Dog-Chicken progress

[Vanilla eXee]

We have had the chickies for almost a month now. When Blue first met them, they were on the table in the courtyard. He would not stop barking and trying to jump up on the table no matter what we did (he never even acts that way when we're eating, he'll sit and patiently wait for a piece of meat when everyone is done eating.) It was like that the first few times, but he is getting better.

Today he was in the house so I took them out to play in the yard. I only let them play for like 10 mins since it's hot and they started panting. Then I brought them to sit on my lap on the porch. Blue's mommy got home and she let him out. He ran over to the fence and did his barking, then he heard the chickens yelling and he came over to look, but not on the porch. Then he came up on the porch like he was going to come bother them, so I said "Blue, go lay down." sternly. He walked away and I told him he was a good boy.

He's getting exactly to where I want him to be. As long as he leaves them alone when he knows I'm watching, everything will be good. It would be a plus if he'd leave them alone all the time, but there will probably never be a time when they're unsupervised anyway so, this works for me. I'm proud of him.  

[LuvByrd]

Awesomeness. I bet you could get him to leave the chicks alone, probably with rewarding him whenever he leaves them. Are they getting thier "grown-up" feathers in yet?  

[Vanilla eXee]

LuvByrd

Awesomeness. I bet you could get him to leave the chicks alone, probably with rewarding him whenever he leaves them. Are they getting thier "grown-up" feathers in yet?

Yeah, they have most of them. They only have chick fluff on parts of their head, a little spot on their chests and under the wings. They're also getting bigger and bigger every day. If they were bantys I'd say they were fully grown but they're standard sized so they have a long way to go. And that's the plan, when they get a little older his daddy is going to hold him on a leash while the chickens are out playing and for ignoring them he'll get rewarded.  

[Akari_32]

It just takes time. He'll get over it at some point. It took our dogs about 10 minutes to realize that the chickens were "ours" not "theirs" just be us holding them and sitting on the ground where they could see us holding them and they could get a good sniff, but we could easily get up and walk away if they got too rowdy. This was when the chickens were the size of a tennis ball, but you get the point XD You could probly do something like that lol  

[Vanilla eXee]

Akari_32

It just takes time. He'll get over it at some point. It took our dogs about 10 minutes to realize that the chickens were "ours" not "theirs" just be us holding them and sitting on the ground where they could see us holding them and they could get a good sniff, but we could easily get up and walk away if they got too rowdy. This was when the chickens were the size of a tennis ball, but you get the point XD You could probly do something like that lol

Hopefully. Though it's not as big of an issue now that I've built them a run.  

[Lime Kiss]

Good to see that it doesn't take too long to introduce dogs and chicks. smile  

[Vanilla eXee]

Lime Kiss

Good to see that it doesn't take too long to introduce dogs and chicks. smile

TBH, I wouldn't trust him with them if they aren't in the run or on my lap. Not that he's a mean dog, but I'm sure he'd like to "play" with them if he could and then we'd have dead chicks.  

[Akari_32]

Our dogs werent allowed to be with in 10ft of our chickies with out us untill they were about soccer ball-sized, and even then, we never left them alone together. I do leave the rabbit out with them, though. I think its because the chickens spooked at everything (because they had a close call with raccoons when we left for the weekend once, that ended in a death), but the rabbit just completely ignores them. With two hunting dogs, and a herding dog, leaving 5 easily spooked, 8 inch tall flightless birds unattended with them might be bad LOL