Fox attack

[McChooky]

If you reinforced the chicken wire of a run with hardware cloth, how high would it need to be? Raccoons will be my biggest concern (not in the chicken business but thinking about it.). An occasional dog and possibly a fox. Haven’t seen any but we do have them in this area. Chickens might draw them. Would 4’ of hardware cloth be enough?

Dogs and foxes both are bad about killing every free range chicken they can find. Coons will kill them in a unsafe run or on the roost

It seems like nothing is going to stop that terrorism, but I figure he didn’t get in. My concern is way more about ground predators. My thought is can someone climb up above 4’, hang on and chew through the chicken wire above the HW cloth?

If you don't have a dog trained to protect your chickens and won't be using traps and shooting predators I wouldn't advise you to use chicken wire. It requires other methods in place to work