Temporary poultry pasture fence experiment
It only took Anna and me about
20 minutes to set up 100 feet of the experimental, temporary chick
fencing this morning.
The soft,
plastic green material was a dream to handle compared to the hard,
metal chicken wire.
I've got a feeling this new
temporary chicken fencing method is going to become part of our future
pasturing poultry routine.
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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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I definitely wouldn't advocate using this fencing in a permanent location or expect it to last too long. However, we've been using the same pieces for three or four years as pea trellises and have seen absolutely no degradation yet. The trick to longevity seems to be taking it in as soon as you're done, which limits the trellis material's exposure to nature.
I also wouldn't expect it to keep any animals out (especially not deer?!) I'm sure Lucy could go right through it, but she's pretty well trained that chicken areas are off limits.
The big plus of this stuff is that it doesn't kink up and it doesn't scratch you to pieces --- both of which are great assets if you're using it in temporary locations and taking it down and putting it up a lot.
A chicken pasture/orchard can work really well, I believe, as long as you have places to rotate the chickens during other seasons. I wish we could run our chickens under the peach trees at certain times of the year to cut down on bad pest insects!