What should I do with my dog mauled duck? And with the dog.

Came home this afternnon to find one of my Austalian Spotted drakes in a laundry basket missing all the feathers on his back and more than likely the skin too. He also has a wound on his chest about the size of a loonie. It's not really bleeding, just a bit weepy. I washed it with a detol soulution ( I really am hoping now that that won't kill him)

Is there anything else I can do to help it heal and prevent infection?

On to the dog. I have caught him a few times with a duck and finally just locked them up, but today the wind blew their door open and he got at them. He doesn't bother the chickens
- they're harder to catch. He's only five months old (great pyreneese)How do I teach him the ducks are not for him?

I had the same problem with my Pyr. He killed several chickens and ducks until he met the geese. They cornered him against the fence and took a round out of him. He won't touch any birds now.

You need some geese, and not nice ones either.

Sorry to hear that DC. If you happen to find the solution to duck-proofing your dog, I'd love to hear about it. I must say Sue's advice sounds very effective. Maybe she could rent out her dog-training geese!

The geese solution does sound effective. Trouble is I having been chased as a kid by my grandmas nasty geese I have developed a bit of a phobia concerning them. Maybe if I raised them from babies I could face my fears and train the dog all at once.

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DC good advise givin about the duck so I am going to move onto your dog.
Being a pup he is most likely playing and they are funny little creatures to a playful dog so best you keep the dog confined when you are not around if possible.
I would do short training with him when you are around, taking him in with the ducks and disciplining hard when he does something wrong in any way. Staring at the duck, tail high, trying to paw them, anything that shows play. He should completely ignore them.
Our dog would play and occationally kill young chickens that escaped their pens, the biggest thing was catching him in the act and disciplining him so he never wanted to touch them again. We never caused the dog harm, but made ourselves clear that it was absolutely something he was not to do. And once we caught him with one he wouldnt do it again. Some dogs are more strong willed than others so you need to pick which discipline works and which doesnt.
You can't simply keep all livestock locked away from the puppy, best keep puppy locked away from livestock when you cannot be around. I know their job is to protect and that is hard when they are locked up but the first year in these dogs lives is critical training time and best to not train them to do the wrong things...

We are thinking of getting another dog, our boy just cannot do it all on his own and when we do get a pup it's first training is going to be in a crate in the hen house. These guys need to bond with their livestock first and their people second, something we did wrong with our other dog. I think if they bond first to livestock they are going to be more protective of them against predators and have less of a training period of not harming them.

Hope your drake makes out ok for you.

Schipperkesue wrote:I had the same problem with my Pyr. He killed several chickens and ducks until he met the geese. They cornered him against the fence and took a round out of him. He won't touch any birds now.

You need some geese, and not nice ones either.

Sell me some of those geese if you have any mean ones to spare.
Are you going to the November show?

Piet, the thing is, they are not mean geese. They only hiss and chase me a little bit and occasionally nip my ankle. I love their feistiness. Sometimes I will scream and run from them and they will chase me, wings spread, doing ballet figures on the lawn, so very proud of themselves. I wouldn't turn my back on them during breeding season though.

They are Toulouse, not a really aggressive breed.

I will be at the show, but probably only on Sunday. I plan to keep all of my little flock. You may be able to get some from ABPride. I bought mine from her. Next spring I do hope to have goslings!

Until recently, Basque wanted to play with the fowl and he will play them to death. He saw the geese and romped right over. Let's play! he said. We think not! hissed the geese. They chased him into the corner and began to bite him. They pulled out big chunks of fur. He was petrified. Now when he is loose, he makes sure I am standing between him and those nasty geese. He has no interest in any fowl now.

Hi Sue,
Thanks and yes to me that lesson for the dog is worth the purchase of the geese alone. I have a 120 puppy that ate some chickens and loves to eat more with his big appetite. He is very very cool tempered and a big love ball and does not need much for correction and for this the best way would be to let the fowl teach him. He would get it too, I know it.
Piet

Piet, you may be able to find a small flock on Kijiji. I find geese winter well, eat little if they can graze, and big tough loud geese wandering the yard seem to keep away the predators too. Basque is a big, 120 lb Pyr who tends to still be a puppy at heart but those geese have really smartened him up.

Thanks, I will do some research:)

We have just gone through a similar thing with a Cuckoo Maran hen. She was mauled by a coyote. She had puncture wounds, feathers missing and a wound of about 4x7". Well 3 weeks later, she is up and around , wounds haave almost totally healed and feathers are starting to grow back. We used peroxide to clean the wounds at first and then later witch hazel. Uno reminded me that Honey is one of the best antibiotic treatments. We covered her wounds for about 10 days with honey and I am so amazed at the recovery. She will have minimal scarring, and may not grow feathers in a small area. We actually found the piece of skin with feathers attached...maybe crazy glue? haha. We are keeping her inside still (she gets to wander through the plants on our 50ft deck and comes in when she feels cold or uncomfortable. She can still hear the chickens and ducks and soon she will be able to join them.

Oh this is dreadful, sorry to hear of this. I will only comment to the healing of the bird. As Cuckomama was telling you, please listen, get some UNPASTURIZED (gads, how DO you spell that) honey. If you can't get unpastuerized (spelling please...) pasturized (blah...spelling) will be fine.

Honey has a very, very low pH, much like peat moss. Bacteria cannot grow within the environment that honey, or peat moss have, because of this low pH. That is why honey is such an amazing cure for infection from baceteria. I wish more people would understand that honey is far better than any medicated ointment to keep infection at bay. Now if something is really infected, perhaps a little medication firstly, then using honey to finish off the work of healing. If there is no bacteria present, the wound heals faster. Right...well, that is a given. Find some honey and get that on the wound as soon as you can. Find a way to get some kind of bandage of some sort to cover the honey so that it is not being bothered by other things that like honey, like flies, smiling.

Hope your little ducky comes through, a partner would also help. Stress is a bad thing which lowers the immune system. A happier patient will recover much more quickly. Find something in this day to make you happy, and with that, have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Well, I had posted a reply yesterday, but whenever I try to post using my daughters laptop it never works.

Anyways, the duck seems to be doing great. No signs of infection. I stopped after work yesterday and got peroxide and polysporin to clean him up again. He's fiesty so I am taking that as a good sign.

I like to ideas of using geese to make the dog sit up and take notice that he should not chase the birds, but I have a goose-phobia. They would keep me away too.

When my daughter found him with the ducks she gave him a huge tongue lashing and chase hi around a bit, he seems sorry. . . for now.

I only have three ducks, him, his mate and their son so if I bring her in to him, the son is alone. Right now he is living in the garage in a bin. Is it OK to put him back outside in the pen with the others?

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I am repeating myself here, but Sue said something that is very critical, to my mind, in training dogs to stay away from your birds. FEAR. HEr dog FEARS the geese. And there in lies your potential hope. IT is not a quick cure and you have to put aside a few days of time to accomplish it. But with the dog being young, you have a chance.

What is he scared of? Popping ballons? Air horns? FIrecrackers? What startles him and makes him jump? I've used empty pop cans with a few pennies or pebbles inside, the cans tied to strings. ARmed with my pop cans and the new dog I head down to the chicken pen. I SAY NOTHING to the dog. I DO NOTHING to indicate how he should or should not act towards the chickens. (the chickens are locked up at this point, obviously) I take a seat somewhere near the pen, but not hovering over the dog. I wait for the dog to approach the fence, rigid with excitement at the potential chase, tail wagging eagerly as he thinks about what he is going to chew on and then.....BLAM! I slam a few cans down beside him as hard as I can!

BUT...I say nothing, I do nothing, in fact I try to not even look at the dog. Because he needs to learn that it is not ME who is doing this, but the invisible chicken god in the sky who is always watching and will always blam some scary noise at him when he looks at the chickens. Without comment and without going over to the dog, I slowly reel the cans back to me by the attached strings. This is all about the element of surprise. Scary, jarring, unpleasant surprise.

Repeat this performance. If the dog quits being startled by your object, quit and find another object. If the dog leaves the chicken fence and comes to you for comfort, pat him on the head, tell him he is a good boy, but do not go overboard on the squeaky, enthusiastic praise. Give him praise, but if he wanders away from you and back to the chicken fence, time for next round of "Don't Tempt THe Chicken God!"

WHen you do scare him, do not say anything. Just act as if it had nothing to do with you. In fact, look skyward and mutter, uh oh, someone has made him mad today! YOur dog needs to get the idea that interst in chickens is rewarded by the unpleasant sensation of sudden fear. He needs to learn that lesson in a BIG WAY. SO if you have to blow up a bunch of balloon and pop them one at a time with a pin, or have an air horn in your pocket (wear ear plugs) or hurl cans without looking like you are...then that is what you do. But find what startles him and use it to your advantage. Negative association = chickens are scary. STAY AWAY FROM THEM!

I do not tie dead chickens to my dogs. I do not beat them with dead chickens. I have had dogs that are bear chasers, are SPCA rejects and have all manner of mental issues. But I have NEVER lost a single bird to one of my dogs. Never. And this 'Chicken God' method is the one I use in every case. IT has worked waith mature SPCA dogs as well. Find what scares them and then scare them...while pretending its' not you doing it.

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HIggins, I wasn't meaning to imply that you did tie dead chickens to your dogs. THat is a very old 'cure' for chicken killing. A stupid old cure.

I suppose if you expect your dogs to herd chickens, then this method might not be what you want.

Since I let my birds out they let themselves back in at night, I don't need them herded. I just need my dog to leave them alone. And with that as my goal, The Chicken God method has always worked. The dog figures out that staying close to me is better than romping after chickens, and that he should keep a safe distance, lest the Chicken God randomly strike.

But with CynthiaM's recent event with visiting dogs killing birds, I will hasten to add that while I trust my dgos around my own chickens, I would still not trust them around anyone else's chickens. I cannot say for sure what the mental reasoning abilites of a dog are, but maybe he'd think that only OUR chickens had a scary god, but no one else's did. Therefore they are fair game.