Cheverny's working pack, fed in public
La Soupe des Chiens: Cheverny's Hound Feeding
Once a day, roughly 100 tricolour hunting hounds are fed in a tightly controlled ritual — a living remnant of the château's real hunt, not a show staged for tourists.
Check dates and availability ↗What happens at the Soupe
Once a day, handlers lay out a line of raw chicken carcasses and kibble in front of the château while the estate's pack of hunting hounds is held back under close control. On a signal, the dogs are released to eat — a display the château itself calls 'impressive and coded,' since every stage, from the dogs' restraint to the release, follows a strict, practised routine developed for managing a working pack, not for spectacle. It's the same feeding the hounds would get on any other day, simply timed and positioned so visitors can watch. There's no narration or performance built around it — it's closer to watching a genuine piece of estate management than a scheduled show, which is part of what makes it distinctive among Loire château attractions.
The hounds: Grand Anglo-Français Tricolore
The pack is made up of Grand Anglo-Français Tricolores, a French scenthound breed created by crossing the English Foxhound with the French Poitevin. Roughly 100 of these tricolour hounds live at Cheverny, kept as a working pack rather than as pets or show dogs. The breed was developed specifically for stamina and pack discipline in the field, qualities the Soupe demonstrates in miniature: the dogs' ability to hold position as a group under a handler's control, rather than break for food individually, reflects the same training used to manage them during an actual hunt. It's a detail worth watching for — the spectacle isn't really about the eating, it's about the discipline the pack shows in the moments before it's allowed to.
The hunt behind the feeding
The hounds exist because Cheverny still runs a working chasse à courre, or hunt with hounds, in the surrounding forest. The tradition was revived in 1850 by Marquis Paul de Vibraye after a period of decline, and formalised further in 1907 when his descendant Philippe de Vibraye founded the Société de Vénerie. Today the hunt pursues deer in the Cheverny forest and neighbouring woodland, going out roughly twice a week between October and March — an aristocratic field sport that remains genuinely expensive to run, which is part of why so few estates still maintain a hunt and pack at this scale. The Soupe des Chiens visitors see each day is downstream of that: the pack exists for the hunt first, and the public feeding second.
When to watch it
The feeding follows a published seasonal schedule: from 1 April to 14 September, the pack is fed daily at 11:30am; from 15 September to 31 March, feeding still happens at 11:30am but only on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Because schedules can be adjusted for weather, hunting activity or estate operations, check the current timetable on the château's official website or with the ticket office before you plan your visit around it — arriving on the wrong day for a hound feeding is a common and avoidable disappointment. The feeding is included in standard château admission; no separate ticket has historically been required, but it's worth confirming this too when you check the schedule.
Why it's not just for tourists
What sets the Soupe des Chiens apart from staged animal encounters elsewhere is that the pack's routine doesn't exist for visitors — it's simply been made visible to them. The hounds are working animals with a job to do each hunting season, and the daily feeding ritual would happen with or without an audience. That distinction matters if you're deciding how much time to give it: this isn't a themed show with a beginning, middle and end, but a few minutes of genuine estate life, over quickly once the dogs are fed. Visitors who arrive expecting a long performance are often surprised by how brief and matter-of-fact it is — which, for anyone interested in how a working French estate actually functions, is exactly the point.