Labrador ate our chicken

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jvoyce

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Last week we got some lovely new posh chickens - Basil, Sybil and Polly Welsummer as well as Fern and Felicity Faverolle. Our choccie lab caught and ate Polly today - we'd tried to explain to Polly that she ought not to come out of the pen, but today she paid the price for ignoring our advice
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Bl**dy labradors
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It really is pretty secure already (we have 24 others who don't get out !) - the only thing we can do is clip wings. The dogs don't normally go after the chickens but I guess she couldn't resist a lunchtime snack when it was in front of her
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did she actually eat it?or just chase and catch it? we have a lab who will retrieve things..livestock included but she wont eat them...to the point that she caught my rabbit when was a kid and managed to catch and pluck the hair off but never broke the skin poor little thing died from fright..rip sooty..
 
All that was left was feathers - I hunted for any bits of carcass but not a scrap left !!! Poor little bantam can't have been much of a meal
 
And she'd already had extra breakfast - as the weather's improved she's had more exercise and lost a couple of pounds so we'd upped her rations. How ungrateful !!
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The walking stomach has put itself on a raw diet! Poor little chicken! But I suppose she didn't go entirely to waste.
 
We have four huge fat birds......
Molly my lab has chased them, but as a rule she kind of knows they're out of bounds (although they roam loose in the day all over the place).
They're all quite grumpy (pecky) old bags and I don't think she can get her mouth round them cos they're too big.
Although my friend owns her mum and she can't let her near anything with Feathers - lets hope it's not hereditary.
Note to self, watch her with the chickens...... my mum would kill me, then my dog!
 
I would definitely clip one wing on the hens. Saves all the heartache.

Interestingly my Polish (Tracey, after Tracey Beaker due to the whacky hairdo) has never taken flight at all. I can't imagine she would get over our fencing.

Since we clipped a wing on each bird we've not lost any from their large enclosure which means we've not fed Foxy for yonks either.
 
Our one remaining "problem" escapee hen has both wings clipped already and doesn't seem to stop her getting out !. The dog seems to leave the Warrens alone but obviously didn't realise that the Welsummer wasn't a pheasant !!
 
Tried just clipping one wing and that didn't work, so tried the two and that doesn't work either !!!!! Barbara the bird brain doesn't realise how much danger she's in I reckon. Her mate Margot is much more sensible
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Clipping two certainly won't work. The idea of wing clipping is to clip one wing which will unbalance the bird so that they find it impossible to take flight. (imagine a plane taking off with just one wing!)

You need to completely cut (as short as you dare) the first 10 (if I recall) primary flight feathers on just the one wing for it to be effective. It certainly worked with all of mine.

If you cut both, you'll find your birds can still fly....their wings may be "shorter" once clipped, but they'd be perfectly balanced.

The key really is in just clipping the one.

Good luck with it.
 
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