To the folks who trained their dogs to live with chickens…

Training doesn’t start until the dog is mature enough to truly learn

Balderdash! And the rest of your post refutes this statement anyway.

What I think you are really trying to say, and what my experience points to in training dogs at the highest level of agility, is that while puppies can certainly learn, they have difficulty with impulse control until mature. So while your puppy may "know" commands and seem trained at a young age, they aren't reliable until they are old enough to have good impulse control. Complex behaviors and those geared against a dog's natural drive may take until the pup has more than the attention span of a gnat to become truly "learned" (we use the term "proofing.")

I start my puppies in their ground work agility training at 8 to 10 weeks. To say they aren't learning at this age is utter nonsense, not to mentioned they are being house broken by me and taught doggie social manners by the older dogs. By the time they are able to compete (18 months in AKC), they know pretty much everything they need to be agility dogs, but that doesn't prevent wild, out of control runs at first. Because it comes down to impulse control, which some dogs develop younger than others.
 
Well.... Back to the topic of training dogs to live with Chickens, having pretty much nothing to do with agility...... I start with chicks that are a few weeks old, holding them close to my dogs face/nose (dog = any age,) I let them sniff and understand what it is. Keeping them 100% no contact just seems to make the dog want to get to it more. I do this repeatedly until the chicks are running free in my run. I let my dog in for very controlled, quick sessions to just be around the chickens. It's younger, zoomier chicks and/or any chicken "running," that makes that prey drive kick in. I make my dog "snap out of it," and of course leave the run when it happens. All dogs are different and you learn which are going to be able to be around chickens and which are not. It's not even breed specific or training (I'm not going to digress to my credentials, yes I have them.) In my 50years of dogs+chickens I've been able to get 10 out of 12 dogs to "be nice to chickens." Yep, that's an actual command. The 2 who just would not, okay, move on. Keep dog and chickens separated, it's just not going to happen. Breeds I'm well versed in: Newfoundland, Leonberger, Mastiff, Golden Retriever, Lab, Sheltie, Vizsla, Malamute. My 2 chicken killers: Newfoundland, Vizsla.
 

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