Dogs killing the chickens

Lager

Lager

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Wife says the dogs gotta go !! Out of her beloved 10 hens, there is only one left. We thought it was coon or something scaling the 6 foot high fence and getting at them.. Turned out one the dogs was scooting her self in between two fences and scaring the birds to fly out for the other two chow hounds to pounce on them..Our last dog didn't bother the birds at all, now we have these three and its looks like they like the taste of chicken..
 
Jp8819 said:
String a wire about 4” off the ground around pen and hook it to a electric fence charger. Bet the dog doesn’t go near it but once more unless he is a slow learner.
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My dogs don't bother our chickens, but one of them busted out under a section of our new fence. One trip to tractor supply and they barely go on that side of the yard anymore.

@Lager I'm trying to thin the herd/flock and have six bantam hens I would gladly give you, if you want them. The hens I want to keep are three barred rock, one leghorn, three lavendar orpingtons, and two easter eggers. They occupy the main coop and run. The bantams are scattered about in little satellite coops. I want to move the birds so I can try to sell the coops.

They look like this:

20180506_100723.jpg
 
I don't know if our dogs would chase chickens. But sure as heck love chasing the rabbits that get in the yard.
That husky we had as kids got off one night. My father was him alone while we were at Disney world with our mom.
When we got home, the husky was not there.
That's when he told us what happened. My father was never one to show any emotion at all. ANd he never again showed as much as he did tell us what he saw when he went to that garage that morning.
Our neighbor, well within his rights, shot our husky with his hunting rifle when the husky got into his chicken after breaking another collar.
Luckily he survived, by millimeters. Made a full recovery. But all that blood scared the crap out of my father. He was grateful we were not there to see it.
I was never mad at the neighbor for protecting his chickens.
We go the strongest collar available after that.
 
I had a Lab years ago that would kill anything that stepped into the yard. People he would just intimidate. He hated my wife's chickens and he would kill one if he got the chance. He thought he was real slick because he would bury the evidence. The problem was that he only buried the head. It was not unusual to find a chicken, coon or a possum dead in the yard with their heads stuck in the ground and stiff cold feet sticking up in the air. I guess he figured if he buried the head no one would notice. If you have a dog with some sense you can change his behavior, but like people, if you have a dumb one there is little you can do. The secret is to catch them in the act. It took a few years and many dead bodies but eventually I caught him red handed burying a chicken in the yard head first, feet in the air. I grabbed the chicken and commenced to wailing on him hollering "Bad Dog" until there was nothing left of the chicken but a handful of feathers. He never killed another one after that. Sure, you could see him looking at them and skulking and we knew that he was skeaming on how to commit another poultry murder without getting caught but he just couldn't deal with doing the "time". :D

Your problem is that you have multiple dogs. A pack, or maybe even a gang, and you may have stupid dogs to boot. Electrocution may be your only option. Hot wire around the coop. One nasty little trick my wife learned about dogs is that they don't like their own poop. She had a few problems with the dogs laying in her gardens so she would take a shovel and drop a loaf or two where they liked to lay. Seemed to work. So if they are digging then try putting some dog poop around the perimeter. ;)
 
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Downeast said:
One nasty little trick my wife learned about dogs is that they don't like their own poop.
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Generally.

I had a dog, a very large dog, that would take a dump and if you didn't call him back right then, would turn right around and it eat. I nearly vomited the first time I witnessed it.

From that point forward, we always picked up his poop and bagged it.
 
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kcult said:
Generally.

I had a dog, a very large dog, that would take a dump and if you didn't call him back right then, would turn tight around and it eat. I nearly vomited the first time I witnessed it.

From that point forward, we always picked up his poop and bagged it.
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They forget. He turned around and was like “where’d this delicious thing come from???”
 
Shoot the dogs or build a chicken fortress, whichever makes the wife happy.
 
I'm sure tapatalk is going to do something funky with the picture, but here is what I got from tractor supply.

I drove aluminum stakes in the ground, set some insulators on top, strung my wire around them and to the end.

No more dogs at the fence line.
a040de0c19642c3dc6f9e40efe903859.jpg


Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 
kcult said:
I'm sure tapatalk is going to do something funky with the picture, but here is what I got from tractor supply.

I drove aluminum stakes in the ground, set some insulators on top, strung my wire around them and to the end.

No more dogs at the fence line.
a040de0c19642c3dc6f9e40efe903859.jpg


Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
That's the exact same thing I did. It wont take them long to figure it out.
 
Burt Gummer said:
They forget. He turned around and was like “where’d this delicious thing come from???”
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Oddly enough, he wouldn't eat the Pom's poop.

They ate the same food, so I imagined the doo doo had to be similar.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 
kcult said:
Oddly enough, he wouldn't eat the Pom's poop.

They ate the same food, so I imagined the doo doo had to be similar.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
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I had Beagles that ate theirs all the time. I raised rabbit dogs back then & got rid of the poop eaters. But found it hard to find Beagles that didn't.
 
Had a dog that killed a few chickens. Dad saw dog running off with chicken.
Dog knew chickens were off limits. Dad stuffed chicken half way down his throat and beat the living sh&t out of him.
Dog never touched or went near a chicken again and had a different attitude after that, and quite agreeable.
I was quite horrified and never messed with the chickens after that either!

Not suggesting this is how to handle it, but I have to admit it worked.
 
Lager said:
Wife says the dogs gotta go !! Out of her beloved 10 hens, there is only one left. We thought it was coon or something scaling the 6 foot high fence and getting at them.. Turned out one the dogs was scooting her self in between two fences and scaring the birds to fly out for the other two chow hounds to pounce on them..Our last dog didn't bother the birds at all, now we have these three and its looks like they like the taste of chicken..
Click to expand...

Yep we got rid of our dogs after it and a couple others decided to much on our flock. NC allows you to protect your flock from predators and I ended up shooting one of the other dogs, got rid of ours and the cats don’t bother them.
 
Mirac said:
We did the tie the carcass around their neck thing on our GSD. Left it till it rotted off. He didn't go near a chicken again.
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When I was a teenager, I took a trip with the neighboring farm family to visit their adult daughter for the New Year. While there we found an entire litter of eight pups with eyes not yet open abandoned outside in minus 20-30°F weather and brought them all home.

I took one but the rest stayed on the farm until they found homes. All were great dogs except they loved killing the free range chickens.

Each time we caught one in the act, that chicken was tied around the offenders neck with baling twine for the remainder of the day.

We got eight first time cures, but it cost them a couple dozen chickens.
 
NKD said:
Had a dog that killed a few chickens. Dad saw dog running off with chicken.
Dog knew chickens were off limits. Dad stuffed chicken half way down his throat and beat the living sh&t out of him.
Dog never touched or went near a chicken again and had a different attitude after that, and quite agreeable.
I was quite horrified and never messed with the chickens after that either!

Not suggesting this is how to handle it, but I have to admit it worked.
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He just stepped up to be the Leader of the Pack...
 
rdinatal said:
He just stepped up to be the Leader of the Pack...
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Indeed. He was a dog trainer. He trained K9's/bombsquad dogs and military dogs for the Air Force.

If any of our dogs ever had any question about who was in change...it wasn't for very long!
 
Sorry to say it but there are a couple basic beliefs I buy in on dogs and chasing/killing stock ...

- Once they have done it they we continue to do it ... taste of blood is not forgotten.
- Unless you catch ‘em red handed it’s hard to make the punishment stick. Beating them 10 minutes later likely does not register with them.
- To deal with it you gotta either catch ‘em then and instill the fear in them, ship them off or DRT. My wife hates it but to “instill” I have shot a fair number of our own dogs with birdshot for chasing our stock ... especially foals. All except on stupid Husky learned very quickly. Dogs are pack animals and hunters deep down ... you gotta be Alpha and lead them.
 
Many moons ago growing up on the family farm, my moms stupid little dog bolted out the door of the house and attacked a chicken. I happened to be outside with a 20ga in hand and put the chicken out of it's misery while it was still just about in the dogs mouth. The dog never so much as thought about looking at a chicken for the rest of its life.

Fast forward, these days my GSD and pound mutt guard my flock of 20 from hawks to otters to stray dogs, it's their job.


IMG_20171124_102241.jpg
 
Jp8819 said:
String a wire about 4” off the ground around pen and hook it to a electric fence charger. Bet the dog doesn’t go near it but once more unless he is a slow learner.
Click to expand...
That's a good option, I looked at them but didn't think I needed it since I thought I built the fence well enough. I thought wrong..
 
kcult said:
My dogs don't bother our chickens, but one of them busted out under a section of our new fence. One trip to tractor supply and they barely go on that side of the yard anymore.

@Lager I'm trying to thin the herd/flock and have six bantam hens I would gladly give you, if you want them. The hens I want to keep are three barred rock, one leghorn, three lavendar orpingtons, and two easter eggers. They occupy the main coop and run. The bantams are scattered about in little satellite coops. I want to move the birds so I can try to sell the coops.

They look like this:

View attachment 63882
Click to expand...
Thanks for the offer Kcult, I asked the wife and she said " Thank you very much, but Im looking for full size birds for egg size" I really appreciate the offer tho.. Im still trying to get the new redesigned coop/run area built but its been slow going due to health reasons with me..
 
Lager said:
That's a good option, I looked at them but didn't think I needed it since I thought I built the fence well enough. I thought wrong..
Click to expand...

Dogs are extremely intelligent...and properly motivated, a fence isn't much of a challenge.

As our neighbor Joe learned when I was a kid.

I had a dog, half Cocker Spaniel, half Dachshund. "Blackie" only grew so high at the shoulders, then he just got long.

Joe tried for the longest time to raise pure bred Beagles. Blackie, however, kept "f*cking" that up, to put it bluntly.

Joe even built an awesome kennel for his Beagle bitch.

Blackie, as it turned out, was a master fence climber. There wasn't a fence in the neighborhood he couldn't get over, properly motivated. And apparently a Beagle bitch in heat is one HELL of a motivator!

Joe came over one day when Grandpa and I were sitting on the front porch. He was in a baaaaad mood (apparently his Beagle had just given birth to ANOTHER fine litter of suspiciously black puppies).

After a few minutes of listening to Joe, Grandpa dug into his pocket, pulled out a condom, gave it to Joe and said "give this to your Beagle bitch to use. Next time Blackie pays a visit, she can ask him to use it."

Now, I was waaaay too young to appreciate the adult humor in this, but it was funny to see Joe stomp off. Years later the story was even funnier retold as an adult!
 
Lager said:
Thanks for the offer Kcult, I asked the wife and she said " Thank you very much, but Im looking for full size birds for egg size" I really appreciate the offer tho.. Im still trying to get the new redesigned coop/run area built but its been slow going due to health reasons with me..
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I totally understand. The bantams were a good starting point, but bigger eggs is what we're after.

And I don't trust this girl. While I'm out with them, everything's cool. I bet if I go inside, even for a minute, I'll be minus at least one bird.

20180703_203450.jpg
 
We had a problem with a young Belgian Malinois killing our chickens. The darn things are hard headed, to say the least, especially when they are young. Catching her in the act, scolding her or using corporal punishment on her did not solve the problem.

Finally, when we reached the point that a rehoming was looking like the only option, when she killed the last chicken she was severely scolded, with the chicken body used for corporal punishment, and then it was tied around her neck for a day. Every time we went into the yard for the rest of the day we either ignored her or when she bounded up looked at her with disdain and scolded here again, stating "no chicken" loudly while scolding. I think that being outcast from us is what finally got through to her. She was ignored for a day and night and left outside in the yard overnight while the other dogs were treated normally (indoor - outdoor dogs).

It worked.
 
I know this is an older thread, but I just came across it, so I'll throw out a good solution in case anyone runs into similar problems with dogs. I grew up with hog and bear dogs, and while I was pretty rough on dogs that mis behaved, I knew plenty of people who would drop a dog in its tracks for trailing a deer track or running one on sight. So I took something an old man told me about and saved many hunting dogs from their death in the following way:

Get a plastic barrel and lay it on its side and cut a door in the side big enough for the dog to go into. Drill a hole in the center of each end and put a 6" bolt sticking out of each end, bolt needs to be around 1/2" diameter. Make a wooden revtangular base the length of the barrel with 2x4s and attach uprights to the sides. Drill holes in the top of the uprights for the barrel bolts to go through. So now the barrel is off the ground and between the uprights of your base. Place dog in barrel with whatever you want to break him off of. I would use a fresh deer hide, you could use a dead chicken, etc. Tape door closed and give rover a spin long enough to get him sick, I would usually spin it for about a minute or so, give him 30 seconds and do it again for another minute. Take dog out and clip him up with plenty of water. Repeat this process every other day for a week, and the dog won't ever want to be around that smell (whatever you put in there with him) again. I did this to dozens of dogs when I was young and had hounds and curs, and have yet to find one that would run a deer track after a week of the barrel.
 
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