Chickens and ducks in fenced orchard

[Garden Bird]

We enclosed our small orchard with 6' high chain link to make a chicken and duck area that is approximately 50' x 72'. We are trying to decide how to best meet the needs of our chickens and the lifestyle of our family. The purpose of the chickens and ducks is bug control, weed control and assisting in turning over our compost pile. (And of course, to be our little friends and garden guests with supervision.)

Our desire is to have a set up that requires minimal maintenance but keeps the birds safe and healthy. We were thinking about covering the entire orchard area with netting to prevent predators from getting into the orchard and disturbing the chickens and ducks. I realize that this may be expensive, but can you help me think through the advantages and drawbacks of this sort of setup so that we can decide if this really is the best thing for us to do? I was thinking that this would allow the ducks to simply have the freedom to spend the night wherever they feel like and the chickens could have a bottomless, mobile coop of some sort that could maybe be moved to different parts of the orchard to avoid having to clean out the inside of it but would provide shelter at night. With a setup such as this, would I need to close the door on the coop at night or would the chickens be safe enough due to the enclosed run?

We will have 3 runner ducks and 12 chickens. We live in the Central Valley of California where summer temperatures can stay over 100 during the summer and frost is common during the winter months but no snow. Predators in the area would likely be mice, owls, hawks, coyotes, dogs and possibly skunks.

Thanks for any help or advice you can throw my way!

 

[dan26552]

How big are your trees? if they're older than five or six years those will provide some protection from raptors. We had something similar to that when we raised pastured broilers, we had ribbon strung up crisscrossing its-self and that worked really well but was a lot cheeper then the netting would be. Are you talking about a chicken tractor type coop or something different from that?

 

[Garden Bird]

We have 11 trees. 3 are over six years old. The others are between one and three years old. Here is a picture of our orchard. You can see on the right that we haven't finished putting up all of the chain link but that will happen soon. You can see all four sides of the enclosure in this picture. The mature trees are on the back right along the west side of the space.



I'm thinking about a coop like the one pictured below minus the wire enclosure since that would be somewhat redundant if the orchard is fully enclosed with chain link and chicken wire. Although, I might make one for use in other parts of the garden/yard. I don't know how many chickens would fit in one coop this size. Any thoughts? I'm still unclear about how big to make the coop for 12 chickens if they will have our entire orchard to free range in every day. I'm also wondering if a coop like this has wire floor in it so the poop falls through to the ground. I'm still a little foggy on what it means to provide protection from cold drafts in the winter. My thought was that if this has a wire floor in it, I could move the coop over once a week or so in order to let the chickens scratch their poop into the soil. Am I delusional?



This is what I have in mind for the "roof" of the orchard. We would use poles to extend our six foot fence to 20 feet with bird netting connecting down the sides to meet up with the fencing. Am I foolish to think that my birds will be safe with their coop to retreat to at night or when spooked and won't need me to shut them in and let them out regularly? Ideally, when we go on trips, I would like to have the neighbors check on my birds and feed them but not have to come to open and close their coop for them. Or maybe for the birds to be totally fine on their own if I'm only gone for a couple of days.