Our sweet Miniature American Shepperd/Heeler mix dog, Kogee, is such a character. We like to say he’s a chicken herding cow dog since he’s trained to be chicken friendly and loves to help with the chickens! Kogee also loves to go on walks and runs. When he sees his leash he gets so excited he starts to bark. He loves to help with the chickens every day. As crazy as it might sound, our Kogee pup is a chicken keeper!
In the evening when I’m collecting eggs from the chicken coops and I open the lid to the nesting boxes, Kogee jumps up and perches his front paws on the edge of the nesting box and peeks in. He pokes his head in and looks around just like he’s looking for eggs with me. It’s so funny!
He’ll clean up after the chickens too. He will eat any spilled chicken feed he can find. He’s not picky, except when it comes to vegetables (which sounds like my little brother!) Kogee will only eat vegetables when they are in his homemade dog food and even then sometimes he eats around them.
There are ways to train your dog to be chicken friendly. We trained Kogee to help herd chickens but not attack them, although the chickens don’t understand. Sometimes if it’s late in the evening and the chickens won’t go back into the coop, Kogee loves to help herd the chickens back into the coop.
We have a couple chickens that occasionally don’t want to go back into the coop at night. Kogee will corner the chicken so we can catch them and put the chicken back into the coop so they don’t get eaten by predators at night.
Once when we were closing in the chickens for the night, Kogee jumped the four-foot-tall chicken fence, ran up the run and INTO the chicken coop! I don’t know what it is about the chicken coop that is so fascinating to him but he just loves running up inside there with them and looking around.
The first time Koagee ran into the chicken coop, the chickens freaked out thinking he was a predator and I think one of them jumped down from the roost and landed on Kogee! It was so hilarious. I didn’t think he could fit inside the little chicken coop door!
After that, I think the chickens refer to him as the slobbering giant! Kogee still loves to herd the chickens and at least once a week he will run up into the coop to check them out.
For the most part he just prefers to snuggle with me and go on runs around the pasture. He still eats the chickens’ food every chance he gets and I’m pretty sure if he ran into the coop when nobody was looking, he’d probably eat out of their feeder!
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