thank you all so much for the great advice! Ivywoods, yeah, we do have a 3 point auger that fits on the back of our tractor. And I know from experience that when the ground is this dry, it cuts down a few inches and then it's like hitting rock. In the past, we've had to rent larger machines to build our barn (for digging). But I just want to use what we have, our tractor/auger is not really that small... but it's not super duty heavy, either, I suppose. I agree with ChickenDanz about our clay soil and it mucking up when it gets overly wet. In fact, it takes a while to dry out after a lot of soaking and heavy rains. But I do think it's probably a good idea to run a sprinkler over the whole area the night before we go to dig so that maybe it'll be just the right amount of moisture. This could get interesting. But I don't want to kill myself in the heat figuring it out. ha!
CallDuckLover- WOW that is one determined raccoon(s)!! I am so very sorry for the loss of all of those birds! That is just awful! And with him being so sick, this couldn't be happening at a worse time.
I hope he starts to feel better quickly!
That makes me pretty worried about how I'm going to build my run/coop. I know they can tear apart the chicken wire, but can they tear apart the hardware cloth.. or is he ripping it away from the wood it's secured to? I was looking at someone's coop here recently and they said they had a lot of raccoons and they were using the hardware cloth, but sandwiching it between two pieces of wood, so there are no exposed edges to get ahold of. I'm pretty sure that's how I'm going to build mine. I realize that is a lot more wood to buy/hunt down.
My other worry- and not a lot of people really address this, is what about the predators trying to get UNDER the wiring? Even if I dig down a few inches, is that enough? I don't want to lay wire on top of the grass for an apron. I'm just too worried about mowing over it or having a lot of weeds get in there. Is there another idea for preventing something from digging under? Here's a crazy idea.. and possibly costly, but I was thinking that if I attached the bottom of my wiring to PVC pipe and wrapped it a bit around the pipe (pipe won't rot out) and screw it into that and have that burried down into the dirt maybe about a foot all around...?? Good idea, bad idea??? Any other suggestions?
ChicksChook- I'll go check out the polish forum, didn't know there was one! That will be fun to check out! Thanks for the info! And yes, I heartily agree with you- having your power out in these kinds of temps is very akin to having a power outage in the middle of a blizzard. It was miserable! I don't know what happened, but it effected a large portion of our CoOp.
