The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[jlynnet]

Might be time for target practice!

 

[SandBsmom]

Good evening all! Thank you all so much for weighing in on the ventilation in my coop. JackE thank you for the beautiful pictures of your coop. I remember seeing that on another thread and I was impressed then too! You were all right. My chickens all made it through the night and strangely the water didn't freeze! We've been in the 20s every night lately and the water in the coop has been frozen almost solid every morning. So yesterday I opened up the eves and the top of one window. the temps were at 23 degrees last night and this morning the water only had a very thin covering of ice that the chickens could easily peck through. What the heck????? I open all the doors and it gets warmer in there???? Weird but I'll go with it!

To the person who had to process her pigs (I'm sorry I can't remember your name!) My heart breaks for you. I feel exactly the same. I know its silly but when we ask an animal to trust us it does feel traitorous to "lead them to slaughter". But everyone is right that your pigs had a waaaaay better life up to that point than any "pig farm" pig. I actually admire you. You are honest about the reality of your food. You faced it hard as it was. I couldn't do it myself because I would love my animals too much. But I happily buy the pork at the butcher. I'm pretty sure that makes me a hypocrite and you a caring realist.

 

[JeffOeuf]

1,000 feet is pretty close because an acre can be any dimension equaling 43,560 square feet. some examples.
Square: 208.71 feet on a side (approx.)
Rectangles:
9' x 4840'
10' x 4356'
12' x 3630'
20' x 2178'
24' x 1815'
40' x 1089'
60' x 726'
72' x 605'
120' x 363'
121' x 360'
180' x 242'
It does not matter the shape it takes the same amount of fence. To add another half acre add divide 4,3560 by 2 that is 2,1780 add 43560 back to it and that is 65,430 square feet. 255.79 times 255.79 = 65,429 rounded up. So 255.79 rounded 256 that times 4 sides equals 1024 feet of fence to fence in an acre and a half.

Sorry thinking out loud again.

I did a similar exercise this morning, thinking that once you calculated the perimeter of an acre, it didn't matter what shape it was. If you look at the numbers, turns out it doesn't work that way. 1024 for an acre and a half only works if it is a perfect square. In the case of one acre, it would be 836 (rounded up a little -- 209 multiplied by 4), but once you start making a rectangle of the space, it isn't as efficient. Using the numbers in Pigeonguy's post, the first one makes the best example, since it is extreme. If your one acre paddock is 9 feet by 4840 feet, you'll need 9698 feet of fence to enclose it...two long sides and two short sides. The closer you are to a square the more efficient your use of fence to create an enclosure. Obviously, if you're doing perimeter fencing, you can't do anything about it, but this kind of opened my eyes to laying out temporary paddocks.

 

[countrygirl74]

The non-poultry people think we're insane.

I like themes. Only old lady names are given. Sorry if I name a chicken after one of you. If you have an old lady name, it's gonna happen.

I have Phyllis, Murtle, Denny, Mabel, Edna, Gretta, Lorraine, Pearl, Flora-Mae, Agatha, etc.
Old man names: Steve, George, Milton, Roger, Brian, Stanley, Carl, etc.

If you have an awesome old person name, please do share. My silkies do get named. They are productive for a long time, and I'd never eat one.

Here's some more old lady names... Hildegard, Bertha, Fannie, Doris... (I always named my oldest, least attractive barbie doll Hildegard, which is funny because I actually had a grandmother by that name)

 

[aoxa]

Here's some more old lady names... Hildegard, Bertha, Fannie, Doris... (I always named my oldest, least attractive barbie doll Hildegard, which is funny because I actually had a grandmother by that name)

I actually have Bertha, Martha, and Fannie (but Franny instead of Fannie) as well. Hehehe. I like Doris though!

 

[aoxa]

I did a similar exercise this morning, thinking that once you calculated the perimeter of an acre, it didn't matter what shape it was. If you look at the numbers, turns out it doesn't work that way. 1024 for an acre and a half only works if it is a perfect square. In the case of one acre, it would be 836 (rounded up a little -- 209 multiplied by 4), but once you start making a rectangle of the space, it isn't as efficient. Using the numbers in Pigeonguy's post, the first one makes the best example, since it is extreme. If your one acre paddock is 9 feet by 4840 feet, you'll need 9698 feet of fence to enclose it...two long sides and two short sides. The closer you are to a square the more efficient your use of fence to create an enclosure. Obviously, if you're doing perimeter fencing, you can't do anything about it, but this kind of opened my eyes to laying out temporary paddocks.

Okay, so I took a google earth image of my house. My yard is not perfectly square or perfectly rectangular, so it wouldn't be a straight line by any means. However, it is not extreme either.



Now we are the lot with the drawn in black. Ideally I would LOVE to have a permiter fence all around to keep my LGD a little less likely to escape (as well as my other dogs, and PLEASE let it keep in my cats )

*Note I already have underground electric fence for the dogs, haven't started using it yet, but it's there.. I would love to have reinforcement with the above ground electric as well (mostly on Clem my Great Pyr/Maremma).

I would still like to give them room in the woods to scratch around.. and my neighbours to the left like the chickens visiting them.. Anyway.. So what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't need to be poultry netting, because I don't care to keep the poultry in (other than the huge turkeys - who are bigger than my medium dog).

Also don't want to fence in the front yard, so that takes off .25 of an acre. So just one full acre would be fenced.

Now if I had the fence too close to trees, I think the turkeys may fly to a tree and than over. I don't think they'd just fly clear over the fence..

What's the highest they go?

 

[aoxa]

Note that I added some colour acronyms to the member page.. Can't believe I missed CRD, ILT, IB, LGD, GP and a couple others.. Those are important ones!

 

[Leahs Mom]

What's the highest they go?

Are you asking how high the fences are or how high the turkeys go?

 

[aoxa]

Are you asking how high the fences are or how high the turkeys go?

The fences My turkeys can fly like crazy.

 

[Leahs Mom]

The electric netting for chickens go to 4 ft (48") I think they may have higher for other animal types.

One thing everyone needs to know on the electric fences...you have to keep the ground where it is mowed low so that it doesn't ground out on grass or weeds. That may make a difference for some folks on whether they want to use it. Some use a chemical week killer along the fence lines but since this is a Natural chicken thread probably those here wouldn't want to do that.

It's not that hard to keep the weeds/grass down low where it is but some folks may have areas that they can't take care of like that.