[Penninehillbilly]

/quote]

My feed bill is going through the roof with them not free ranging, I'm emptying the veg garden putting veg in with roots and stalks still on to give them some interest and break there Bordem.

One of my first thoughts was the feed merchants are going to be making some profit.

[ColinS]

Wedge a stick under the tarp to make a tent so the rain runs off.

Thanks - as the run has fox netting over the top it needs a ridge beam over the lot held up by a couple of A-frames. I think it's called building a barn by instalments   

[Marches Farmer]

I'm at a loss about what I can do about this.
I thought about putting chicken wire over the top of the duck run, but that wouldn't really be sufficient, would it? Yet anything more solid, e.g. tarpaulin, would get shredded by the wind in a matter of hours.
If I simply lock them into their house, they will have no light and no pond. Plus the house is 'cosy' to start with.

Put a tarpaulin/opened-out old feed sacks or whatever on and then put the chicken wire over the top to make a tarp sandwich. It stops everything blowing around and getting shredded.

If the run isn't too big and the roof is low (not more than 75cm, say) you might get away with twinwall polycarbonate - light, strong, but needs sound wood and washers underneath the screw heads to stop it being blown loose.

[ColinS]

I got some white tarps from Bradshaws and they let in plenty of light - have pressed lots of rope, ground anchors and old 5litre bottles into service to hold them down but with a good Derbyshire breeze I expect I'll be picking it up from a neighbour's field some day soon.

[Creagan]

I'm at a loss about what I can do about this.
I thought about putting chicken wire over the top of the duck run, but that wouldn't really be sufficient, would it? Yet anything more solid, e.g. tarpaulin, would get shredded by the wind in a matter of hours.
If I simply lock them into their house, they will have no light and no pond. Plus the house is 'cosy' to start with.

Put a tarpaulin/opened-out old feed sacks or whatever on and then put the chicken wire over the top to make a tarp sandwich. It stops everything blowing around and getting shredded.

If the run isn't too big and the roof is low (not more than 75cm, say) you might get away with twinwall polycarbonate - light, strong, but needs sound wood and washers underneath the screw heads to stop it being blown loose.

Definitely too big to do that- it's a deer fenced run measuring about 6x18m!
However it only cost £30 on Amazon for a 3x50m roll of scaffolding netting so that will do a canopy over the top, with some light timber beams to help support it. The same mesh plus a half roll of windbreak mesh that I already had will go round the sides.

It should stop any direct contact between wild and domestic birds. The weak point of it will be that wild birds could poop onto the roof, which would then get washed through by rain, so if I see evidence of that I may need to rig up some sort of scarer.

[Eve]

The first run we built is a good 5x5m, so it needed some supports to keep the mesh on top from sagging.
So there are thin long timber slats resting on top of the run to hold the mesh up, but these slats run from the edge of the run to on top of a frame from one of those plastic greenhouses (the easy, slot in type frame) that's standing in the middle of the run.

The reason we used that greenhouse frame as roof support in a chicken run is because when used as a greenhouse the plastic caught the wind so much that it blew onto someone else's allotment within days of erecting it. The plastic shredded in no time but the frame still came in handy   
For anyone using tarpaulins, my mantra is tent lines, tent lines, tent lines

[Marches Farmer]

For anyone using tarpaulins, my mantra is tent lines, tent lines, tent lines

Or, in our case, baler twine fixed to anything solid (like a wall) or a pallet with a wrapped round bale on top.  Just have to check regularly to make sure the twine hasn't chafed through.

[Louise Gaunt]

Does anyone know the current status of disease movement? I assume no cases this side of the Channel so far but just checking in cases anyone knows anything different.
My hen's are getting used to confinement in the woodshed! It has one enclosed bay and a second open bay which I have fenced off with non electrified electric fence net plus a curtain of fruit cage netting hanging on a bamboo pole on cup hooks! It is a pain to get in and out but they are contained, under a solid roof and have light and fresh air. Their coop is in the enclosed bay and is really quite snug, I'm not sure they will want to come back out when this is all over.

[Penninehillbilly]

Sadly already heard of someone giving their hens away :-(.

[Marches Farmer]

I guess we should look to the future and have a plan in place for when (note I didn't use "if") it happens again.  We started thinking about how to provide cover when we heard Switzerland had gone on lockdown and had only one pen of birds still free-ranging by the time Holland and Belgium did the same.  I think we'll try to have almost all the birds in pens with covers as we go into Autumn as a matter of course from now on.

[big soft moose]

Does anyone know the current status of disease movement? I assume no cases this side of the Channel so far but just checking in cases anyone knows anything different.

Theres a map here showing all known cases of H5 and H7 in birds last updated on the 13th Dec  http://www.oie.int/animal-health-in-the-world/update-on-avian-influenza/2016/  click on it to zoom in.

that said  i'm sure that if there was a case in the UK we'd hear about it on national media pretty damn quick

[BrimwoodFarm]

Sadly already heard of someone giving their hens away :-(.

Me too...quite a few in fact. And, even more sadly, I heard of someone who'd culled their birds. 

[Womble]

I think we're going to do that with most of ours. The geese are miserable stuck in their house all day (they don't even make any noise any more), and the hens didn't even bother leaving their house to go into the covered run today.

We only have a limited amount of space available under cover, so if we can cull out some of the older birds, I hope that will make life more pleasant for the rest.

[lord flynn]

my geese worry me the most-they are outside in a covered run and up until today, they didn't seem to be eating a lot. today they have though, a mix of corn/wheat in water, some apples, lettuce and greens. My ducks are also outside in a  covered run and while sulking a bit, most of them are this years hatch and spent the first 2 months of their life under nets anyway and seem fine. The chooks are in a  stable with a floodlight on a timer and are fine-even come back into lay.


for those of us in Scotland, its to get stormy next week-I simply can't have wind/shade netting or tarps up here when its like that, the ducks will have to come into the stables and be wing clipped which makes me a bit sad. at least I have the option though.

[Backinwellies]

Why has everyone housed their geese?  Welfare states they need to graze ... and the flu regs just says they have to be fed away from wild birds ... cant you feed them and let them out ?  ..... or are you in the east where wild water fowl are arriving?