I have had enough of the chicken tractors for my broilers. They are never large enough and storing them in the off season is a pain. I am going to change to the electric netting. Bigger pen, easiler set up and store in a smaller area. Here are my questions: What would be a good shelter in the pature? Would like to come up with something easy to move and tear down at the end of the season. I can not find any good range feeders. Does anyone have a lead on these or a design. What is the best set up for chargers. It will be within a 100-200' of an outlet. Any ideas would be appreciated. Dave
Well how do you want to set up your charger? Will it be indoors 100-200' from an outlet? Or will it be outside that far away? Because the chargers cannot be mounted outside, they are not waterproof. If the charger needs to be mounted outside, then you will have to get a solar powered model.
I can mount the charger indoors within a few hundred feet of the fence. Would that be a bigger pain than keeping up on a battery?
I use an old pop up camper in my pasture. I can move it at the end of the season and it folds down for storage. I bought it off ebay for less than $200. When you mount your charger inside, you will be 100-200 ft away from the fence, so you will have to run that much wire to connect the charger to the fence. My power source is about 200 ft away also, so what I did was, I put my charger next to the fence. To keep it off the ground I put it on a cinder block, then covered the whole thing with a 5 gallon bucket. I topped it with a smaller brick to keep the bucket secure. This keeps my fence and ground wire shorter. I use heavy duty outdoor extention cord to plug the charger in. Much easier to roll up cords, than deal with 200 ft of wire. My charger has been outside covered that way for 5 years now and still works great.
Electric fences are great--except for raptors. We have hawks, eagles, peregrines and owls. They are strong, incredibly fast and accurate predators and a roof or netting of some sort is a necessity.
