Chicken-proofing livestock panels

Chicken-proofing Livestock Panels

I made a big mistake when our livestock panels were delivered.  There are lots of different kinds of livestock panels, some with holes the same size all over and others with various types of small holes at the bottom.  I'd ordered the ones with very little holes down low working up to normal-sized holes halfway up the fence, but what actually came just had two rows of medium-sized holes at the bottom then had large holes the rest of the way up.  Unfortunately, I didn't notice the substitution until the panels were halfway unloaded, at which point I thought it wasn't fair to complain and figured we'd work with what we got.

Of course, once we put our first batch of chicks in the starplate coop, we realized that young chickens have no problem slipping right through those holes.  So we moved on to plan b --- add an expanse of one-inch chicken wire along the bottom of the panels to keep chickens in.  In some ways, this negates the awesomeness of livestock panels since it takes as long to attach the chicken wire as it did to put up the panels in the first place, and the panels will also now be harder to move.  But the chicken wire does keep the chickens in.

And we do get keep many of the good qualities of the panels.  I've enjoyed the way cattle panels can be curved into any shape imaginable --- a great asset if you have an irregularly shaped area and want to enclose every inch.  Plus, the heavy metal will keep Lucy from gnawing dog doors wherever she wants them, and will also allow the fences to stand up to bigger livestock if we ever get them.  Finally, I especially enjoy the way cattle panels are Anna-friendly fencing --- easy enough that I can put them up all by myself.

Our little flock is now enjoying the first paddock and I'll be adding chicken wire to new paddocks as they're needed by the pullets and cockerels.  At the moment, there are no gates at the far end of the pasture --- the chicks are still young enough that they don't venture that far from the coop.  I have a feeling gate-building will be on Mark's agenda in a week or two, though.  That's definitely a task too complex for me.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.

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