anybody ever hear of putting up an 8ft fence

[tmanley]

Someone I know was telling me I needed to fence my property and an 8ft fence minimum go keep chickens. Just seems silly to put up thousands of dollars of fence just for some birds that only cost a small amount.

 

[scratch'n'peck]

Most chickens don't really like to free range very far from their coop. I suppose a neighbor's garden could tempt them to come over to the next yard, but generally they like to stay within site of their coop. Also, most domestic chickens are not really good flyers. They would have to be really motivated to make it over an 8 foot fence even if they were decent flyers.

If you have lots of dogs roaming the area. then you would have to figure out how to keep them away from the chickens. Of course the chickens would need to be protected from night time predators.

My chickens don't free range without supervision because we live in the woods with lots of predators. We built them a covered run off their coop because our inexpensive birds are wonderful pets.

 

[DallasCriftins]

I have a 2M high stock fencing around the main field my birds use. This is primarily to keep predators out rather than the birds in
I have a couple of birds that do very occasionally hop over the top, often they can't work out how to get back in!






I normally find them in with the Sheep and I only have 1.2M high fencing to keep the Sheep under control.

 

[Life is Good!]

We have a neighbor's dog who is very predator-bird oriented. So, our run fence is nearly 6' high - and super strong too, just for that darn dog.

Since we've built the run, we've been forced to fence in our 2 acre lot - same dog attacked our dog and nearly ate our meat OFF the grill - needless to say, I've not seen the dog since putting in the fence.

 

[speedy2020]

You go with heavy breed and less flighty bird. I have 4' fence and no problem with RIR, Orpington, Australorp, Marans, Delaware, Dark Cornish, etc.. The electric fence will keep many predictors away. If your chicken little flighty, you could always clip their wings.