Animals Digging to Get In

I have not had the problem but scbatz33 did with raccoons. She lost nearly all of her birds before she could get them stopped.

She dug out around the doorway of the stall and buried cinder blacks, she reinforced the entire stall with wire, she buried wire around the bottom of the stall and out to stop them.

You have to have something solid or hardwire cloth buried down and out away from the walls so when they dig, they hit wire or something solid they cannot dig through.

 

It wasn't a dig in, but more of a walk in. Before I put the apron around my run, I had a possum kind of push its way under the wire around my run. The wire was not buried but was right on the ground and the bottom was hidden in the grass. I did put an apron down after that.

I always had an apron around my coop. My philosophy is to have a predator resistant run for the daytime and a predator proof coop to lock them in at night.

 

Too many rocks where my coops and runs are, a small rodent might be able to tunnel around them but would have to be very persistent.

Digging post holes was a major undertaking.

 

We have had diggers around our coop/run. But they were foiled b/c we dug 12 inches down into the hard, clay ground to bury the run wire. They also climbed up on top of the run, which was netted and covered with heavy duty construction grade plastic and tried to claw open the plastic to get into the coop.
Not long thereafter, we trapped FIVE humongous raccoons. They're pushing up daisies now.

 

I have had a very recent problem with fox. My run fence (hardwire) is buried down approx. a foot, and they gave up trying to dig their way in. DD and I went to the gravel pit yesterday and hauled a car load of large rocks home and placed them around the fence as well. No evidence of digging this morning, so I hope that they have given up. My coop is very secure, but I leave for work 2 mornings a week before the sun comes up, and I go out and open the pop door before I leave, so the fence has to be secure as well.