk to HER". But no name, no phone # for the lady. Big man!

Apparently he is now divorced & the kids with horses & 4 wheelers are gone?

"Fiance" then sends long text about her angel of a dog who wouldn't hurt a fly, she won't hunt, scared of guns, doesn't ever act at all interested in birds, etc. etc.

Friday, about 24 hours later, I send 1 more text asking if they have contacted sheriff yet, as I would like to break my Monday am appointment with lawyer in a timely fashion if they have.

THAT gets a response. One of them finally calls the sheriff within minutes.

I don't want money. What are 10 birds worth? Not much. What I want is to never see their dogs on our property again, been asking for that courtesy for 10 YEARS +.

As part of this, I spoke to a couple of other long term neighbors. They corroborated ID of owner of dog, said "He always has let his dogs run, he won't change because you ask. We've asked too, good luck"

I have not seen their dogs for 2 weeks now. Hope that continues-

And they're not poor people. Really nice big house. He is the heir to the area's largest trucking and construction company, described as "XXXX county royalty" by one neighbor. And described by several others as "he's different, you probably should NOT talk to him". I'm beginning to understand why.

I just want to say how sorry I am you lost your chickens in such a horrific way. I can only imagine how upset you are with your neighbors .I hope you replace them soon because chickens are fun to keep . Electric fence will solve your "dog" problem and keep most predators away. Best of luck to you and hope you're awarded triple for your trouble.Please keep us updated!

 

[Folly's place]

So sorry for your losses, and having such awful neighbors. Do talk to your lawyer! Around here laying hens have been worth $35 and up each, and then there's the damage to your fencing.
Electric fencing is your friend! Consider doing it anyway, birds or not, with a nice charger that hits 10,000 volts, just slightly inside your property line, if your attorney says not exactly on the lot line.
Nice dogs kill birds too, and it isn't the dog's fault, as you said, it's these owners. They will keep having dogs, and whoever they are, their dogs do not belong on your property.
Here we had neighbors long ago who rode their snowmobiles on our property without permission. Logs across the trail, with a nice big brush pile, fixed the problem, when no trespassing signs failed.
All the best,
Mary

 

[cmom]

Also so sorry for your loss. It's sad that people can be so careless and sad for you. I hope nothing like that ever happens to me. I did have some dogs years ago harass my birds. Didn't kill any, I was lucky. I talked to the dogs (5 dogs) owner. Luckily she controlled them and they never came on my property again. I also have electric wires around my coops and pens. Nothing has gotten past the hot wires. Some people who have put up either electric fencing or electric wires, bait them so whatever predator will go for the bait and learn the hot wires are there. As @Folly's place said voltage of at least 10,000 will get the dogs attention. Good luck...

 

[ChickenWhisperer101]

I’m so sorry this happened. This isn’t right at all! I hope you can figure something out to where you can get chickens again. I hope they do there small part by keeping their dogs under control. Good luck!

 

[Lady Clucks-a-Lot]

But that's so not fair! Where's the lawyer? Where's the judgment? You have absolute right to report them! Even if it's not about the chickens, their dogs are invading ILLEGALLY YOUR property! And can't that neighbor KEEP TRACK OF WHERE THEIR DOGS ARE GOING? I thought it was illegal and it counts as invading other people's privacy/property!

 

[Migolito]

Sorry to hear about your Birds, but also, and more importantly about the loss of your enthusiasm and joy.

Sometimes a person just has to do what he needs to do to protect themselves and their property.

 

[ElizaMay]

Thanks, but I'm not going to get more birds.

Between this episode, the past eagle, fox and coyote predations and the OTHER neighbor with his two dogs he wouldn't keep on his own property after multiple requests- Which dogs killed 14 of our turkeys- I don't care to continue. It's not the dogs. I like dogs. IT'S THEIR OWNERS.

It's been an interesting 8 years and I learned a lot of things. But enough is enough.

In Nova Scotia if a dog is actively attacking/attacked livestock, it may be shot. I likely would if I caught one in the act where we live.

Your type of loss actually happened to us several years back.
Our squatter neighbor let his shih tzu loose from his oil-tarred shack - it ran into our barn, tore into our chicken-wired stall and ripped most of our special cross meat/layer to shreds, then stayed there to be found by us shortly thereafter laying down at the scene of the crime, panting satisfied up at us with a bloody-toothed smile.
We caught the damed thing and put it is a spare stall, then called the dogcatcher. Dogcatcher came and got the tale from us, we told him exactly where the dog came from. The man went to the neighbor, asked him if it was his dog, he said no, it was the neighbor up the road's dog (a toothless old ancient lab). Dogcatcher took the dog. Next day he called to tell us it didn't belong to the fella up the road (you don't say?) and what did we want done? I said the dog had been loose several times before, it always ran straight to our driveway, and we'd returned it. Well this time, with the toll on our birds, we told the catcher we wanted it put down. It was.
Two years later the neighbor had another much larger dog get loose, and come over into our barn. We cornered that in anothrr stall in our barn (no birds harmed) and this time called the RCMP to come to escort the man on our property to retrieve the animsl. Dumbass man then said, 'how come you had my dog killed last time?' Snort. I said, 'you told the dogcatcher it wasn't your dog, and we knew it fidn't belong to so-in-so, and it was loose here before, so we asked for it to be put down. We would have returned that dog to you the same way we are THIS one if you hadn't lied. Now, since you admit it WAS your dog, you can pay for our dead chickens."
We arranged for him to drop the money off at the mountie detachment so we would not have to deal with him.

 

[AP332]

Wow you are in a crummy position there. This might sound defeatist but have you spoken to a realtor? If even the police will or cannot help you then what other recourse do you have? I am blessed with awesome neighbors for the most part, (may they live forever), but I have had some real goofballs over the years. My last winner let his children, ages 5-11 shoot real bows and arrows all over the place, (their favorite was straight up), without supervision. It is a wonder no one got hurt. take care and good luck to you

 

[Juar3z]

One of our neighbors (or possibly their idiot, home alone older teenaged children) who have been asked several times to keep their dogs (they have 2) off our property has once again decided to just let them run free. I saw one of the dogs a couple of times this week but was too busy to try and get hold of neighbor AGAIN, besides, our birds were inside some good fences (I thought).

About 3:30pm of 5/29/21 I went past the chicken yard and their dog had broken in, it was happily tossing around and tearing up the dead birds. It saw me, ran back out through the dammaged fence and beelined towards its owners home.

I could see feathers and dead birds all over both their yard and the orchard.

We have an 8' tall anti deer fenced orchard next to chicken yard which has a pop door open during summer so birds can free range, safe from anything but hawks. Orchard fence has an additional 4' tall heavy plastic coated chicken wire reinforcement at bottom, dug into the ground a foot.

Only thing that ever penetrated this before was a BEAR last September, which tore open a corner of fence, ate all the windfall fruit + all the low hanging fruit, then wormed into the chicken coop and ate all the chicken feed- But didn't harm any birds. A vegetarian black bear?

Dog had managed to tear the top edge of chicken wire away from the plastic anti deer fence. This break was in the orchard fencing, a section where I had used zip ties to quickly assemble the fences and NOT GONE BACK OVER IT WITH ADDITIONAL STAINLESS STEEL TIES OR WIRES FOR LONG TERM DURABILITY. I found some of the ties could be broken with my fingers now, 3 years later. Guess the dog did too.

*NOTE TO OTHER CHICKEN OWNERS:

Plastic zip ties are degraded by ultra violet light (UV) in sunlight. They get weaker the longer they are out in the sun, DO NOT use them for any long term fence installation unless you follow up with stainless steel wire, hog rings or similar METAL fastenings.

Called the sheriff and showed the deputy the scene. He said he'd talk to neighbor about their dogs running free and get back to me. I have heard nothing more about it.

These two images are of the same flock, one taken Friday, the other Saturday. Less than 24 hours apart. First picture, they are all out enjoying life in the orchard, you can see open door to chicken yard in the background.

Second, I'm about to bury them in the garden. Yes, the rifle is in case rover comes back.


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I am so sorry for your loss we had the same happen to us today and my kids are very distraught