Repairing Electrified Netting

 As I have mentioned last time, one of the measures I have gone to for predator deterrence is electrified netting.  The netting is very easy to set up and move around and generally works well.  It does have some limitations, however.  One is that it's relatively fragile.

Several times I have found a section of netting down on the ground.  Cameras have never been positioned the right way to show me what happened, but I have assumed it was a deer that got caught on the top of the fence coming in or going out, and in its effort to free itself, it pulled up some of the posts. A coyote might be another possibility, or a bobcat--all of them are present to some degree.  I haven't seen hogs or bears, although a bear wouldn't be completely out of the question.

The most recent time this happened, it was very obviously a deer:

The hoof marks in the dirt show where it flailed around a bit trying to get out.  Another first for this time around is that the netting was actually damaged.  A couple of non-conductive vertical strands were broken, and two horizontal conductive ones were, as well.

Premier1 includes a little repair kit with each roll of netting; it has small rolls of each type of cord in the net, along with a few brass crimpers to put around the repair knots to help ensure a conductive bond.  The number were too limited for serious repairs, so I got a package of fifty 14-8 copper crimp sleeves.  They have a flared end that enabled them to slide over the square knots I tied to join the replacement pieces to the broken ends of the existing netting.

Then a quick squeeze with a pair of pliers and the repair was done:

The end result isn't particularly pretty--it's obvious there was damage--but it is again fully functional. That's all that matters.

Predators and Predator Abatement

This is mostly just a collection of night pictures of the chicken tractors, along with some fixes.  Everybody loves chicken, as the saying goes.

Initially, I put my chicken tractor out on grass, moving it daily.  I put a trail camera on it to see if there were any nighttime visitors.  Sure enough, there were.

I didn't necessarily see predators every night or even every week, but they did come frequently and get up close and personal with the chickens.

As noted previously, one night a fox did get two chickens--without ever making it into the tractor. I'm assuming it was a fox because the camera did capture a fox that night, although there were no shots of the attack itself.  At the time of the attack, I had six pullets and two cockerels in the tractor.  One of each died.  The predator attacked through the handhold opening for the milk crate.

Unlike many, I haven't had much of a problem with digging, but did see clear signs one day:

In response to all of this, I have implemented a series of preventive measures.  One was discussed in the post on tractor construction.  To close off the handhold openings, I put hardware cloth on the gate:

 

The gate still opens. To guard against digging, I put split cordwood around the tractor in any areas where there are visible gaps.

This also deters the chickens from trying to dig out.  Other than the one incident shown above, however, I haven't had a digging problem.  Finally, I realized that incidents like the one shown above--with the fox on the top of the tractor--weren't good for the chickens, even if they were secure inside.

To deal with this, I set up electrified poultry netting.  That has worked very well.  Since starting to use it, I haven't captured any pictures of anything inside the net (although deer and birds have come inside).  Although foxes could jump over, they seem to be disinclined to.

Sweetgum, 2021

 I have commented more than once about splitting sweetgum. Sometimes relatively small pieces split okay, and it does produce decent BTUs. So I'm happy to take small-diameter sweetgum if offered.

 The smaller pieces actually did split fine.  Up to four inches or so, one hit with the maul is all it took:

 

Larger pieces were more challenging to do manually, turning into a death match with maul and wedge, so I broke out the splitter.  It got the pieces split, but they tore badly.

These were mostly in the six inch range.  Although the splitter was able to crack them, they often needed significant mauling after the splitter to separate.  On the bright side, this fall and winter all of those wood shards will help the pieces catch fire and burn.