Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi

We have 5 hens and are due to collect a golden retreiver puppy on Saturday. The hens have their own large enclosure but are used to roaming across the whole garden. I've never introduced hens to dogs or dogs to hens. Obviously we don't want to end up with a dog that terrorises the hens. Any suggestions as to how best to approach this would be very much appreciated.

I look forward to your replies

Chris

Hi Chris
I've got five hens as well, I've also got two three year old standard poodles. They just loved to chase the hens if given the chance, I've managed to stop them chasing them by taking them on a lead up to the hens and giving them a good shouting at if they even looked at them the wrong way. this seems to have worked because I can leave them in the garden alone with them now and they totally ignore them.
Arthur

We have peacocks at chez Potato head, and used the above method to introduce our insane rescue dog to them, which worked pretty quickly. I'm confident that you'll be able to train your puppy pretty easily not to chase the chickens... However, whilst the dogs may behave themselves, you might find that the birds still get a little twitchy for a while... chickens...