help keeping 1'' chicken wire fencing tight

[vinniepoch]

hi everyone, we need help with this one. my wife and i have built a beautiful coop for our 19 chickens now it's time to build the run and we are styimed. the run is going to come off the front of the house and make a rectangle that measures30' long by 15' wide. We sank metal posts every 5' and it looks good. we went to wire it, and the fencing sags and is not tight. also, do we want to bury the fencing a foot or so? please help us out. thank you vinnie poch

 

[patandchickens]

Chickenwire (which btw is not particularly predator-safe...) can take a good bit of stretching, especially diagonally; is it possible that it was just installed a bit loosely?

For a 5' span though it'll be awful hard (maybe impossible) to get it totally tight, and stay that way, without a top and bottom rail to staple the chickenwire to. Try using 2x4s, although they're not ideal on T-posts. This iwll also prevent you from having to diagonally brace the corners which you'd otherwise have to do (if you were just going to try to stretch it real tight).

Most predators that dig, can dig more than a foot. (they can rip apart most chickenwire too, though, so I'm not sure how much it's worth putting a whole lot of effort into burying things deep). You could consider a 2-4' horizontal 'apron' of wire on the ground, outside of the base of the run fence, either buried under turf or mulch or whatever or weighted down with rocks, pavers, concrete rubble, whatever.

Good luck,

Pat

 

[melissastraka]

honestly, I dont like chicken wire. Too many of our flocks have been wiped out by predators through chicken wire. My suggestion is try and find some used chain link fencing. then put the chicken wire around the bottom of the run about 3 feet up(so the cant stick their heads through.

If you are dead-set about wire here are some ideas.

Dig at least a 1 foot deep trench, line the bottom with some sort of plastic before setting the wire in. Bury with dirt till even with the surface. Add some sort of rock around the fence line.

This should help

 

[TennesseeTruly]

I agree with not using chicken wire. We used hardware cloth but we did use chicken wire for some of the top of the run. We deliberately left it a bit loose so that if raccoons or something get on it, it will sag and bounce around and they'll get the message and get off it.

Of course we're adding a Great Pyrenees dog to our run so if a coon does get through, they'll have to deal with Lady Guardian of the Fowl!


Good luck!

Laurie