Good Fences Make Good Chickens
Last year being our first to have chickens, we never really had a need to fence in our garden. Our chickens free range during the day. When we first got them they didn’t venture to far from the coop. They slowly widened their horizons, so to speak, and found the garden. By that time most of the plants were mature enough to withstand their scratching around in the dirt, though they took their toll on the more delicate plants. They really loved the potato patch.
“Chickens in the Garden!” became a common cry as one of us ran down to chase them out. It soon became apparent that we needed to find a way to keep them out. After a little research we learned that buying fencing material was going to cost a lot more than we could afford. But we were getting ready to plant strawberries and did not want the plants ruined.
In our efforts to be self sufficient we try to use resources that we already have on hand. So, looking around us, we realized that we have 30 acres of fencing material right here!
Weaving a Stick Fence
Charley and Tony gathered up the materials we needed. One Sunday afternoon the three of us went down to the strawberry patch an build a fence. Actually, we wove a fence.
Taking trees & limbs about 3 inches in diameter we build a frame consisting of 3 limbs for the uprights and 3 horizontal limbs to weave the smaller twigs through.
We had an assembly line process. Charley cut the limbs and twigs to size, I assembled the frames, Tony arranged the frames around the strawberry patch and began the weaving. As we got them ready, we tied the frames together end to end. When we had all the frames we needed in place, Charley and I joined Tony in the weaving.
For the weaving we used twigs about 1 inch to make smaller uprights. Using smaller twigs we filled in the gaps. The weaving works best with green, bendable twigs.
The result was a functional, affordable fence. It was rustic looking, but that’s what we like. It really cost us nothing but time and with a little tweaking has worked very well.
If you are thinking of trying this, I do recommend that you weave it pretty tight. Chickens can get through gaps you never thought they could. Test your fence. If you can move a twig, so can a chicken. Charley just recently wove some bamboo twigs in to make it a much tighter fence.
This ideas can be expanded into other parts of your garden. You can weave stick trellises, plant beans or other viney plants can climb over them & use them for support.
We plan to use the bamboo that Charley and Tony harvested at a neighbors property to fence in the larger garden. I’ll be posting on that at a later date.
Update: Below is a photo of the bamboo fence we built to replace the stick fence around the strawberry patch.
6 comments
Thanks for that, i luckily typed in the computer and your site came on i was going to start a fence for the first time and was going to go about it all wrong its just in the garden to keep the dog from diggin the vegetables up. what did you use to tie the frame i want to use twigs but may use string. Thanks for the info.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for visiting us here. We used string to tie the frames together. You may also want to use some kind of posts between each section. Secure them in the ground and tie the section to keep them from swaying.
If your dog is pretty well mannered this other method may work. I taught our dogs to stay out of the garden by using tree limbs that have a fork and about 2 feet long. The forked part should be something like you would use for a sling shot. Using them as the fence posts I’d push them in the ground at the corners and along the edge of the garden with the forked end up. Then I’d lay long sticks (the rails) on top of the forks until I had them around the perimeter of the garden. The dogs quickly got the idea not to go in there. This did not work with the cats and I’m certain it wouldn’t work with the chickens.
[...] year we built a primitive stick fence around the new Strawberry Patch. We used sticks, limbs and twigs from the woods. It lasted the [...]
[...] the creek. Adding compost to the soil we planted them in hills. To keep the chickens out we built a primitive fence around the strawberry patch using sticks and twigs we gathered from the woods (this spring we [...]
what about flying over the top? or do you clip your chickens wings? thank you.
Hi Denise,
Thanks for the visit. Flying over the top can be a problem unless you weave in long sticks vertically like we did with the fence surrounding the strawberry patch (we rebuilt it last year using bamboo). I have added a photo of that fence to this post.
We will however have a problem this year with the main garden fence that we built in the post & rail fashion. It was good enough to keep the older chickens out of the garden last year. We allowed last years chicks to have access to the garden since they didn’t create much damage. But, they have learned (as adults) they can fly over the top rail. We will have to figure something out to remedy this. We do not clip wings.
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