When we first brought our pullets home one of our dogs was a little too enthusiastic about their presence. My dog was a rescue, and I'm sure she spent some time wandering and finding her own food. Once on a camping trip, I was surprised to see her sprint through a field to catch and kill a squirrel. I'm sure she would gladly have a chicken for a meal if she could.
We tried some Dog Whispering per Cesar Milan's "dog overcomes chicken obsession" episode. That helped, and at least let my dog know that it was not okay to go after them while we were around. However, I certainly did not trust my dog when we were out of the house. I did some other looking around on the web for training and techniques that could help, and all I could find was an old farmer's trick of tying a dead chicken's neck to the dog's collar after the dog gets one and letting it rot for a day. No thanks, but farmers swear by this technique.
I already had put up a pretty good fence and gate, but more needed to be done. I put two stone steps under the gate to prevent digging.
I put some large pieces of firewood along the bottom of the wire fence.
I then used some metal staples on the inside to attach the logs to the bottom of the wire fence so my dog could not pull back the wood and start digging.
Featured below is our beagle, which is not much of a threat compared to our other dog, but as you can tell she is also pretty interested in the chickens.
However, they could be enhanced by adding coils of barbed wire along the top or having the top of the posts angled over at 45 degrees (again, possibly with barbed wire added). Separate gate pieces are also a possibility.wood fence installation
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion! So far the automatic door to lock my girls in at night seems to be working well. My next door neighbor however was visited by a bobcat and lost one of her hens about 5 years ago after forgetting to lock them in, so there are definitely predators lurking in the suburbs.
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