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Fencing suggestions on difficult land

 
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I'm looking for suggestion for fencing solutions on difficult terrain.

We have fairly steep land. It's close to bedrock, which is visible in some places and where it's not visible the ground is very rocky.
We have tried different fencing approaches to fence our chickens. Ideally we would like a mobile fencing solution, but have been unable to find one.
So I hope that someone here maybe has some ideas or suggestions to what we can try.

The main problems, as you can imagine, are that it is often difficult or impossible to get posts in the ground and where it's possible they can't go very deep, also on the steep slopes, it's difficult to get the fence high enough (or low, since it's not an even slope).

Having it being mobile, makes it even worse, since we start over every time, trying to find good locations for the post and making the fence high and low enough and the first couple of days in a new location are spent catching chickens and fixing the fence - and once it's working then it's about time to move again
 
pollinator
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Joel Salatin's dad started out with this problem. He made post holders--tires filled with cement with pipe pieces to hold the posts. He put in a couple pieces, one straight and at least one angled, so the post would be close to straight even when they were on sloping ground.
 
Marcus Hoff
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Ahhh - that sounds promising!
I had been thinking about making posts with "cement feet", but that would still be a problem on the slopes.
His idea sounds like it could solve the slope problem. Do you know if it was normal car tires or more like wheelbarrow kind of tires? I imagine that car tires filled with cement are heavy to carry around.
 
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For stationary, long term fencing, gabions might work. Make about 30 inch diameter circles out of good quality galvanized wire. Hold post vertical or on a desired lean and fill the basket with rocks. Posts last much longer when there's no soil contact. Snakes and lizards may take up residence.
 
R Scott
pollinator
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Marcus Hoff wrote:Ahhh - that sounds promising!
I had been thinking about making posts with "cement feet", but that would still be a problem on the slopes.
His idea sounds like it could solve the slope problem. Do you know if it was normal car tires or more like wheelbarrow kind of tires? I imagine that car tires filled with cement are heavy to carry around.



Small car tires, mostly. Bigger tires for corners. Dale's gabion idea works really well for semi-permanent corners and laneways.
 
pollinator
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I've used netting for my chicken fencing for years....it's easy to move around, drapes over uneven ground, and tough netting like old fish net or golf/baseball practice yard netting is pretty critter-and-sun proof. Usually I put it up with stakes, but in woods I've hung or tied it to trees or bushes or draped it over saplings cut off, and in some cases used tripods of bamboo or poles as the supports, which I think might work for you as they don't need to be driven in. Simply leave some excess of the net dragging on the ground and then hold this in place with rocks or logs. A line or several of electric fence along the outside will make the whole system completely predator proof if that's a danger.....
 
Marcus Hoff
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Once we get the slopes terraced we are going to put in permanent fencing in the terrace walls. But we just wanted to be able to move chickens around before that.
We have used drape netting before and it solves the slope problem at the bottom and rocks keep it down nicely. We just used the green garden/terrace netting and that worked fine. It's not very expensive as I imagine sports netting could be.
Our main problem is keeping the chickens in, not so much keeping the predators out. We have only had one attack, it was a falcon and the chickens defended them selves. The foxes don't come near them because of the dog.
 
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