keeping birds from roosting up against pen wall

[centrarchid]

I keep a fair number of my birds in pens made in part of 2 x 4 inch welded wire. Sticks provided as roost are supported by pen walls. With the usual birds of this arrangement (American Games) they roost in middle of stick well away from walls of pen. American doms on other hand push themselves right up against pen wall. Any predator otherwise detered by fencing can simply reach through, grab bird and dismember it to consume a leasuire. Any ideas on how to keep bird away for pen wall? I was thinking about making ends of roosting stick difficult to stand on but have not tried as of yet.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I have a shed coop where the high perches on the inside come very close to the ceiling that is slanted down on the sides. I don't want them to perch on some of the roost, since their backs will touch the metal shed innards.

I use chicken wire loosely rolled, attached to the roost with sisal and propped up against the ceiling rafters to keep them off the ends of the roost.

I just "scrunch" the chicken wire into a shape that works. It really works!

I used this also on my bird feeder (to feed wild birds), wrapping the chicken wire around the feeder but loosely on the bottom to keep squirrels from eating there. The songbirds fly under the bottom of the wire to get to the lowest perch on the feeder.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

You could layer 1/2" hardware cloth over that area and wire it on, to keep raccoons from reaching through. Just make sure to cover a large enough area.

 

[buffalogal]

Cheap five gallon plastic buckets; remove wire handles, drill a hole in the bottom large enough for the perch to go through that will also allow the bucket to spin if the bird tries to roost on it or a raccoon tries to steady himself on it to reach around. Open end faces out away from sleeping birds. I haven't seen a raccoon yet with arms long enough to reach past a spinning five gallon bucket. I'm assuming a round perch, but if you use square or 2X4, slip around piece of pvc sewer pipe over the perch first, then widen the hole in the bucket so it will fit the pipe and spin.

 

[buffalogal]

Actually, it wouldn't have to spin if you use heavier plastic buckets.

 

[patandchickens]

IMO it makes more sense to predatorproof the pen sides around the ends of the roosts than to try to keep the chcikens from roosting near the pen sides. Reason being, the former is very easy to do in a pretty 100%-foolproof way, whereas the latter may have a significantly nonzero failure rate (as chickens develop agility you had not expected <g>) which may lead to headless chickens in the morning.

All you need to do is take a piece of plywood or roof tin with holes drilled in a few places, or some hardwarecloth, and wire it very securely to the pen wall at the end of the roost. Ideally this would be done from the inside (makes it essentially impossible for predators to rip it off) which would mean removing the roost branch, drilling a hole in the center of your plywood/tin/wire/whatever, and then reinstalling the branch after the predator guard is on. If you wire it onto the OUTSIDE of the pen fence instead, you had better have great confidence in your ability to do so in a way that predators can't pry off. But it works really well. You can eyeball what size piece you need according to the size of your chickens. Err on the side of bigger rather than smaller.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat