Run Expansion Advice

[Chicksnmind]

Are you going to close them in every night? If not how likely can another animal get in? I need to expand but I need everything super safe because they aren’t going to be closed in the coop at night.

 

[Tooshay89]

*Let me preface this by saying that the letter after M o my keyboard suddenly stopped working, so if my laptop does't autocorrect the word, it's going to look like I've lost my mind. Sorry i advance. Replacement laptop has bee ordered, so I'll just have to deal with it util ext week.*


The expansion still is't 100% complete, but it's pretty close. The birds love it! We still have to finish securing the hardware cloth with washers ad screws, ad we still have to pull the top mesh a little tighter ad put the trim boards across the top to secure the mesh a little more.

This is what it looked like before we put the mesh over top. We basically had to use washers ad screws to secure the first side, ad work our way around the ru, cutting slits out for the trees. Zip ties were used to re-secure the cut ends back together o the other side of the trees.

This is the mesh that we used. It's pretty heavy duty - 1" x 1" aviary mesh from Stromberg's. I will say that this stuff is MUCH easier to work with than the cheaper plastic mesh we've worked with before.

Here you ca see after we put the mesh over the top. This was before we cut off the excess o the sides. There are 4 posts i the middle of the ru to help hold up the mesh. There's also a 2 foot wide apron around the whole thing for digging predators.

As far as locking them in the coop at night, there are actually 2 auto doors between the chickes and the expansion - the coop auto door ad the auto door between the secure roofed run ad the expansion. The chickens are locked in the coop until sunrise.

 

[aart]

*Let me preface this by saying that the letter after M o my keyboard suddenly stopped working, so if my laptop does't autocorrect the word, it's going to look like I've lost my mind. Sorry i advance. Replacement laptop has bee ordered, so I'll just have to deal with it util ext week.*

Probably something stuck under there...no need to buy a whole new laptop.
..but great explanation

Oh, and, how about some closeups were netting goes around trees?

 

[elmo]

Turkey wire has bigger mesh (fine for adult birds)

With larger openings between the wires, just be aware of a couple of things. Raccoons can reach in, grab birds and pull them out piece by piece. Consider using wire with smaller openings anywhere this could be an issue (near roosts, the bottom few feet of the pen, etc.). Openings that are larger may also admit vermin like rats and small wild birds carrying mites to infect your flock.

 

[Tooshay89]

Probably something stuck under there...no need to buy a whole new laptop.
..but great explanation

Oh, and, how about some closeups were netting goes around trees?

I wish. It's a known issue with the 2017 version of the mac pro. I've bee back and forth with Apple about my keyboard issues for months - some days keys stop working, the next they work but each keystroke repeats 4-5 times. ow the letter after M has completely given out, after moths of intermittently not working. I'm finally giving i and upgrading to the new mac pro since they fixed the keyboard issue on the ew version. The only thing they offered for this one is to replace the keyboard - but ot with the newer version that actually resolves the issue. Makes o sense, but I have to have a working computer to run my business.

It's dark ow, but tomorrow I'll go over and take some better pictures and close ups of the mesh around the trees. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.

 

[aart]

ow the letter after M

This just cracks me up

 

[Tooshay89]

This just cracks me up

It's horrible!! I'm so ot looking forward to trying to copy and paste that letter into all the words in my client emails tomorrow.

 

[aart]

It's horrible!! I'm so ot looking forward to trying to copy and paste that letter into all the words in my client emails tomorrow.

I imagine from that side it is, BTDT...but the way you expressed it here has had me giggling all day. Hang in there!

 

[Tooshay89]

Okay! So I'm back with some new pictures. We finally had another not-so-hot day today, so we took full advantage and went back to work on the run. We unscrewed each screw and washer that was holding up the netting one by one, pulled the it tight, and re-attached the netting. It looks a lot better now.

I also tried to get some pictures of how the netting is wrapped around the trees and zip tied together. It's hard to see, but hopefully this helps anyone who is considering aviary netting with trees in the run. It's really not as hard as I thought it would be, but my trees are also on the edges of my run, not in the middle.

These are the four posts that hold up the netting in the middle of the run. It definitely helps, since the whole enclosure is about 50x50.

You can kind of see in this picture where I cut the slit for this group of trees. Because the trees were a little further away from the edge than all the others, there was a hole in the netting where there wasn't enough slack to meet the two ends together. I ended up cutting an extra piece of netting to mend together with zip ties. It worked quite well!

We had a lot of extra hanging off the sides when we were done, it's a pain in the butt to cut through this stuff, and obviously I still have more to do.

 

[aart]

We unscrewed each screw and washer that was holding up the netting one by one, pulled the it tight, and re-attached the netting. It looks a lot better now.

Oh, I've had to re-do stuff, PITA but worth the trouble.
N your n's are back!!!