Can Cocker Spaniels and chickens be friends?
[00:00:00] Suellen - Host of the DogPod:
Hello and welcome to today's episode of The DogPod where we are going to be talking about dogs and chickens, and in particular, Cocker Spaniels and chickens. My dog, Ben is a Cocker Spaniel, so that's going to be the basis of my experience, of how I actually got my chickens and my dog used to one another. So when we moved to acreage, which was about a year ago, one of the first things I wanted to do was actually get chickens.
[00:00:28] I've never had chickens before, so it was all a bit of a learning experience. And so, I needed to make sure I had the right kind of chickens for my environment. I wanted them to be hardy. I wanted them to be good egg layers, but I also wanted them to be friendly and good with people and also with dogs, so in getting dogs and chickens used to one another, I think there's probably three things you need to take into consideration.
[00:00:55] One is your dog's prey drive, the other is the type of [00:01:00] chicken that you choose to get. And the third one is just how you introduce them to one another. So, my dog Ben, is a Cocker Spaniel, as I said, and he's essentially a gun dog. And gun dogs are supposed to have a relatively high prey drive. But that's not the case with my dog, Ben.
[00:01:20] He's actually very chill. He's a pretty good companion dog. He doesn't tend to like to chase balls all that much. He's not much into active games like that, so he is not a ball chaser and retriever. So, I was probably in a pretty good position from the get-go. The other thing I did was I research
[00:01:41] the types of chickens that you could get. And I made sure I chose one that that I wanted them to be friendly, easy to handle, and I wanted them to potentially be good with dogs as well. And the chicken that I chose was, a breed of chicken called an Australian Australorp.
[00:02:00] They're very chill, they're friendly, they're easy to handle. and they're not phased by too much. So, between Ben being a fairly chill dog and getting chill chickens, I was off to a pretty good start. So, what I did when I first got them is made sure I had a really secure coop. And I'll talk about the coop a little bit later.
[00:02:25] And when I first got the chickens, they were on point of lay, which means they're about three to four weeks off actually laying eggs. And once I got the chickens used to their new coop and then closure, then I would introduce Ben out to the coop. Just for a few minutes a day until they kind of got used to one another.
[00:02:46] And after a little while, the novelty of Ben being there and the novelty of the chickens to Ben sort of wore off, and that happened reasonably quickly once I was comfortable that they were, you know, [00:03:00] comfortable enough around one another, and the chickens weren't too stressed out and Ben wasn't too interested, then I would let the chickens out into the yard so they could free range a bit.
[00:03:10] I would have Ben out there with them on a leash, and I would supervise his interactions with the chickens. And initially, I found he was kind of interested in them. Obviously, they were moving around. There was something new and so he would show some interest, but if he got too close, the chickens would kind of just warn him off. And, again, after doing this several times, I would assess how calm Ben was feeling around them, and once I felt he was comfortable again and the chickens were comfortable again, then it was time to kind of take it to stage three. And stage three is letting the chickens free range and letting Ben. or your dog off the leash, and this went pretty [00:04:00] seamlessly.
[00:04:00] Again, it was just a matter of supervising Ben with the chickens, and obviously they're never out there together, Ben's not off leash and the chickens aren't, aren't out there without him being supervised. So he is always under some level of supervision. It's been a year now and he shows very little interest in the chickens anymore.
[00:04:21] He knows they're around. He kind of tends to avoid them because they will give him a peck if he's a nuisance and. Again, I won't necessarily say that they're friends, but they're certainly very good acquaintances and it's certainly doable, but you have to assess the temperament of your dog and the temperament of your chickens.
[00:04:45] Now, one of the things that I'd mentioned, and this is not a sponsored episode by any means, is selecting a coop that is pretty secure from dogs. So not only your dog, but maybe neighbouring [00:05:00] dogs, and obviously foxes, particularly at night. The coop that I chose is something called an Eglu.
[00:05:07] by Omlet is the company, and these aren't cheap coops. But the reason I went for this coop, after doing lots of reading, is that we live in Queensland, which is very hot and can be wet climate, but it's certainly very hot. So any coop is going to be subject to the harsh conditions of the sun and heat up here.
[00:05:31] This coop is completely plastic. It's got very strong wire. It can be moved around so it's portable. So if you are on relatively small acreage and you don't have a huge amount of space, you can actually move this thing around to keep the area clean and mud free. The other thing if I haven't mentioned it already is that it's extremely easy to clean.
[00:05:54] It's like brilliant to clean, but it also makes managing Ben with the [00:06:00] chickens very easy and it makes managing the chickens for somebody like me who's pretty inexperienced, pretty easy. It's definitely not cheap. But I felt it was worth the investment. And after a year of this coop, more than a year actually of this coop being in the sun, it is still
[00:06:21] in great condition. As I said, really easy to keep clean, and it's very flexible. You can add extra bits to it as you need it as well. So that's just a little tip for me about the type of coop that I chose that made getting Ben familiar with the chickens. Just so much easier. So, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
[00:06:45] Drop me a note if you've got any questions or you've got any feedback and let me know how you go.