Troubleshooting chicken moats
This year, Mark build a bunch
of chicken pastures that act as moats around a large portion of
the garden. I love the moats --- they keep the deer out, make the
edges distinct, and just make me feel relaxed. We have had a
couple of issues, though, that I'd like to remedy before boxing in the
rest of the boundary.
Lucy's job is to patrol
the perimeter, and that's a bit tough when she can't get there.
We started to notice gaps
gnawed in our fences,
and then realized that Lucy was making bolt-holes so she can spring off
in any direction to reach the edges of our homestead
lickety-split. The trouble is that deer and chickens come in
those holes and end up in the garden, which defeats the purpose of the
moats. Surely there's a way to give Lucy better access to the
perimeter without compromising our fences, but I'm not sure what it
would be. I was pondering stiles (like in the photo above), but
an agile chicken or (if we go there) goat could prance over top just as
easily as a dog could. As crazy as it sounds, I'm now thinking of
installing dog doors in select locations in the pasture fences, but any
other ideas would be appreciated as well.
The
chicken problem is similar to Lucy's dilemma. Since we started
letting our chickens free
range, we've had chickens stuck partway home multiple times.
As dusk falls, chickens seem to use a compass sense (maybe based on
magnetism?) to figure out how to shorten their peregrination and head
straight back to the coop. The problem is that there's often a
fence in their way, so they end up huddled in a corner, not realizing
that if they simply walked at right angles for a few feet, they could
get home. The chickens do seem to learn the terrain after a
while, so we might just have to plan on leading chickens home a few
times when they start free ranging. Maybe another solution would
be to make all exterior fences convex instead of concave?
I'm curious to hear some
creative solutions to our moat problems, so I hope you'll leave a
comment with your ideas!
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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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As far as letting the dog get in and out I was thinking of a row cover type hoop (with fencing as the fabric) that lets the dog run through but won't allow deer through due to the small size and keeps the livestock from having a hole to escape from. This may allow smaller animals in though, I'm not sure if that's much of a problem? Or if the holes could be closed at night since they would be smaller?
As far as the chickens getting home, I've found if ours don't have a visual connection to where they want to go they will keep looking. We put a small piece of plywood next to part of our fence in our small coop because one chicken always seemed to stay on that side because she saw the other girls close by but didn't know how to get over to them.
Excellent point about line of sight. We have a terrible time getting chickens to go around a partial fence if they can see through it. Perhaps adding something more solid to the bottom foot would help with that problem.
Your dog door idea sounds good if you don't have chickens, but would let our little scoundrels through to areas they shouldn't be in. I'm thinking of a rectangular door frame with a medium-heavy rubber flap to let Lucy push through while making it too tough for chickens.
I was thinking more like this: http://www.waldeneffect.org/20110205quickhoop.jpg To create a tunnel through the coop (along the perpendicular fences so you don't break up the pastures.) This would keep the chickens and the dog separate. The tunnels would have to be strategically located so the chickens can't hop on it then over the fence.
Now that I re-read what I wrote I can see this may require a fair amount of resources, but maybe the idea will spur some other ideas.