Follow these steps to insure your hen's safety!

[rosemarythyme]

The roof of your coop should be made out of thick plastic (1cm thick) and tilted at an angle of 46 degrees This will make the water flow down when raining and you can place guttering on the roof leading down to a bucket or something, creating a water supply for the chickens. Regarding the welded mesh, have the opening size about 1cm wide, and if you have a snake problem, slightly less.

I'd suggest either a metal roof or a standard shingled type roof (or if on a budget, wood with some sort of waterproofing on it can work but may not hold up as long.) I haven't seen plastic that'd be thick enough for me to want to use as a coop roof, I'm sure it exists but it's not the type that's sold at our usual big box stores. There's pros and cons to roof choices just as with anything else. My roof is metal, which is a pretty popular choice and is fairly strong, but it can have condensation issues depending on climate, amount of ventilation, and installation. I have plywood sheathing under it to prevent any possible condensation from dripping.

1 cm mesh openings would certainly keep out almost every small pest I can think of.

 

[Eelantha]

A netting or some kind of metal wire net placed over the run is a must if you have avian predators. A roof is best. I have foxes, ferrets, raccoons and buzzards in my area, and while the first three have not bothered the coop despite the obvious scent of poultry that comes from it, buzzards are another problem altogether. Those birds will never say no to an easy meal. My family helped alot in thinking up ways to deter buzzards from perching on our coop, stapling wired fence all along the upper borders of the run and placing nail-covered plywood squares on top of poles. The only option the buzzard has for perching is either into the nearby trees or into the net, where it will be quite tangled if it does decide to try its luck.

As crazy as this sounds, when the landlady had built the coop decades ago, the entire side netting of the run had been purposely left loosely tied at the upper edge so curious critters would be discouraged from fully climbing over it once they felt the net get dragged down under their weight. She's never had a racoon problem, so I guess this worked somehow. Preying buzzards threw that plan down the toilet though, once I moved in.

Mice and squirrels are a common occurrence in the run, but they don't get far inside before the chickens go after them. Since the feed is inside the shed 24h/7, they've both learned to stay clear of the coop, so no problems here. I've seen a hen eat a small snake whole after fighting with it, too, so snakes aren't a worry here either. (Plus I'm lucky in that venomous snakes don't live in the area).