Electric fencing

[Ozkan]

Hi I have a 50m 1m 30cm high electric fence. I was going to move my chickens in there when it turns warmer, but I wasn't sure if my olde English standard game was going to fly over it as they like living in trees?
Any suggestions please
Ozkan

 

[cavemanrich]

If you have flighty chickens I suggest clipping one wing appropriately so they are not able to fly very well. They still will be able to get to their roosts since the flight is only a couple of feet enhanced with their jump. Once they are aware that they cant fly over, usually they do not try even when their wing feathers grow back. Wings take a while to regrow new feathers. Chickens learn their limits during that period.
WISHING YOU BEST,,,,,,,

 

[Joeschooks]

I agree with Cavemanrich, but you might also find they do not have any desire to escape if they have a suitable roosting area within the fence... Could you include a tree in the fenced area?

I have no experience with Game, but I have a leghorn and a legbar X who are very good flyers. Both have one wing clipped and they can't clear my 1.4m electric fence from the ground. BUT they don't seem to have any escape instinct because I'm sure they could escape if they really wanted to by standing on the pile of logs or on the nest box! I realise OEG will have different instincts but hopefully someone who knows the breed will comment.

 

[lazy gardener]

Yes, they will fly over. This is why I had to stop using my Premier 1 Electronet poultry fencing. They would fly out and then be hawk bait. Strangely, the hawks did not take them inside the fence, which I found odd. But, given how brazen the hawks have become since then, I am assured that would have happened sooner than later. You could put bird netting over the top of it.

 

[Howard E]

In my experience their desire to fly over to get out depends a great deal on how confined they are. Mine are not confined.....have plenty of room and cover inside.....and NEVER get out and mine is nothing more than a simple 4 wire fence. An advantage of an electric fence of this type is it is simple and cheap to build, so you can make a bigger yard of it.

When being trained to the fence......they step on it.....get zapped on the bottom of their foot and don't like it.....not one bit. But like all the rest, they want no part of another such jolt so don't do it twice. Four wire fence is used to keep predators out......but a lower one or two wire fence is used to train the birds.

The single tape fence is of the type you use for training the birds. Here...it is being used for crowd control. To keep them out of the garden. It worked!

The additional benefit of such a fence is if they do manage to get outside, in a panic, they can just lift up and hop over to get back in. For some reason, they will not do that to get out, but will do it to get back in. Compare that to a poultry netting, where likely as not in a panic they will try to stick their head in the netting to punch through, and get caught in the process and as vulnerable to a predator as if they were darts stuck in a dart board.

 

[lazy gardener]

Howard, what do you use to kill the grass around your fence?

 

[Howard E]

The original fence I built this way I used my lawnmower to scalp the grass down to bare dirt, then used my Echo string trimmer to keep it that way. You had to be careful not to get hung up in the wire or all hell broke loose. But it worked.....and you only had to do that in the summer months when the grass was growing. Maybe 6 months out of the year I didn't touch it at all.

With the last expansion, that got to be too much.....so I tried the vinegar and salt mix to kill the grass and weeds, which would burn them down to brown but they would green right up and come back from the roots. Got tired of that and finally resorted to Roundup. That did it.