Keeping chickens out when you have a fishing line fence for deer?

Last year I thought I'd stumbled on a great fencing option - plastic safety fence, stacked one row on top of itself. it worked great to keep the deer out but now after a winter, it's all ripped up and rotted. boo :(

My ultimate goal is to put in a "real" wire fence but I don't have available cash or time to put it in at the moment but I won't be able to garden at all if I don't do something. I want to try the fishing line fence to see if it works... but my conundrum is, I also need to keep my chickens and my dog out of the garden. If I put a low chicken netting type fence up, won't that show the deer where the fence line is? I'm trying to figure out what the best way to keep both chickens and deer out.

Has anyone tried stringing more line down below like an inch apart, really tight, to keep out smaller animals? I don't have wild rabbits out here so I don't think anything would chew it up. I was thinking about doing that down low for the chickens, and increasing the frequency higher up to keep out this stupid dog, and then go to the 1ft spacing up top for the deer.

How about if you put a chicken wire fence around the garden for the chicken/dog and then a deer fishing line fence about 4' out from that?  I've heard double fences mess with a deer's depth perception so even if they see/feel the fishing line, maybe the second fence behind it would keep them from proceeding?

My guess on closely strung fishing line is that it may sag and that a running dog may get tangled up in it or something.

Thanks Mike!

That sounds like a good option. I was stringing the fence yesterday and I was thinking I could try to do just fishing line also, an inch or so apart, but that seems so tedious. I suspect a chicken fence right inside might be easier! I did finally find a blog post yesterday where a lady did a 24" chicken wire around the bottom of the perimeter and she didn't report any issues with it but who knows. It just seems to me like they would still try to go over it or it would "mark" something for them.

It also depends on how big your garden is and how "pokey" it looks.  A fence around a 10x10 garden won't need to be as high as one around a 50x50 garden.  They have more room to land and to jump from when they want to leave a larger garden.  Having a lot of pokey looking stakes, trellises, bird baths, raised bed edges, etc also reduces their interest in risking a broken leg jumping into the gauntlet.

Well, just in case anyone in the future searches for this... it didn't work. And I think it's because of the short fence I put up to keep the chickens out. So frustrating. I've got my perennials covered with net but have given up on anything else. They bend down the wire I put up for the chickens and then both deer AND chickens are in the garden, completely destructive.

So - if I was to really give this a shot to see if it worked, I'd probably have to do an outer fishing line fence and inner chicken fence. But I'm not going to redo all that.

Next year, I am putting in a REAL fence. I will say someone in my area had told me they haven't had any problems since they did the double fence thing with some extra poultrynet they had, and I have some unused ones so I may string baling twine along the fence to create a visual fence, and put the electric net around it about 3 feet out for that double fence effect. We will see. I may not even bother. I've been trying to at least keep things mulched but because I now can't keep the chickens out, even that isn't working well.