With us losing Ethelred our cock this spring to the fox, we’ve decided we can’t take any more chances, so we’ve moved to electric fencing to keep our various birds safe. In the little orchard the pen is pretty much the full extent of the quarter acre, so the impact on the chickens will be minimal. We’ve used the 110cm high poultry netting, which we’ve used as standard netting to contain the bantams for the last year, but we’ve added another 50m section to it, to produce a 25m x 25m area, powered by a 3.5 joules energiser and 75Ah leisure battery. It gives a reading of between 2,000 and 3,000kw, so it’ll do the job.<\/p>\n
The geese, on the other hand, might not really need it, but we’ve done it to be safe. There are foxes around, and the easy pickings of dropped fruit will dry up over the next few months, so we feel it’s best they ‘learn’ our animals aren’t on the menu. Poultry netting is dangerous for geese as they tend to push their heads through fencing, and can easily get stuck in the smaller netting, dieing from electrocution \ud83d\ude41 So for them we’ve erected a 5 strand fence powered by a 0.5J system, which gives a reading of around 4,000kW! We’ve also added a “hot-gate” system, so we can get in and out easily.<\/p>\n
As we haven’t bought another cock in for the large hens, we’re going to run the two flocks together inside the chicken pen, and William the bantam can deal with them all! They’ll still have their own coops and, from experience, they’ll tend to stick to the coops they know.<\/p>\n
Another job done ready for the winter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With us losing Ethelred our cock this spring to the fox, we’ve decided we can’t take any more chances, so we’ve moved to electric fencing to keep our various birds safe. In the little orchard the pen is pretty much the full extent of the quarter acre, so the impact on the chickens will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[227,4,23,85],"tags":[24,256,261,262,257,258,259,248,260],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chickens","category-land-management","category-poultry","category-tools","tag-chickens","tag-electric","tag-energiser","tag-energizer","tag-fencing","tag-geese","tag-netting","tag-poultry","tag-strand"],"yoast_head":"\n