Yes that was a lucky dog! So sorry for your loss. Keep the faith, not all stray dogs are like that. Sending you strong vibes for for chickens to bounce back to health!

Thinknpink

Ramona, so sorry to hear about your chickens. Also sorry that the dog didn't work out, it was nice of you to take him in in the first place. Maybe the wounded chickens will survive, my rooster survived being carted off to the neighbor dog's house. He looked pretty beat up but you would never know anything had happened to him now. Keep us updated on them. Lori

Oh that's a shame, I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

However, it seems to me that it is a rare dog that can scale a 6 foot fence, I think you should do a sweep to look for other weaknesses that he might have exploited unless your husband saw him do it.

I really hope your others live.

Sorry you lost your birds, it DOES seem like it's always your favorite. :(

You can do quite a few things to help the injured birds survive. Basic emergency care and supportive therapy I've listed here on my chickens site:

http://jackshenhouse.com/VSChickHealth.htm

Keep them warm and quiet to guard against shock, and give them unflavored Pedialyte (at the grocery store in the baby aisle) to drink to help boost electrolytes. You can get some over the counter bird antibiotics at the pet store, look in the bird/reptile section for Ornacyn, a tetracycline-based antibiotic you can mix with water or Pedialyte. Keep the wounds clean and you can use Neosporin on them in small amounts--try to apply it thin enough to avoid soiling the feathers and those chilling the bird, and so the bird can't preen it off and ingest too much. In addition to their regular feed, give them assorted high-protein goodies to eat such as scrambled eggs, cooked ground beef and live mealworms to help give their bodies extra fuel to grow new tissue and keep them eating. The first few days are the hardest, if they can get past the initial shock of the attack and start healing, chances are they'll pull through. You'll have to isolate them from the rest of the flock until they are healed, since chickens will peck at anothers' wounds constantly.

Shagbark bantams has a GREAT site here, with a list of articles. Read the ones on 'Cell Migration' (how to heal torn or missing skin) and 'Supportive Therapy' to help your birds:

http://www.shagbarkbantams.com/contents.htm

I've heard many stories of dogs running up and over wire fences to get at chickens, or just plain blasting through them and knocking them down. They can be VERY determined, surprisingly so. Don't beat yourself up, consider it a learning experience. Everyone who keeps chickens as lost birds to various causes--dogs, other predators, dumb accidents, mistakes, things you know you should have somehow known to avoid. We've all had it happen sooner or later.

So sorry for your loss, what a terrible thing to happen. We too had a break in last year. A fishercat broke into our coop at night stealing one of my favorite dark laying marans. I thought our coop was secure but now we have a deadbolt on the coop door just to make sure. Like Velvet says, it's happened to us all in one way or another, you are in sympathetic company.

Take care,
Sheila

A great horned owl swooped down around 7 in the morning on our RIR hen when I was young, he was huge but not big enough to take her away, se he took about half of a breast.

That's horrible! You must be so devestated! I certainly would be. They dog was lucky to make it to the pound alright!

Hey everybody, thank you for listening.

Brendan - he definately went over the fence. We put the hens up and locked them in their coop. Since it was one of the rare days in MS when the temp dropped in the 20's. I told him to put him back in his dog pen and take him to the rescue league in the AM. He wanted to leave him in a wire carrier all night in the back of his truck. The first thing he did was to make his way back to the hen pen and scale their fence. Hubby then wanted to put a 22 in his head, but I told him we were not going to do that. He had proven he would kill and he had to go. But we were not going to resort to inhumane tactics in the process.

Velvet, thanks for all the advice. She's seems to be doing okay. We take her out of the coop every morning and put her into the green house. At evening when the other hens have nested, we put her back in the coop in one of the nesting boxes. Otherwise she frets a lot, cause she can hear them. This seems to be working out fine for now. She has been eating pretty good, but I will bump up her protein. I doubt that she will ever lay an egg again. There is just too much damage.

The white hen "fat chick" that was injured is doing okay too. Her wounds were not as bad and her wings cover them up.

Needless to say egg production is down to 1 or 2 eggs a day. It was around 6 to 7 a day. I'm just glad that no more of them were killed.

Thanks again everybody.

Ramona

Here is a link that might be useful: my blog