4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[andyglen]

I am after some advice as I want to create a run for the chickens during the day and I need to know what the best height of Chicken Wire I need to stop them hopping over.

 

I was going to get some 1800 cm high wire and create an area around their cube where they can forage in the bushes whilst we are out during the day.

 

Any advice or experience with this would be appreciated.

[welsh sarah]

the height sounds ok but what about foxes.

sarah

[Egluntyne]

Chicken wire is no match for a fox I'm afraid.

[..lay a little egg for me]

I would recommend using electric fencing if you want to let them free-range while you are out. It is the only really effective way of keeping foxes out of a large area. Plus you can move it around to different places if you want to give the ground a rest anytime. My chooks have never tried to get over it and the green colour blends in nicely in the garden.

[andyglen]

Being new to this I am grateful for any advice.

 

Are foxes likely to come into my garden duing daylght hours as I haven't heard any foxes out and about at night around our way.

 

If electric fencing is the only way do you recommend anywhere to get it ?

 

Thanks.

[Egluntyne]

Being new to this I am grateful for any advice.

 

Are foxes likely to come into my garden duing daylght hours as I haven't heard any foxes out and about at night around our way.

 

If electric fencing is the only way do you recommend anywhere to get it ?

 

Thanks.

 

'Fraid so....once they get a whiff of the chickens, they will come from far and wide.

 

I never see them in the day, apart from at first light, but wouldn't risk leaving my girls out all day unsupervised.

 

The Omlet netting can be electrified.

[..lay a little egg for me]

The omlet netting is really good but expensive. You can buy a very similar product called flexinet much cheaper online, but it doesn't have as many poles so tends to sag. We compensated for this by using pea sticks threaded through the netting between the official poles, which worked out a lot cheaper.

 

However, the most expensive bit though is the electric "fencer" (aka "sender") unit that sends the electric pulse through the net. You must make sure you get one that is powerful enough to electrify the net. Most senders are made for horse or sheep electric fences that consist of only one electrified wire, whereas the nets use more power. You can get mains senders or use a 12V battery. Although they recommend a deep cycle leisure battery, we just use an old car battery and it works fine. You can get complete kits of net, fencer and earth rod at a reasonable price on t'internet.

 

We got 50m of netting and it gives plenty of room for our 4 chooks. You can also get 25m lengths of netting but I thought that the larger area might result in less damage to the ground by the chooks as our neighbours have 4 chooks in about the area that 25m of fence would give and their run is just bare earth. Ours, by contrast, is in pretty good condition. If you are interested I can give you the details of how we set ours up etc. Gamebird has a similar set up and posted pics of hers a while back (I don't have any pics of the fencing I'm afraid).

[jlo]

Caroline - I would be really interested in knowing how you set it all up. I am a complete numpty and really want to feel that the girls are more secure when they are out of their pen.

[helenmb]

Suggestion - if you are going to get Omlet Netting or similar get some extra netting support poles as I found mine really sagged between the supports unless I added in an extra one. That stopped my Houdini Hens from winging their way over too

 

I seem to remember there being a tread recently about electrifying the netting so will take a squizz in a mo and see if I can find it.

[andyglen]

Thanks for all your replies, I have made a very temporary enclosure with a few metres of chicken wire that I let them in when we are in the garden and they are very happy with the new freedom.

 

I am going to have a think on wether to go down the electric fence route or make a moveable fox proof run that they can go in during the day.

[..lay a little egg for me]

OK, jlo, here is what we did to set up our electric fencing:

 

I got my electric fencing from http://www.farmcareuk.com which is £170 for 50m of electric poultry netting plus the sender unit and earth post and then I bought 20 bamboo pea sticks for £2 to add extra structure to the net as it gets a bit floppy. Last we bought an old car battery for £10 to power the fence. We have 50m for 4 chooks and the grass keeps growing (we cut it every couple of weeks) so we are hoping they won't reduce it to mud in the winter. I worked out that the chooks are 'officially' free range with this much netting (we have 4 girls). If you don’t buy the sender/fencer as part of a kit, make sure you get one that is powerful enough to drive poultry netting...the ones designed for horse fencing are not strong enough.

 

Electric fencing can be moved about as required but its quite a faff to move it about so we are intending leaving it in one place until the grass starts to look too tatty. The faff is getting it all taut, because if it is too floppy the lowest electrified wire starts to touch the grass which reduces the efficiency of the fence (the bottom wire is not electrified).

 

When setting it up the most important thing to note is that the fence must not touch other things that could carry current (e.g., grass, tree branches etc) as it will short out and be no good. It can cope with some short circuits but you do need to keep the grass down around the fence because if too much touches then it won't work. Very dry things that don't carry any current are OK, but vegetation has too much moisture so saps the current. We have to trim the grass along the bottom of the fence each week to keep it low enough not to touch the electrified wire. I am thinking of using some old pond liner cut into a long strip to go along the bottom under the fence to stop the grass touching the wire. Alternatively you can use weed killer to kill the strip of grass under the fence, but that means that if you move the fence you will have a (semi) permanent mark where it was. My OH was not keen on that idea though it would be the least work.

 

We have ours in the orchard so there are plenty of trees for the girls to shelter under but we make sure the trees don't touch the fence. So far, they haven't tried to use the trees as a launch pad to escape. If there are trees etc too near the outside of the fence, mr fox can use them to jump over the fence.

 

It is best to have the fence on fairly even ground. If it is too bumpy you get sections that don't go all the way to the bottom in the dips (so mr fox can crawl under) or the electrified sections will touch the humps shorting out the fence. You will need extra posts to help keep the fence taut in these bits. As I mentioned, I used bamboo pea sticks threaded through the wires with the bottom and top wires wrapped around the stick to make it tighter.

 

Setting up:

1. arrange your fence so it makes an enclosure (this is very tricky in an orchard as we weren’t sure how long each side should be and then found it didn’t meet up to form an enclosure and had to take the whole thing down and roll it up again and put it out again because the trees were in the way!). I think that if we move the fence we will get a piece of string 50m long and mark on it where the posts go (because you have to have a post at each corner) and lay it out on the ground to form a template before attempting to put up the fence. Use guy ropes (supplied in my kit) to stop the corner posts falling inwards and to keep the fence taut. Where the two ends of the fence met, I kind of overlapped the posts slightly (a couple of inches) and then tied the tops of the posts together. I use this point to go in and out of the enclosure by untying the tops of these two posts and then stepping through the gap that forms between them because I have the fence quite taut so when I undo the tops they spring apart.

2. Make sure there is no grass or other vegetation touching the horizontal wires (apart from the bottom wire which is not electrified). We have put down a strip of old pond liner under the bottom of the fence to keep the grass away from the fence. Or you can kill the grass along the path of the fence with round up or similar or just keep it clipped short with clippers (bit of a faff).

3. Bash the earth post into the ground as far as you can, close to where you are going to set up the sender etc (by the ‘gate’ is best). The instructions say it should go down 3 ft but there was no way we could get it in that far. Ours is down about 18 ins and the fence works fine.

4. Make sure your battery is charged and connect the sender to the battery according to the instructions. Clip the earth wire onto the earth post and clip the last crocodile clip (the wire that sends the pulse of electricity to the fence) onto the thick bundle of wires that runs down the end post. These are the ends of all the horizontal wires, so if you clip onto these, you will be sending the electric pulse to all the horizontal wires. Your fence is now electrified.

5. We invested in a fence tester to reassure ourselves that it was working. However the cheap alternative that is less painful than simply touching the fence to check it is to pluck a blade of grass and touch that to the fence...you will still feel the shock but it will be very mild.

 

Gosh, that's quite a lot of typing! I hope that it all makes sense...any Q's just ask.

[andyglen]

Hi Caroline

 

Thanks for the info, I know it wasn't directly aimed at me but it is very informative for me anyway and I may go down this route as I have a reasonable sized garden and i would like the chickens to get some use of the undergrowth without them becoming a foxes dinner.

 

The kids love being in with them as well which is a bit difficult getting three of them jammed in the cube with three chickens

[..lay a little egg for me]

The kids love being in with them as well which is a bit difficult getting three of them jammed in the cube with three chickens

Love the image!

 

 

Glad the info is of help to you and anyone else considering the electric fence option. I am really pleased with it so far. I have used electric fencing to divide up my horse field for years, so it was an obvious choice when it came to deciding how to keep the chooks.

 

Forgot to add that you will need a battery charger as well as the car battery (my OH had one anyway so I 'assumed' everyone else would have too )

 

Also, you can get mains senders if you happen to have a mains outlet at a convenient point.

[..lay a little egg for me]

I have now worked out how to link to the thread (thanks Claret for info on how to do this) in which Gamebird kindly posted a pic of an electric fence set up:

http://club.omlet.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27790&p=458134

 

I'm afraid much of the info I gave above is repeated in the thread, but the picture will help you see what I am talking about (I hope).

[Gamebird]

Thanks Caroline for using my photo - I feel quite flattered.

 

This system has worked really well for me. My girls free range all day and every day. I don't even lock them up at night so they are free to get up and go to bed as they please.

 

It has not reduced their egg production by being out all day and they are a joy to watch.

 

I have seen a fox walk past them without even glancing in their direction so I presume he/she has experienced a sting to the nose in the past. and has no intention of feeling it again.

 

It is really important you keep the fencing switched on all the time even if you do lock your girls up at night so there is never an opportunity for the fox to think that there is a vulnerable time to attack.

 

The girls have not trashed the lawn area because they prefer to scratch about in the bare patch underneath the oak tree.