Pavers prevent predators?

[urbanfarms]

Hi BYC fam! First time coop designer and am wondering about predator prevention. Although were in an urban area, we live less mile away from open nature preserve area with racoons, rats, snakes, possums, etc sometimes trespassing in our yard. Rather than extending a skirt of hardware cloth 2' from the base of our coop/run, would adding 12" pavers keep diggers at bay?

 

[CaliforniaMountainChicks]

Predators tend to dig at the edge of barriers (most of the time the edge of a fence). A predator may see the edge of your pavers as a barrier to start at so they may just dig right under them. The wire aprons are effective because they’re securely fastened to the edge of the run and then hidden by dirt or grass, making the beginning and end of it invisible to the predator. With the apron they’ll start digging by the fence and then proceed to hit the apron. They find that they can’t dig down any further which confuses them and they give up because they don’t know where the end of the ‘invisible’ apron is. I personally recommend an apron that’s a minimum of 1.5 feet wide. Mine is personally 3 feet wide but that’s because I have a ton of coyotes and didn’t want to risk anything.

 

[K0k0shka]

Nope! 12" of anything is not far out enough. They'll just dig at the edge of the pavers and under them. One big downside of pavers is that the animal can see them. It can see where they end, and dig after that, tunneling under them. With hardware cloth that's flat along the ground and covered with dirt/mulch/whatever, especially once grass grows through it, it's impossible to see where it is, where it begins and where it ends. The animal will dig here and there, encountering wire, and will soon give up just because there's no way of knowing where the wire ends, and IF it ends at all! As far as the animal is concerned, there's wire everywhere! It's not worth their effort to dig up the entire perimeter to figure out exactly where it ends. So they give up. Put the hardware cloth down, you won't regret it.

 

[tlcmurphy]

We did pavers, mostly to keep the mud at bay. We have 2 rows of pavers (2 feet) around the coop and most of the run, nothings going through that! Predators can dig under skirts too if so inclined…

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

We did pavers, mostly to keep the mud at bay. We have 2 rows of pavers (2 feet) around the coop and most of the run, nothings going through that! Predators can dig under skirts too if so inclined…

No, they're going under it.

 

[David61]

Pavers go on the inside so chickens don't dig at the edge of the fence. The purpose of the buried apron is so then predators dig at the edge of the fence they hit it, can't get in, can't tell how far back to start to dig and give up. Putting pavers down is just telling them where to start digging. Why would you want to help them figure that out?

 

[Krugerrand]

Of course you can still use your pavers if you have a specific desire for them to be there, ie erosion control under the drip edge. Simply get that apron secure underneath them and stretch 2' beyond the pavers. That way if something starts digging beyond the paver, they'll still run into the apron.

 

[Red Horse]

We took the apron a little farther and just put hardware cloth under the entire run so even if something dug under the apron, it couldn't come up into the run. Probably we could have just gotten away with an apron on both the inside and outside and it would have been a little cheaper.

 

[Krugerrand]

We took the apron a little farther and just put hardware cloth under the entire run so even if something dug under the apron, it couldn't come up into the run. Probably we could have just gotten away with an apron on both the inside and outside and it would have been a little cheaper.

The trick to that is making sure it's deeper than the chickens can dig so that they don't damage their talons when they dig.

 

[Red Horse]

The trick to that is making sure it's deeper than the chickens can dig so that they don't damage their talons when they dig.

Yes! We filled the inside of the run with about 5-6 inches of wet-packed limestone screenings and more around the outside to help with drainage. So far after almost a year they haven't made it down to the cloth, but I do sometimes hide treats in their dust bath, which gets emptied often, so they tend to scratch around in there more and they're rooting around in cleaner substrate. I also put straw over the limestone so I think the wheat berries help too... easy pickin's.