I’m stunned his chickens don’t roost on that wire cover! Mine would :lol: :sigh:
You must have tenacious chickens! Mine would hop on and off bowls, getting them dirty anyway, but they never tried to roost on thin ledges or pieces of wire. LOL
On a side note… I found an emaciated, grease covered Guinea Pig in a busy parking lot this week. Haven’t had one in more than 5 years and don’t have any equipment left so I’m back to researching supplies needed (on a budget). Water has been a major issue because he can dirty or spill a bowl in less than 5 minutes.
For a guinea pig. the only sure fire way to keep clean water is to have one of those bottles with the metal neck with the small metal ball that plugs the opening. The only mess it creates is a bit of dampness right under the end they drink from, when it drips a bit of water. They should have those at Walmart or Target fairly cheap. Or if you have a TSC, they have small pet supplies too.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/lixit-no-drip-top-fill-water-bottle-32-oz
I borrowed a water bottle but don’t have a good way to attach it since he’s still living in a plastic bin.
Gorilla brand duct tape I bet would solve that problem.
Yes, everything eats chicken. I just have a 6’ tall wire kennel around my coop, but my coop is like Ft. Knox and I lock it up at night, so it works pretty well.
My biggest problem is possums. I get really irritated when people share this graphic on FB about how possums are harmless and won’t bother your chickens, etc. Um, no, they absolutely WILL. I lost four hens to a possum before I realized it the first year I kept them in my barn stall for the winter. I’ve since made a hardware cloth apron to go under the sliding door and that solved the problem. I also used to be lax about closing the coop door and came home after dark and saw eyes inside. Yep, it was a possum. Bonked him on the head to get him out and caught him in a trap by morning. Apparently there was more than one though, as I just found a long dead possum carcass dragged halfway out from under the coop (on a huge pallet, so a little space under but not that I can really see) so I guess one just mysteriously died under there?
We’ve caught a lot of raccoons, and still have tons, but so far they haven’t tried to get in the coop.
Knock on wood I haven’t lost any chickens to predators with my current set up. Free ranging we lost a lot so I gave up on that. Hardware cloth is my best friend.
My sister and I are ordering 6 day olds to split to add to our small flocks. They come April 10th 
We ordered 2 barred rocks, 2 red sexlinks, and 2 white leghorns. Fingers crossed they get sexed correctly. I’ve never had a leghorn so we’ll see how that goes, they have a reputation for being flighty. I’ve got brown and blue egg layers so I’m excited to add some white eggs to the mix.
I killed my friend’s Leghorn chick a few years ago 
She had a regular round feeder sat on the brooder floor. We were doing chores quickly and I threw a scoop of feed into the feeder and moved on. Next day, couldn’t find the Leghorn chick. Turns out, it had flown up on top of the feeder and either jumped or fell in, and I smothered it I’ve never forgotten that, and anytime I’ve filled her feeders after or used that kind myself, I double check before I dump it in.
Well, unless you want 100+ chickens, you did right by passing on those Cornish! My hens are the sweetest, most affectionate and funny hens–BUT, super broody. And they are sneaky! They will hoard eggs and set them in the most bizarre places you would never imagine a chicken would even find.
After putting in hay this summer, the loft was closed up for the season, packed full to the brim, so no light shines in. Well, one day whilst doing my daily barn check I find a lone little chick standing in the aisle way crying away. Picked her up, and she quieted down, only for me to hear more peeping above me, in the hayloft.
This hen had to fly up into the loft, there’s no easy way to get in, it’s an old barn and kind of scary getting to the loft. That was a major chore walking across all those bales of hay with a hen in one hand and a bucket with peeping chicks in another!
@Megaladon I guess she wanted some privacy! LOL Cornish was not one of the breeds I was looking to get. That’s just what TSC had. That and a trough full of ducklings that had way too many (I thought) crowded in - they were almost stacked on top of one another. I felt kinda bad for them.
I’m just curious why chicken wire is still the prevalent type of enclosure material stocked with the chicken stuff? TSC had it in all shapes and sizes and even in plastic too. I’m saving my pennies for the hardware cloth I’ll probably have to order from Amazon, to do my coop and run correctly. I’m just curious why only chicken wire at the store if that’s not really secure enough when you’re anywhere with wild animals? Am I missing something?
It’s cheaper, and it’s what people will buy most often. Stores are interested in selling people what they will buy, not what is best for the animals, in general. Especially poultry. I’ve heard of store employees telling people they don’t need lights or heat for chicks and they can feed them scratch grains, because they’re cheap. Dead chickens abound when inexperienced people stroll through the store and think, “They’re so cute, let’s just get chicks today!”
My Rural King stocks lots of hardware cloth though. Don’t you have a home improvement or hardware store? Home Depot? Lowe’s? Menard’s? They stock hardware cloth.
2 Likes
Yes, we have Lowe’s and Home Depot. I’ve never seen it in our stores in-stock (though they do have it on-line). Amazon had cheaper prices and I get free shipping with Prime.
And I want the heavier gauge wire too (I think it was 19 gauge).
We just made a chicken coop, and got the hardware cloth and wire from Lowes, I think. Many people in my neighborhood, a rural area, have chickens and all of them say that chicken wire isn’t safe.
Ah, good! You can also use stuff like 1x1 or 1x2 wire fence on stuff like runs, just not anywhere that chickens will be sitting next to it at night, as raccoons can (and will) reach through and pull their heads off. So if you see some rolls on the cheap, that’s another option.
The problem with chicken wire is the way we describe livestock fence overall. Horse fence, cattle panels, hog panels, chicken wire. These terms all describe the animal that the fence is meant to keep IN. Chicken wire keeps chickens in. The rub comes in where you typically aren’t fencing other livestock with any intention of keeping predators OUT, whereas chickens you must. And it’s not something most people give a thought to. Before chickens, I had no idea that raccoons were like small bears and could actually pull apart chicken wire, never occurred to me.
3 Likes
My plan is to do the whole outside run in the wire cloth. Since the run has a roof already, in summer, my thought was to leave the two chicken doors open to the coop (between the “coop” inside the barn and the run outside) for air flow. It is suffocatingly hot and humid here in july/aug. I don’t want to cook the chickens!
And because raccoons, snakes and other critters do operate in the day time, I figured not using the wire cloth on the run would be tempting fate. I’d rather start with something that is vermin proof, rather than have to add to it later to make it more secure.
The last thing I want is dead chickens right off the bat!
Ahhhh, I missed that you’re putting them in the barn. It would be nice to not have to lock them up at night, yes. If I had my druthers, I’d have huge “windows” on all sides of my coop, with hardware cloth and plywood “storm windows.” That way I could open that puppy up in the summer when it’s so hot.
Here’s how we’ve managed not to spend a small fortune on hardware cloth:
We use chain link dog kennel panels for the runs and zip tie the chicken wire to the chain link. We have also buried chain link around the perimeter and put landscape fabric and mulch on top of the buried wire. The tops of the pens are also covered by chicken wire. After having a problem with a fox or coyote climbing the the top of the pens and dropping in through the top, we ran three strands of hot wire around the outside of the runs powered by a solar battery; anything attempting to climb the side would hit the hot wire.
The buried fence keeps anything from digging in; the hot wire keeps anything from climbing up. The last step was hardware cloth from the ground to the first hot wire (~12 inches) because something (a weasel? a snake? a rat?) was squeezing through the chain link/chicken wire combo.
Poultry keeping can be tough; chickens are at the bottom of the food chain, and everything likes chicken.
Hey @4LeafCloverFarm how is your coop coming?! 
And a question for @Mosey_2003 … any reason I can’t keep my crew on chick starter/grower long term? Higher protein than layer, not as much calcium as layer. Offer oyster shell, handful of higher protein treats and call it good?
Cleanup is going well, but slowly. The constant rain for months, the mud and trying to to do chores in slop has slowed down progress. And the money spent on gravel and more recently pine bark nuggets to lift my pony and horse out of the mud (literally) in their shed has consumed any budget I had for construction of my chicken coop/run. There is always something more pressing! lol Which is why the chickens always got dropped off the to-do list in previous years. We also spent nearly double our normal budget on hay this winter. I am so hoping this is a good hay growing year locally.
But I’m plugging along! The outside looks really nice now. We just have to figure out how to get the hog crib feeder out of there. Its huge. Not even sure how they got it in there to begin with.
