Chicken wire floor?

My coop floor is concrete with 2-3 inches of pine chips, my run has several inches construction sand.

Their feet easily get cut, so chicken wire would not be a good idea at all.

I am a new to this, but i am putting in a wire bottom, buried 6-12 inches buried in the ground (and going up the sides to connect with the fence). We have raccoons in the area, and it will keep out rodents too.

We buried the welded wire about 12-18 inches around the run. Nothing is digging in. We also wrapped chicken wire at the bottom as a skirt, so our cats and other animals could not get their little arms in.

I'm in the process of asking hubby to rewire with hardware cloth either under the welded wire or as a replacement. I'd like to keep my coop door open at night to cool it down at night.

My run


The outside access door to free range


Our coop is inside our garage.

Yes, putting wire in is a good idea, to keep out the predators.
It's all about where about you live and what you think about the chickens safety.

EDIT: Just remember to bury the wire deep enough so the chickens don't cut their feet!
Edited by AndrewKroger - 5/3/12 at 4:29am

For any run the best protection against digging predators is the attach fencing to your run fence on the outside of the the run and lay the fencing flat on the ground coming out a foot or more. Pin the outer edge of the fencing down to the ground and when the vegetation grows up through it you will never know it's there. This stops digging predator at the point where they would normally dig. Buried wire is a lot of work and some predators like foxes can dig down a foot in a matter of minutes. Use heavier fencing for predator guards not chicken wire. Wire under chickens in a run is not the best you can do for your chickens, they like to dig and should be able to do so.

Jaxon, could you please give more details on how to do this?

 

How do you pin the fencing to the ground?

 

Thanks!

You can get 100 blanket staples at Home Depot or Lowes for about $7.   You just hammer these to the fencing that is angled out about a foot on the outside of your run fence into the ground.  That will keep any diggers from getting under the fence.

 

I plan on putting wire on the floor of the run because our soil is completely full of rocks and it will be extremely labor intensive to build a trench to bury the wire around the footprint of the run.  I plan to do sand on top of the wire- deep enough that they'll be able to dig around and not reach the wire (I'll make a frame around the bottom edge of the run so the sand won't fall out the sides).  Could anyone give some input on how deep I should make the sand bed?  I have no idea how deep chickens can dig.