Chicken Wire and wild birds

[quercus21]

Our pen is enclosed in chicken wire and in the morning before I let the chickens out there are birds in there, mostly junco's, but there was a blue jayone morning. They squeeze in through the wire and then squeeze out again.

We plan on using better fencing for the run. We ran out of time when the weather was good.

Birds aren't going to do enough damage to your garden to worry about totally enclosing it.

 

[toddy111]

Well guess i was wrong !!! Everyone told me !! lol

 

[davidb]

They make a one inch and a two inch chicken wire, go with the one inch it still wont keep the smallest birds out thou, hardware cloth is stronger and more expensive at first but it will last three times longer than the chicken wire and keep all the birds out

 

[patandchickens]

Why do you actually *need* to keep small songbirds out? There isn't much they eat. Certainly not on a regular basis. It would be vastly easier to just build something to keep larger critters out -- 1" mesh at bunny level, and 2x4 mesh higher up. And then if you need temporary targeted protection -- for instance, blueberry bushes in fruit, or when corn is first sown -- make smaller individualized protectors of hardwarecloth or bird netting for those specific plants.

I don't know if you live somewhere that occasionally gets wet snows, but if you do, that's a very important angle to consider too. Doesn't take much wet snow sitting on chickenwire to bring it down. Even 2x4 or 4x4 mesh would need good support.

Good luck,

Pat

 

[WoodlandWoman]

The only thing I've ever protected from wild birds is small berries. For that, I just use lightweight garden netting, which has the really small holes. They don't even bother them, really. It's those darn chipmunks/ground squirrels that were stealing all my strawberries, anyway.

 

[Beed]

I have one of those big plastic fake owls and an iron hawk in my garden. Works okay. It doesn't help that I feed the wild birds though-ha. In the past I have used garden netting in my blueberry patch. I was always worried about enough light getting through. Have you tried bone meal/marrow around the perimeter of your garden? It helps w/ rabbits, squirrels and some birds. I throw onion peels around garden to ward off cats as well.