Keeping free range hens in the yard ??

[luvs2ride1979]

Quote:
Our goats don't let anything in the pasture that they don't like. The hawks in our neighborhood don't come around our pasture anymore. There are plenty of people around us with cats and small dogs that are about the size of our chickens and the hawks never bother them, so I'm not really worried about it. The chickens and ducks have been out since October and we haven't lost one yet and I haven't seen an increase in predators in the area. I do keep them up at night.

 

[luvs2ride1979]

Thanks kizanne, that was very helpful. I'll have to consider keeping mine in longer and when we're not home. They were good today about staying in the yard/pasture. They only went onto the driveway a bit, but stayed close to home.

 

[itsy]

Welcome to BYC!

We recently moved from a large farm to a smaller house in another state. On the farm - the girls had complete free range of all acres/horse paddocks/front yard/barn, etc and ::knock on wood:: we never lost one to any sort of predator.

Once we moved here to the mountains, we realized that our predator list got a lot more intense. Now the girls "free range" in our back yard. It's a fraction of the size of the farm, but it's a good space for them. The fencing that we have now is a combo of that short open link square wire and wood, but the slats were a decent ways apart, so a chicken could fit through.... so we clipped their wings and put up 7" deer fence netting over it. We put in long wooden posts and stapled/ziptied the black netting to the fence so the girls couldn't get over. It's working well.

Will it keep predators out? No - so the girls are secured at night in their house and the fence is strong enough to deter a dog. Will it keep hawks away? No, but we're taking a risk by allowing them to walk about the yard. I'm considering putting up some avian netting for a roof, but it would be a pain if it snowed or leaves fall. I'll have to get more creative. Perhaps a rooster would help.


Click on the small images to see them larger.....
Here's one of the fences before we put up the deer mesh:



And if you look behind my quail coop, you can see one of the other fences. You can see the wooden stakes that hold the mesh if you look carefully. There's one peeking if you look over the right top of the quail coop. Now follow your eye to the left and you can see another one of the stakes directly in front of that tree in the distance. If you keep looking left, you can barely make out the mesh. It's nice because it's difficult to even see it there, so it's not really an eye sore.

 

[yakfishgirl]

Our tiny flock are in a 5x10' run during the bulk of the day. When we get home from school we let the hens range in our large back yard for a supervised playtime while we tend to coop and run chores and play with the dogs. We've had hawk attack the chickens twice in our suburban neighborhood. Thank heavens for our dog, who tackled the hawk who was pinning one of the chickens. It was a scary experience and one that upset my teenage daughter, the chickens' "mom". We love to have them free range, but not without supervision by people or our dog.

 

[luvs2ride1979]

Thanks itsy, those are good pictures. I'll definitely consider something similar if we decide to lock the girls down more.

I took some pictures today, so I could have some decent shots of the girls. It was a bit bright outside, so not all of them came out well, but here are a couple.

The ducks: