The truth about chicken wire

[The Moonshiner]

Some new fangled Google thing.

Oh, a Google thing. Might as well ask on Facebook.

 

[Painted Calls]

Oh, a Google thing. Might as well ask on Facebook.

Nah - they'd have recommended chicken wire and DE.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Nah - they'd have recommended chicken wire and DE.

I actually think its the opposite. The trendy thing and conventional wisdom is to shun chicken wire and recommend hardware cloth. Its sort of the default answer of the internet chicken community.

Chicken wire is more of the the old fashioned, folksy, answer that most people have gotten away from.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Google can't even post the right birds when you search images of a certain breed.
And this Bard dude's own page says he's inaccurate.

 

[Painted Calls]

I actually think its the opposite. The trendy thing and conventional wisdom is to shun chicken wire and recommend hardware cloth. Its sort of the default answer of the internet chicken community.

Chicken wire is more of the the old fashioned, folksy, answer that most people have gotten away from.

Good point!

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

With a secure nighttime coop chicken wire is probably fine. My family always used to use chicken wire for all chicken related fencing when I was a kid, there wasn't really any other option. It entirely depends on your predator pressures.
I don't have many predator issues, my birds sleep in trees or nighttime coops that stay open (coops would exclude most dogs as only the small pop door is open). Daytime they're behind my property fences and portable non electric poultry fence. That would be like setting up a chicken dinner drive-thru restaurant for some places, here it's ok! So, what are your predator pressures? That will dictate how you need to house your chickens.

 

[ElleEmie]

Thank you yes I figured overlapping it would at least make it more challenging to break

At my old house in the mountains country the coop walls were just chicken wire…. It works. Over lap it!

 

[PaisleyChickMama]

Dogs out at night too. That fear of a canine ambush will keep almost everything away. They definitely won’t stay around long enough to start probing for weaknesses in the fence. In the 6 years I’ve lived on my current farm in the deep woods, the only varmint to raid my coops at night against my dogs was a black bear that twice tore the wire net off of the top of a coop but then ran off once the commotion started. Both times it came in on a rainy night downwind of where the dogs sleep, but the commotion apparently alerted the dogs and ran it off. Other varmints don’t even try the coops and won’t even come into the fenceless yard, except a couple of times possums have walked through the yard with negative outcomes for them.

That’s awesome, I’ve been wanting them to be outside dogs but there’s a couple obstacles I’m facing. They’re not livestock guardian dogs, we used to live in the city so they’re used to being coddled (outside dogs were illegal) and we still don’t technically live in the country, we have just under an acre and live in a small town so our dogs tend to wander into the neighbors yard if we’re not outside since we don’t have fences. And I always say if a dog is on my yard trying to eat my ducks I won’t hesitate to shoot it, I can’t be hypocritical and not hold my dogs to the same standard of staying in our yard

 

[PaisleyChickMama]

yep, thats why you use HW cloth on your roost box/coop and lock them up at night. Day run 2x4 animal wire, hawk net and your family dog can handle day time needs.

This is good probably the best for our circumstances

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

That’s awesome, I’ve been wanting them to be outside dogs but there’s a couple obstacles I’m facing. They’re not livestock guardian dogs, we used to live in the city so they’re used to being coddled (outside dogs were illegal) and we still don’t technically live in the country, we have just under an acre and live in a small town so our dogs tend to wander into the neighbors yard if we’re not outside since we don’t have fences. And I always say if a dog is on my yard trying to eat my ducks I won’t hesitate to shoot it, I can’t be hypocritical and not hold my dogs to the same standard of staying in our yard

They don't need to be a dedicated livestock guardian breed to be good outside protectors. Nearly all the dogs I've had that were good at protecting chickens were just mutts or common breeds. When we moved to my current farm 6 years ago, my two bulldogs and redbone hound had only been urban dogs that slept inside at night and stayed in a picket fence backyard during the day while we worked. They took to country life fast and within a short amount of time they were sleeping outside at night on the porch as their preference.

You are of course correct that if you can't keep your dogs on property, you can't let them go unsupervised at night. I have found that it's pretty easy to keep dogs confined behind electric wire. For the past 3 months we've had to keep our dogs behind a makeshift yard fence made only of 4 strands of electric wire because we've been letting logging trucks come and go across our property to log the land behind us. Know that they wouldn't tolerate intruders and would likely run up under the trucks as they came and went, we just fenced the dogs. Tomorrow should be the last day and I'll turn the dogs free again. But it showed me that it's easy to keep dogs where you want them with a good shock.