Building an aviary for waterfowl

[blueraven]

Hello again , just want share some things I have been up to lately. First off my sister sold her horses so now we have alot of space on the other side of the fence and my dad got her this old metal round pen for training the horses in with sand but now its basicly grown over with grass and weeds. The round pen is about 8 feet hight made of really heavy metal not sure what kind but its not going anywhere i helped put it up years ago when I was much younger. so I got an idea what if i made it into an avairy for my waterfowl mainly my ducks because my geese free range all day. so Its maybe a little bit less then at 100ft from side to side in a circle. I so far put up the chicken wire on the sides. I am going to be putting a little pond in the sand with some pond liner. So now i just am trying to find some avairy netting how much does it run for prices these days. I was looking at ebay. does anyone know where I can purchase some localy like what stores are common for having it.

so far for birds for the avairy i have a blue winged teal hen , Mandarin hen, and i am going to be getting a pair of wood ducks soon from mnwaterfowler hes on here selling them and also some bar head geese. cant wait.

 

[MNwaterfowler]

Try 3Tproducts.com

 

[Silver Silkie]

Oooh. Sounds like a great idea! Good Luck!

 

[blueraven]

Oooh. Sounds like a great idea! Good Luck!

Thank you all post some pictures as soon as I find a net or buy one.

 

[waterfowl rocks]

Make the supports out of somthing really strong, I just spent $1000 on a waterfowl aviary and we had 8 inches of really sticky snow and it all came down! Also do not trust the big store's prices for the netting. Go to eBay.

 

[mominoz]

Chicken wire only keeps your birds in, not predators out. at least hotwire bottom about 6" off ground and another higher up. Dogs, raccoons, possums, and anything bigger will go /chew thru chicken wire. I suggest you surround it with horse wire or dog kennel wire and hot wire. I have that on mine... only rats/snakes have gotten in , but they haven't eaten any birds

 

[MinxFox]

Make the supports out of somthing really strong, I just spent $1000 on a waterfowl aviary and we had 8 inches of really sticky snow and it all came down! Also do not trust the big store's prices for the netting. Go to eBay.

Actually I don't trust eBay and would rather trust the big store's prices. I found some netting on eBay and thought I got it for a great steal compared to those big store prices. Well, in my opinion with netting you get what you pay for. This netting I got is very thin and has been ripping all over the place. Last year I bought netting for a new aviary I am working on. This time I did a lot of research and asking around about netting and what to use and thus I bought some Toprite knotted netting. Once it came in the difference was shocking. It is at least twice as thick as the ebay netting I have and feels a lot stronger. Now I know why people recommend them and why people say that kind of netting lasts for at least 20 years.

So in my searching I have found that 3T products and Toprite is the best. I went with Toprite just because of all the people I talked to Toprite was the main recommendation. Another cool thing is I was able to visit 2 peafowl breeders that use Toprite netting so I got to see and feel the quality. One had it over a small pen and the other had it over a large, tall flight aviary.

Maybe it is just me who has had a bad experience with cheep eBay netting, but what a horrible experience it has been. If anyone wants to look into Toprite netting I got mine off of Cuttler's Supply: http://cutlersupply.com/zen_new51/i...=9_117&zenid=21e4033b5f2c9120870d408265cc7f6f

Edit: Oops just saw this thread was started back in 2013 so hopefully they figured everything out.