gananatha
In the Brooder
- Apr 16, 2017
- 4
- 2
- 10
Hi,
Everyone,
We had a very sad event this morning. Hunting with dogs is extremely popular in our County in Virginia. It is very common to have large packs of hunting dogs roaming through our property during hunting season. And equally common to find packs of abandoned hunting dogs freezing and starving to death on the property at the close of hunting season. This morning, I heard a pack of hunting dogs making a lot of commotion near our chicken runs. I went outside to see what was going on, and saw the dogs running away from the run and found one of our roosters dead inside. We raised him from a chick and we are very sad about his untimely death. I am guessing, he had a heart attack while being tormented by the dogs. I called local animal control and they were very unsympathetic and sounded very supportive of hunting with dogs. They said that it is legal here for the dogs to hunt on our property, and that because the dogs did not actually bite our rooster, that killing our rooster also was not illegal. I am not sure that this is in accordance with our state laws, but this seems to be how things happen around here. She seemed to indicate that even if the dogs killed our chickens by biting them, I would only have legal recourse if they did it three times. Our chickens are already contained within their run 24/7, but the property is very large (14 acres) so erecting a fence around the whole property would not be an option, and fences are very expensive. I wonder if anyone has any ideas about anything cheap I might be able to legally do to protect my chickens, despite the local laws which seem to favor hunting at the expense of livestock.
thanks,
Everyone,
We had a very sad event this morning. Hunting with dogs is extremely popular in our County in Virginia. It is very common to have large packs of hunting dogs roaming through our property during hunting season. And equally common to find packs of abandoned hunting dogs freezing and starving to death on the property at the close of hunting season. This morning, I heard a pack of hunting dogs making a lot of commotion near our chicken runs. I went outside to see what was going on, and saw the dogs running away from the run and found one of our roosters dead inside. We raised him from a chick and we are very sad about his untimely death. I am guessing, he had a heart attack while being tormented by the dogs. I called local animal control and they were very unsympathetic and sounded very supportive of hunting with dogs. They said that it is legal here for the dogs to hunt on our property, and that because the dogs did not actually bite our rooster, that killing our rooster also was not illegal. I am not sure that this is in accordance with our state laws, but this seems to be how things happen around here. She seemed to indicate that even if the dogs killed our chickens by biting them, I would only have legal recourse if they did it three times. Our chickens are already contained within their run 24/7, but the property is very large (14 acres) so erecting a fence around the whole property would not be an option, and fences are very expensive. I wonder if anyone has any ideas about anything cheap I might be able to legally do to protect my chickens, despite the local laws which seem to favor hunting at the expense of livestock.
thanks,