Training Help/Advice for dog who killed poultry?

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

I trained my dog with the chickens using a muzzle and E collar, starting off on a leash.

How did that go?

My concern with doing that is that, if she isn’t muzzled or collar on will she still ignore them/associate that buzz when she sees them??

 

[Tookie]

How did that go?

My concern with doing that is that, if she isn’t muzzled or collar on will she still ignore them/associate that buzz when she sees them??

It went very well, I don't think she was very interested in attacking them though. She is a German Shepherd, we got her as a puppy and she has been around them all her life. Sometimes she'll even try to play with the chickens, there is one pullet who likes her and will follow her around and hang around her, its so cute.

She may ignore the shocks when she doesn't have the collar on, it may be best to just not have her around them.

So you free range the chickens? Do you have a predator proof run?

 

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

It went very well, I don't think she was very interested in attacking them though. She is a German Shepherd, we got her as a puppy and she has been around them all her life. Sometimes she'll even try to play with the chickens, there is one pullet who likes her and will follow her around and hang around her, its so cute.

She may ignore the shocks when she doesn't have the collar on, it may be best to just not have her around them.

So you free range the chickens? Do you have a predator proof run?

No only our roos were. Ended up w 3; the self imposed leader is a mean bully, hurting the other two. Even when he free ranged. So he stays penned & they were getting to free range. (Varying ages of the hens so was keeping them separated.) But since this happened, our friendly roo is with the females. The mean one in the tractor.

I worked with her some today. She is going to be a piece of work because I feel she will only do something if we aren’t around. She didn’t even really give the chickens too much attn when we walked around the pen. Only once did she go into stalk mode. Smh. She’s a smart cookie. Lol
Quickly grasped “Come.”, but “Sit.” requires me to push her butt down. lol

 

[Coops Dad]

I have a spayed female 3-yr old Siberian Husky/GSD mix who was shuffled through 5 homes (with a stop in the local shelter between each) so she came to us as a damage case. She also had/has an insanely high prey drive and killed several of our chickens. Plus a few wild rabbits, many possums, I don't know how many feral cats and one skunk. Once she realized she was in her forever home, she began to show her personality- and a huge part of it was responding to positive reinforcement and training. Once I started training her, it took her ONE day to learn that I expected her to sit and wait for me to enter/exit the house and follow only on command.

Even with that level of dog smarts, it still took two months of constant training to keep her from pursuing chickens when off leash. She'd respond to commands to break and come, but I felt like Sisyphus and her stubbornness was that rock.

I eventually won, probably took another 2 months to get where we are now. I can walk her off leash through the run past 30+ birds and she won't even glance at a chicken. I can hold out a chick and she'll turn her head away as if I was offering her poison. That's with me. With my wife... well, that's a different matter. Luna is a one person dog and my wife is not that one person. Luna is... untrustworthy... with the chickens when under my wife's direction.

You've got your work cut out for you. I'll keep you in prayer.

 

[Aquira]

Does she gets lots of exercise? Not just playing in a yard but does she go on walks/runs?
A well exercised dog tends to be a well behaved dog (with training of course)

Have you thought about putting electric fencing around the chicken pen? Most dogs don't like getting shocked by those.

Training a dog to do what you want it to do is easy enough with time and dedication. Training a dog to do those things without your presence is a lot harder.

 

[TinyPeaPea]

I’ll preface it to say I’ve never trained a dog beyond, potty training outside & sit, stay. Mainly pit bulls. (That’s what our other two are.) And it really was just telling them & not true training.

Like sit, we’d push their rear down & there ya go.
She’s been different. She lays down, will roll over to her belly shows. But sit was an issue. Lol
We used to have her & her bro in the house but she got to where she didn’t want it. She wants to be outside. Which is fine.
But I’ve tried periodically to get her to sit. Yet as life goes I’m extremely busy. Gardens, children, homeschool, yard work, chickens, lol the list goes on.
It has been easier to just let her be so to speak because that’s just how she’s existed.

But I have a goal to at least get her to respect that I am alpha, and she has to listen to me on basic commands.
Might be a process but it’s worth a shot.

(Pssh if you have a cat obeying teach me your ways! I have numerous ones & they are typical cats! Do what they want when they want. Lol)

Let me preface everything by saying that I do not in any way mean to disparage your lifestyle choices or method of training by any of my comments, so you don't need to excuse or explain yourself to me.
There are many roads toward different solutions and everyone has their own preference for how they want to handle conditioning their pets. The information I will share with you is based off my experience with animals, which will be anecdotal and at times controversial. These are my opinions and experiences, do not accept them as fact without doing your own research first.

I think Cesar Milan is a hack. Yeah, he's good at showing you how to handle a dog via the magic of post production editing, but if you attempt to emulate his "domination and training methods" on most dogs you're more likely to get bit than automatically gain the title "Pack Leader."
First of all, you see this madman kneeling in front of every dog he meets, while this looks good for the camera, I can assure you that "getting down to their level to make eye contact" is not something you should do with dogs unfamiliar to you.
I also remember seeing in one episode he grabs a dog by the snout (which is fine if your dog is used to that type of play or you have a completely submissive animal) but if you tried to dominate an angry pit, lab, or shepherd who hasn't recognized you like that, I guarantee you'll have a bad time.
What he doesn't show you behind the scenes is all the trust building exercises or reinforcement training that is done with the dog over weeks/months to get it to "episode worthy" behavior. Whatever, he is the expert with the TV show, I am just the backyard practitioner. That's just my opinion of his show.

There is plenty of good advice offered in this thread, but remember that every dog is a case by case thing and something that worked for someone else might not be as effective on another dog. The most important thing is to watch for cues from your dog and respond in a way it understands.

I started training my first dog when I was 5. Basic stuff like potty training, come here, sit, shake, down, stay, and eventually my favorite, "shut up!" which was later replaced with "SHHH!" and a firm pointing at. I've trained single pups and whole litters, and the occasional rescue. I've rehabilitated 2 aggressive rescues that were beaten. Needless to say there were a lot of mistakes and learning experiences, but definitely all successes. Anyone can train a dog if they really want to and put the effort in. There's very few devil dogs that can't be conditioned or rehabilitated.

I trained all my dogs while going to school, working, and tending to all the chores required in life. You just need to make the dog part of your everyday chores, and dedicate at least 10-30 minutes sessions to consistently reinforce your relationship and conditioning with the dog. I would average 10-14 hours of interaction/training over a week, which means over a year I spent between 480-672 hours reinforcing things with the dog. Even if you only spent 10 minutes twice a day, you would still have managed to train the dog for 56 hours over a year, and that is a good amount of training.

^ This is just training and food/treat interactions. I'm not counting any park visits or walks in the neighborhood as those are extracurriculars.

I believe you should dedicate training time for your dogs. A dog is something that demands time. If you say you don't have time, then I insist you make time. If you want to commit to a functional relationship with your current and future pack, this is integral time to bond and reinforce obedience and condition behavior and foster trust. It is not optional, it is mandatory. You can't command the trust, respect, or obedience of a pack you don't spend time with. It's good that you want to work with her because your time with her is what she needs to grow into the doggo you want her to be.

Now, it's not about how many hours a day you spend forcing them to sit, it's about how consistent you are in demanding they sit and how you show them to sit. If they only have to sit a third of the time, and you allow them to ignore you and walk away most of the time, then that is the behavior you are conditioning. If you have to shove her bottom down to make her sit, then you're conditioning that as the behavior.

I personally had this problem with my cat. Because I originally had to nudge him a bit to get him to roll over on command, he had a phase where he associated rolling over with me nudging him and would wait for me to push him a bit before he would roll over. Eventually we worked it out, but that's what happened.
What you need to do is give her some more time to respond to 'sit' before you start pushing her, and gradually work the association away from being pushed to sit toward sitting by herself on command. Patience is key at this stage of things, as associations have already been formed and reconditioning them takes reinforcement.

Consider training to be ongoing and constant, there is no end to it. Even my cat is not done training and I picked him off the street in 2019.
For example, my cat comes on command ~75% of the time. (It started at 0% of the time) The remaining ~25% he sits and stares and decides if he really has to or not. But as soon as I step toward him or motion to go get him, he remembers that it's not a choice and comes over. About a third of the time I'll give him a treat, so that reinforces in him to come over next time because he could potentially get a treat. That's what I mean by consistency and giving them time to respond. My cat listens most of the time, but often not the first time he hears a command. Sometimes he needs it repeated because he's easily distracted by every single sound and movement nearby or he forgot that I'm gonna make him do it anyway. In a sense I've conditioned him to believe it's not a matter of "if" but "when" he's going to obey my command, and I just need to reinforce that notion to him.

You shouldn't hit your dog for not coming over to you, but you can walk over to him and gently grab him like mama would over the nape, pull him over by a leash like a fish on a line, nudge him into position, however you want to make it more preferable for him to just obey you to begin with. However you want to condition it is up to you. To train the most stubborn of dogs to 'come here' a leash is mandatory. But by no means should you ever yank the dog aggressively. You will condition it to distrust you and being leashed. The leash is to be treated as neutral and just a connection to keep the dog tethered to you and easily controlled. Do not use the leash as a tool of negative reinforcement.

You seem to already know the basics of how to get doggy to sit, so just apply it throughout the whole training. You don't need to shoot for 100% obedience, but something like 50% is far short of the mark. Repetition is key in reinforcing conditioning in any animal.

The best time to train is feeding time and there's a lot of reasons for this, but the simplest explanation comes down to animal instinct and the whole positive reinforcement thing. Food and treats are a key component of that reinforcement in a lot of food-motivated animals. Do not just give your dog free food. Make them pay a cost. Something as simple as sit, shake, or 'wait' until I let you eat is enough.
People who dump food in a bowl without interacting with their dogs at all are doing them a disservice and blurring lines in the relationship. You can get away with this with a solo dog with proper dominance training but it's easier to train multiple dogs at once if you get this basic concept down.
It's the same when they say not to let the dog walk you. You are supposed to lead the pack and while your dog can trot in front of you, it should not be dragging or leading you. You set the pace and you decide the direction. By doing this, you can train your dog to wait at cross walks and safely watch for cars before crossing the street as well as stay on the sidewalks instead of charging into traffic. I've seen what happens when an untrained dog runs off into traffic. It's horrifying.

I digress. The type of training and what priorities are focused on differ from owner to owner and dog by dog. It'll be up to you to figure out what to train and how to train it based on your dog and your own personal preferences.

Behavioral training is more important than training commands or punishing mistakes IMO. It's better to work with your dog's existing personality and behavior to modify it instead of trying to yell at, slap, choke, shock, or deter the dog solely through negative stimulus.

Without going too much into it, (since there are tons of books by lots of experts you can read) We can simplify reinforcement training down to adding a behavior or removing one through the use of positive and negative stimuli/reinforcement.
You've heard of clicker training? That's when you make a click or verbal cue and reward the dog for a good behavior to associate the two. Then by repeated reinforcement of the behavior and cue, you condition in the dog a baseline of how to act.
You already know this, something as simple as "good dog" and petting them or giving them a treat, or "no", "bad dog" and tugging on their leash. There is truly a wide and diverse range of how people handle conditioning their dogs.
Household myth says lemon juice and water spritzing works. I've found mileage may vary from dog to dog on that. Some people smack their doggy bottoms. I do too occasionally, but only reserve it as punishment for the naughtiest of dogs.
Some people swat their noses with newspapers. It's effective, but I wouldn't. Some people use electricity or vibrations, and that it works very effectively but I have not needed to personally. Some use choke chains effectively too.
Never grab a dog by the nose, legs, or tail. Dog's noses have arguably got to be the most sensitive area they have. Just rubbing the snout of some dogs is enough to annoy and anger them. I suspect it's not pleasant to have their noses handled roughly. Their ribcages are also comparatively fragile to shear forces, so absolutely never carry or drag a dog by its legs.
I'm not a proponent of dishing out spankies as the first form of punishment as I've learned throughout my experience that once conditioned, escalating to the negative verbal cue is enough. Owners who are quick to make contact with their dogs end up conditioning dogs that shy away from adverse reactions, to the point where some will avoid hands entirely because it's unsure what will result in a quick slap or just run away from you if you shift your tone too deep. If you at least verbally warn your dog that its behavior is heading for punishment, you give it an opportunity to rethink its behavior.
How you choose to discipline your dog is up to you. However you choose to do it, please make sure you are not harming your animal or doing damage to your conditioning by punishing it in a way that promotes distrust.

A good example is of this training is the electro shock collar that shocks or vibrates when your dog barks. I've never needed to use electricity to train my dogs, but it works. When the dog wearing an ecollar barks, a vibration/shock is applied to surprise/break the behavior by applying a negative stimulus. It's the equivalent of you watching your dog and telling it to be quiet every time it barked. It's just easier to use the tool. But as mentioned dogs can and will often ignore the shock if they want to, it's not a powerful shock, but you don't want it to be anyway.
Muzzles are a great tool to begin introducing your dog to smaller animals and begin associations and training. If you choose to leave her unsupervised with a muzzle, please buy one that would allow her to eat and drink and not one of those full guard bane muzzle masks. Muzzles are also not a full time solution so please do not substitute them for training.
A sturdy harness and leash is necessary for obedience training if you aren't experienced at controlling dogs without force. A dog that can leave the premise is not one with a mindset conducive to training. You must restrict its freedom of choice and movement while training.

Anyway, it seems like you already understand the basics of what to do, you need to come up with a schedule to reinforce into your dog the behavior you want to see from it. Start by exposing your dog to the chickens on a leash. Reward her when she is calm or sniffs the chickens without interest, and only punish if she charges the chickens with intent, either to play or kill, condition that behavior. Control her distance with the leash. How fast she gets it is gonna come down to how well and how often you can work with her.

When you feel sure that she can be trusted to remain calm without the leash, you can then advance to introductions with a muzzle. Show her your chickens and modify her behavior with the proper reactions. Again, the goal is to work with her and the chickens and condition the behavior you want. If she's calm and shows disinterest, that's what you want. If she's excited and wants to play with them, that's what you don't want. Idk if you've "played" with full grown Huskies, but their idea of it is to wrestle and bite each other on the ground. A chicken would not enjoy husky play in any sense of the word.

What you are trying to do is train the husky to recognize the chickens as your posessions and not a toy for your husky to play with. If you introduce them as other pets then your husky might associate them as part of the pack and attempt to dominate and play with them.

In the end you also have to realize the nature of their relationship. Dogs are predatory pack animals with a strong drive to chase. Birds are prey animals with a strong flight response. Strictly speaking, a dog mauling a chicken is natural and bound to happen. It's your job to set up failsafes and establish boundaries for your animals.

Also mentioned was that it's a lot harder to train your dog to stick to its training when you're not supervising, this is true. However you can get your dog to a trustworthy point through conditioning. Examples of this are the flock dogs that guard backyard chickens from varmints.

If that means no unsupervised time with the chickens until she's fully trained, that's what it means. It's better if she doesn't get to interact with the chickens at all without you until she learns how to rather than being punished for killing one.

Good luck. It's a lot of work and quite a process, but it can be done.

 

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

Thanks for the info.

I’ve been working with her a bit each day. Just at the basics. Sit, stay, making sure she knows paying attn to me, no leash pulling.
I watched a few of Will Atherton’s training videos & have tried implementing his techniques. They seem decent.

She is stubborn but responding to commands. She hates to sit. Lol
But she now has to sit before she gets her dinner.

She did get disciplined yesterday. Walking by the chicken tractor she bolted, on the leash, at the one roo in it.
I made her stay by the fence w the others; they thankfully didn’t run. Their fear of her has subsided thankfully. (They were scared of her. But not one of our other dogs.)

Watching her with them & correcting her just while she watched, I really think it’s the fact they make such a ruckus & then run! Lolol she wants that chase. Not to harm them per say just to cause though. Lol

Regardless she’s going to be worked with daily if I can. Lol

 

[Chescochickens]

I have a Jack Russell and can’t trust her off leash around my chickens either. I wish I could because it would be much easier. I agree with Tookie on the E-collar though. It breaks her prey drive and calms her down although I’ve only done it with her on a leash with the chickens but have seen how it works on her in other situations. I would start with the E-collar for other things and then see how your dog responds to it with a leash on around the chickens. I’m still not brave enough to let my dog free with mine so I’m interested in how this training goes. Keep us posted!

 

[Rise722]

My sister is a professional dog trainer, and you have to work with this dog every single day...it is not respectful. And people who are telling you to get a leash and a muzzle are correct....or use a shock collar.

 

[cassie]

You are not going to be able to train a Husky not to chase and kill chickens. You just aren't. Huskys have a very high prey drive. To them chasing and killing things is the most fun they can have. About the best you can hope for is to get the dog to leave the poultry alone as long as you are there. Once you are out of sight all bets are off. You just have to make sure the dog can't get to the birds. One of the posters here said they were able to train a Husky to leave the poultry alone. I say congratulations. Over the years I have seen a lot of people try. Some even hired professional trainers. None were successful over the long run. Some dogs can be trained to leave livestock and poultry alone. In my experience Malamutes and Huskys cannot be. I would be willing to be proven wrong. I wish you the best of luck.