Help, our Border Collie is killing Chickens, is there hope or off to a new chickenless home?

[kmadams]

We have been watching him, and as I said, with the first two birds, we were not sure he was the calperate. But with the third, my son was right there. I have owned herding breeds all my life and currently have 4, so its not like I'm new the these dogs. My other 3 have no issues, and they were all introduced the same way. He has even been through some training classes, but just the basics, no herding or agility training yet. He is very well mannered and listens very well normally. I could understand if he was inclined to chase them, as that would be normal herding type behavior. Or even if he tried to eat them. But he simply killed her and dropped her, in a matter of seconds. We have worked for years to get out of town and into the country, and love having the chickens. We would also like to add other animals eventually. However now I'm concerned that if he has taken so easily to killing chickens, is this going to be a concern with baby goats, or the kids' ponies? Currently we now have to let the dog out to run in the morning, then he has to be crated or taken out on a lead, until we put the chickens up in the evening. Not only is this not a desired situation, but it's not fair to the dog either. We are in the process of getting him a run built, so he can be out in the run when we are not able to supervise him. But I also don't want him to have to live in a run all the time.
But I completely agree, how do we ever trust him in the future? He already knows to mind his manners when I'm watching him, but with my husband and son its not always the case. Which also makes me believe he will be able to discern when he is not under constant nwatch in the future.
My main question is , has anyone had similar issues with their dog, and if so did they ever become trustworthy? Has anyone had experience turning a dog with this issue around?

 

[dekel18042]

Quote:
But I completely agree, how do we ever trust him in the future? He already knows to mind his manners when I'm watching him, but with my husband and son its not always the case. Which also makes me believe he will be able to discern when he is not under constant nwatch in the future.
My main question is , has anyone had similar issues with their dog, and if so did they ever become trustworthy? Has anyone had experience turning a dog with this issue around?
A lot of it depends on why he killed. If he was playing or curious, if it was a learned behavior it can be unlearned. Any learned behavior can be unlearned, but if it is hard wired within him then it will always be there and at best it becomes a management problem.
We've had terriers and a lab who let poultry and livestock alone. The Siberian husky was another story altogether, and she could be very sneaky about it.
A neighbor had a dog who after caught killing cats and poultry was trained vigorously and left other animals alone when someone was there, but the minute he was alone with them he would kill.
Both the previous dogs were rehomed into a non rural setting.
Dogs should be able to do the jobs for which the breed was bred to do, but sometimes the genes don't line up that way, which has always happened, hopefully infrequently.
Border collies had always been a breed where working ability and health were the paramount considerations in breeding. With the breed now accepted by AKC and in the show ring I'm afraid more of their basic instincts will fall by the wayside in favor of standardized looks. Already it's getting to the point where you can see the difference in dogs from working and dogs from show lines.

 

[enola]

You state that you let him out to run every morning....... Does this mean he is completely unsupervised?

 

[DIMBY]

My Aussies/BC mix (two brothers) were raised with the chickens from 10 weeks, however when they were about 6 months or so we had an 'incident' - nothing fatal and the chicken was fine, but they had her down pulling out feathers. I thought about a shock collar but worked on them first, spending many hours with them in the yard with the chickens, positive reinforcement when they just watched the chickens (went thru 50 pounds of treats), scolding and time outs when it looked like they were going to do something wrong. I just sat in a chair and watched. When I couldn't do this, the chickens were in their coop. It was tough, but within 2-3 months I felt confident to let the chickens out all the time; however, that was only when myself or my husband were home, if we left the chickens went back into the coop. Casey and Corky are now beautiful with the chickens, share their dog house, herd them when I want them to (Casey is better at this). Dogs just turned 3 in June and only then did I have confidence for hubby and I to leave and trust the dogs. Probably could have done it sooner, but I didn't want to take any chances.