Dew cracks me up!

[bcnewe2]

We have 10 baby chicks, just in the past few days I've decided that they could come out of the hen house into the small enclousure that we have. It's really a cattle panel around the chickencoop with plastic snow fence around the outside and chicken wire around the inside to keep them in and "critters" out.

I think the LGD pups found them cause there was a bit of digging by the gate, The only place I didn't think to wrap in chickenwire and have it extended into the pen.

 

Well, Dew is in love with the chickens. She will watch them forever if I let her, which I don't, but she does want to.

So yesterday afternoon I take Dew out to graze sheep, now where is that darn dog? Not a good thing but I'll forgive her this once.

I call and call, now I start to worry. So I go looking for her. She is up by the chicken coop. Sitting all squished up. I get to her and realize she's got a little chicken in between her front paws squished up onto her chest. She's not teasing it or picking at it. Just sitting there waiting for me to find her with her prize. I take it away from her, which she kindly gives up and then she runs into the pinyon trees and works another chicken out of the trees. She gets it to the fence and again sorta lays on it without hurting it, looking at me like, ok Mom here's the baby, you can put it up now.

So I grab the escapee and put it back, then fill in the hole by the fence and off we go to graze the sheep which is the job we started out the door to do.

 

I'm not sure how I really feel about her doing her chicken thing rather than right there to work the sheep but I'll say she saved 2 little chicken lives so I guess I'll let it go for now and see what happens.

This morning, I had all the dogs out, and we were all looking at the wee chicks, one of the LGD pups makes a lunge at the fence. Mick jumps up and corrects the LGD pup like he's mad that the pup was trying to get the chickens. THe pup did get the message and sat back about 5 ft from the fence to keep watching the chickens.

 

BTW, untill I got these baby chicks, Mick has never recognized poultry of anykind to be worked, the other night I couldn't get them all back in the little chicken door, so I sent Mick in to help. He did a great job and all the while he stayed on his belly, which seemed to me, he was trying not to spook the little chicks.

 

This is going to be an interesting summer. I'm thinking of getting one baby goose to help me to hear if something is in the hen house. Wonder how that will go!

[juliepoudrier]

Welcome to the world of chicken working dogs! They can come in handy. A goose will certainly let you know if *anything* is around, at least during the day....

 

J.