Electric fences!!! Please help!

[katieellis39]

Hey, guys! I have been looking for a good solution to keep predators away from my chickens. I plan to keep the girlies in a chicken tractor surrounded by electric fencing, to be moved to a different spot once a week. We've got foxes, opposums, raccoons, stray dogs, and hawks to look out for. Does anyone know of good places selling solar powered electric fences? I have heard that Premier is a good place. Also, wouldn't snow and grass be a damper on the shocks of an electric fence?

Oh, and someone told me that hanging blank CDs around the yard keeps away hawks and other flying predators. Does that really work? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Percheron chick]

Any online farm supply store will have them. I buy most of my stuff from Jeffers. They are usually cheaper than most on supplies and they also sell poultry electric netting. If you can't wait to buy online, any farm supply store in town like a TSC will have them. Petsmart will have them too. Snow and weeds can short your fence out and render it useless. Keep those off the lower strands.

Premier is probably one of the more expensive ways to go.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Get a solar powered (or battery powered) electric fence charger. Mount it on top of your chicken tractor. Then run the hot wires on insolates around the coop. When you move your chicken tractor you move the electric fence and charger in the same motion. Just don't park the coop in the shade.

 

[centrarchid]

I use Kencove's electrified poultry netting. If chickens confined to tractor then raptors will not be a problem. The fencing will stop ground predators bigger than a weasel. Keep grass mowed wherefencing is placed. Snow will short it out but most predators will respect it for a while.

 

[bugflipper]

Grass actually helps since it has moisture in it. On chicken tractors I like to just use the nail on insulators and attach the wire to the tractor. For the corners just use a piece of tubing about an inch long to rest on the edges of the pen. The wire runs through it so the fence doesn't short out on the wood. You can use a shepherd's hook for the ground rod as it's easy to step on to sink in the ground. When you water the chickens if it hasn't rained just water the ground rod as well. If there isn't some moisture in the ground it won't shock what touches the fence very good, or maybe at all.
My solar charger was made in 1980 and still works as new, just needs a battery every 15 years or so to continue to work all night. The company has been making electric fence chargers for 70 years.
http://parmakusa.com/product_details.php?PId=3

 

[cryan1980]

Anyway to work a ground for a plug in charger and a moveable coop? Considering I have one laying around I'd rather not spend on a solar one!


(I realize this will be my first post under my name...not new to BYC but can not its been a few years and can not remember my login...)

 

[centrarchid]

Easiest method for me is to have charger with ground in centralized location. Then run a long and flexible hotwire from charger to tractor and hook that into your perimeter wires. I have never done the alternate wire trick where ground is connected to on set of wires and hot is connected to other wires in close proximity and parallel to ground wires.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

We have a Zareba solar charger, purchased at TSC, that we have been using for 6+ years now and it is going strong (though I suspect we'll be replacing the battery this year). We power the horse pasture perimeter fence and are going to be tapping into it to run a couple wires (one low for digging pests, one high to keep fat horse butts away) around the outside of the chicken run.
Our charger is set up to be a permanent fixture, but you could easily move it if you didn't want to run the line to each place you move them to -- you would have to relocate your charger and grounding rod each time.