How bout your own dog as a predator?

[speckledhen]

Most dogs will grab a chicken. It's up to the owner to make sure he can't get to them. My dog who died last year was never allowed access to the birds because I knew he would go on a killing spree. The dogs were fenced, as they always are when we have them. The birds are penned and would freerange daily, but they never had access to the dogs' area. It's just something you have to be vigilant about. Never assume a dog won't kill a chicken under the right circumstances.

 

[rhondapiper]

I'm sure my dog would love to eat my chickens. They are still babies, but I'm not taking any chances. I put their run outside her underground electric fence, so she can see but she can't harass. She's so well trained about the fence line that even if the battery in the collar is dying or we've shut off the power due to a storm, she still respects the boundary. I don't worry that she'll challenge it to get to the chickens, because she won't pass it for squirrels, fox, or deer.

I think you just need to assume any dog is capable of killing a bird and plan accordingly.

 

[ESD]

I had a Pomeranian about half the size of a couple of my hens and he still managed to get one of them. He tried to take a run at Big Red (RIR) and found out that was a bad idea...LOL. Sadly my Pommy was run over last month...so no more chicken chasin' round here, but what was upsetting about the whole thing was trying to figure out how to discipline this small dog for basically going after food thats fun. For us it was probably just lack of training on my part....chickens are a new thing around my house and I think my Pom was just over excited about the new family members at first, and then realized....hey they taste good too. Seriously though, he was never trained to behave....total lap dog up to that point.

 

[kycowgirl78]

Well, glad to see ppl have had the same experience. As for keeping the birds and dogs seperated, it's always a bit of an ordeal around here. Number 1, we live way out away from everyone we are fortunate enough to allow our dogs to run loose. Number 2, the little dogs don't have a "pen" so if we let the birds loose then we have to be sure the little dogs are in the house. Number 3, My large dogs are all chained but my future inlaws don't have any desire to put up their two labs, the male loves to chase birds. So that's something I can't control because they aren't my dogs. And we've spent all our funds currently to build more chicken pens, not dog pens. It was MY dog that killed the duck but it was one of the ones who was chained and his chain broke in the middle of the night. I didn't know he was loose until the duck had already been killed. So while I'd love to have a nice big pen for all the dogs, right now it's just not possible so we have to keep all our birds up all the time. Accidents do happen that sometimes you just can't control everybody all the time so we do the best we can.