RIP Sam and Ella

Through an unfortunate series of incidents and a thoughtless dog owner we lost both our chickens yesterday.

I lost two fence panels due to the the wind on Wednesday night and given it was still very windy yesterday morning and the fence post was broken could not put up them before work.  My wife came home to find a staffy puppy sitting in the run and one dead chicken and one injured one which died within an hour.  Neither were grossly injured but I'm guessing shock and getting knocked about a bit was enough.

Unfortunately the dog got away so we've no way of showing the thoughtless owner what damage they have caused by letting their dog run free (it did have a collar on).

It appears the dog has got into our garden had a couple of attempts at digging under the coop / run and couldn't as I have mounted in on thick boards so it has chewed its way through the wire and made a round hole to get in.  With it being a puppy it looks like it was small enough to get into both the coop and run so there was no cover anywhere.

We will get another two but I'm getting some weld mesh to make the run double skinned before we do anything else.

Sorry to hear about your loss its never nice to lose pets in that way.

Without knowing much about the local area but rather than it being a thoughtless dog owner who has let their puppy run free could the puppy have escaped in the same manner in which it was able to gain access to your property i.e. a broken fence?

Must say i do feel exactly the same about dog owners who allow this, like i said dont know about your area but from where we are alot of the thoughtless owners seem too young to look after themselves nevermind a dog! but if you do bring in restrictions to dog ownership how do you police/enforce it? Thankfully for every unresponsible dog owner you do get I like to think there are 10 responsible owners.

Really sorry to hear about you losing your girls  . Like you say there is a good chance the puppy could have broken free so lets hope it was that but it doesn't stop the fact that there are some thoughtless owners who just don't seem to care what their dogs get up to.

As both a dog owner (also a Staff who is really lovely & friendly dog though I must admit I wouldn't trust her with the hens) and hen owner I can really understand your frustrations.

Really glad though that this hasn't put you off keeping hens.