Dog Kennel Coop/Run

[drinkoj]

I'm considering the "dog kennel" solution, but please excuse the dumb question by a newbie...

Won't the raccoons and/or foxes just climb over the hardware cloth portion and slip through the chain link? Was thinking I'd have to hardware cloth over the the whole chainlink outside.

The concept is to go 2 feet up the chain link fence with the hardware cloth so that the racoons and critters little hands cannot reach through and grab the chickens. If the critter climbs up the chain link they cannot easily grab the chickens through the fence to rip their head off. Same theory applies to running 2 feet of hardware cloth as an apron on the ground, to stop diggers.

Now for critters climbing OVER the kennel top here is what I've done. I have a 10x10x6 kennel chicken run and used 1"x2"x2' fencing over the top that I connected with rebar ties, then put a tarp over for shade, and added a 14 foot long corrugated metal roofing piece over the door entrance and plan on adding more sheets over time to have a complete metal roof. I will place wood slats underneath the sheet metal for support and so I can connect the metal sheets to a solid source to prevent sagging. The metal roof will be connected by me drilling holes in the edges & riveting them together so they stay together as a solid mass.

 

[feather13]

We have a dog kennel run covered with corrugated metal roofing, as well as a wood frame run with hardware cloth completely covering the sides and top. Initially, we only put the hardware cloth partly up the sides of the coop, but opossums and cats still could squeeze their bodies through the chain link holes (!!!) and raccoons still reached in and bit the chickens because they sometimes roost out in the run. Now the whole set up is covered in hardware cloth (I used zip ties to connect everything). It was $$$ but our coop and run needed to be 100% predator-proofed since the chickens kept getting killed.