Quote: Sounds like a good plan!
Click below to see why you want to put a strip of fabric cloth a couple of feet high at the bottom of the wire:
Raccoons work together sometimes. One will scare the chickens up against the wire and a second one will reach through and rip the chickens through the wire.
Thanks Bruce & Ron for your input.
Padlock??? I must have SECURITY issues on my mind.
Indeed, I meant paddock.
Yes, as far as the deer go we do understand that they can jump a typical 6 ft. fence. But when using multiple stands of electric wire, using black fencing (black throws off their depth perception we read somewhere) plus possibly tipping the top inward we are hoping to cause them to think twice because of the poor depth perception. I can't find the article we read before but the link below is a good one from your neck of the woods Bruce.
http://www.uvm.edu/pss/ppp/articles/deerfences.html
We have a small apple orchard fenced in with 6' black wire and never in over 10 years have the deer jumped in even though they sleep around it dreaming of the apples within.
Hope this hasn't given us false hope.
Deer are known to break their own rules.
My DH told me my idea of staggering the hex wire skirting over the bottom of the PVC coated hex wire wouldn't work for the same reason you stated. No way could it line up perfectly all the way around was also his input. So we may need to check out that hardware cloth at Amazon. Thanks for that suggestion.
Ron, you've got to be kidding me... they work in tandem! That really blows my mind. A very clever foe indeed!
Bruce, your ground is the opposite of ours. We have sandy loam until you get down a few feet. Then you hit hard clay. We have lived in areas with big rocks every few feet which remind me of your property. It made fence building a horrible challenge but we were much younger then. DH told me he is going to use T stakes because even though our property does not have rocks he does not want to dig post holes. Our acreage is part of old farm land. Basically when we moved on it 17 years ago it was a field of alfalfa.
Soup is hot. Need to go serve dinner now. Thanks again.
~Dee~