Ducks

[grenzehund]

Is there a practical reason for a dog to work ducks? (Aside from rounding up a neighbor's stray Thanksgiving duck, that is!)

 

Susan

[kajarrel]

Mine free range and it's helpful if the dog can help get them out of the road. I also (rarely) want to put the poultry in (or more frequently out of) the barn and it's helpful if the dog can help.

 

Kim

[bcnewe2]

We don't have ducks but we have chickens. I use Dew to put the chickens up every evening.

They would probably go in on their own but that would be on their time not mine so I do find it helpful.

[NorthfieldNick]

Yeah, to put them back when they get loose!

[Liz P]

Put them away at night so they don't become coyote chow.

[juliepoudrier]

Ducks can be less intimidating to young dogs, but I also found that they could bring out a lot of eye in a dog that already has it. While I still had ducks, I toyed with the idea of sending them down to the creek during the day and then penning them up at night, and a dog was certainly useful for that the one time I did it (that's a whole long story because the creek side is very brushy and tangled and I actually had Pip crawling under briars to drop down into the creek behind the ducks to try and get them back down where they could get out of the creek--not to mention those that had gone through the culvert to the other side of the creek and had wended their way down almost to the neighbor's property.... Forty-five minutes later we finally had them all rounded up and back in their pen--a real adventure.)

 

Anyway, if you have limited space (i.e., no room for larger stock), ducks can be handy for training a dog and teaching some finesse. They aren't a complete substitute for larger stock like sheep, goats, or cattle, but they have their purpose. (And they tend to flock better than chickens.)

 

Some dogs don't recognize poultry as something that should be worked. Twist, Kat, and Phoebe absolutely refuse to even see poultry, whereas Pip and Lark, and it seems probably Ranger as well, like to work poultry. Of my retirees, Jill and Willow liked to work poultry, but Boy and Farleigh never showed the slightest interest. One reason I got rid of the ducks (not counting the amount of feed they wasted) was that Lark was the main dog who really liked to work them, and doing so just exacerbated her clappiness.

 

J.