If you have a dog.....

[GoChick]

We have 3 rough collies, and they are fine around the chickens. The only problem is they quite often eat chicken poop! anybody else has this problem? Are way to stop them from doing this?

 

[matthewschickens]

Quote:
No, not really. Mine do it also. Though what I tried once is a found a piece on our patio and filled it with hot peppers. One dog ate it and headed for water quickly.. I made another one and another dog ate it and walked away.. I think she liked it..

 

[imthedude]

labrador retriever, and she's great with the birds. loves chicken poop too. like finding little snickers bars..........

 

[harleyjo]

This is so interesting. Keep it coming folks. Loving the pics too!

 

[pcord]

I have and English Setter (bird dog) and she leaves them alone mostly. She's only interested when the flap or fly and even then, she's never hurt one (but sure would like to I bet!). I leave her alone with the free range birds- mostly runs through the flock on her way to bark at walkers or any wildlife that strays onto our property.

 

[mamabigbird]

We share a few acres with my sis and BIL and they have 4 Jack Russells and we have 1 JR too.
Believe it or not they are all really good around the chickens but mine loves to chase cats, rabbits and black bears.
My Russell's attitude is " if it doesn't run it aint no fun." And my hens don't fear anything so they don't run.

 

[AllCoop'dUp]

I love my 10 yr old Standard Poodle - Mitzi, but she is also my biggest heartache when it comes to loosing chickens. Extremely high prey-drive, goes with the fact that Stardards are bird dogs and retrievers. The only thing safe around my house are things that don't move. The cat has learned that if it runs, it gets chased, but if it walks, it's ignored. I'm sure that just about any dog, were it raised and trained to respect and protect chickens could be great guardians. I want 2 Pryenees pups so badly, but I don't think I should get them until Ms. Mitzi has passed. So...I'll just have to be patient.

 

[leahthor]

6 German Shorthaired Pointers and 1 English Bulldog. I don't think the Bulldog would bother the chickens but absolutley NO WAY would I be stupid enough to trust my GSPs around the chickens!

 

[NeeleysAVLChicks]

This was our Hannah, best chicken dog ever, we trusted her with them moment we got chickens and she was a loyal chicken guardian for four years....

We lost her to old age in the spring and were utterly devastated.

We just got Hank a couple weeks ago from the pound, some sort of golden retriever/lab/who knows mix-farm puppy in training! So far he's been great, we have spent a lot of time with him in the runs and out with the free rangers. So far, so good!

I'm a firm believer that most (there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between) dogs, if introduced to chickens at a very early age and you're consistent with them, most dogs can be taught to leave chickens alone.

 

[chickerdoodle]

A Belgian Malinois. We adopted her from the U.S. Air Force as she injured her knee and therefore pulled from active duty at a young 2 years of age. We had her knees fixed and she became good as new! Since she has crazy prey drive (hence being chosen by military as a working dog) I started to train her with the chicks when they reached 3 days of age. I taught her to touch them with her nose and sat on the floor with them and held her collar. I knew if I didn't allow her to sniff and touch them she would go crazy and do it without us around. We set up a secure 4x4 metal, covered dog pen in the family room with the chicks and a soft plastic "chicken" wire fence to keep the little ones from popping out of the pen. This allowed them to grow up with the dogs (I still had my ancient Jack Russel then) so they would not fear the dogs and therefore not run.

Now all get along really well but I would not leave them outside unsupervised together. Cherokee still will nose them into the coop and keep them there if I tell her to. She also loves to eat any chicken feed if she can get to it--she'll ignore the chickens and go for the feed so I try to avoid this at all costs, LOL!

Here's a picture of them the very first day the pullets were put in their new coop (the hen house hadn't been painted yet):