Destruction and Genesis

[Tevyes Dad]

I mentioned your plan to my beloved - and in the interest of preserving your hide, I decided I would share.

His first comment was, it wouldn't work here in New England. (We have very very stony soils.) He went on contemplating out loud.

The chainsaw would kick back when it hit the stone. The chain could go flying. Or the stone could hit you in the crotch at 50 mph. The more I think about it, the wiggier I feel….. (that means he's getting faint).

There's my public service announcement. I have no experience with chainsaws, myself.

While I understood what was going on in my head, looking at my post a day later, it might have seemed like a dismissal. It was not. I very much appreciate you valuing my hide as well as the wisdom of your beloved. Pull the trigger and go would NOT be the approach I would take. A professional hand trencher works the same way as a chainsaw although its blade is a bit different. The rotation direction is the same and in fact there is one manufacturer who offers a trenching kit for their chainsaw. The kick on the chainsaw and the risk of the chain flying wouldn't be much any different than with wood: too aggressive of a bite could lead to trouble either way. Naturally any large rocks would have to be hand dug. (Large is defined by the chainsaw/trencher) I don't think any trencher is designed to cut through rock, but up to a certain size, it can just knock them out of the way. I would guess in my soil if it isn't frozen that would be about a 1-1/2" diameter rock tops - anything bigger would probably have to be dug out (I have a pick/mattock that can move the world). Since I don't actually have a whole lot of use for a full scale chain saw, I am looking at a $40 electric with a 14" bar so I am sure it will stall before things get too crazy and if after 15 seconds it seems like the "stupid" is turned up too high, I will abort. I will also be using steel toe shoes, knee pads and a full face shield.

 

[Amiga]

I reckon you're on the ball - but I also saw that my beloved would feel better if I shared his concern.

I will forward your response (c:

 

[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]

Last weekend I spent exposing the main power line to our house. I had dig line go through (know before you dig

) and the power runs under the pen and the duck house (I knew that, just wanted to be precise). Didn't know how deep though. Exposing the lines revealed they were 29" deep and dead-on where they were detected. They should cause us no problems T poles will go in 23" and will be far enough away from the line (I exposed it at the point closest to any T poles so I know we will miss it) and the hardware cloth will only go down 12". Filled the hole back in. Tried the crazy chainsaw experiment. Found 2 problems: 1 - the electric chainsaw didn't have a "throttle" - just on or off giving me only downward pressure to use as a control. 2 - it really wasn't going much faster than I could do with my pick so there wasn't much point. So @Amiga, you and your beloved can sleep better - I am going to use a pick. I'll buy a new chain and it will be good as new and we can use it for keeping the trees away from our internet microwave shot (they keep growing in front of it). Wasn't much weekend left and I couldn't see the ducks leaving a small partial trench alone if we did half of it, so we knocked a couple T poles in the ground and called it good.

To be continued.....

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Nothin' done this weekend. I had a 102F fever yesterday and am down to 100F today. Spending a little time with the ducks was all I could really do. Depending on weather, this may be put on hold until spring

 

[Miss Lydia]

Nothin' done this weekend. I had a 102F fever yesterday and am down to 100F today. Spending a little time with the ducks was all I could really do. Depending on weather, this may be put on hold until spring

Sorry your sick TD, Hope you feel better real soon.

 

[Amiga]

Nothin' done this weekend. I had a 102F fever yesterday and am down to 100F today. Spending a little time with the ducks was all I could really do. Depending on weather, this may be put on hold until spring

Oh, no...

Healing hugs to you and yours.

Duck time will definitely help you recover.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Thanks.

 

[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.