My dog is a chicken eater, don't know what to do

I have a dog that I could never dare trust alone with my hens. He's always on a leash while outside, and has never had a taste of chicken. If he had, I don't think he'd be as well behaved when he does see them.

A quick suggestion. How about electric poultry netting? Have NO CLUE if that's to keep predators out, but if it is, maybe to protect your chickens, it'd be worth a shot?
Please prove me wrong...but once a dog get's the taste it will always want it. It may not stop at a chicken.
 
I have an Aussiedoodle dog, just barely a year old, and we didn't socialize her very much with chickens when she was younger, and now we're worried it's too late. Her name is Rosie. She is a little over 40 pounds.

She tries to "play" with our cat, but he can take care of himself. She had one close call with my OEGB hen but I stopped her.

Late August she caught and killed one of my Australorps while we were gone. We tried to tie the hen to her neck, but she got it off and ate more of her. It was a mess.

I have had all my chickens confined in their coops since then, except sometimes in the evenings when I watch over them while they play in the chicken yard (which is fenced off from the rest of the yard, and we do our best to keep Rosie out of).

Today I had one rooster isolated from the others in a small pen. But in the matter of a few hours Rosie broke into the chicken yard and broke his pen open. This time she ate him pretty fast and all I found was feathers.

Both of these losses weren't chickens I loved, and they don't matter to my breeding programs, but that's not the point.

Rosie doesn't know that killing chickens is wrong. But if it came down to it, I would choose my chickens over her. But my whole family loves her (including myself) and we've had her since she was a puppy. And we bought her for over $1000 to breed her, and have spent a couple hundred on her since.

Please help, we don't know what to do. I've heard mixed results about shock colors.

Thanks in advace!
I have an Aussiedoodle dog, just barely a year old, and we didn't socialize her very much with chickens when she was younger, and now we're worried it's too late. Her name is Rosie. She is a little over 40 pounds.

She tries to "play" with our cat, but he can take care of himself. She had one close call with my OEGB hen but I stopped her.

Late August she caught and killed one of my Australorps while we were gone. We tried to tie the hen to her neck, but she got it off and ate more of her. It was a mess.

I have had all my chickens confined in their coops since then, except sometimes in the evenings when I watch over them while they play in the chicken yard (which is fenced off from the rest of the yard, and we do our best to keep Rosie out of).

Today I had one rooster isolated from the others in a small pen. But in the matter of a few hours Rosie broke into the chicken yard and broke his pen open. This time she ate him pretty fast and all I found was feathers.

Both of these losses weren't chickens I loved, and they don't matter to my breeding programs, but that's not the point.

Rosie doesn't know that killing chickens is wrong. But if it came down to it, I would choose my chickens over her. But my whole family loves her (including myself) and we've had her since she was a puppy. And we bought her for over $1000 to breed her, and have spent a couple hundred on her since.

Please help, we don't know what to do. I've heard mixed results about shock colors.

Thanks in advace!
My setter (a bird dog) has killed more of our chickens than any other predator, she doesn’t even do it on purpose, she just loves catching them and running around with them, they die of heart attacks. So, she gets the yard in the morning and at night, the chickens get it during daylight hours. The coop is totally secure.

Don’t get rid of your dog, it’s not the dog’s responsibility to inhibit their prey drive. it’s your responsibility to keep it separated from your chickens. Either have them out at different times, build a predator-proof run/pens, or both.
 
I have a dog that I could never dare trust alone with my hens. He's always on a leash while outside, and has never had a taste of chicken. If he had, I don't think he'd be as well behaved when he does see them.

A quick suggestion. How about electric poultry netting? Have NO CLUE if that's to keep predators out, but if it is, maybe to protect your chickens, it'd be worth a shot?
Please prove me wrong...but once a dog get's the taste it will always want it. It may not stop at a chicken.
I think that you might of misread my post... :oops: I said that he has never got a taste of chicken. If he had, I don't think he'd be as well behaved when he does see them. I agree 100% with your statement. :thumbsup
 
Dogs and chickens can live together. In fact you can get dogs that are trained to guard chickens, or you can train dogs to do it.
It seems from your post that you already had chickens when you got the dog.

The most informative part of your post is this.


and to read later that while your coops are secure, the run isn't.

Say you were successful with breeding your dog. How were you going to cope with a litter of excitable pups running around and the chickens?
True, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but then again, so is a bit of planning.
Everywhere I've lived where there has been livestock or even pets, if a dog kills an animal then you shoot the dog. Harsh perhaps but in the long run it's the only sensible option. Once a dog has done it once it is unreasonable not to expect it to do it again. If you give, or sell the dog to someoone else, you are just moving a problem dog on, not addressing your responsibility as the owner.

There are a few posts where people have written that they never let their dog have access to thhe chickens. One day someone will forget. It's almost inevitable.

For others who read this post who have chickens and want a dog, get a farm dog who is farm animal trained. Better still, get a young dog from parents who are farm animal trained.

There is no such thing as a completely secure coop or run. You can deter most predators with security measures but accidents and carelessness happen. Better by far in the long run is to have dogs that know not to bother the other creatures where they live.
💯 agree with you. If you want a dog to be around livestock they have to grow up with them - get a guardian breed. My Sarplaninac/Pyr just wants to eat their poop and lay around them. He helps me round them up when I have escapees (kids lol).

An Aussie-doodle is a mutt and I don’t say that to be offensive; they can be lovely companions. But breeding dogs isn’t something people should be doing to make cash. If you aren’t bettering the breed, just don’t. There are many unwanted dogs in the world that deserve homes.

I hope everything works out for OP and no more chicken casualties.
 
Being a dog trainer/owner/competitor for many, many years my thought would be to restrict the dog's access to the birds. In other words, the dog is NEVER allowed to run loose! It's not the dog's fault - she's just doing what comes naturally. I do have to wonder why you'd pay $1000 for a mongrel and then expect to breed it later? You do know that the puppies are mongrels too, right, and will not look anything like the mother or whoever the father might be. It always puzzles me why animal people can't figure this out. If you bred two different breeds of chickens you wouldn't expect the chicks to be either one or the other of the breeds, would you?
Anyway, simply keep the dog away from the chickens, either tie it up or build a kennel area for it. We have had some success with keeping a neighbor's dog out of our yard using an electric wire run around the perimeter. Dog went to come over, hit the wire, never tried it again.
 
You do know that the puppies are mongrels too, right, and will not look anything like the mother or whoever the father might be. It always puzzles me why animal people can't figure this out. If you bred two different breeds of chickens you wouldn't expect the chicks to be either one or the other of the breeds, would you?

And it puzzles me why you would say this.

Puppies look "not look anything like" either parent? That is almost impossible.
Of course the puppies will resemble their parents in size, general body shape, coat type, color, temperament and so forth. They will not exactly match their parents, and there will be more variation than you would see in purebred dogs, but there will be quite a few similarities. Every puppy gets its genes from its parents, so it could hardly help having traits in common with them!

If I were to breed a poodle-mix dog to some other dog, I would expect to have poodle-mix puppies (some kind of mix that includes some amount of poodle.) It seems obvious to me that an "Aussiedoodle" is a mix of Australian Shepherd and poodle. Breeding that dog would either give an Aussie-something-doodle, or another Aussiedoodle, depending on whether other breeds are added to the mix.

That way of labeling mixes makes sense to me. And yes, it applies to chickens too. For example, I see plenty of photos of Silkie-mixes, and the common Cornish Rock meat chickens began as a cross of Cornish with Plymouth Rock.
 
Sometimes I killed the chicken & pulled off the feathers, other times it was chicken from the grocery store. The dog was not entirely raw-fed, but it certainly was served raw chicken some of the time.
Mine will eat them with feathers on. They know not to mess with them when still warm with life. To my dogs, the dead chickens involve a different set of rules compared to live chickens.
 

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