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Are you actually aware of dogs protecting free-range chickens against bald eagles? I am not sure that bald eagles really care about dogs. A bald eagle will swoo

• tw04 6y ago
  >Are you actually aware of dogs protecting free-range chickens against bald eagles? At any given time I've got 3-5 bald eagles in the woods around my house. There are 3 houses with chickens in the neighborhood. The eagles won't go anywhere near a yard with a dog - I'm quite confident they aren't dumb enough to tangle with a large dog unless they have no other option for food. I have no doubt if an eagle was starving to death it might tangle with the dog and might even win, but I don't think that would be their first, second, or fifth choice if there were other food options.
• Floegipoky 6y ago
  Livestock guardians as a general rule don't protect by fighting, but by convincing the predator that the risk is too high to bother. The guardian alerts and the flock reacts to the danger, seeking shelter, making noise, looking up, etc. Without an easy meal the predator moves on. Arial predators are especially risk-averse because it doesn't take much to cause a mortal injury. I've even heard of people using guardian geese instead of dogs. They're supposed to be very effective at preventing arial predation and orders of magnitude cheaper than dogs, though I've never heard anyone talk about them in the context of something the size of a bald eagle.