Can u give me specific dimensions for run?

[patandchickens]

Quote:
As billfields says, DOGS. There are loose dogs everywhere, and many of them are adept diggers. 8-12" will not necessarily be enough.

Foxes are also more common in many suburban and semi-urban areas than you might think, and especially when the babies are young, they will most definitely hunt during daytime. Dogs are much much more of a threat though.

I really do not think it's worth going to all the work of digging 18+" down (which is really what it takes to be reasonably secure) when you could do a 2-4' wide *apron*, horizontally on the ground surface or just below it, and get the same results.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Chooksaurus]

Quote:
Not only are there the dogs and such that others have mentioned, but our chickens have decided that the best place to dig a set of 4-6" deep dust-bath holes is right up along the fence. They also scratch along the fence along one entire side, and have a 2-3" deep groove worn along the inside. It wouldn't take much effort from an outside digger to meet their efforts.

Of note: our run is 14'x18' = 252 sq. ft. for 12 birds. They have plenty of room, but still like to dig along the fence.

An 18" trench that was 4" wide took me about 3 hours total work time with a trenching shovel. You could always rent a trencher, but it wasn't really all that much work.

 

[MIKE555444]

I guess depending on your area and what kind of preditors you might have would determine how secure you should be.

I have a situation where we have many dogs in our neighborhood so I needed to mostly protect from the dogs and then they pretty much keep everything else chased away. I used cheap lanscaping timbers and found some free chain link fence that was 6' tall. This worked out great from my large breed since I buried 6" in the ground and they never attempt to fly over the remaining 5 1/2'. I am in the process of doing an electric fence once I work out the electricity issue.

 

[HappyHatch'en]

I let my guard down just one day, previous I had no problems with stray dogs...just one day I got lax and came home to 7 dead turkey's and 6 dead chickens...my neighbor saw three stray dogs in the area....things can and will happen.
A run should be longer than it is wide...a good width is 8 feet so you can catch a bird easily.