It didn't stop me and my family. (Chicken katsu is still one of my favorites dishes.) To be sure, we did not eat our own chickens (just their eggs). Somehow we were able to still mentally distance ourselves from ours and "the others".
I was living in San Jose in a dense suburban neighborhood. It became legal to have backyard chickens so I jumped at getting three chickens. (We had three young daughters, see.)
One mysteriously died. Of the remaining two, the bossy one decided she was a rooster and started crowing, of a sort, in the morning hours.
So we had one asshole neighbor complain and I was obliged to send them off to live with a friend who had some property in the Santa Cruz mountains. Sad. And afterward, neighbors strolling by said they missed the chicken sounds in the neighborhood.
I'll spare you the unfortunate ends for the two. I'll say the Santa Cruz mountains represent more predators and require someone with a little more responsibility than my friend showed. (I don't blame him. It was really my fault — having more or less dumped them on him.)
Everything loves a chicken dinner. Unless you live in a city where the predator population has already been driven out, you are faced with the decision to either let them free roam (and accept a small but steady rate of predation) or keep them penned when not under direct supervision. There's not a third option.
We had racoons, skunks, and foxes paying nightly visits. Occasionally one would find a way into the coop and there would be a massive kill off. We got a dog, and just the scent of the dog around the coop has been enough to eliminate the skunks and racoons anyway. The fox still does come by from time to time. We had to put a net over the roof of the coop because of hawks.
Our coop is impenetrable; we never lost any chickens that way. But they would get picked off during the day by hawks, coyotes, and bobcats. One every month or two.
We've given up and are switching to bantams in an enclosed run.
Some sort of goat maybe?
Goats can be territorial, but I'm not aware of them having any particular inclination to guard chickens or livestock.
Livestock guard dogs work better, but then you're dealing with a large dog that isn't a pet and isn't socialized like a house dog.
Can't your livestock guard dog also be a pet that's socialized like a house dog? Are the two mutually exclusive?
Based solely on what I've read and experience with them when I'm on a bicycle...
Not really, because you want to dog to be bonded to the livestock, not the humans. The dog lives outside amongst the other farm animals. They tend to be more territorial and protective than pet dogs. All that said, I've seen them used more with sheep than poultry.