Venting about neighbors dogs please ignore.

[wisefool]

Thank you very much for this forum. I am new to chickens this year, but have been reading this site since fall. I have had minor complications but the answers were here and I am grateful.

The answer to my current problem (neighbors dogs) is also here, but I am just venting because after 2 days of putting up a 32'x10'x8' + hardware wire plus other deterents -- my neighbors dogs dug under. I can not tell if the barred rock (4 weeks old) I found dead was injured by them or not. Probably not, but I know the next step is electric + burried barb wire around my babies, but I just wish people would think before they move to the country and put up a McMansion and then expect the existing people to work hard to make sure *thier* dogs can have hundreds of acres idiot proofed for them. Uptill this point I check on the run every few hours and 50% of the time the mutts are there. I shout loudly throw sticks at them but I can not be there all the time. I have been shouting loud enough that I know my neighbor has heard it.

My babies provide me food. They stay on my property and have wonderful lives. If they went on someone elses property I would not have a problem with whatever happened, but (despite my legal rights) it seems dogs are somehow given status as gods in social and political circles. I will never own a dog after today. And I do have other responsible, neighbors that keep thier animals on thier property. Or atleast make attempts to heard them back in if they get loose.

Again, just venting. Please ignore. Thank you all for the forum.

 

[sandypaws]

a few things i have found to STOP bad neighbor dogs from digging under the coop/fences..

#1 my donkey pen is on the east side of the chicken yard.. he will kill ANY predator that gets near there...

#2 hotwire.. dont buy the "dog" fencer get a COW or horse fencer,, more power= bigger ZZAAAPPPPP..
wet the ground everynight all around the coop so they have better contact with the ground= very BIG BIG ZZZAAAPPPPPP

#3 planting big thorned cactus all around the coop stops antbody from digging there...

and of couse..SSS

 

[Schultz]

Sorry for your loss, dogs are usually not friends with chickens and I think burying their fencing is the best idea! Maybe you could bribe your bad neighbor with eggs so they take more notice of their dog's behavior? I would also let them know that your chickens are just as important to you as their dogs are to them!

Welcome from Indiana...

 

[wisefool]

Thank you all for the welcome and suggestions. I will put the hotwire in. But I feel like I am subsidizing other peoples irresponsibility and at the same time am imprisoning the innocents.

The egg bribe is a good idea, but these are fancy folks from the city. I doubt they would like the taste of real food. When I start shouting at thier dogs they usually get in thier car and roar away. Instead of calling them home. I have and will continue to persuade the wild dogs and coyotes (usually 2nd or third generation "dump it in the country" dogs. I have no problem doing that, But I am just frustrated that I have been running thier pet dogs off very visibly for over a year now and they don't seem to get the hint. Other neighbors (not me) have registered complaints with animal control. I am sure they think I am the crazy one. And I might be, but before it was just a nusiance (for me and others), now it is affecting my ability to eat. I want to take on cattle and a couple of pigs this year so everything has to be done delecatly.

I am grateful for this place and the good ideas. I can bite my tongue and put in hotwire for the greater good. Thanks again all.

 

[Schultz]

We wish you luck and I hope you find peace and resolution to the problem! Feel free to vent, maybe someone here has gone thru the same thing that can offer a little advice.

Also, you would be surprised at what 'city folk' will pay for brown eggs. Around here they sell for $4.35 a dozen in the store.

 

[Chirpy]

I'm sorry that you lost your chicken to the dogs.

A usually great deterrent, but expensive one, is to get a paintball gun.

It is non lethal but hurts enough to make most dogs not want to come around. If you need to you can even freeze the paintballs to make them give more of an 'ouch'. Also, when the neighbors find their dogs coming home with pink, blue or green paint on them it gives a very visual impression of what's happening.

Also, take pictures of the dogs when they are at your house to prove they are there in case you ever need/want to file a complaint or go further into the legal issues.


Good luck.

 

[fuzziebutt]

Get a pellet gun and shoot them. I actually use a .22 and drag bodies off into the woods, but you seem nicer than I am. I have put up with stepping in crap, having my garbage torn open, and barking dogs, cat prints on my clean, just washed car, up on the roof, and some even try to get in the house! Playtime is over around here!

 

[wisefool]

Thanks again. I am not a nice man when it comes to wild predator animals. I have small neices and nephews and I will not ever have a wild dog injury/infection to them when they are visiting me. No problems there.

But these are pets. I respect that, and I want to expand into livestock so I kinda have to be nice. My how things have changed out here in the last 15 years. I did not mind pickimg up the dtrewn out trash, or fortifying my compost bin for the last year. I thought it was part of the hint, but maybe not. Again, I am venting, when I was young we had a dog in a kennel and on a cable run. The neighbors chickens would come on our land and taunt him non stop. He broke away a couple of times and killed 1 chicken (pulling 100 ft of cable). I got such a lecture from that old farmer and we reienforced his tether. But we had been neighbors for years so he knew that we knew the rules and that they worked both ways.

I guess I'll try the paintball thing or go give them that "old farmer" lecture. I don't know which is going to be more effective and/or keep me our of the local rumor mill.

Thanks again for a place where people have gone through the same issue.

 

[roosterjerry]

O.K. it looks like I found the right place. First off I'd like to say I realize this a family board so I'll try not to use the many four letter words I am thinking. Earlier today I came home with six mixed bantams making me very happy. I had not not let my girls out today so after I got the chicks squared away I let the hens out. This is only the 4th or fifth day of letting them roam the yard so I am VERY.... protective call me a mother hen. All is going good and I go next door to speak with my neighbor(also my landlord) about some cows. All the while looking into my yard to see how my girls are doing. The next thing I know I see my neighbors scraggly grump mutt %#$@!*&^$#@$ killing one of my girls as she tries to get back in to the coop. He says "its O.K. she is still moving" so I have to go and put her out of her misery. I take a quick count and find that most made it inside the coop but I am still missing one of my favorites and the only blue one I had. I am so angry I just want to go and give his stoopid little mutt the business end of my 9mm. I'll just reach over the fence( that doesn't keep the mutt in anyway) drag it into my yard and unload a ten round mag into the mutt and leave it for the vultures. NO more Mr.nice guy

 

[speckledhen]

I understand the frustration and anger about this issue. Seems to me rather than talking to a brick wall, the old tried and true "SSS" applies here. Saves your blood pressure rising.


For those who don't know, SSS is shoot, shovel and shutup. And if the ijits get another dog, that one can disappear as well if it comes onto property. Pets are animals on their own property, under the control of their owner. Off their land and onto yours, running free, they instantly become predators, albeit domesticated ones. Life is becoming too complicated and lately, I'm all for cutting to the root of the problem and nipping it in the bud rather than wasting breath.