Personally, I'm not really sure why you did not take compensation for the dead chickens. It really isn't about whether you want to replace them but what you lost. But that's up to you.Update ******
The neighbor offered to cover any cost but we declined as we chose not to replace the 2 dead chickens. I did go the next day and get my daughter a new pet Roan duck. It was nice for about a week until our OTHER neighbor's dog came over and took a chunk out of my Peking drake. Had I not walked out just as she did it - I am sure she would have killed him. The neighborhood we moved into (6 houses on a u shaped street) general mentality is "well, dogs roam and they kill birds what can you do"? Everyone has dogs and everyone lets them roam.
So after many tears from both my kids and myself we gave our beloved pet ducks away and have been keeping the chickens in their coop / run attached to the coop (no more free ranging). It is a far cry from what we planned for OUR property but since our neighbors have no plans to stop their dogs from coming on our property I decided it was best for now. I KNOW the laws are on my side but I just cannot engage in a war over this right now and I am not confident I can shoot all my neighbors dogs w/o traumatizing my children and damaging my relationships with all my neighbors. At the moment we are looking into underground invisible fencing for our dogs since they also on occasion step over property boundaries (although would never kill anything a Golden-doodle and a Chihuahua) . We do want to be responsible with our dogs and certainly cannot demand they keep their dogs on their own property if we are not doing the same.
Thanks for all the advice!
I guess I'll never understand why it seems that the owner of the dead livestock, the one who did nothing wrong, always thinks they must tiptoe around neighbors' feelings when the neighbor's dog slaughters their birds. It's apparent the neighbor cares zilch about your feelings, your childrens' traumatic experience losing their pets or the law.
Personally, though this is up to you how you want to live your life, I would have the worst taste in my mouth if I must keep mine shut and always live in fear of my flocks being killed while everyone else just does whatever they please, to heck with what's right and what's the law. But, me, I know that an irresponsible dog owner is the one who trashed the so-called relationship in the first place, not me for asking for them to obey the dog laws and compensate me for my loss. We never, ever let our dogs roam when they were alive, as I feel is the responsibility of every single dog owner to put up fencing that will hold their dogs. If our dogs had run the neighborhood and they were shot for harassing/killing livestock, that would be OUR fault and well-deserved.
As far as invisible fencing, I would not depend on that entirely. It may keep your dog in but it sure won't keep others out. Our next door neighbor did that after getting a warning from us about his roaming dog getting coming onto our property and getting close to our flock. The dog zoomed right through it. Of course, he didn't want to go back through and get shocked again. And you also have to have charged batteries in that collar. If not, it's a useless system.