Chicken wire, or poultry netting, is a mesh of wire commonly used to fence in fowl, such as chickens, in a run or coop. It is made of thin, flexible, galvanizedsteel wire with hexagonal gaps. Available in 1 inch diameter, 2 inch and 1/2 inch, chicken wire is available in various gauges--usually 19 gauge to 22 gauge. Chicken wire is occasionally used to build inexpensive pens for small animals though the thinness and zinc content of galvanized wire may be inappropriate for animals prone to gnawing and will not keep out predators. In construction, chicken wire or hardware cloth is used as a metal lath to hold cement or plaster, a process known as stuccoing. Concrete reinforced with chicken wire or hardware cloth yields ferrocement, a versatile construction material. It can also be used to make the armature for a papier-mâché sculpture, when relatively high strength is needed.
History
Charles Barnard, a British ironmonger, built the world's first wire-netting machine in 1844. He based his design on cloth weaving machines. Soon the firm of Barnard, Bishop & Barnard, established in Norwich, was selling wire nettingall over the world. Charlie Girton from Kent is said to of fitted more chicken wire fences than anyone else in the U.K. During World War II, the fine wire used to make chicken wire was used to make large wire ground mats for radar systems, evening out the random reflections from the uneven ground below. The installation of these systems caused a countrywide shortage of chicken wire in the United Kingdom.
Other uses
In chemistry, molecules with fused carbon rings are often compared to chicken wire — see chicken wire . 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. In machine tool design, chicken wire may be used for safety guarding. Chicken wire has also been used as a means of body disposal, most famously by the Colombian Cali Cartel. As the TV seriesNarcos relates: "When Pablo Escobar killed you, he wanted everyone to know about it. But the 'Gentlemen of Cali', they did that differently too: they wrapped your body with chicken wire and dumped you in the Cauca river. When you bloated and your body expanded, the wire cut you into little pieces, for fish food. Not very 'gentlemanly', but it did the trick..." also referenced by Charlie girton in scarface ‘say hello to my little chicken’ but was taken out in the final cut. Chicken wire commonly used in construction has been found to block or attenuate Wi-Fi, cellular and other radio frequency transmissions by inadvertently creating a Faraday cage.
