My Dog Killed all the new Silkies

[cookiesoth]

This morning i woke up to find all the new 6 Silkie's I brought yesterday were all dead. Lined up in the back yard evenly placed in a straight line. The culprit is my dog, a little Jack Russel. I have had chickens for a while and never had a problem with the dog, I have brought new chickens before about 5 weeks old ( Australorpe and Legorns ) and I praised the dog for its good behavior. Even got two Partridge Silkie's and the Dog has not even been fussed by them. I brought 6 white silkies yesterday at the Auctions, not exactly sure on the age but they were small, looked about 4 to 5 weeks old. Spent time introducing our dog to the new chickens and so no sign of aggression or playfulness to them. Could have spent more time but it was 40 degrees C ( 104 F ). Went out for dinner last night got back around midnight and the little chickens were doing well. Woke up about 7am this morning to find them all dead. All the other chickens were fine.

For the first time I am having to start training my little Dog who i thought was a saint. The look of guilt on her face this morning i new something was wrong. I know she is a dog and we do love her but now is the time for tough love. I rubbed its nose in the dead chicken smacked it and yelled at the dog. I wont socialize with the our dog for about a month. Looking at other forums, attaching the dead chickens to the dog is popular, but cant see that doing much help for two reasons, I think this was an isolated incident and today we are reaching temperatures of 44 degrees C ( 111.2 F ). A dead animal will rot and smell a lot and my wife is a clean freak. The Chickens were not eaten just killed and placed strategically around our backyard.

Am I doing the right thing or is there more that I can do? Thanks in advance

 

[boskelli1571]

Well......sorry to hear about your chicks. I really wish you luck with the Jack Russell. As you probably know, they were specifically bred to hunt small furry things that move quickly (i.e. rats, rabbits) - so small feathery chicks aren't that much different to a dog. My best advice to you is - the dog doesn't go near the chicks until they are big enough to deliver a mean peck - probably 6 months or more.
You didn't say how old the dog was, but I suspect that re-training is going to be a long and probably frustrating time for you both. Good luck with it, Sue

 

[Ramblin Rooster]

This morning i woke up to find all the new 6 Silkie's I brought yesterday were all dead. Lined up in the back yard evenly placed in a straight line. The culprit is my dog, a little Jack Russel. I have had chickens for a while and never had a problem with the dog, I have brought new chickens before about 5 weeks old ( Australorpe and Legorns ) and I praised the dog for its good behavior. Even got two Partridge Silkie's and the Dog has not even been fussed by them. I brought 6 white silkies yesterday at the Auctions, not exactly sure on the age but they were small, looked about 4 to 5 weeks old. Spent time introducing our dog to the new chickens and so no sign of aggression or playfulness to them. Could have spent more time but it was 40 degrees C ( 104 F ). Went out for dinner last night got back around midnight and the little chickens were doing well. Woke up about 7am this morning to find them all dead. All the other chickens were fine.

For the first time I am having to start training my little Dog who i thought was a saint. The look of guilt on her face this morning i new something was wrong. I know she is a dog and we do love her but now is the time for tough love. I rubbed its nose in the dead chicken smacked it and yelled at the dog. I wont socialize with the our dog for about a month. Looking at other forums, attaching the dead chickens to the dog is popular, but cant see that doing much help for two reasons, I think this was an isolated incident and today we are reaching temperatures of 44 degrees C ( 111.2 F ). A dead animal will rot and smell a lot and my wife is a clean freak. The Chickens were not eaten just killed and placed strategically around our backyard.

Am I doing the right thing or is there more that I can do? Thanks in advance

I'm so sorry for your loss.

It's always worst when it's been done by your own pet. Seems like you're doing it all right so it could have been bad luck. Best to keep the pets separated from them, because animals are unpredictable. Hope you can get some more silkies and try again, I bet some people here on BYC would love to give you a couple.

 

[cookiesoth]

Cheers for the kind words. You are right, a Jack Russell is breed to catch small animals and does well keeping the mice away so I guess I cant blame the Dog entirely. I am going to make a large brooder cage so I am able to raise the chicks to a more suitable size to roam free in the backyard. For now I am going to buy the chickens at a larger size, I kinda pushed the envelope on getting them so small. Feel sorry for the poor little silkies and I blame myself more than the Dog for my poor judgement. Good thing is that she does not attack the bigger chickens so I am in a better situation than most people that have larger breeds of dogs.

Still our Dog is very smart and she knows what she did wrong, she has been hiding from me this morning with the look of a sad face. Also she is almost 4 years old.

Ha ha if anyone does have any larger pure bred white silkies in my area i am happy to pay for them. I really want to breed them in the future as well as the Australorpes. And don't worry our dog is fine as long as there bigger than a rat.

Our Dog has to learn but I cant put the temptation in front of her. Other than today's killing the dog has been perfect around the chickens and its a lesson for both of us.

I have a large fenced area for the chickens and in the past i have tried to make it dog proof but she just digs under the fence so keeping them separate is going to be tough. In the past I was really happy with the dog because she just roamed around with the chickens like she was a chicken. I felt a little more secure too because she kept the cats away if there was any around.

I would love to train the Dog not to attack the small chicks because you get a humble feeling in the backyard when the chicks are with there mothers roaming around the backyard

 

[lizanne]

I'm so sorry for you loss. I have 2 big dogs (lab/German shepherd mixes), and I would never let them around my chickens if I wasn't there. One of the dogs is old and lazy, but I know if he got into the chicken yard alone he would get them. It their instinct. They don't kill them to eat them, when the chickens get freaked out and run the dog's prey drive kicks in and they kill them. I wonder if that was what happened. The other chickens weren't worried about you dog, but the new ones ran from him and he chased them.

 

[007aston]

I'm pretty new to this site, but one day not to long ago I was studying for my tests/) and I heard the hens make a really weird stressful sounding noise, I'm from Ireland and I know there's foxes near so I immediately jumping up panicing, it was two dogs from down the road! I think they were two retrievers, I grabbed the shotgun (don't worry I didn't shoot them) and shot up into the air. The dogs made themselves scarce! Haven't seen them since. Just keep an eye on the chickens and if they made a weird noise go outside! Also, my miniature Schnauzer killed a hen like the second day after I bought them!!