Poorly chicken

[Scottie]

Has anyone used chain link fencing for their permanent run, or is the widespread view that weldmesh is better? Husband seems to think that chainlink might be easier to work with, but it seems to have quite large holes for chickies to stick heads through etc.

 

Any advice gratefully received.

 

Sheila

[Egluntyne]

You are right about the holes being large enough for hens to stick their heads through....also it would be easier for a determined fox to bite a hen through the more open fencing.

[Mirkwood]

i used wire that was to big for my quail and they put their head through and mooky the neighbours cat releaved them of it........then learnt to put his paw through and drag them to the fence and pull their head through, so now they have tiny gauge wire.

[daj198]

Hi Sheila

 

I'm intending to have a chain link run built too. I didn't think of the chickens putting their heads through the fence. Hmmm... I suppose I'll just have to hope they won't I'm also thinking of paving along the inside of the fence to prevent digging.

[Scottie]

We thought of making the run with chain link and then putting the small weldmesh stuff at the bottom, creating a skirt and also going maybe 2 feet up against the chainlink to stop them putting their heads out. My OH seems to think that we can use less posts using chainlink and it's much easier to work with. We'd also put on a roof etc.

 

Sheila

[meezers]

We thought of making the run with chain link and then putting the small weldmesh stuff at the bottom, creating a skirt and also going maybe 2 feet up against the chainlink to stop them putting their heads out. My OH seems to think that we can use less posts using chainlink and it's much easier to work with. We'd also put on a roof etc.

 

Sheila

 

I thought of doing exactly the same - after we'd finished building the run I think it would have been easier, and if you have small mesh on the inside to stop the chooks from sticking bits out, it should be very strong as well. Another thought I had, whilst browsing the net for garden fencing ( got a bit distracted and ended up building an imaginary chicken run ) have you seen the 'security fencing' panels you can buy ? usually under the chain link/ metal fencing section, they were very reasonably priced and would be super sttrong, again, you'd have to put smaller mesh on the inside, but I reckon we could have built a run out of that in a matter of hours and for the same price or less.

[Sunshine]

We have used plastic coated wire netting for our chicken run and our chickens can poke their heads out and back in again. We have found this fine. When our chickens escaped into the farmers fields around surrounding our house one of them did get their head stuck in the chainlink that is around some of the garden behind the hedges so mum had to pull it free.

 

I did hear that chainlink was quite hard to work with too which is why we got this plastic coated wire, which is not fox proof but as we can't really put a secure roof on our roof it didn't seem worth it to spend a lot more on fox proof fencing when they could easily climb over the run.

 

This is a photo of our run, you can kind of see how big the holes are in our fencing.

 

 

The grass has completly gone now so we need to put some woodchip down soon so they have something to scratch around in.

[Tara123]

I've used chain link on my run with a small wooden skirt along the bottom to keep the bedding in and its been fine. We used it because we got a whole roll of it given to us and though it would be strong enough to stop any foxes nibbling through. Even though my girls could put there heads through it they don't seem to bother.

 

Here's a pick of it for you and it was incredible easy to work with