Advice on outside pen for peacock

[yorkchick]

No coffee yet this AM! Yes, electric fencing is your friend!
I cant's see how that woven wire is attached to the framing. Best is with fencing staples, and then covered with 1"x4" boards, screwed into the framing. Raccoons and big dogs are what you need to fear, and do you have black bears?
Mary

Oooo, yeah, forgot about covering the staples! Yeah, we used galvanized fencing staples. I’ll get them covered with boards!

We have raccoons and coyotes. And foxes. Always the possibility of stray dogs, although we don’t see them generally around here. The last confirmed black bear sighting in the area was in 2011, so not impossible, but not likely. But I have no problem over-building this thing. I’m reasonably sure it was coyotes that got the geese.

 

[yorkchick]

Hardware cloth will hold snow as roofing, and you will be out there at 2am dealing with that before it collapses everything! I think that you will have to go with netting, flimsy, or build structure for snow load.
Mary

Arrrgh. Snow load! Yep. That will be a problem.

Mary makes a good point. Also, I can't quite tell if your side wall fencing is hardware cloth or not. But it definitely should be hardware cloth and not just woven wire.

I have 1/2” hardware cloth that I was going to cover the 2” x 4” woven wire fencing, at least the first 3 to 4 feet up. That way I can do the hardware cloth in smaller sections, easier to handle and I can do it without help.

 

[aart]

@casportpony knows peas.

 

[KsKingBee]

150 sq ft per bird is adequate so you should be good for one or two birds. Use the netting you already have for the top. If you have as many predators as you say then you really need a livestock guardian dog to keep predators at bay. We could not have what we have if it were not for our two dogs.

 

[Folly's place]

Love your flight pens!
Mary

 

[KsKingBee]

Love your flight pens!
Mary

Those are our breeding pens, 12 x 48 plus coop, 12 x 12. Our flights are 50 x 50 and 50 x 100.

 

[1muttsfan]

What a great setup.

If you do get poultry netting, make sure it is the heavy-duty kind. You can buy smaller pieces on Ebay. It doesn't hurt to put a support pole in the middle of the run so that it does not sag under the snow.

 

[yorkchick]

KsKingBe—thank you! Your place is marvelous! You are living the dream (and no doubt have been working your backside off for years to create and maintain it)

This is the flight netting I have, not sure what weight it is. I got it from a neighbor who used it to cover his chicken run (he gave me what was left over). He’s had chickens for a few years and he says no trouble with predators.

I could look for a different weight or mesh size if this doesn’t look right.

 

[1muttsfan]

That looks similar to the netting that I've had over my pen for the last 9 years.

 

[KsKingBee]

KsKingBe—thank you! Your place is marvelous! You are living the dream (and no doubt have been working your backside off for years to create and maintain it)

This is the flight netting I have, not sure what weight it is. I got it from a neighbor who used it to cover his chicken run (he gave me what was left over). He’s had chickens for a few years and he says no trouble with predators.
View attachment 2127306
I could look for a different weight or mesh size if this doesn’t look right.

That is perfect, it is a heavy knotted and will last for many years. Being two-inch it will let most of the snow fall through but in really heavy wet snows you may have to go out and ht the underside with a broom. If you have lots of cross bracing you won't have to do that.