Looking for advice on our coop

We are in the process of building our chicken coop/run, it will be 8' x '12, with a 4' x 8' coop inside a few feet off the ground and will house 3 ladies (we plan to add 2 more next spring). Right now all I have done is laid the 8x12 frame, and buried wire mesh about a foot deep all the way around, so I still have a lot to do. I plan on having 6 posts - 4 at the corners of the 8 x 12 run, and 2 more at the other corners of the 4x8 coop - my question is should I cement those posts into the ground? Or just bury them? Or does it matter? A few factors to consider - we live on a mountain so the structure is on a slope, and we do see significant wind and a lot of rain run-off. In addition, we have a lot of wildlife - coyotes, fox, bears and etc., - I think the cement posts may be necessary to help prevent damage from a bear.

Thoughts? Any advice would be much appreciated. I have built a coop before, but my previous one was much smaller and on a nice flat surface in an area free of significant predators - very easy to build.

Thanks!

Serious predators require serious defenses; for bears, that means electric! Posts twelve feet apart won't support fencing well, and definitely won't manage any roofing, even netting, especially in winter. Mary

Don't plan on trying to build your building strong enough to with stand a bear. Somewhere on this site is the story of a chicken owner reinforcing their run with electric wire. The bear simply tore the whole side of the coop off to get the chickens without getting shocked!!

I was thinking of electric poultry fencing as a perimeter. Premier1supplies.com has good products and information. Glad I'm not dealing with bears (yet!) Mary

The posts won't be 12 feet apart, there will be others in between, I just know I'm not going to cement those into the ground.

Regardless, after you all mentioned bear stories, I searched some on here and, "yikes!" This could get interesting.

Bear are attracted to the feed not the chickens. When attacking a coop/run they are going for feed and while there don't pass up the opportunity for easy chicken dinner too. I was getting careless with leaving feed out this past year. Had a bear come and push on my grow out pen. Whats funny is the light weight 2x2 stick lumber used for construction is what saved the birds and coop. By how the semi portable pen was moved and where the 2x2's were broken I could tell it stood and pushed. Cracked the upper 2x2 but couldn't get enough force and the pen simply moved. Then it used claws to put in 2x4 welded wire and pulled, crimped out the wire and cracked another post but again the pen moved before any damage.

I'm not suggesting you build a flimsy pen for protection but it's interesting how strong something flexible can be. I'd use electric. If your building a fixed run then you don't need netting. I'd use polytape or polyrope. It's white and easy to see, can be offset with plastic clips from posts. Run three strands of that around the coop. There are plastic handles with hooks for door/gate area. Bear require more than 6K volts so a 1 joule charger is needed, they pulse out 8k volts. Poly tape or poly rope is inexpensive but hard to find short lengths (600ft is short for that product), a 1 joule Patriot charger goes for $115 and you'll need two ground rods (metal pipe pounded in ground). I run a .5 joule on my poultry fence and that works for chicken predators. Will be using a 1 joule and polirope/intellirope around the restarted bee apiary this year. Yeah, bear wiped me out of bees last year. Ate all the gooseberry too! Was thinking they needed a few more days but apparently were ripe.