Lost my first Girl

[bigred77]

Well I lost a chicken for the first time, to a freaking dog.
Happened Sunday, a week ago. I wasnt home, but my step son was and he had let the girls out of their coop to roam the fenced in back yard, like we always have during the day. And he was inside and saw something out the window, ran out to find a dog in the yard.
It had killed my Barred Rock already and was going after the others, I think my Wyandotte (SP?) got her wing broke or dislocated. Its hanging down and she cant really flap it, but she wont let me catch her to check it. She was already the most skiddish of the bunch and hardest to catch before.

Still havent figured out for sure how the dog got in, no holes in or under the fence. Its a 5.5' tall chainlink fence.
Only thing we can figure is it climbed up on the picnic table and jumped over. Moved the table, to try and keep it from happening again.

Havent seen the dog since and we have been keeping an eye out.
We live in a small neighborhood, and my step son went looking for it to find the owner after he had let it out of the yard.
Dog is lucky I wasnt home, as I wouldnt have hesitated to shoot it.

My 3 other chickens havent laid a single egg since. Not sure if they actually got hurt, or its just the stress. They seem to be fine (minus the ones wing), and act normal eating and drinking fine.
Hope they get back to laying soon, I'm running low on eggs.

 

[Zoomie]

Oh no, how awful, I'm so sorry.

There are dogs who can actually climb chain link fence. When I was a kid, we had a black lab who did that. We knew he could escape from the 6' chain link fence around the yard but did not know how he did it. So we sneaked off one afternoon, pretending to drive away, and then turned around and watched carefully. Sure enough he just climbed right over, climbing the fence like a cat would. Usually they dig under, and the dog might have jumped from the table like you say, climbing is another possibility, unfortunately.

I hope your girls will be OK. They are probably just really upset and stressed about the whole thing. With luck the one that has the injured wing will be OK. What I was always told is that birds start to grow new bone pretty much immediately, and that if you can't get a break splinted within the first 6 hours, you probably should just let it be. They can heal from a break and even though they may not regain full use, they can sometimes get along just fine and live out their little chickeny lives. I hope that is the case for her.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

Depending on the breed, a dog can jump a fence. My fence is 4 ft, granted shorter, and my SIL dog a husky jumped it to kill all of my cats. I am sorry for your loss, hope you get the dog tracked down before more attacks.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Six feet is high enough that very few ground based predators can clear it cleanly. Either the table is responsible, or the dog scaled the fence. It's not common, but some can climb chain link.

You should also check any gates, and connection points for any sort of play - it doesn't take a lot of movement for a dog to be able to squeeze themselves through a gate - just a couple inches of wiggle in the gate is enough.

My suggestion if you think the dog went over, and you can't find any gaps that he went through is hotwire - run a line about 6 inches from the top of the fence, and then run another one at the top of the fence on 6-12" standoffs. Nothing will ever climb the fence again. (They make specialized standoffs/insulators for chainlink)

 

[bigred77]

Finally got our first egg since the incident today.
11 days later.

glad atleast one of the girls is settling down