Discovering the most worrisome of chicken ownership - predators!

[Folly's place]

Howard E has lots of good advice on this site, and premier1supplies is a great resource for information and supplies for electric fencing, and poultry supplies in general. They have a website, paper catalogs, and living breathing humans on the phone!
Mary

 

[lazy gardener]

IMO, electric fence won't work during winter in snow country.

I have an 18V Ryobi flood light, and LOVE that thing. It will light up my whole yard when I do an evening pred. check. I will often turn off the fan in the bedroom at night to do a few minutes of "listening at the window". Last night, at 3 AM, there was a large black (I presume) cat prowling between garden and house. I was glad to see him, and would love to have a "barn cat" move into the yard. However, my dog would take great sport in watching a cat run.

One thing I do to help make my yard inhospitable to some creatures of the night: I fling dog poop into the surrounding underbrush. I figure it just might "gross" some of those critters out!

 

[MissChick@dee]

I have the best husband in the whole world! Gardening is my thing (we live in the desert) he built me 10, 12x5 boxes. I had my little coop sitting on or patio for 2 years (got a hecka deal just had to get it). It was 2 years before I was going to retire. He never had a negative thing to say when I told him I wanted to raise chickens. I fret and worry about hawks (got tons of stories about them). At dusk and dawn you can set your watch to hawks that hunt our area. My hubby will come out and “hawk watch” for me any time I ask. We have coyotes, skunks, raccoons, etc...my little chihuahua will alert if something’s happening around the coop (she knows) and my husband will get up to check things out (gun in hand). So that’s my security system. Best Ever!!

 

[LisaMarie81]

Having a secure coop at night is #1, and then as secure a run as possible, preferably roofed. In winter, you won't love shoveling snow to get your birds outside!
Bears can demolish just about anything, so electric fencing set up properly is the solution there, and it will also keep out most ground predators.
You are doing great! Sleep!
Post pictures of your coop and run; maybe we can make suggestions to help.
And yes, everyone loves chicken...
Mary

I can post some pics later once at home.

 

[LisaMarie81]

So, was outside cleaning the coop and hanging my new lights...got too dark for pics.
So
First pic - original coop. we took this coop and skirted the entire thing with 3ft of wire on the ground and 6" stakes place so that no matter where something digs...it's going to hit a stake.
Second Pic - (tonight in the dark) showing the new addition to the coop. it sits over the wire previously placed on that side. so basically there is 3 ft of wire under the floor too. To get through this you need to get through the skirt, dig down under, come up to another layer of wire, then the floor. Nothing is getting UNDER this new addition, but I worry about THROUGH it. The wood is thin.

Also, the wood frame you see leaning against the run is the new run. It's going to be put onto the end of this run. so will extend it by 8ft. (and yes it will be skirted as well 3ft out, 6"yard stakes, and there will be a top on it with extra braces in case something crawls on top that's a good weight.

The last pic is our yard (before coop). It shows that we tried to place it in the middle of the yard as best we could as well knowing critters dislike being in the open. Even our fox skirts the left side of the tree line almost always. Never down the middle.