Owning a bird dog and chicks...

[farmgirlie1031]

I have to keep our Golden and our birds apart. He wants to retrieve them. When he is on leash I can say "leave it" and he will just ignore them after that but I still don't trust letting him out loose while any of our birds are out free-ranging.

 

[yotetrapper]

My dog is kinda unique. He is a yellow lab/?? mix and he is stupid LOL. I mean, seriously stupid. One day, my gate came unlatched and I had chickens escape when he was outside. I thought for sure one chomp and they would be gone. But he has a somewhat "soft mouth" in the term bird hunters use, which means when he bites a chicken he doesn't chomp down. He caught the first bird, and held it there alive until I got it. I then used him to catch the rest of the escapees, and he didnt hurt any of them. Then one day when no one was home, he caught and killed a rooster. Sometime later a chicken managed to get into his kennel (still have no idea how lol) and he killed it too. Just worried it to death I think. If I'm outside he will still catch and hold chickens unharmed for me until I get to them. But leave him alone with a chicken and he gets "excited" and eventually chews too hard.

I would not expect you can ever trust your Brit unless you spend extensive time training it.

 

[Judy]

My chickens free range and often hang around the house. I have two rescue mutts. They ignore the chickens, will walk by them as if they were not there. It took a few months of watching them closely and telling them "no" whenever they approached a chicken (they wanted to chase and play.) They were mature dogs when I got the chickens, and already knew what "no" means -- and I am definitely the lead dog in this pack. I never used a leash, collar or muzzle, just supervised. Not necessary any more. My son lives next door and got 2 more dogs a couple of months ago, pound puppies, a lab and some little black and white purebred something. It took a lot less time to teach them to leave the chickens alone. None of them ever hurt a chicken. Since we got the last two dogs, we have had no more predator losses. None of the dogs actually guard the chickens, but they do chase off critters.

I assume there are dogs that are not trainable. I don't know anything about your breed of dog; have never owned a purebred dog, only rescue mutts. But I'd sure try training it.

 

[columbiacritter]

I have ex racing greyhounds. Very high prey drive dogs. my male Ed actively hunts varmints that sneak in our yard and except for one attempt at a duck when we first got them, he's never bothered a bird. The sharp reprimand for attempting to pull a duck through the fence hurt his feelings so badly he wouldn't look at them for weeks.

My female, do to injury, was leashed and rarely outside for many months after the birds were ranging our yard. She took more work to convince her the birds weren't toys.

Since our birds only free range when we're home the dogs aren't left alone with them for more than a few minutes.

 

[greenclogs]

We have two golden retriever mixes - one with sheltie and the other aussie. The Golden/Aussie is totally trustworthy because he's very obedient and would rather please me than chase birds (much as he loves chasing the other birds). He lays down next to the run and goes to sleep while they play. The Golden/Sheltie is obsessed by them. They've been outside for about a week in a fully enclosed coop and run. She still has to be on a lead line that keeps her several feet away because she'll patrol the coop by running in circles around it and freaking them out. I figure it'll take her several weeks before she learns that they're not to chase. I think she's trying to herd them, which would be funny if they weren't scared. She did get too close to the baby chicks during a moment of chaos and inattention and she stepped on two of them and killed them while inspecting, so we just don't trust her at all. We built our coop to be Luna proof just in case she never gets over it. Hopefully she will and they'll be able to free range when they're full size.

My SIL lost several chickens to her German Shorthair Pointer, but now he finally just points at them after a year. He's slowly losing the name "Chicken Killer."

 

[Chickbait]

I have two Brittany's

I always introduce my dogs to any new comers such as my chicks, I think that if you deprive them of a 'look in' or a sniff here and there it makes them worse. I will sit down with a chick and talk to my brittany's and let them come close, sniff and check it out. I could trust them alone with my chicks, they would not kill them intentionally but they may kill them playing with their paws and long legs.

They seem to know the difference between a pet bird and a wild one, they still go crazy for birds, squirrels etc in the wild, but do understand that the birds at home are mine. They are smart dogs, mine know when they are doing something that I don't want them to do when I give them a look, I never have to shout at them they are very sensistive dogs are brittany's.