Taiwanese dog training method: Teach a dog to leave chickens alone

My wife and i live in Taiwan. As we were hiking one day, we met a man who simply put knows his s*** when it comes to raising dogs. Some of his methods wouldn't be very well accepted by most dogs trainers, but... well you'll see.

He swears that his dogs will NEVER EVER kill his neighbors chickens. He does this by keeping the dog next to the chicken pen, on a short chain, and burning chicken feathers under its nose. The acrid smell is very irritating to the dog and the dog learns to associate the smell of chicken with the uncomfortable burning feather smell. After this, the dog is never interested in chickens ever again.

Those of you who think this sounds abusive (it certainly did to me at first), it is the same concept as an invisible fence (crossing the "fence"= pain). I also firmly believe that the ends justify the means since, at least here, a lot of dogs are killed by angry chicken owners.

On the subject, do any of you know any other methods to keep dogs out of the chicken run? It could save a life!

Interesting technique. That smells like it should work.

I heard of a dog that killed a duck and the owner tied the dead duck to a short rope that was then tied to the dog's collar for a day. The dog has not killed any more ducks. I don't think that I would ever use this one, but it did work. Would this work for humans?

I came home once to find piles of what at first looked like snow. They were my dead chickens. I tied one around the neck of the guilty dog and left it there for a day. Didn't kill anymore chickens since they were all dead. It did kill a cow but couldn't get it around his neck.

seems like it ties a negative event in the dogs mind to the chickens, so i can see how the dog would stay away.

we started out with a dog (lab mix rescue) that would pounch on chickens... caught her mid-bite on our of our americanas and decided we had to do something because we werent getting rid of either her or the chickens.

first thing we did was make sure there were no toys that we were using that were similar. we found that we had a squeeky duck that was similar to a chicken, so we stopped using that. dont want her to get confused.

ultimately we have had success with working with our dog on a long leash. we gave her just enough leash so that you can tell she is going after the chickens, but not enough to where she can get to the chickens. (chickens free ranging)
once she goes after the chicken, tighten up the slack on the leash, scold her and make sure she knows that chasing after chickens is not something that makes the alpha (ideally the humans ) happy
we did this over a period of 2-3 weeks and didnt have any other problems after that. it seemed like breaking that flight instinct and intervening then broke her habit in relatively short order.
our dog is 7 now, but when we broke her of chicken chasing she was 4 yrs old

now she is so used to chickens that she can walk right through a group of them and not even flinch. even if the chickens spook/run around she has no desire to chase. seems to be working so far.
we have [wild] ringneck pheasants that pass through our property and we have noticed that she doesnt chase them either. we assume she sees them as chickens???
she still chases rabbits and chased cats, til we think she ran into one with claws, now she is a bit cautious of them, lol
she chase and eat voles and mice, so the instinct to chase/eat is definitely still there.

hope this helps.