Chicken wire

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Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2008 | Fences

Chicken in a hen house behind chicken wire

Chicken wire, or poultry netting, is a mesh of wire, generally used for making fences. It is made of thin, flexible galvanized wire, with hexagonal gaps. Available in 1 inch (about 2.5 cm) diameter, 2 inch (about 5 cm) and 1/2 inch (about 1.3 cm), chicken wire is available in various wire gauges usually 19 gauge (about 1 mm wire) to 22 gauge (about 0.7 mm wire)

Chicken wire is also used as a matrix to hold cement or plaster, in a process known as stuccoing.

It can also be used as a security measure in musical venues to protect the musicians from things being thrown from the audience, as seen in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.

Psychologist Harry Harlow used chicken wire to create "surrogate mothers" for rhesus monkeys. In experiments, the wire "mothers" tended to inspire less affection than cloth "mothers" despite being equipped with "nipples" supplying "milk."

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg claims that the animatronics puppet for E.T. "was made out of brown Play-Doh and chicken wire" in a teaser trailer for the film Bee Movie.

In chemistry, molecules with fused carbon rings are often compared to chicken wire — see chicken wire (chemistry).

In photonics, the chicken-wire effect is a predominant pattern of low transmission lines between multifiber bundles in a fiberoptic used to couple the intensifier tube to the CCD sensor. The lines have a pattern similar to that of chicken wire.

For many years, chicken wire was thought to have been the best source for containing flocks of chickens (hence the name, chicken wire), until the discovery of electromagnetiv fields which are now commonly used. Chicken wire, having such a small gauge, is found to be too flimsy. While it keeps the average chicken from escaping, it shows to be a bad source for keeping out predators, such as opposum, skunk, and commonly dogs as well.

It is also often used in hutches and runs for rabbits/guinea-pigs, but this can be unsafe as it does not effectively protect against predators, can rust or break easily which can leave sharp edges, and can also stretch, potentially strangling small animals.