Do I need to bury Hardware cloth if coop is raised?

[chickenfeeva]

I have purchased the playhouse coop plans and want to have it built by Fall so I am in the planning stage right now. Since the coop portion where the chickens will be locked up for the night is raised, is burying the hardware cloth necessary? I just thought I could move the coop (if I wanted to) if I hadn't buried the hardware cloth. If they are locked up tight at night and raised off the ground, what predators should I be worried about? I will be using Hardware cloth on the entire coop for overall safety. Thoughts???

 

[patandchickens]

Dogs, which are your biggest daytime predator threat (and there are loose dogs EVERYWHERE), will easily dig under a run fence to get to chickens. Unless you have a 6' privacy fence around your yard, no dog of your own, are really confident the gate will never get left open, *and* feel lucky, it is an awfully good idea to digproof the run in some fashion.

Burying the bottom of the run fence is one option; your other option is a wire mesh apron that lies on the ground all around outside the run fence, sticking out 1-4' depending on the degree of security you want, and securely attached to the bottom of the run fence. This can be done in a way such that the coop is moveable, although if you aren't going to move it very often, you may end up with the apron awkwardly grown into the grass and hard to extract when you want to eventually move.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[elmo]

We're using the apron method and it was not hard at all to install. I used metal landscaping staples, six inches long, to fasten the hardware cloth down to the ground. A lot of them.

Our chicks aren't old enough to go in the coop yet, so it's too soon for me to testify about how predator proof our coop will be. I think I'm going to test it out first by putting some appealing food inside the coop (other than our precious chickens) for a couple of weeks to test the coop's defenses.