Pet Dogs & Chicks

[HiryuStorm]

I also wonder how dogs could get along with chickens.

 

[Dogfish]

Cedar, our yellow lab pup, is 6 months and he has been dealing with the chicks for a month now. You can see he really wants to retrieve them, but as someone else said, introduce the dog to the birds on a leash, and then let them gradually get closer, but ALWAY be there ready to intervene. Cedar now sniffs the BR than like to get on my lap and does really well. Train your dog EVERY day, for just 5 minutes, and they should learn it well. I do say "NO" a lot, and I did start with the E-collar. Get one with the vibrate option so you don't have to inflict pain unless necessary. In 2 months of using the e-collar, 3 times he's been zapped, and the rest were just the buzz. It really shortens the training time, but they need to know why they are being corrected.

The challenge will be once we start Cedar on retrieving pheasants and quail. Good luck!

 

[kaddidle]

I just wanted to advise that I've learned that supervision and caution are very important as I've made a couple stupid mistakes with dogs and baby chicks.

I do dog rescue and have two extremely well-socialized dogs who've helped raise litters of puppies and kittens and who lived with a ferret. The oldest is a cocker basset mix who has also lived with rats, parakeets, and cockatiels. The middle is a lab/Great Dane mix. They've been great with the baby chicks. When I first introduced them I told them over and over that the chicks were "babies" and they understood that. I made them lie down and be calm when chicks were out. The middle dog wouldn't even look at the chicks. The older dog liked to nose them gently and herd them back into their crate.

My youngest dog is a rescue Great Dane who's a little nutty. She was rescued at 18 months old and was severely unsocialized. She totally ignored the chicks and would leave the room when they were out running around inside.

When I first got the chicks, they lived inside in a dog crate so that all the dogs could see and hear them. My oldest dog loved them and would watch them blissfully. My middle dog would lay by their crate and ignore them, and the young dog ignored them entirely. I got comfortable letting the dogs around the chicks. Too comfortable...

The first nice day of spring, I tried letting the chicks outside in a different dog crate with the bottom removed. I stupidly didn't notice that removing the bottom created a bigger gap than in the cage they lived in indoors. I watched them closely for a few moments and they seemed fine, so I went inside to grab lunch out of the microwave and walked back out to eat it while watching them with my Great Dane a few paces ahead of me. The chicks had gotten out of their crate and were flapping about in the yard. The Dane, who loves to chase squirrels and robins in the yard, took off, and before I had time to react had trampled one of the chicks to death. As soon as I yelled "No!" she stopped, looked confused, and sat by the sidelines while I gathered the remaining chick.

I think that she just had her usual reaction to a small animal being in the yard and didn't even associate it with the pets I'd had in the house. Regardless, out of caution, I no longer let her anywhere near the chickens while they're loose whether in the house or outside and have moved their crate to a room that she can't reach, and am much more cautious with my other dogs as well, even though they have a good track record with chicks. I've been extremely strict about making them lie down calmly if they are going to watch or be around loose chicks (as in the photo above).

Chicks are extremely easy to kill and do lots of things to incite prey drive in dogs--flapping wings suddenly as they exercise their growing muscles, darting about quickly, being small and feathery...

I've had some really good chicken dogs when I raised chickens growing up (baby chicks used to nest under my Old English Sheepdog and Shetland Sheepdog) and I think that it made me cocky about how good dogs can be with chicks. But it only takes a second for a dog to kill a chicken and I think it's important not to press your luck like I did. The whole incident put a big fat dent in the happiness I was getting from keeping chickens and could have easily been avoided if I'd known to leash the dog, supervise more closely, or just keep her away. Now I don't walk away from my chickens for a second when they're loose and don't let the large dogs near them at all.