Fencing 200' away from the coop

[BrianV]

I have a 5-acre hobby farm, and we have a (small) flock of free range chickens.

This week, they've discovered the neighbour's property and her bird feeder. We've been asked to keep them indoors as she isn't paying for bird seed for our chickens. 100% reasonable; I want to be a good neighbour.

So, I want to put up a fence between my property and theirs to discourage chicken intrusion. Here's a map of the situation. Green is me, Red is the neightbor:

Ignore the mess on the property. That satellite photo is from before we bought it.

The closest distance to my neighbour's property is 211' from the coop door. From the coop door to my property line is ~75'. The neighbour has a livestock fence along the back of their property that the chickens can squeeze through, so ideally, I need to discourage them from going into the field as well.

I'm planning on building a fence the whole way between the two pins, which is about 675'. I'll use cedar posts for the end posts, and steel in the middle to give nothing to perch on.

My main question is this: how high does it need to be to discourage the chickens from going over it, that far from the coop?

Basically, a 4' fence is $1400 in fencing; a 5' fence is $1900 in fencing. I'd prefer to do a 4' fence as this was not a cost we were counting on this year, but I don't want to go through the work if it won't be sufficient.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on how to discourage them from visiting the neighbour?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are dealing with living animals, no one can give you any guarantees on their behaviors. They have discovered a food source over there.

My chickens can easily fly well over four feet high, they do to get to the roosts. But in a fairly similar situation to yours I was successful in keeping them contained with 4' high fencing.

If they really want over there I'm not sure a 5' high fence would be adequate. It's not a case f can they fly over it, it's a case of how bad do they want to fly over it. At that cost difference I'd go for the 4' high. It will probably work.

 

[TheGoldenGirlz]

You could do four feet of fence and then secure netting on top of it to add height. I myself would probably just use all netting, it’s cheaper and harder to see

 

[snow5164]

Four feet, five feet won’t keep them in ..our girls flew over 5 1/2 feet hardware netting to get to the other chickens . We added a foot and attached it to the roof .... you have a conundrum for sure...

 

[wamtazlady]

It might be cheaper to set up bird feeders on your own property. My chickens always went next door to check out my neighbor's bird feeder. Thankfully they liked the chickens over there and liked the eggs I gave them. Anyway, was thinking if the chickens are liking the seeds it would be easy to set up several feeders of your own and give your chickens no reason to visit next door.

 

[tripletfeb]

I admire you for caring! My neighbor lets her cats poop all over my yard and in my garden. Which is not fair because a dog would never get away with that! Anyways, my chickens can fly over 5 feet high, wish you luck in whatever you decide.

 

[Criticalicious]

Have you considered electric poultry fence and rotate pasture them instead of letting them free range wherever all the time? It might be cheaper than building a giant fence.

 

[Stepnout]

I would second putting up your own feeders.
Can I ask do you and others lose a lot of eggs to free ranging or do you keep them in the coop until they have laid? I see so many posts about chickens wondering away and others laying in the bushes etc.

 

[BrianV]

I guess a better way to phrase it would be 'to create a disincentive' to going onto the neighbour's property as, well, they can fly.

With some more thought - the cheapest way to go would be standard field fencing ($670 for a 49" x 660' roll) and then run some 36" tall chicken wire inside of it. That should prevent the chickens from crawling through it. They I can focus on making the stuff 'inside the wire' more chicken friendly. I've been debating planting an apple orchard behind their coop which will provide a lot more shade, though that may be a few years away yet.

 

[BrianV]

I would second putting up your own feeders.
Can I ask do you and others lose a lot of eggs to free ranging or do you keep them in the coop until they have laid? I see so many posts about chickens wondering away and others laying in the bushes etc.

So far, my hens return to the coop to lay pretty reliably. From 6 laying hens, I get 4-6 eggs per day consistently laid inside.