Destruction and Genesis

[Tevyes Dad]

Tuesday night through Wednesday morning we were hit by a strong wind storm. There were fairly long periods of 30-40 mph winds punctuated by 70 mph gusts. We woke a little before 3am to the UPS and power monitor alarms going off. While our power outage was short, the winds were not. The ducky dome I had built had withstood the wind onslaught admirably for several hours up to that point. Finally the tarp that covered it tore. This allowed it to dive under its primary support and directly pry on the PVC supports that stood between the primary wood supports. One by one it broke through the PVC hoops and with each break, the section of destructive tarp grew. By the time it got to the center wood support, it was a 15' x 15' sail that even that strong support could not withstand. Once that was toppled, most of the remaining PVC hoops were mangled, but the tarp was now lying low and not putting the force on the structure. All that was left standing were the primary supports on either end and some support lumber here and there. Yvonne and I went out in the dark and the wind and disassembled the ducky dome. We didn't want further damage to occur to what was left or to other areas of our property from the debris. Also we wanted the possibility of our ducks emerging from their house in the morning into a safe environment. We took everything apart, inventorying every screw along the way. There were 8 screws missing. I then ran to Lowes and bought a contractor grade sweeper magnet and we ran it over the entire yard the ducks use several times. We accounted for all but 5 screws on the entire structure. Hopefully those were flung out of the yard completely. We are still looking every chance we get. Our gazebos were also damaged in the wind. Fortunately, the ducks' house stood firm and had no damage (It is actually tied to the fence behind it.)

Here is a before and after shot of our back yard (we moved the ramp)...





On the bright side (but another reason I have been missing from the forum) we started and completed phase 1 of the secure run project. We are constructing a 400 sq. ft. run where we will be able (when it is fully armed

) to herd the duckies and possibly be able to go away for a weekend without sitters. And if a duck doesn't go in the house, it will have to sit outside and quack until morning, but it will be able to do so safely.

For phase 1, we erected (slightly trenched) a 20' x 20' x 6' dog kennel. More before and after pictures:




The following phases are still planned:

Phase 2: Hardware Cloth lower boundary. This will probably be 4ft hardware cloth sunk around 1ft inside the chain link. Plus stitching steel wire between the fence and the duck house so that nothing can press through to the opening for the duck door.

Phase 3: Electrification/stabilization. running strands of electric wire around the entire fence for crafty climbers. In this process, several ground rods will be driven into the ground. They will be way oversized so that they can double as mechanical supports in the middle of the fence walls for further stabilization.

Phase 4: Aerial Defense. A mast will be erected in the center of the run. This will support fishing line / LED lighting strands / netting or a combination of these to reduce the chance of hawk / eagle attacks to zero.

Phase 5: Active Defenses. This will be an autonomous defense system working from 4 turrets that will be placed on each corner of the pen. I am currently doing risk analysis to determine whether shotgun or laser based systems would make more sense when weighing efficacy vs liability.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Today I was out of town all day and didn't get back until after dark, so the ducks got stuck in their secure run for the day. So even though they had gotten taken care of in the morning, I checked in on their food / water / straw since tomorrow will likely be the same. I also gave them some meal worms to try to make it up to them. So I am taking a snap from my security cam to illustrate the new(er) lighting system. Not as pretty as the old one, but very effective!

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Mercy!!!

Glad you were all unharmed.

Could you go over the ground rod idea again? I have set up electric fence twice, understand their role, wondered about shock risk….

I have a comprehensive background in electricity and no background in electric fence so you know what to take with a grain of salt. As I understand it the energizer of an electric fence puts out a very short duration shock in the low millisecond range. The reason this is important is that current and duration is what "fries" you. Voltage can kick start your nerves and make you use motor skills involuntarily and it can REALLY hurt. A good example is if you go some place where it is really dry (like 15% humidity) and scuff your feet on some carpet, you can get yourself some REALLY painful static electric shocks. These shocks can be in the 10,000 - 20,0000 volt range and they hurt pretty bad. If you scuffed up a super static like this (we get days like that in Montana) and touched your duck right in the head, it would probably hate you for about a month, but would be unharmed (unless it rammed its head into something which caused damage). Electric fences from what I understand use around 5000 - 10,0000 volts and I would guess the duration is similar, but they will keep doing it around 1 time / second. Ow...... Ow....... Ow........ So a modern electric fence will turn away a grizzly bear, but won't harm a mouse - it is a psychological barrier, not a physical one. That being said, a weak static shock won't deter anyone and neither will a weak electric fence. For voltage to be productive you need a circuit where current can flow. The normal residential power lines that run around neighborhoods are usually around 12,500 Volts but there is a constant flow at high current available on them. If you touched one with a metal pole, much of you would be turned to ash and you would not survive the ordeal. But birds land on them all the time. There is no reference. If a bird was so unlucky to have one foot on the wooden pole (especially after a rain) and another foot on the line, it would be a puff of smoke even though wood isn't that good of a conductor. So on your energizer, there is one connector that is "ground" and one that is "hot". The earth acts as a moderate conductor and so if you are standing on the ground and touch the wire, you will get shocked. If you are wearing rubber boots, maybe not. So if a raccoon jumps on the fence and the fence is not making good contact with the ground electrically, when he touches the wire, the shock he gets won't be as strong. If the fence is making very good contact with the ground, then he will get the full shock. It won't harm him, but if every time he wanted to come by your place you kicked him good in the ribs, he'd find another less painful place to have a meal.

Grounding the fence like this will only make sure that the fence itself is always at the same potential as ground so as long as your birds don't touch the hot wires, the fence itself won't be even a little dangerous, in fact even if the hot wire were to touch the fence (a deer lays on it or something), a good ground will short out the voltage and the fence will still be ok for the birds (if it isn't repaired however Mr. Raccoon might get a break.) If the bird does touch the hot wire... They won't do it again!

Now the reference I was making is normally for electric fences, you use a small diameter rod pounded several feet into the ground to make electrical contact with the earth. In my case, since my actual fence is a dog kennel and isn't as sturdy as fence posts concreted into the ground, I am going to go with a heavier longer post to pound into the ground that will act as both my grounding posts and as an anchor for my kennel so it can't be lifted/pushed/deformed easily.

I may have babbled on too much here, but I don't know your point of reference or anyone else's who might read this so I hope I covered what was useful and didn't glaze too many eyes over.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Last weekend I stitched the fence to the house. Because I had to open the chain link to provide an entrance into the house for the ducks, I created a weakness in the fence where a critter could push between the house and the fence then gain access to the door or the entire enclosed area. This stitching goes the entire 6 ft of the fence and effectively closes off the section where the door and the hole in the chain link are. It also pulls the chain link closer to the house. Anything that could fit through the stitching could have fit through the chain link anyway. (Remember the other half of phase 2 will include hardware cloth.)



One of the challenges I faced was that the duck house is a plastic shed. (Someday they will get something better). Since I didn't want the steel wire to slowly cut through the plastic sides of the house, I reinforced it on the back side using a very inexpensive shelf support. This measure might also apply to someone using a steel shed. Another unrelated compensation for the plastic shed is at the bottom of the doorway, there is a big glob of silicone. This is because the cut edges of the plastic shed for the door were thin and sharp (The wall is corrugated plastic). The ducks wouldn't step over the edge, they always stepped on it, so now they have a soft spongy surface to step on. (It is set back from where the door closes, so doesn't interfere with it.



And here is a close up of the outside:



This was all done with 17ga galvanized steel wire (the same wire I will be using for the electric fence).

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Ground is thawed enough to resume work... Starting on the hardware cloth... I have a couple feathered helpers

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Phase 4: Has been completed pending scrutiny. I need the help of the experienced. I have the following birds of prey in the area that are of possible concern:

Bald Eagles
Golden Eagles
A dozen types of Hawk
Osprey
Barn Owls
Great Horned Owls

The first 4 they are exposed to during the day. We haven't had any problems with them and I think there are two reasons for this. 1 - Our yard is fairly cluttered so the ducks have many places to take shelter and the birds have a less than ideal attack area. 2 - We are surrounded by fields that are full of mice and gophers that make perfect meals for these birds so they really have no need to endure the racket and excess weight involved in taking a duck in the middle of a flock.

The latter two I have no experience with since the ducks are in their shelter at night.

The purpose of this structure is to have a larger area that I can lock the ducks in so I can go away for a weekend with them in this structure and if they go in their house great, if they don't, no lives are lost.

I have heard of people stringing fishing line over enclosures to keep birds of prey from attacking their chickens / ducks. This is what I am attempting here. I ran strings of LED lights to a central pole as you can see in the above picture. The lights are just for us - I doubt they would make a deterrent, but the wires should help somewhat. I turned on the lights so you can easily see where the wires go relative to the kennel. The kennel is 20' on a side and is broken into 8 sections on a side by the strands so in a perfect world, the strands would be 2-1/2' apart on the outside of the kennel and get closer as they near the center. But the reality is that in order to accommodate hardware the strands may be slightly to one side or another but would be no further off of their "ideal" position than 4". So a worst case scenario (I don't even know if this exists) would be where two strands max away from each other in opposite directions. That would make a maximum gap of 3'2" at the top of the fence.

So my question to those of you with experience in such things. Do you think this will deter birds of prey from coming into the kennel??? If not, how tight would it have to be? I could fill in with more strands: more LEDs or fishing line. There will be electric fence around the kennel, so I shouldn't have to worry about climbers. Thanks for any wisdom you might impart.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Well, it has been 2 years since I finished the secure kennel. I am happy to say it seems.... secure. The lights I had running up and down frequently shorted out when they got shaken by the wind, so I finally removed them and replaced them with 4 LED flood lights at the top of the mast. I also removed the hula hoop since it was no longer holding the light strands. This made the top of the net only supported by one strand, so I put an old circular serving tray with a rod in the middle of it (it used to be a two tier tray) in the top of the mast so that the net was supported by the tray. This works quite well, but now the net is a bit loose when it is wet (after a rain or snow).

I may tighten it a bit next spring. The only other change I have made is I changed out the thermal outlet that goes to their heat lamp. The old one came on at 10F and went off at 20F. This seemed to make them uncomfortably warm when it was closer to 20F, so I changed it out with one that comes on at 0F, and goes off at 10F. It is only on 10% as often as it was before and usually by the time it comes on, at least one duck thinks it is a good idea to be under it. By -20F they all think it is a good idea

Kaine is no longer going to jail - he is reformed, but the "jail" has come in handy to isolate ducks temporarily while still keeping them in view of the flock. Mostly that area is now open and we put the straw there in the winter to give the ducks a place to sun where they can stay out of the snow. Currently it is snowing so they will just have to wait until it stops. I flipped the straw a half hour ago and it was covered in snow again before a single duck sat on it. If they really want to get out of the snow, they can always go into their house. It is actually reasonably warm (for this time of year), currently 38F so the ducks have chosen to hang out in the "center strip" in the back yard...

It is supposed to stop snowing this evening, so I'll flip / add their straw then. Most every evening, they are inside their kennel waiting to be shut in so I'm sure they see or hear the predators outside at night and like the security of their kennel. Their house is now optional and they use that most of the winter but like to stay out in the kennel when the weather is nice. Although I saw a couple raccoons poking around the kennel a couple of years ago, I haven't had any attacks, nor have I seen any signs (including tracks in the snow) of raccoons lately. My guess is they got shocked a few times and moved on. I am sure new raccoons will stop by and test the kennel, but it seems up to the task. I do still physically check the electric fence with a voltage tester at least once per month (every weekend if I think about it.) I have occasionally seen evidence of attempted digs under the kennel, but they seem to give up quickly after running into the buried hardware cloth. We push the dirt back into the small hole, and whatever it was gives up. (I know at least one time it was a skunk - caught him on video.)

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Flipped and added straw as promised

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Looks really good!

Well you know our history with Ebony and Belle https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/r-i-p-ebony-and-belle.883393/#post-13441288.
After that, we really cracked down on security. That was not something we wanted to repeat!

Hmmm, just reviewed that post from 2014... Funny, was thinking then that the plastic shed was a temporary solution and I would build a "Quack Shack", The only thing is it has worked so well, I think we will stay with it. Also we still have the parts from the first one that broke, so if any panels / doors get damaged, we have backups.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Oh yes remember very well and so sad. You have done a great job keeping them all safe and secure!