fencing?

[Chicken.Lytle]

My lightest hen fails to clear a low chicken wire fence around the run. My heavy rooster easily makes it to the top of the 5' farm fence . Seems to depend of the bird and how much they work out.

I had to put up poultry netting over the pen to keep the hawks out. This also kept the chickens from free ranging against my wishes .

 

[MVchickens]

So it sounds like it will work. I dont know what breeds i am getting because I ordered the mixed varietys from mcmurray. I decided that I am going to build a super secure run on the other side of the coop so I can let them in there when im away and not be worried. any ideas on that? should i do it completely out of hardware cloth?

 

[bburn]

Don't count on it. I put two EE's in my main pen this week to intergrate them. Put up 4' chicken wire to make them an area where everyone could see them for a few days. Got up the next morning and they had 'flown the mini coop' into the main pen. All was well and there did not seem to be any real issues. Sure was worried about those mean ole RIR hens. But EE's seem to be pretty light and airy. They flew.

You can see through chicken wire. It is light. One pen I have two layers of chicken wire over the top of and had to go around a tree and that made it pretty easy. Just stapled to the tree. The other pen my DH put 2x4 welded wire over the top with a support built in the middle...it works well but I put chicken wire over the top of that to make the holes smaller. I would worry more about what could fly in.