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Quite a bit has happened since I made my last post here. In the spring we purchased both rabbits and baby chickens. The dormant hunting genes in Dolly awakened. My goal was to get everybody home without anybody being eaten.
Dolly seems to know that when my voice is calm and gentle that I am trying to teach or tell her something. It's the method that works best for her plus a lot of praise thrown in the mix. She thrives on genuine praise. In this case it worked.
She pays no attention to the chickens now. As for the rabbits it turned out that they are escape artists. When they are loose Dolly will help us try to round them up and put them back in their cages. Other than that she pays no attention to them.
We bought the chickens to eat once they were grown. I was going to keep the rabbits as a breeding . pair. Within 24 hours our plans changed, They are all pets now.
I really like the rabbits. They are clean and they share their food with each other. They like sitting on my shoulder. They are always tring to see if we have something to eat for them. They are gentle but if you scare them they will bite. Not hard. It's more like a " Leave me alone" bite intended as a warning.
We have a brown (red?) longhair. Dolly is a cutie!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweetie Dolly is. I'm thinking my two Yorkies - the ones without manners - could take a lesson or two from her.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the chicks! We thought we were going to eat our last batch but they turned into good layers so we're keeping them and will raise some more for eating. Our neighbors did the same thing but they turned into pets so there won't be any home fried chicken there either. LOL
ReplyDeleteLove your Dolly! I have a long haired chihuahua and a Chihuahua mix......my little long haired doesn't like sharing attention with anyone/ thing lol.
ReplyDeleteHi! Came over from a link from Gorges. What happened to your chickens? :0)
ReplyDeleteI built a coop for them but a stray coonhound killed half of them. A low power electric fence ended his desire to do that again.
DeleteThe chickens were a breed that was intended to gain weight quickly and be used for their meat in a short period of time. They were calm birds who seemed to be intelligent. Unfortunately they are not a long lived bird. The few we had left are all gone.
Most of my rabbits escaped. They spent a year in the wild. The coonhound who killed the chickens was not smart enough to catch them. They constantly outfoxed him. The rabbits disappeared when we had a upswing in the coyote population.