I have 7 chickens in my flock and have been letting them free range the 2 acres that I live on this summer. They have recently discovered the neighbors yard and flower beds. I love to watch them roaming my yard but the neighbor doesnt like her mulch and flower beds tore apart. So with much regret I have to fence them in. I have a 100ft by 50 ft area I can fence. I was wondering what fence material to use? Farm fence? 72in chicken wire? thanks Jeff
every chicken is different and each breed also depends on flight height, age, weight ect... BUT, we have a 6' privacy fence in our urban back yard and mine have deemed it impassable. I have barreds and a Wyandotte.
I have a fence about 5ft high made of four inch square concrete reinforcement panels. My run is about 5ft high. If you clip the feathers on one wing of each bird it will help. Make sure there is no blood in the shaft of the feather before you clip or your bird may bleed to death. On some birds you may even have to clip a few secondary flight feathers. One wing throws the bird off balance and is more effective than trimming equal amounts off both wings. Feather shafts containing blood.
I personally would use a chicken wire but it depends on the breed of bird,age,and environment. Farm fence may be too small and not stop the chickens from flying over it. Hope this helped.
The 100' x 50' space you are describing is what used to be called a chicken yard and most farms had one. A 5' fence was minimum and 6' better. They looked much like this: Put a single hot wire about 6 inches off the ground on the outside (with 6' stand off insulator) and a single hot wire on the top to deal with climbers, and you will have a nearly ideal perimeter poultry fence. Do NOT use the board on top. It could be made of chicken wire, but 2' x 4' welded wire or even chain link fence would be better. Chicken wire will keep your birds in, but won't keep determined predators out. Some have put a board on the top to define it, but that only encourages birds to fly up to land on it and go on over. The more space you give them the less likely they are to plan an escape. The 10 birds I keep are running around inside a fenced in area not much larger than what you describe and have never tried to escape. My fence is standard 4' chain link and none of them have clipped wings, although I would do that in a heartbeat if they were flying up and over. They never try. They do fly, but it's from one patch of cover to the next and always inside the fence. What will help to keep the birds in is to have interesting grazing and shelter options within your fence, and ideally, clustered in the middle and away from the fence. Chickens are very much like wild game birds in that they like cover and will stick to an edge with shelter if they can. If the edge is near the fence, they will hang and cluster there and and once they see what is on the other side, will be attracted to it. They like variation and are curious. They don't know what a property line or boundary is, except the ones they create in their mind. Mine rarely wander off or venture out into open space where no cover exists, so I keep a wide open buffer zone between cover and shade and the fence, and they seldom go near the barren fence.
