My dog has a habit of killing animals

Question
My dog, Kira, she's a mutt (but it looks like she has some blue heeler in her) about one and a half years old. She eats dry dog food and some wet food occasionally. She's been spayed and she is an outdoor dog.
When my family had a lot of chickens running around, Kira killed a lot of them, maybe around 5 or so. We ended up tying her up for a while, until we had gotten rid of our chickens. We used to have 4 ducks running around our yard, but now we only have 1. Kira killed two of them. Now, I love my dog very much, but my family wants to either get rid of it or kill it. Is there any way I can stop my dog from killing the ducks and such? One person told me that I should tie the dead animal around it's neck-- but that seems a little drastic.
A little help, please?

Answer
Janine, tying a dead animal around a dog's neck to make it stop killing them is an old farmer's trick that just doesn't work.

You are probably not ever going to be able to trust Kira out of your sight, in the presence of ducks or chickens (or rabbits, or etc.), but you *may* be able to work with her and get her under control enough so that you can keep her from bothering them when you are there with her. My advice is to consult with a local trainer that can come to your place and help you train her. Without seeing her in person, it's hard to know what methods to recommend that you try.

When you cannot be out there with her, keep the ducks and chickens penned up so that Kira cannot get to them to hurt them.

If you cannot do this, I would recommend trying to rehome Kira to a family that does not have other small animals.