Poisonous Vines Ate Old Pens

[DopyDgz]

Put on gloves, wear long pant and long sleeved shirt, get some clippers and cut all vines where they climb the perimeter walls - no need to climb up on the roof.
The cut vines will die, can be pulled down then. Mow the area around the coop if at all possible to make on-going weed control easier.

Try to trace the vines to their source. If you do not want to use round-up (one of the more benign wedd-killers, with few residual effects) you can use straight white vinegar, but you will need to find the crown of the plants (where the vine mets the roots).

 

[chickengeorgeto]

ALSO, 2-4-D would probably kill this for you. It's a lot less permanent than Round Up.

2-4-D is the active ingredient in a product named GrazeOn.

You can use it on pastures without harming the livestock but if you use the cow or horse manure on your garden too soon it will kill the plants. 2-4-D its very persistent but it won't harm grass.

RoundUp on the other hand degrades quickly but it degrades into a salt so it harms metal.

Do you know how solid the roof is going to be once clear of the cow-itch vines?

 

[SwampFoot]

Not sure of how solid it is. I haven't been brave enough to venture towards the center yet, and I'm scared to death once I'm on my feet because I'll feel it give a little with my weight. I know that it's holding all of the vines, plus some downed green oak limbs, about four inches worth of dirt and matted leaves, a bush of some sort, and a lot of pokeweed. I removed the limbs, some of the leaf and dirt litter, and at least a fourth of the vines. I'm hoping that if I can clear it up, that maintenance on it will be simple. I have a surplus of house shingles, but I wouldn't want to add to something that works okay. (Unless laying shingles across the vines would help.) Rain falls through the tin at the point where those vines are most dense on the roof. Since my boyfriend is home today, I feel more comfortable sending him up there, or just having someone hold the ladder.
I also had problems with my two plum trees, they had sprouted at least eighty suckers inside of the pens(dirt floor) that had a few years to harden, and the limbs had twinned through the wire and tore it up. I finally got rid of those little horrors, and the pens they messed up.
The rash I had gotten from this plant was unusually bad. I've brushed across it all of my life without a problem, but I read that the sap is the irritant, and the cutting and tearing probably slung that mess everywhere. I was wearing cloth gloves, this time, I'll sleeve up and put the leather gloves on.
I've had poison ivy that hurt less. It seemed to get worse and worse despite I was taking enough benadryl to knock out a horse, and smothered in calamine and hydrocortisone which burned on the rash to begin with. I added Epsom salt and about a tablespoon of VetRX to a bath and got better, and longer lasting results than anything else the pharmacist recommended, haven't hurt or itched. So, my animal's medicine worked better than my own.
I've been busy with a new litter of pups because my neighbor won't keep his dog in the yard, (my dog is fenced but not fixed, apparently they could still get it on with the fence there.) Plus the dog came back two nights in a row this week messing with my chickens. None of them are dead, but I don't think the dog's tasted blood yet, and my old game rooster sleeps on my porch at night, and has his natural spurs. The dog was bleeding when I shined the lights on him, and ol Ceasar the rooster was looking around with his hackles up on end.
Anyways, once I get to the root of the problem (pun intended) and kill the vines, I want to plant some muscodine grape vines or honeysuckle to shade out anything else. (Virginia creeper grows along a neighbors' fence adjoined to my original grapevine, and it won't grow into it.)

 

[Blooie]

Whew! I think I'd let the wilderness have the old pens and start from scratch!

DopyDgz (my auto correct HATES some of these screen names! Gives the little spell checker dude apoplexy!

) has about the best idea for starting. Just start hacking where you can reach. The top part of the vines will die off UNLESS they have rooted themselves in that nice, rich compost up there.

 

[TalkALittle]

Can you get on a ladder and use a pressure washer to spray the crap out of it? If you can wash away the soil that's up there you might be able to yank the vines down easier.

 

[aart]

Can you see the structural aspects of the roof from underneath?

Ditto Dopydgz.......start at the ground, or at least at the edge of the roof and work down to the ground to find the crowns of the plants.

Didn't know Virginia creeper was toxic!

 

[SwampFoot]

Here are some pics. It's trashy because I haven't had time to work on it, and it was trashed bad between an ice storm and people took advantage while it was vacant, wanting to take the doors off the pens and random pieces.
I can start new, but there are some pens that are good in here. Hopefully you guys can gather a good mental picture.

Here is my mess from demolishing some pens in the front that were way too far gone.You can see the green sea up there and the weak spot of the ceiling.

Here is the back view of the pic above. There's two 4X4 pens and a space there to the left.

Here is a closeup of the ceiling from the ladder's view.

Here are the pens on the far side, where the ivy hasn't reached, and below is a pic of the ceiling at that point.

No vines!!! just limbs.

Here is the tricky part. A wire roof thrown in there around an old oak tree, and right in front of that tree is where I think the main root is, (on the roof, Little baby vines fall through the ceiling underneath there.). A burnt house in the background. (my hands are full)


While I was up there on the ladder, I took a pic of some newer pens that are nestled behind this mess.(Someone took the good doors.)

Here is the coop I use now, with my few birds. (bundy the asil is out there photobombing)

 

[aart]

I'd just cut what I could reach from each side without standing on the roof.
Use a short metal tined garden rake to try and drag stuff off the roof.
You're just going to have to cut off pieces as big as you can get and still get it to move off there.
Not fun but slow and sure will do it. The more you get the off the easier it should become.

Once you get all the vine off you can evaluate the structural work needed.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Just a thought about your terrible situation there......
I have on occasion taken black plastic and covered bad weed spots with it to kill the weeds. It works since the plastic heats the area underneath by the sun and deprives the nasties of that same sun as well as water. It may be something worth trying if you can take a large very dark tarp and hook it down as tight as you can get it to the roof covering the offending vines.

2-4-D is some potent stuff. I would use extreme caution with it. My neighbor had stupid choke cherry trees growing between their garage and my fence. They were huge and pushing my fence over about 2 foot. I needed to replace that fence so informed them they needed to cut the trees back. I helped cut the trees down and put 2-4-D into 1/2 inch holes I drilled in the stumps. It killed the entire root structure as well as a tree that must have started as a sucker about 20 feet away. That tree was also huge, at least 18 feet tall.
(not seeing any more suckers in my yard is a nice side effect)

If you can get it to die you may be able to use a garden rake to get a lot of that off of there.