Alternatives to Bullets

[Mutt Farm]

@centrarchid @JackE
@Catnip5

No advice here, just envy. Your properties are just gorgeous! I'm so envious of the lush grasses! Catnip, your shed is adorable. Jack E...wow, and what a great solution. Centrachild what a spread. Love the hills. Where I live, nothing grows without watering. We're in a severe drought and can only water 2X per week. We get huge fines for using too much. Everything is dirt or dead or rocks around here. I give the girls alfalfa hay for greens. I can't wait to move to a beautiful place like where you live.
I felt so bad for Catnip! I too had to rethink my whole free-range dream and find "do no harm" solutions. I'm lucky my pullets were still too young to go outside when the carnage happened at my neighbors. Coyotes. Everything roamed free at his place. He'd loose a chicken or turkey every now and again, then 2 in one week, then the entire pack hit him. It was awful.
So many folks were so kind and helpful to Cat and gave me great ideas for when I move.

 

[torilovessmiles]

@centrarchid @JackE
@Catnip5

No advice here, just envy. Your properties are just gorgeous! I'm so envious of the lush grasses! Catnip, your shed is adorable. Jack E...wow, and what a great solution. Centrachild what a spread. Love the hills. Where I live, nothing grows without watering. We're in a severe drought and can only water 2X per week. We get huge fines for using too much. Everything is dirt or dead or rocks around here. I give the girls alfalfa hay for greens. I can't wait to move to a beautiful place like where you live.
I felt so bad for Catnip! I too had to rethink my whole free-range dream and find "do no harm" solutions. I'm lucky my pullets were still too young to go outside when the carnage happened at my neighbors. Coyotes. Everything roamed free at his place. He'd loose a chicken or turkey every now and again, then 2 in one week, then the entire pack hit him. It was awful.
So many folks were so kind and helpful to Cat and gave me great ideas for when I move.

I know this is off topic, but how are your chickens handling the drought in Southern Cali? I have ducks and I couldn't imagine trying to raise those on water restrictions! Here in WV, there are springs all over the place, including my yard!

 

[Mutt Farm]

Welcome to BYC!

I live in coyote country, hearing them most nights, seeing them around town, etc. Free-ranging would be a death sentence for my chickens. They do get some time out, only when the yard is patrolled by my dogs and I am right there the whole time, but most of the time they are in the run. Unfortunately it is not beautifully landscaped yet, but it will be someday!

The chickens could care less that it is a work in progress. They get lots of garden scraps and weeds to dig through, so they are happy.

Oh boy, me too! I do exactly the same. I'm completely fenced with 6'chain link, but that doesn't stop them. I don't even have a coop. I opted to house them in an enclosed barn stall for safety. They have a huge run, just dirt though. They love the extras from the garden and the weeds. Re landscaping the run: I heard they destroy everything inside a run. I saw an idea where you till, amend and plant greens, then cover the areas with square 1X2 forms with hardware cloth attacked. That way they can eat what pokes through without killing it. I'm going to try it.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

That's a lot of ground rod isn't it? 6 feet? Is that straight down in the ground? I have LOTS of rock and ledge so even staking the fence will be a challenge in spots. Still, I think electric netting might do the trick and would be faster than building a run. Right now the girls are in a very small coop - too small for being locked up all day and in this terrible heat. After yesterday though I couldn't chance another free-range day. The shed will be outfitted this weekend and then they'll have a giant comfy space, at least indoors, until the fence/run is installed.

The drier and more sandy your soil is, the longer the grounding rod must be. Six feet is the median length. In dry sandy soil you may need to double the 6 foot length. In a permanently damp area you may get away with a shorter grounding rod. If you employ a lighting arrester you will need a separate grounding rod for each arrester. Do remember that an electric fence shorting out represents an imminent fire hazard 38 times each minute.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Life is not a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoon. Just like when an organic gardener grabs a weed by the neck and yanks it out of Mother Earth's bosom, if you want to raise free range chickens then one must be willing to kill in order to keep their poultry alive. Life is full of trade offs, this is one of the lesser ones.

 

[Mutt Farm]

I know this is off topic, but how are your chickens handling the drought in Southern Cali? I have ducks and I couldn't imagine trying to raise those on water restrictions! Here in WV, there are springs all over the place, including my yard!

Howdy. It's pretty pitiful. Now I envy you too! Really? Springs in your yard? I'd be happy with a puddle! I've lost 3 huge elm shade trees to the drought. Could only plant a tiny garden. The girls are ok but it's challenging. We have very low humidity here, so evaporative cooling works great, but I can't use misters or soak their run when it's hot. I switched to nipple waterers so I don't waste. I put a small wading tray with a frozen H2O bottle. I had to apply for a variance to increase my limit to water my 2 horses. No way ducks. No way. There were 2 water foul farms near me, they both shut down a couple years ago. They had gorgeous ducks and geese! No springs here, just dried up lakes and ponds. WAY off topic now, Where in WV? What's the weather like? The military just gave my husband back to me (he retired) so we're outta here soon. Here's a pic of a ca water reservoir. You're looking at boat docks. It's bad.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/18/burmese-pythons-florida-homing-ability/6569103/




Even when scientists move giant Burmese pythons that have invaded Florida to other regions, they find their way home.

(Photo: Mike Rochford, University of Florida)​

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Forget humane removal. Scientists studying the invasive giant Burmese pythons that infest Florida have discovered the snakes can find their way home even when taken up to 20 miles away.
The snakes homing ability is "on a scale previously undocumented for any snake species," said Shannon Pittman, a herpetologist at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C.. With the snakes spreading south and north, the implications for surrounding states and areas that have been colonized are worrisome.
The research appears Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters.
Researchers at Davidson and the U.S. Geological Survey trapped six Burmese pythons in Florida and placed radio transmitters in them. They then took them 13 to 20 miles away and released them.
The snakes immediately headed back, taking "direct and striking" routes, said Kristen Hart, a research ecologist with the USGS in Gainesville, Fla.
It took the snakes 94 to 296 days to return but eventually they navigated to within 3 miles of their original capture locations in Everglades National Park.
The research shows that moving the snakes won't work as a control strategy. "You can't move them. Quite honestly, they're going to move back to where they came from," Hart said.
No one knew Burmese pythons were capable of homing.
Researchers don't know how the snakes do it. It could be by sight or smell or even the Earth's magnetic field.
Burmese pythons are one of the world's largest snakes. An 18-foot specimen was found in the Everglades on Feb. 4.
Native to southern Asia, the snakes began to appear in south Florida in the late 1990s, probably released by pet owners.
They have since colonized hundreds of square miles in southern Florida, including most of Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve.
While more than 2,000 Burmese pythons have been re
moved from the area since 2002, the National Park Service estimates that represents only a fraction of the total population.
"There are records of snakes up nearly to Lake Okeechobee," said Michael Dorcas, a biology professor at Davidson College and lead author on the paper. "Most scientists agree that they are likely well north of Alligator Alley (I-75) now."
The snakes are devastating invaders, eating a wide variety of animals including deer and alligators. "They're eating through the food chain," Hart said.

On the up side a few Burmese Pythons may solve your fox problems. An added benefit is that they will keep deer from snacking on your shrubbery.
They also will certainly clear the neighborhood of nearsighted paper boys and keep loud children and overly inquisitive neighbors huddled inside their own homes.

 

[FridayYet]

Oh boy, me too! I do exactly the same. I'm completely fenced with 6'chain link, but that doesn't stop them. I don't even have a coop. I opted to house them in an enclosed barn stall for safety. They have a huge run, just dirt though. They love the extras from the garden and the weeds. Re landscaping the run: I heard they destroy everything inside a run. I saw an idea where you till, amend and plant greens, then cover the areas with square 1X2 forms with hardware cloth attacked. That way they can eat what pokes through without killing it. I'm going to try it.

Like I said, my run is a work in progress! Along one end I have a comfrey bed and the chickens can eat whatever they can reach through the welded wire. Once I build my permanent connector walls, they will have a 2' by 10' raised grazing frame filled with alfalfa, wheatgrass, purslane, dandelion, etc.

I'm very thankful we live near the river and we are on a well. There are things I miss about living in CA, but the drought and the smog are not on the list.

 

[LeafBlade12345]

Catnip I am so happy you did not kill the fox! I could never do it myself, all nature is too important to me. In my opinion, some people are too quick to resort to lethal control when really we are the ones invading these wild animal's homes and than killing them. We brought the chickens, so we sort of caused the problem. Anyway, thanks so much for taking a better, safer approach to keeping predators off your flocks. I think it is very nice that you take the extra expenses just to save a wild animal.

 

[alibabba]

Unfortunately, this is reality. You have to choose between killing the fox and letting your chickens free range, or letting it live and keeping your chickens pinned up. Even with an electric fence, foxes are extremely intelligent and some have learned ways to get through them. Unless you can keep up a huge flock which can keep producing more chickens at the rate that they are lost, the fox will kill all of them. If you don't want to kill the fox, chickies have to stay in a pen.

Foxes can have pretty wide territories, so it may find it's way back to your chickens if relocated, depending on how far you can take it away.
Also, we know how to "outfox a fox." That's why we keep the birds pinned up. Chickens are prey animals, so if we do not protect them with an enclosure, they will be eaten just as they would be in a feral flock.
You can make an extremely large enclosure for your chickens, covered with netting to keep predators from coming in through the top, and it would be practically like free ranging.

There is no choice in killing a creature that belongs in the place it lives. Humans have such a sense of entitlement.

We have ways of keeping chickens safely. (which do not belong here, they are not indigenous)

When you kill one fox, the neighboring vixen will have an even larger litter to fill the gap. You never know when the new one will show up and you lose chickens... Or the raccoons discover your chicken stash...

Predator proof coop and run. Very difficult.. Someone on BYC really nailed it when they said, "then you battle Ninja foxes".

Electric Fence. Simple, cheap. super perfectly effective. However, if you can't free range, you can at least give the chickens the safety and new pasture frequently. I have a friend who lost 2 to foxes broad daylight with people and dogs out and about, then 1 nearly to a hawk. He wasn't in a location where he could free range. It was reality.