u/Asleep_Onion

Had an interesting night last night. Got to watch two of my best plans work out perfectly.

First, in the middle of the night, a rat chewed through my fiber internet line. This is the second time that's happened, and after the fiasco that happened the first time, I was better prepared this time, with a backup starlink plugged into my router, ready to automatically switch over to that in the event of a fiber internet outage. It worked perfectly, we only lost internet for a few seconds while it did the switchover, all while I was asleep. I'll get around to fixing the internet fiber whenever I have time, but because of my backup plan working beautifully, there's no rush. It also allowed one of my Ring cameras to record what happened about an hour later...

This bobcat tried to get into my meat chicken run. I didn't catch the whole event on video, so I'm not exactly sure what happened before the bobcat gave up and left, but it proves that my hard work that went into protecting the chickens paid off. This bobcat had no easy way to get to the meat chickens, and eventually decided to go find something easier. Maybe it even got zapped by the hotwire, I don't know. In any case, I was stoked to wake up this morning and discover that multiple crises were averted while I slept peacefully :) I love seeing a good plan work out.

What all have you guys made plans for that ended up working out as good as (or better than) you expected?

I posted a couple photos and a build description yesterday, but when I realized that one of my security cameras recorded the whole thing, I decided to throw together this little video montage of the build from start to finish.

I normally thoroughly plan everything and make detailed CAD drawings and totally over-engineer everything I do, but in this case I just grabbed some tools and got straight to work with only a vague idea of a plan. Mostly I figured it out as I went.

My favorite part is when I threw the tarp up the first time, and quickly realized that plan was terrible and not going to work, for reasons that are obvious in the video lol. So then I threw together a makeshift roof frame to stretch the tarps over, which worked much better. Enjoy!

Just finished this poultry pen and populated it with my first 10 meat birds. (I've got a totally different pen and coop elsewhere for the eggers).

At 600 square feet, it's way oversized for only 10 cornish cross chickens, but the plan is to get a few turkeys and a larger flock of meat chickens later.

The pen is made of pressure treated posts 2' deep in concrete, H-posts at the corners.

The fencing is buried almost a foot deep, and consists of:

• 3' tall 1/2" hardware cloth on the lower half
• 6' tall 2x4 welded wire
• Cattle panels on the lower 2/3rds.
• 3 rows of hotwire (only 1.5 rows show in photo, I ran out of wire before I was done lol)

There is also bird netting stretched over the whole thing. The tarps are stretched over some very basic trusses I constructed, with the assumption that someday I might build a proper roof on it.

The gate is just a basic chainlink gate, that I reinforced with a bunch of welded wire and hardware cloth, and at some point maybe cattle panel too (I was starting to worry about the weight, so I didn't put that on yet). The threshold under the gate is buried cinderblocks filled with concrete.

There's no coop, really. I blew all my budget (and then some) on the rest of it. So these birds get a repurposed dog kennel for the time being, which I wrapped with some of that reflective bubble wrap stuff from Home Depot. My hope is that the pen will keep predators out well enough that they don't need a really nice coop, and they're getting butchered in a month anyways. But until then, they seem to be really enjoying their new life out there! It's a bummer that this breed can't survive long because they're actually really sweet and fun, and love people. I've had to resist the urge to get attached to any of them.