FBTSOYP Fencing Co.

Last week I decided to start a new business. More specifically, I became the founder of a fencing company called, "Fly-By-The-Seat-Of-Your-Pants Fencing Company," or "FBTSOYP Fencing Co." for short. The company's #1 motto is: "it's not perfect, but it's perfectly acceptable." It's pretty much a one-woman show, though I do occasionally accept assistance from other equally untrained and inexperienced workers, ranging in age from 2 to 35. My first project was to build a fence to separate the goat yard from the chicken yard.

When we first got the chickens, I set up a temporary chicken-wire-and-bean-pole (poles designed to support bean plants in the garden) enclosure to keep the chickens somewhat contained.

What the chicken yard set-up looked like in April.

We were letting our small flock out to free-range during the day, so the main purpose of the enclosure ended up being to restrict the goats' access to the laying pellets and table scraps that we feed the chickens. It was mostly successful for the first couple of weeks, but then Petah discovered that she could barge right through the flimsy fence and that was pretty much the end of us being able to feed the chickens anything (and we quickly noticed a decrease in egg production).

At the end of April, just before Chive gave birth to Lou Lou and Harvey, we had a professional fence installed by an amazing local fence company (owned and run by a friend of ours). The fence completely encloses the goat barn and the chicken coop, with 2 metal gates (one on the house-side of the enclosure, and one on the pasture-side (we can connect our electric net fence to the back entrance, thus allowing the goats extra (and varied) room to graze)). And it is surprisingly chicken-proof. The only parts that aren't chicken-proof are the metal gates since the chickens can squeeze under them. It became clear pretty early on after the fence went up that we were going to need more fencing. And I decided that the best idea would be to add an extra internal fence that would also serve to separate the goats from the chickens once and for all.

Having never built a fence before, nor read anything about fence building, my knowledge of how to build one was minimal at best. But I decided to throw caution to the wind, fly by the seat of my pants, and build one anyway. When I went to the farmer's supply store to buy some fencing materials, the store worker who helped me looked concerned.

"What are you going to use these for?" she asked, quizzically, and then, eyeing Zeben strapped to my back, she added, "it's really not a good idea to fence your children in with this type of welded wire."

I can understand that I don't look like a farmer or like I'm at all qualified to build a fence. But do I really look like someone who would go to a farmer's supply store to buy fencing materials in order to build a fence for my children? I mean, does anyone look like someone who would do that?

"It's for my chickens, actually," I clarified, and the woman smiled and rang me out.

I bought 100 feet of welded wire, 6 cedar posts and a bag of fence nails (they look like the letter "U") to build the fence. Then I got to work. The first step was installing the posts, which, since we don't have a fence-post-hole digger, required digging holes with a shovel before pounding the posts in with a mallet. My sister, Jes, volunteered to help me out, and despite her rather inappropriate outfit, proved herself as a rather adept hole-digger. I, on the other hand, was dressed for success.

These pictures of me in my FBTSOYP Fencing Co. uniform

should clear up any lingering doubt about my [lack of] image-consciousness.
Jes really got into the fencing groove,
high-heeled clogs, jewelry and all.

She really knows how to ride a shovel.

The second motto of the FBTSOYP Fencing Co. is, "when you don't know what you're doing, laugh." Jes and I did plenty of that.

I found the placing of the posts to be pretty satisfying (especially the banging part; it was a great way to release any pent up anger that I may or may not accumulate as the mother of three young children), but attaching the wire to the posts gave me the most gratification. Apparently I like my livestock to be segregated. Stepping in chicken poop while chilling with the goats was not floating my boat. Chasing chickens away from our seedlings in the garden or off of our landlords' property was also becoming rather aggravating. So my favorite part about completing the project was sitting back and watching the chickens not escaping from their new enclosure.

Views of the new chicken yard:

The large, dark barn is an old tobacco barn that our landlords
use to house their many tractors along with some old lumber.

On the other side of the goat barn, I had to put up a small section of fence and a gate (to make the gate, I used some old wood scraps that I found laying around, and some store-bought hinges). And, even though it didn't turn out perfectly, it certainly is perfectly acceptable.


The only bummer about the whole project was coming out to check on things the morning after it was completed and discovering one hen, "Vulture" on the wrong side of the fence.

One unacceptable, escaped chicken and three enclosed,
very confused chickens, saying, "how did she get out there??!!"

But I'm pretty much convinced that Jaz just accidentally let her out when he was opening up the coop earlier that morning. Because no one has managed to escape again since. It's all just peaceful segregation and containment. Just in time, too, since as of this week we now have 12 hens pecking around in the new-and-improved chicken yard.

The second project for the FBTSOYP Fencing Co. was to modify the chicken coop slightly so as to make it more adequate for our six extra chickens. The coop was designed to hold only 10 birds, and while eventually we will need to build a whole other coop (once the chicka-biddies are ready to move outside), I thought that a temporary fix would just be to add some extra roosting space for our two surplus hens (chickens like to roost--sit on a beam, or in the real world, a tree--above ground level at night). So I added a cross-bar to the existing roost to make sure that each chicken would have her 12 inches of roosting space.

One of the new white-leghorns, testing out my temporary fix
("Vulture" is laying an egg in a nesting box in the background).

The third project that I undertook as sole proprieter of the FBTSOYP Fencing Co. was to install and modify a divider in the goat barn so that we'd have a way to separate the goats from each other. The main purpose of this is so that we can keep the kid goats away from the mama goats at night, and thus be able to get more than 1/2 a cup of milk for ourselves in the morning. But the new pen will also come in handy when Petah has her babies, so that we can provide her with a nice kidding stall. Lena's dad gave me most of what I needed to make this happen (an old barn divider that Lena's parents had used when they raised sheep back in the day), so all I had to do was attach it to the walls of the barn and then add some extra boards to make it goat-kid proof (which is apparently different from lamb-proof).

Chive and Harvey standing in the entrace of their fancier-than-ever barn.

Petah voluntarily hanging out in the new sectioned-off pen.

While working on the goat barn project, I got to experience the third motto of the FBTSOYP Fencing Co.: "Learning from your own foolish mistakes is also perfectly acceptable." For instance, I learned that when you use a screw that is an inch too long for your particular purpose, and when the extra inch of screw then sticks out of the backside of your project, and when you then decide to touch that protuding bit of metal, it will be really hot and burn your thumb.

The visual remnants of my screw-branding mishap.

So, now that I've finished up the most pressing of fencing-related needs on our ever-expanding farm, I am ready to start advertising my services to the community at large. If you know of anyone who needs an imperfect, but perfectly acceptable fence built, please let them know about the Fly-By-The-Seat-Of-Your-Pants Fencing Company.

Okay. So maybe I'm not really ready to head out into the world of fence contracting. But I am adding another notch to my Jack of All Trades belt. I'm also preparing for project #4: building a chicken tractor. And in keeping with motto #4, "advice from others, who may or may not know what they're talking about either, is always welcome," I'd love to hear about anyone else's experiences in chicken tractor construction! Until then, I'll just be sitting back, relaxing, letting my thumb heal, and watching the contained and segregated chickens with a big smile on my face.


If you haven't yet had a chance to ask a question in the comments section of my last post, feel free to click here, or simply scroll down, and do so. I'm planning to write out some answers sometime early next week.