Hen Keepers - any of you use electric poulty netting?

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Patches

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If so, does it work at keeping hens in and, more importantly, foxes out?

We've lost two hens today to the fox and it's been back twice more looking for it's next meal. I daren't lt them out tomorrow now. We have fencing, but a few are more flighty, and even with one wing having the primary flight feathers cut, they still somehow manage to escape the run.
 
We have similar stuff for the pet sheep. (infact it is the poultry stuff as they sent us the wrong type) It works well for the sheep.
Also a free range hen place down the road from us uses it, they have loads of hens so i guess it must do the job.

Hope you dont loose any more to the fox, i cant imagine he would like it once he had a shock of it.
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yes, my YO's wife uses it.

Yes it keeps foxes out (though she shuts them up in a coop at night) and no it doesnt keep all the hens in... there's always one who will escape. Last spring the fox managed to kill about 6 lambs outside of the netting and not one hen. So it must work.
 
Have you got a dog? Could you let the dog wander around? Our chickens are totally free range (except for being shut up at night) and go wherever they want and because the dogs wander around (and don't eat the chickens, thats quite important
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) the foxes stay well away.
 
My hens are free range really. We only shut them into a large pen when we've got the tractors about, silaging etc.

I do have a dog, a Cocker Spaniel. He's an air head though. Don't think he'd kill the chooks, but he'd soon be off down the fields on the scent of some bunnies to lick to death.

I've done really well though because we've kept hens for over 18 months and this is the first time we've lost some to the foxes.
 
Ah thats a real shame, it isn't nice when you have to start keeping them in an enclosure. Although at least you wouldn't get some hens laying away and staying down in the barns like one of ours keeps doing, lol.

They're not happy with me at the moment as with all the concrete we're having laid they keep having to stay in for the odd few days
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I can imagine them trying to scratch in the wet concrete.

Ours get everywhere, but more worryingly they have been seen wandering off up the lane! I felt incredibly offended the first time they abandoned me.
 
i've cut the primary feathers on both wings, more to stop them flying over the fences than anything else. then i've put chicken wire around the first 100m or so of the fields, and across the whole front of the property, so any fox coming in from the back, has to walk all the way up the fields, kind of into a net. well, it's worked so far...
 
You're only supposed to cut the primary flight feathers on one wing. The reason it's supposed to work is that it unbalances them and they can't fly. Cutting both wings is supposed to not achieve alot.
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in my experience foxes jump it, it's just not high enough!! the only way we have found to keep our layers safe was to fence their feild with 6' high chicken wire, with 2 strands of galvanised wire 1 running at 6 -8" from the ground and 1 running at 51/2 feet from the ground, on 6" stand-off insulators, never had a fox problem since, they get zapped if they try to dig under and zapped if they try to scale the fence.....
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We have never had a fox go through the rappa fencing, it is connected to a mains fencer though. The paddock is part of a 20 acre grass field, so we're not short of the odd fox either.
 
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