Ducks attacked on Lynden-area farm, dog killedA bit more:
Dog owner says her pit bull could not have harmed ducks
When Herb Rinn was laid off in 2001 after 22 years of work at Georgia Pacific, he and his wife, Marilyn, turned their interest in agriculture into a livelihood and began selling organic duck eggs and vegetables from their home on Ten Mile Road.
But on Feb. 4, Marilyn's 60th birthday, Herb discovered 24 of the ducks had been killed in their pen. Seven others had broken wings and legs.
"I just got done cooking (Marilyn) a nice breakfast," Herb Rinn said. "I went out to check on the ducks and the first thing I noticed was all my ducks were dead."
Moments later, a neighbor's pit bull emerged from a wooden shed within the pen. The dog had dug its way through the chicken wire and underground rat wire protecting the pen, but now couldn't find its way out, Rinn said.
"As soon as it saw me, it did a little lunge and showed its teeth," Rinn said. "It came out of that pen barking and growling."
Rinn went back inside his house, grabbed his Browning 12-gauge shotgun and returned to the pen. He shot the dog in the head, killing it immediately.
"Believe me, I did not want to kill that dog," Rinn said. "But that dog felt no pain, unlike my ducks."
The incident has been devastating for the Rinns, who had been selling their duck eggs for four years to private customers and to the Community Food Co-Op. They had raised the ducks since they were ducklings, and Marilyn had given each one a name.The dog owner says:
When Vanweerdhuizen was looking for Bitsy, she said she heard coyotes in the woods and believes they are likely responsible for what happened to the ducks.Pits are fiercely loyal to their 'family' but absolute time-bombs when it comes to people, property and stock that are not 'theirs'. We have apartments above the store and have no problems with dogs but we do not allow pit bulls as there are infants, toddlers and small dogs living there as well. Coyotes would never do a thing like this -- digging underneath a fence and then trashing a flock. We live with them here and love to hear them singing at night. They operate in stealth mode, coming in and picking off a bird and then running away. They do not spend twenty minutes murdering an entire flock for fun. They come in, choose their meal and then vanish with it. Pits are a loose cannon on the deck. I hope that Vanweerdhuizen can come to terms with this and perhaps choose a better breed of dog as she chooses to live in the country. Posted by DaveH at February 11, 2009 9:42 AM
Vanweerdhuizen said she understands it's her responsibility to keep her dog on her property, but she does not believe Rinn's actions were justified.
"She was not a vicious dog," she said.
I've had dog problems with chickens, catching them in pens that they had ripped through to get at the birds. The dogs aren't hungry, they aren't hunting, at least not in the yote sense. They are playing. Killing birds is fun, but eating them isn't the objective except for some incidental consumption.
Your neighbor's friendly pooch is as likely to do this as a pit. All it takes is an instigator, a pal from another home, and soon you have a pack. Packs have behaviors that individuals may not exhibit, like a gang of boys emboldened by one another to do mischief.
The carnage can be reduced some by coop design, but other than that you lose some birds and practice 3s management.
Posted by: back40 at February 11, 2009 12:29 PM