Fn87
Chirping
Hi I'm raising 188 chicks at a farm. They're seven weeks old and we're starting construction on their coops. The plan is to build a millennium feathernet. I don’t know much about the feathernet (I'm not in charge) but my understanding is that it's an open air plan. I've been told we'll be using electric fencing to keep predators out but we won't be locking the chickens up at night because there isn't anything to lock up.
We had a major issue with predators last summer with our current adult flocks and lost something like 200 hens over the course of six months. We were not using electric fencing then (just regular wooden fences) and we weren't locking the chickens up (we had to fortify the coops and then we did start locking them up) at night. But this was also the first time we experienced this sort of problem in six years since we started.
So the plan with the new coop is open air and an electric fence and rotating fields. We're using the electric fence now around the chicks' brooder in the greenhouse because the plan is to let the chicks stay out at night and we want to keep rats away. But last week we found that something (rats) had already chewed through a section of the bottom line of the electric fence (the part that only has one wire and runs along the bottom to keep the fence from touching the ground and shorting out). We repaired the fence using a kit but I'm a bit less confident with our plan now.
Keeping in mind that my instincts tell me we should just construct another mobile coop that can be locked up, does anyone know anything about the millennium feathernet, how successful it is, how likely we are to experience more predator problems, and what we can do to increase the likelihood that this won't be an issue? We live in a more woodsy area of suburban New York.
We had a major issue with predators last summer with our current adult flocks and lost something like 200 hens over the course of six months. We were not using electric fencing then (just regular wooden fences) and we weren't locking the chickens up (we had to fortify the coops and then we did start locking them up) at night. But this was also the first time we experienced this sort of problem in six years since we started.
So the plan with the new coop is open air and an electric fence and rotating fields. We're using the electric fence now around the chicks' brooder in the greenhouse because the plan is to let the chicks stay out at night and we want to keep rats away. But last week we found that something (rats) had already chewed through a section of the bottom line of the electric fence (the part that only has one wire and runs along the bottom to keep the fence from touching the ground and shorting out). We repaired the fence using a kit but I'm a bit less confident with our plan now.
Keeping in mind that my instincts tell me we should just construct another mobile coop that can be locked up, does anyone know anything about the millennium feathernet, how successful it is, how likely we are to experience more predator problems, and what we can do to increase the likelihood that this won't be an issue? We live in a more woodsy area of suburban New York.
