The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Housing, Health & Hatching

New pens

(1/3) > >>

Kelly Gore:
As most of you know, I have not had birds (life happens :( ) in a few months. Boy do I miss them! We will be moving in Oct to Northern, AZ Kingman area. I will have more birds by spring. My worry is predators. Where I previously lived we had snakes, coyotes (although they didn't get on our property!) scorpions, and neighbor dogs. Were we are moving, we have coyotes, bobcat and mountain lion. Over the winter we will be building new pens for the very anticipated new arrivals. My concern is their safety. Any suggestions on what materials to use? I have never had to deal with these predators before, and just want to make sure that my babies will be locked up like Fort Knox! Thank you!

Don:
Kelly, you are right to consider keeping predators Out rather than only keeping the chickens in when you design the new pens.  I don't know what you'd use to keep out something as big as a Mountain Lion. Something that big can pretty push and tear through any wire or simple cage wire. You might start with Ag Panels, they are pretty sturdy and you'll need to make sure your attachments are heavy duty too. And you will need to have a secondary small opening wire wrapping to keep the racoons and such from getting in or pulling birds closed enought to the edges to kill or eat birds.  Of course you'll have to bury wire around the edges or have paving to keep animals from digging under.  I would consider installing a couple layers of Hot Wire and using a Livestock fence charger for animals that large. That should deter them once they understand the danger from the electricity. You can bait these wires with alumn pans slathered with peanut butter or meat fats.  That will allow them to "get a taste" of the power without pushing or testing the wire itself.  The down side is that you'll need to keep these wires clear of grass, etc. And you will Have to keep your animals, kids and friends away from these wires. So that means you'll probabaly have to install separate stakes/posts, out of reach of the cages, just for the wires and not attach the wires directly to the cages themselves. You might be able to use a timer to turn the units on around dark and day break to reduce the danger to you and yours during your active hours.   I would imagine that Livestock Guard Dogs would help too. I don't know if a lion would challenge a big dog normally.  Good Luck!  Sounds like a great new adventure.  Sounds like you are going to be busy.   Keep us posted when you have time.       

Kelly Gore:
Thanks Don! I will take into consideration all of your suggestions. We shouldn't have much problems, we have a lot of big dogs, but I want to make sure the birds are safe. I saw my first mountain lion in the wild while I was visiting the property. Oh my, they are bigger than I thought!

Kelly Gore:
One more question! (For now! lol) I am from the Phoenix area. Where we are moving, it snows at times. They will have an indoor coop area, anything else I could do to keep them warm? No heat lamps! Too scared of fire.

Don:
I don't know how cold the temps are there.  Here we dont' really have an issue unless it gets extreme for a few nights during the winter.  I don't like to close up the buildings/cages completely since it seems to cause more issues with moisture and illness than leaving some ventilation. Of course you want to keep the pens closed on all sides except for the south during the cold months. There are ways to gather the birds heat on the roosting areas to give them a little more protection. Heat rises, so capture any heat generated by the birds in a hood or tarp hung tight to the roof. This provides them a place of refuge at night when the temps are lowest. You can search some of the old journals, look for conditioning methods where they were trying to encourage birds to finish out faster.  Make sure you use fabrics, burlap or cloth tarps. Plastics will trap more heat, but trap the  moisture also. 

Of course this is from the perspective of a southern climate. I am sure that Gordon and some of the others will have more options where the temps can stay low for much longer periods of time too.  Rattle their cages and get their imput while you do your planning to make sure you have the Best info going forward.     

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page