Electric Poultry Netting??

[chickenannie]

50-100 Cornish cross would poo a LOT in a 40 x 40 foot area. They poo more than regular chickens because they eat so much. It would be very nasty after 3-4 weeks.

One reason to do a moveable tractor is to handle poo. It would be much better to use electrified poultry netting, along with a simple movable structure than to keep them in one 40 x 40 foot area. That way you can also keep them in a much smaller structure/netted area. Many pastured broiler people move their small pens once a day, or once every 2 days. Then, you have no excess poo (it is all broken down quickly) plus the birds can eat fresh greens every day. It is a system that keeps the birds healthy.

You don't say what the ground/bedding would be in your 40 x 40 pen, but I think you will likely have more illness/deaths if the poo builds up. The one exception to this is if you have a bedding plan to compensate for the poo.

One winter I kept 20 broilers in the barn in a 10 x 12 pen on hay bedding because it was too cold for them to be on pasture, and I just kept adding a layer (2-3") of hay every 3 days and it worked well. the bedding just got built up higher and higher over time, but it stayed relatively clean with minimal poo.

Joel Salatin's book on pastured broilers gives you exacting measurements for this sort of question down to the tiniest detail.

 

[quercus21]

We recently purchased the poultry netting from Premier 1 to try with our meat birds. At the moment our eggers are enjoying a enlarged, movable run. I move the fence to a new area when the grass looks a little worn.
As for the meaties, I do about 25 - 30 birds per session. I was going to tractor them for the first 5 - 6 weeks, then into the fenced in area for the last 2 weeks. I am hoping they don't make to much of a mess for us. After the rains so far this year, they made a mess out every tractor location I had them in.
The square footage will be greater then my needs for 2 weeks. I figure 40'x40' = 1600sq' , my tractor is 6'x11' = 66sq' . 1600/66=24 days/locations. I hope this is correct, or I am going to have 1 big mess.
Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/math corrections?

 

[jaku]

Yeah, I've been tractoring my birds for a couple of years now, but my wife isn't too fond of the poo trail through the yard, so I was going to enclose the 40x40 area in a lightly wooded, non-yard area behind my barn, and I'd want to do it from the time they got out of the brooder until butchering day, so I didn't have the same problem in the yard or have to store the tractor. Not that it's a huge problem, but I saw the netting and thought it might be a good idea.

 

[chickenannie]

Quote:
Can you incorporate bedding into your scenario? If it's in a wooded area, maybe you could use a leaf/hay combination to deal with the poo. Would make great compost for your garden the next year. Or possibly woodchips?

 

[jaku]

Quote:
Can you incorporate bedding into your scenario? If it's in a wooded area, maybe you could use a leaf/hay combination to deal with the poo. Would make great compost for your garden the next year. Or possibly woodchips?

Seems like that would short out the wire though. I guess one could rake the poo out about once per week though too, and clean it out that way??

 

[quercus21]

Currently I don't have the wire charged. If I start to have a predator problem, I will. The eggers show no interest in "escaping", I don't think the meaties will either. Time will tell.

 

[Burbs]

Quote:
I am not new to the tractor route. Just looking for something simpler. The crap in the yard can be a little messy and throwing them out in the pasture with a larger area is appealing. As far as using the 40 X 40 area I agree that they don't move around much. I was just thinking that it would be a heck of a lot easier moving the food and water within that area instead of moving the tractor.

Even if the poo capacity is only two weeks towards the end I would say it would be worth it.

Somebody has to be doing this.

 

[JoAnn_WI_4-H_Mom]

We have Premier portable Poultry Net, used with sliding 6X8 Hoop-HardwareCloth-Tarp shelters. We have 2 sections of the 168' fence, making a 84' X 84' perimeter pen (or other configurations). The shelters are slid daily, the birds shut up in them only at night.

Birds went into it when they were about 3 weeks old.

We have a mix of heritage breeds (38 young birds!) and 6 CornX broilers. The broilers tended to be in one shelter and all the others in the second.

Even 6 broilers in 6X8 space needed to have their shelter slid every morning because of the amount of mess made overnight. They also chose to spend more time in the shelter during the day because of their need for shade.

The broilers did not make far excursions from their shelter, 10-15 ft tops. If I slid the shelter of choice greater distance, I had to herd them to it.

I had to reposition the electric fencing every 2 weeks or so, primarily because the broiler poo is such nasty stuff and we haven't gotten any rain, but also because the heritage birds ate up the pasture.

I love the fence. It keeps my birds safe and now that I am practiced I can shift the whole works in about 2 hours. I have lots of space and choices of where to put it, so the portability is a great advantage for me.

Your wooded area sounds like ideal pasture, as they will need shade, but I fear it will get very pooped very fast with that number of birds. It might work if you can slide the shelter around within the fencing to encourage them to use the whole pen. Or the bedding idea suggeted earlier might help in the more obvious latrine areas.

Looking at an old pasture section at our place, you can tell where the broiler shelter was (each day) after 4 weeks (still slimed, yuk), but you cannot really tell where the other shelter was. I think it all would have broken down faster if we had had more rain (less than an inch in the past 40 days).

We charge the wire except when we are in the pen and criss-cross plastic scare tape from the tops of the poles, which to date has kept crows and hawks out.

As you are obviously aware, square perimeters give greater area with the same perimeter length. Note Premier fencing is made up of 12' sections between posts so

The 84' length has 7 sections of 12' each
The 168' length has 14 sections of 12' each

So you will not be making a square from the shorter length.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

I've done this and trust me by the 5th week you wish you wouldn't of... it makes a mess. I would say you could move the 40 x 40 pen 2-3 times in their life span.

If you don't move it, everytime it rains it's going to be a stinky, wet, mess.

Your best best is to move your tractor more often if you can. But that is not always easy to do...

If you go this route, the best way to manage the manure is to keep the feeders and water in one spot. Put a thick layer of straw underneath and add to it every day. Put a tarp above that section to where the water runs *outside* the pen. If you keep the straw from getting wet you will be ok.

The rest of the pasture/woods should stay some what ok. It's just where they eat... and sleep... so if I was you I would hook up a light under the tarp/tin so they go onto the straw at night so it keeps the rest of the pen clean.

Good luck... seems like you need about 3 acres just for chickens!

 

[Buster52]

Quote:
So you move it. This stuff is designed to be highly portable.