Are Anatolian Shepherds good with chickens?

They can be, if they are raised with chickens from puppyhood and supervised while young. It is not automatic, and research on guardian dogs with poultry is thin.

The national breed club says an Anatolian does best with other animals when it meets them as a puppy under careful supervision. Young dogs are the risk. Texas A&M AgriLife says that in larger pastures, dogs 6 to 18 months old may chase animals.

We found no study of Anatolians with poultry. Two Western Australia studies looked at Maremma guardian dogs on egg farms. In one, foxes still entered a 27-hectare paddock on 17 of 23 nights. Foxes were seen on camera eating or carrying eggs, and no predation on chickens was recorded during monitoring. In the other, two dogs were let out of their chicken enclosure two to three nights a week. When they were free to roam, 96 percent of their night locations were within 75 meters of the farmhouse, and the authors found no sign the dogs had bonded to the hens. Oklahoma State University Extension lists guardian dogs as an option for free-range birds.

Our puppies see the sheep, chickens and cats from the start. Our dogs watch the sky and run birds of prey off. We raise laying hens on pasture inside mobile fencing, and we have had no losses to predators while the dogs were on the job.

The information on this page is general information about the breed, drawn from the sources listed and from our own experience. Individual dogs vary. Nothing here is a guarantee about the health, size, temperament or working ability of any particular puppy. The terms of any sale are those in our written contract.

Sources

• Anatolian Shepherd Dog Club of America, Breed Facts at a Glance
• Texas A&M AgriLife, “Livestock Guardian Dogs: An Overview,” ANSC-PU-468
• Roddick, Kreplins, Kobryn and Fleming 2022, “Livestock guardian dog protection of free-range poultry from the red fox,” Animal Production Science 62(13)
• McKellar, Kreplins and Fleming 2023, “Chicken’s best friend? Livestock guardian dog bonding with free-ranging chickens,” Translational Animal Science 7(1)
• Oklahoma State University Extension, “Protecting Small Poultry Flocks from Predators”