Chicken Netting

So, I have chickens. A lot of them. I have chickens to lay eggs. In addition, I have rare and exotics chickens as well. This last year, I go into the rare chickens. It doesn't involved getting run over by large hooved animals, no pretending that my dog is listening to me, when is fact, the dog is actually giving me the doggie finger. Plus I can scare the chickens a lot more than the sheep, Well so far, until they wise up.

 

Anyways, the rare breeds that I raise are French Black Copper Marans, Wheaten Marans, Blue and Blue Copper Marans, Cream Legbars, Rhodebars, Swedish Flower Hens and Appenzeller Spitzhaubens.

 

We have hawks and eagles who like to stop by and see what chickens they can cart off for a fast meal. This last week, they made off with some Swedish Flower Hens, Black Copper and a Blue Copper Marans. I was so mad since they never seem to get the cheap layers. The chickens they made off with sell for $30 plus.

 

So I decided to thwart the flying rats by installing fishing net over two of  the coops. I got the military camouflage spreader gear and a 50 x 100 ft two inch fishing net. It took a bit but we got it all set up.

 

The poles at 12 feet high. The coop area is about 48 x 48 feet total.

 

As you can see the spreader hold the net up in the air. I still need to get more spreaders but for the time being, this will work. You can see Maddie supervising us. Scott was the main guy on this job as I gave him the idea and he did the implementation. Diane M, George, Joe and I worked on this for part of the afternoon. Then we went to the local pub for some well deserved refreshements.

 

Later, about 50 starling flew in to get their free meal but they could not get in. It worked. I saw the hawk flying about the net and was so happy to know the young chickens were out of his reach. We still have some fine tuning to on it but it is doing well so far. Oh yea, the crows and ravens now have now lost their daily eggs source!

 

Yes, we did work dogs as well. And the beer sure was cool and tasty after a hot afternoon. We expect the fall to be here tomorrow so we enjoyed the sunny day.