Closeup of chicken wire tied on to hog panel with baling twine. It's a temporary setup, so baling twine works for now.
Welp, it's coming along. Yesterday I got the most of the chicken wire tied on to the hog panel, leaving a section that I can bend out to be a "gate". That way I can drive the tractor in occasionally and dump in stall refuse.
The section in the middle folds out in a "U" shape to allow the tractor in. There's my mobile chicken coop. My Dad built that for me on a little utility trailer from lumber he milled from his own trees. It's served me well in 3 years. My nieces decorated it. it's about due to be repainted soon. The box? I carried duckies out to join the pullets inside the coop. They all stay closed up in there for now with food and water and wood chips on the floor. And of course, the pigs came over to check things out and lay right where I was walking. One of the boars, the big pink "big/littles", decided to come over, much like the dog, and nose me while I was sitting down on the ground tying on chicken wire. He would nose me with his nose, then lay down beside me (half on me) and repeatedly ask for a belly rub. LOL Then when I wouldn't keep rubbing his belly, he gave up on that, and decided to stand up and rub on me, instead. He weighed 125 lbs last time I had the scale out. So here's this big ole' pig, rubbing his butt on my back while I'm tryin' to work.
The dog was very unhappy about that. He thinks I'm his exclusively. LOL But Hamella Anderson ruined my brave dog forever and turned him into a big weenie now. He is afraid of pigs now, and hides either in the truck, or under it when we are in the field. Or sticks to me like glue. He wants to protect me, but he's scared, so he's constantly torn when the pigs are close to me, and as soon as they leave me, he comes right over and glues himself to my leg, seeking reassurance.
This is looking up from beside the mobile chicken coop. I picked a pole out from the pile of slabs in the field and screwed a screw in the end. Then I tied a length of just yarn on the screw, walked out to the corner of the chicken run with it to measure to the farthest corner a length of string. I used that length as my guide and measured out lengths of string until I ran out of yarn, tying each one on that nail on the end. The I raised the pole and screwed it into the side of the chicken coop with my drill. This raised the top of it about twenty feet in the air, plenty of height to allow the tractor in. After that, I walked each length of string out to a post on the edge of the run, building a "spider web" of string. I read somewhere that you can keep birds of prey away from your chickens by making a web of fishing line above them with about a foot-wide holes. The hawks come down to dive bomb the chickens and get tangled in the web and then they don't like that, so they learn really quick to leave the chickens alone. Well, I would like to not have an injured hawk tangled up in my string, or have my web broken either. So I decided a more visible yarn would be ok, and I have plenty of that laying around that I sacrificed. So for now I have the pole mounted, with the center of the web raised while I stretch out the strings and tie them. Some of them are way too long, as the "center" is actually over to one side, and I have measured to the farthest corner. I either tie off the string, or cut it. I will have it patched all over, I'm sure. It's not meant to be pretty, it's meant to keep my chickens alive.
Also, since I have the strings tied to the edge, right on the top of the fenceline, I will be tying extra tight holes on the edge about a foot in. My intent is to create... how to explain this. You know in jails or where they fence off a construction area and on top of the hurricane fencing there is a section that tips out so that if someone were to climb the fence they would have to angle backwards at the top to get over it? Makes it hard or impossible to climb over. Well, I intend to do that at the top of the fence for the chickens. Because even if their wings are clipped, they can still fly a little. At least to the top of the fence. I've seen them do it. I have also seen the little buggers roost right on the charged electric line. Maybe because they aren't touching the ground they aren't getting zapped? Or they have touched the hot wire to the metal fence, grounded it out, and it quit? I dunno. I just know that an electric wire doesn't do jack for chickens. They sit on it and laugh at me. That electronetting works, though. Except for the stubborn few. Hubs is put off a bit by that though, after we had a little grass fire from the netting our first year here. I keep trying to explain to him that the netting was arcing because the pigs and goats stretched out the netting and that without pigs in the mix, it will be fine. But he's arguing, still. He just saw flames and that was it. Our water isn't adequate, so I can understand his concern. I don't think he realizes just how much money we have lost in birds, however.
As soon as I get the hot wire mounted on the ground and another line on the top of the fence line (raccoons climb), and set up some kind of automatic water setup (less chores is good), I can catch all the existing chickens that currently roost in the barn and put them in the chicken run.
So the objective is to keep the chickens nearby the garden, keep them OUT of the garden (stop laughing), and use them to work compost from the barn and garden. Ultimately, I will get worms, which will be protien for the chickens. Ultimately, I won't be feeding them chicken feed much, if at all. But these things take time to grow.
Then, the compost goes on the garden, and I sell off the extra. Sieved, organic, black gold. When we lived on our acre, I sold it by the 80 lb feed sack full for $8 a bag, which folks tell me was an awesome price. I thought making a few hundred cash for dirt was an awesome price. LOL But I did sieve it.