Want a Dog to Protect Your Poultry?

It's too late for my dogs - now that they've been trained to remove the wild turkeys from our yard as soon as they spot them, turning them around might prove to be impossible. But that's OK - the only birds here are the wild turkeys.

But maybe you do have chickens, or want to have chickens, or ducks, or domestic turkeys.

If so, an article I just read said that certain breeds have a strong protection instinct. Among them are the Great Pyrenees, Anatolian, Mastiff, and Maremma. So first, choose the right breed.

The very best way to train a young dog to protect poultry is to let an old dog do it - they teach the young ones what to do.

Barring that, try to whelp your pups in the poultry house, where they will be corrected by the hens if they get too rambunctious. Pups raised in this way will naturally bond with the birds, just as a puppy raised with an authoritative adult cat will learn to befriend cats. Since these dogs naturally protect youngsters of any species, raising your pup around baby chicks will result in a dog who will need very little training from you.