I'm 70, have had it with deer, and need to know if this is a crazy idea.

Look, I've tried just about every deer deterrent method known to man except for the electric fence. I've got the established-corridor corners closed off with tall deer netting, have various deer scarers and barriers and smelly stuff planted all over, and one or two of them are still determined to get in. Demolished my beans and daylilies, okra and cowpeas, rugosa roses, and now are nipping at my tomatoes. It's just a matter of time before they hit my squash, which is the only thing going big-guns right now.

I am a renter in the suburbs so really cannot invest in an acre of 8-foot deer fencing. The tactic I'm thinking of now is to try to protect my trees with cages or deer netting and also find a way to grow various annual-type veggies and plant starts in a protected area. I want something that, when the time comes for us to go into a nursing home and leave this place, I can sell or donate.

I'm seriously thinking about getting one of those walk-in chicken runs, like this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M6CQSNK/

I figure it would let the sun in but keep the deer out (maybe?), give me a structure to hang some planters from for vertical gardening stuff in addition to the ground-planted and grow-bagged stuff inside the run, and if I wanted to turn chickens loose in there at some point, it would keep the hawks out.

Now, I do have chickens. (Or I should say chicken. One day I'll start over, but not for a few years.) For now I just want something that won't shade out the sun unless I want to put shade cloth on it, inside of which I can plant those things like beans and squash and tomatoes and okra. This is for two people trying to feed themselves out of a garden as much as possible but not trying to produce a huge ton of food. I'm working on perennial guilds elsewhere in the yard, and I'm having to protect them from deer as well, but my concern with this idea is to have a sheltered but sunny place to grow annual vegetables that the marauding deer can't get to.

Some of you might be familiar with where I started from five years ago: essentially a pine forest overgrown with English and poison ivy. With the exception of the one big log you see lying across the yard (which I need to get cut up and out of my way), what's lying on the ground is going to stay there. I was thinking of putting maybe a 10ish x 20ish chicken run between the parallel logs on either side of that area once it's cleared. Would this work? Would I be sorry? I'm just so darned sick of these darned deer! And I'm not getting any younger and have no help...

What a lovely place you have created.
No wonder the deer want to come along.
How long is the boundary that needs attention?
As an after thought, would it be possible to use the trees as fence posts and wrap any netting around your block, using the trees to hold it in place.

im right there with ya,im ready to sit with a shotgun  and just shoot them from a distance or up in the air,i have had it with these sons of basketweavers

They have stripped the leaves from my pole beans and just left the stems,they will recover if i can get rid of the soon to be venison.

I saw a video about using fishin twine,string it up around your perimeter at several different heights,but do it far away from your veggies.Its suppose to confuse them im gonna try it.

In the meantime i get off fall from a cabinet shop an have stuck 6,7,and some 8 foot sticks up behind my fence,some of them are sharp.my hope is to make an obstacle from the deer to try to work around,it may slow them down some,i also tied up my shirt i wore all day next to my beans.

If all this dont work im going to implement the fishing string,then resort to more deliberate means of eradication.

Diane, the link didn't seem to have a price (claimed it was not available) but if you can afford it, I'd suggest you buy two. If you got two, and put a little fencing across inside at about the halfway point, you'd be able to rotate your chickens back and forth in one a week or two at a time, and plant annuals in the other. Then the following year, reverse the "plant one" and the "chicken one". Fertility would be ensured and chicken safely would be decent so long as you make sure nothing can dig under the bottom. You'd still need a secure coop, as it is unclear the size of the mesh - racoon can get a paw through chain-link size and mink can get through anything more than 1 inch.  

Yes - I'd love such a thing, and they claim they ship to Canada, but the mark-up would be huge. I totally agree that deer and bunnies can ruin the joy of gardening!
I genuinely wish you to do what pleases your heart!

Shookeli Riggs wrote:iIf all this dont work im going to implement the fishing string ...

That's interesting. I've been wrapping my hilltop house in fishing string for years, to keep migratory birds from killing themselves on the windows. The big idea is that bees, birds and deer can see farther into the ultraviolet spectrum than you and I. So I bought a roll of bass(??or catfish??) fishing string that's designed for night fishing with UV lights. Basically, it glows like a beacon in daylight, and it works. I think that if you were to string that around,  in a configuration they can't jump over without getting tangled, it might mess with their heads. Know your enemy!

Fencing or caging is the best way I've encountered to deal with animals. My parents in the suburbs cage all their veggies because of squirrels, birds and whatever. I'm in the middle of nowhere and the only way I can grow edible crops without fencing is to surround them with extremely poisonous plants and even then they only last spring and summer, come fall, deer will eat anything. If they are fleeing from fire they will do extreme damage on their way out as well. Good luck to you.

We have 2 of these 10'x10'x6' high dog kennels for out chickens and turkeys.  They use real cyclone fencing and heavy gauge galvanized steel tubing so I think they are much stronger than what you are seeing on Amazon.  But they cost more too because you get what you pay for.  So far nothing has gotten in.  The top is open but odds are the deer wont jump a 6 foot tall fence, but if you are concerned you can easily make a roof over the top with wood or wire fencing.  both of ours have a roof and are completely enclosed so nothing can fly or climb into the kennels.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/stephens-pipe-steel-dog-kennel-10-ft-w-x-10-ft-l-x-6-ft-h

You could easily place one around each tree and have plenty of room inside the fencing for a garden or planter boxes.

The one you posted from Amazon looks like it is made of chicken wire, which probably will keep out the deer if it is a decent quality wire, but you wont know how strong the wire is or how long it will last until after you buy it.  When I opened the link I thought I wanted one or two of them but once I took a closer look I was not impressed for my needs.

my mother lived in a heavy deer area and we tried EVERYTHING. You name it. They didn't even seem to mind dogs, they'd run away but be right back again. With their friends.
What we eventually did was to put up 6-foot fencing in a long, narrow garden, with the two sides close enough together that they couldn't jump in (maybe 5 feet apart, max). They would eat whatever they could reach through and get, so we used chicken wire on that fence in places too, but they never managed to jump in.

i love the enclosure you linked to!

John C Daley wrote:What a lovely place you have created.
No wonder the deer want to come along.
How long is the boundary that needs attention?
As an after thought, would it be possible to use the trees as fence posts and wrap any netting around your block, using the trees to hold it in place.

If I were to deal with the whole yard, we're talking about at least 800' of fencing. This is why I'm thinking I might just put in a 10' x 20' run that could serve not only to protect the annual-veggies garden in the summer from the deer but maybe, in the winter, throw some plastic over it for greenhouse-type stuff. In the parts of the yard where I'm trying to garden, there are no longer any trees. I have planted guilds in other sections of the yard that I intend to keep dedicated to perennials, and I'm just trying to keep the young trees protected with netting or cages toward that end.

Thank you for your kind words about what I've done so far. It really was a complete disaster when we first moved in here.

Jay Angler wrote:Diane, the link didn't seem to have a price (claimed it was not available) but if you can afford it, I'd suggest you buy two. If you got two, and put a little fencing across inside at about the halfway point, you'd be able to rotate your chickens back and forth in one a week or two at a time, and plant annuals in the other. Then the following year, reverse the "plant one" and the "chicken one". Fertility would be ensured and chicken safely would be decent so long as you make sure nothing can dig under the bottom. You'd still need a secure coop, as it is unclear the size of the mesh - racoon can get a paw through chain-link size and mink can get through anything more than 1 inch.  

Yes - I'd love such a thing, and they claim they ship to Canada, but the mark-up would be huge. I totally agree that deer and bunnies can ruin the joy of gardening!
I genuinely wish you to do what pleases your heart!

That's a very good idea, Jay. I've seen the prices on these go anywhere from $149 to $400+. I do have a coop and "inner run" that is very secure against predators, and I don't intend to get a lot of chickens. I have room for six to eight, but would only want no more than four. But to be able to rotate them to build fertility, that would be a fine thing. So I could let them in there during the day and then, at night let them go home to roost in the coop.

Tereza Okava wrote:my mother lived in a heavy deer area and we tried EVERYTHING. You name it. They didn't even seem to mind dogs, they'd run away but be right back again. With their friends.
What we eventually did was to put up 6-foot fencing in a long, narrow garden, with the two sides close enough together that they couldn't jump in (maybe 5 feet apart, max). They would eat whatever they could reach through and get, so we used chicken wire on that fence in places too, but they never managed to jump in.

i love the enclosure you linked to!

Actually, that narrow idea is a great one. And I've got room to do a long area, too, Which direction should a long side face to maximize sunlight? The back of our yard runs SE to S to SW, with the trees on the SW side shading the ground in the afternoon.

One of the things I've done to try to create deer barriers is to tip up logs about four feet from the back fence line, which I'm still working on as I get these trees cut up. I was hoping those would prevent them from jumping, too.

Diane Kistner wrote:

One of the things I've done to try to create deer barriers is to tip up logs about four feet from the back fence line, which I'm still working on as I get these trees cut up. I was hoping those would prevent them from jumping, too.

I have a couple of sections of 4 foot fencing protecting guilds I'm establishing and one section of garden that needed fencing fast. A trick I read here on permies was to make the top of the fence "uneven" to discourage deer. So I took bamboo branches (but any thin branch with side shoots would do the job) and wove them vertically through the top foot of fencing so they stood up and poked outward and were all different lengths. Granted, I also tried not to give them safe-looking landing spots on the inside of the fence, but the garden spot I did this has been in use at least 3 years and I haven't had deer in there. Also, I pinned male dog fur at nose height on the fencing, so when they come to sniff they sniff stuff they don't like (sustainably harvested from a friend's poodle who requires a summer haircut). I'm taking a multiple pronged approach, but I'd still prefer Fort Knox Fencing so that things that deer and bunnies particularly love (beans!) are protected and I don't loose my entire crop, like I did last year.

Howdy,

I also weave small diameter sticks, slats, "things" into the hog wire fencing so the top of the fence looks taller than it is, also at different lengths/heights. I am using re-cycled wire fencing from friends and also get it from the scrap metal pile at local dump/waste transfer site here locally.

I also have 2 dogs and the fencing is to keep THE DOGS out of the garden and the dogs do most of the job of keeping deer away. I also take my dogs shedding and brushed hair and "hang" it around the garden area, more like casting it to the wind.

I do still see deer close, on my driveway, sometimes even crossing the yard, dogs asleep. I have had bears in my apple trees. outside freezer in shed dumped over and raided by bears. Dogs have treed cougar/mtn. lions even 50-75 feet from the house.

Years ago, when the one dog I had died, within days the fence was "downed' by deer and garden was ravished. I watched a 4-point buck trying to get away with wire fencing in his antlers.

I am also 70/single and some of this life is not getting easier, BUT I still enjoy my life here, 40 +yrs.....peace,rc

I know you meant English Ivy but now I'm imagining a pine forest overrun with English colonials