making an old dog not kill poultry??

Have yall had success with teaching 2 yr old dogs not to kill poultry, when my cur see's them get scared and fly away she kills them and it almost made me kill her last night. Sigh. Id perfer to train this one instead of raise a puppy around them since she is a great hog hunting dog and I dont want to loose her or train another. She will already kill any varmits in the yard, so if I could just get her away from my poultry it would be the best of both worlds, esecially if i accidently leave the fence open.
She is a 45 lb little BMCur dog and I have shock collars.

I'm not recommending this, but I will tell you what my grandfather did when one of his dogs killed a chicken. He would beat it with the dead chicken. I've never done this myself, although I admit there were times I was tempted to beat my dog with a dead shoe.

I had cur dog growing up. I think they have way too much prey drive. Mine would tree racoons, squirrels, cats, and work cattle. You would have to do a lot of aversion training. Like spray a chicken down with pepper spray or some other averse substance. Of course this would be highly unethical chicken treatment. I don't think your cur would ever be trustworthy.

This is a tough problem, but it can be addressed. First I would check out Walter Jeffries' blog "Killer Kita - training the untrainable" He is a member here, so he may come by with more direct advice.

Hey Grant, we had this problem when we first got our chickens. One of our dogs, Ralph, is a mutt who was 7-8 years old at the time, and a stone cold killer. I have seen him kill a gopher and rip the guts out and eat it almost whole. He kills anything that can't get away from him, and he was eyeing those hens and drooling.

We got a hold of a shock collar, and had one of us holding his leash and the other holding the shock controller, while a third person brought in one of the hens. We had to shave some of his neck fur to make sure the electric leads were in contact with his skin. Every time he would look at the chicken, we'd shock him on a lower setting to warn him. Any time he moved toward the chicken, we shocked on the higher setting. We worked with him 2-3 times for maybe 45 minutes each time (as I recall).

I was very skeptical this dog could ever coexist with chickens, but now he is actually afraid of them! We have had some backlash, he will occasionally have accidents in the house because he is afraid to go into the back yard! That hasn't happened in a while. Overall, I would prefer to not have to train in this way again - I do not like inflicting pain and fear in another being, and Ralph's instincts can also be very useful - he could have been used to protect our hens if he had been introduced to them as a puppy. However, we had a need to curb those instincts, and this way was extremely effective.

Good luck!

heard of some folk tying the dead chicken around their neck, and another who got a new puppy, and had the grown dog train the pup not to hunt the chickens....


They also make a shock type collar that shoots out citronella, instead of shock. You could use that for a bit, then spray down the chickens with some citronella, and by then, he may have learned.

The citronella just overwhelms their senses, because of the smell overload.

The collar doesn't fire off on the "protective" bark, just the yapping bark.

They may have made a remote trigger one by now, i started selling em about 5 years ago. GentleSpray

Ahhh. I don't know how to delete my post that was only a draft. The post I wanted to put up is below, and I discovered my draft was posted too. If I knew how to just delete it I would.

sorry
Thekla

I don't know if this will work for you, because a lot depends on the temperament of the dog, and how much time you can spend with her. I have a Komondor, she is almost 4 now, and was very puppy like, and a challenge until she was three years old. I considered giving her away more than once. She killed chickens, guineas, turkeys. She jumped, climbed over and dug under a 5 foot fence, you get the idea. The chicken killing started about age 4 months, and I tried to prevent any repeat occurrences, but it was a problem for more than a year.

I kept her tied or penned when I was not out in the field, and tried to keep my eye on her, but I have a lot to do, and she did reoffend. She also stole my gloves and ran with them, stole fruit out of the buckets of picked fruit and ran with it (when there was plenty fruit on the ground under the trees...) With the chicken killing, I think it was just so interesting to her, and she killed them more by accident, and then once they were dead, well hey, they sure taste good.

So, I would take a chicken from her that she had killed, and give her the bad dog noise (a hard ch sound) and tell her no. If she growled at me when I removed the chicken then she got more ch and no and bad dog. I would always tie or pen her up after taking a chicken from her. This was not really punishment to her, she liked her long line in the orchard, but it prevented an immediate reoccurrence. I had to remember to use a calm voice, like i was giving her information rather than angry with her. I'd just say "OK, come on, you get to go on your long line now, so I don't have to watch you". I treated her pretty much like a young child.

There may be plenty of dogs this would not have worked on, but I do think if I had not trained her, she would still be killing chickens, if I still had any. My success is more like good luck, that my training method suited her learning style, and I was not asking her to go against the work her breed was born to do.

Your dog may still be a pup at heart. That third year was hard going for me, and I had a friend who would always ask me how old she was, and then she would say: "One day, she is just going to lie down and be a very good dog".

good luck

Thekla

We have five BBORD's (big black Oklahoma Ranch Dogs), when we put our first flock in they were confined to the house until I could finish the fencing. Two of them tore the chicken wire on the door off (and the big electricians staples holding it it) and slaughtered the pullets. Got a new flock after the fence was complete (and a solid door installed) along with a cheap solar powered fence zapper. Two pieces of nylon electric fence tape, one at about a foot off the ground and the other at about three feet up. After three days they avoided the area like it was radioactive and after a few weeks I could let the chix free range without any molestation at all. Dr. Pavlov was right on all counts except for one; they wouldn't go near the chickens but they wouldn't protect them either from stray dogs, even my Belgian sheepdog/Border Collie mix who guarded my wife like a Secret Service agent. I can only guess that they expected the stray dogs to get zapped just as bad as they did. Psych deterrence works both ways I guess.

Electric shock collar or fence.
Or get rid of fido and give fido to a good home without chickens.

Ever grabbed an electic fence on a dare? I have done it more than once as a kid. need not be fear inducing, but memorable.
Folks use electricity to train animals all the time.

Try it on yourself first if you feel bad about it.
I did with our dog's shock collar. Shock level 1, 2 no biggee, 3 is wowsers. That is where I stopped. And i don't go higher with our dog.

Level 1 is more than enough to get attention and is slightly more rough than putting your tongue on the ends of a square battery.

I don't think one needs to instill fear using it, but it can be used much like a choke collar in that it imitates an alpha dog biting a beta dog.

Our dog gets super excited when I pull out the shock collar. B/c I have trained her to associate it with fun.
Be the alpha dog, get their attention, and guide them to the correct behavior

Couple the shock with a command, and after whatever time is necessary for your dog to adopt the preferred behavior, extinguish the use of the shoc, and then only use the command as the main attention getter with selective reinforcement from the collar (like a Las Vegas slot machine in reverse). Soon, you can put away the collar and just hollar.

Classic ABA Behaviorism.
Behaviorism works with most animals including humans, and need not be cruel or use shock or other physical aversives at all.
But getting one's attention is quick and easy with a shock.

Thanks Skinner.
I thought Pavlov really wasn't shaping behavior if my memory serves me, rather measuring response to a stimuli, but my mind is overloaded with useless trivia, so i may be remembering wrong.

This may or may not work on a large dog, but my neighbours trained theirs to stay away from chickens by keeping nearby with a hose, and every time she started to make a move towards the chickens, she got a big blast of water. It didn't take long for her to work out that chickens made her soaking wet.

However, the instinct to chase and catch is really strong in some dogs, and training may not be enough to stop it. Good luck!

Thanks for the reply's everyone, the shock collars are helping and ill be putting up an electric fence as soon as i can afford it!!

This is really sad but it works... Tie the dead chicked around your dogs neck for a couple days.

BMC, Catahoulas, Kemmers all make great chicken dogs, mostly kept by men that have a problem w/ 2 legged varmints.
Personally if I had one trained to hunt hogs I would not be letting chase a kill other varmints or chickens for that matter. Mainly because you will end up baying more skunks than hogs. The dead chicken around the neck works but with a game dog you probably should leave it on till it rots off. The dog should be hunted often so it knows when and what it is supposed to do.
I rotate all livestock frequently (dogs included) keeps them from becoming bored. Be careful w/ the shock collar I have seen many good hunting dogs get the hunt shocked out of them, it is not a panacea.
All I am really saying is if you focus your game dog on one specific game, they will ignore everything else.
LGD's are for protecting the livestock, game dogs are for catching prey, these breeds have been bred this way for centuries so they take to there respective jobs easily.
That being said I have a farm shepherd that does both, doesn't hunt as well as the coondog, but doesn't consider himself as part of the herd like an LGD, knows basic cow herding commands like down and come by, will go toe to toe w/ a cougar, and you can lock him in the coop and he won't harm a feather.

Julia Winter wrote:
This is a tough problem, but it can be addressed.  First I would check out Walter Jeffries' blog "Killer Kita - training the untrainable"  He is a member here, so he may come by with more direct advice.

Unfortunately that link is now broken but it was cool to look at his farm.

I guilt-tripped my dog and it worked, but would it ever work again with another dog?

He has a high hunt instinct but he has never forgotten that our pigeons are family.

He is a sterilized German shepherd - red Labrador, crossed with my vet thinks Akita, not Malamute, but he has the curly tail, and relatively short ears that can stand or flop or both, and has very thick bones.

Shortly after I adopted him as a euthanasia rescue -- he bites -- he killed my first Giant Runt pigeon, back when I was beginning my flock, and only had 35 or so.

I cried real tears but overdid it a lot, and made sure he knew I was really distressed (I was: I blamed myself, which I am too quick to do when hind sight could have prevented an accident).

He never killed another and that was six years ago. He does faithfully sound the alarm for my large flock when a Cooper's hawk comes hunting, and can jump the balcony and reach a raccoon in seconds and kill it instantly, and is fearless with foxes so I have to watch him.

I give him raw and frozen eggs, but never feed him raw pigeons.

Ra Kenworth wrote:I guilt-tripped my dog and it worked, but would it ever work again with another dog?

He has a high hunt instinct but he has never forgotten that our pigeons are family.

He is a sterilized German shepherd - red Labrador, crossed with my vet thinks Akita, not Malamute, but he has the curly tail, and relatively short ears that can stand or flop or both, and has very thick bones.

Shortly after I adopted him as a euthanasia rescue -- he bites -- he killed my first Giant Runt pigeon, back when I was beginning my flock, and only had 35 or so.

I cried real tears but overdid it a lot, and made sure he knew I was really distressed (I was: I blamed myself, which I am too quick to do when hind sight could have prevented an accident).

He never killed another and that was six years ago. He does faithfully sound the alarm for my large flock when a Cooper's hawk comes hunting, and can jump the balcony and reach a raccoon in seconds and kill it instantly, and is fearless with foxes so I have to watch him.

I give him raw and frozen eggs, but never feed him raw pigeons.

I’ve heard of others using the same strategy with dogs who had been with them for a long time, and were quite loyal and faithful….

exaggerating their grief, sorrow over something the dog did.  I never dreamed it would work!  I’m going to keep it in mind.  My Malinois does a few things I would like her to quit…..