Gophers in coop!

[Folly's place]

Will a hardware cloth skirt keep them out?
Any tunnels into your coop or run will invite rates and weasels, who will kill your chickens!
And gophers have rodent fleas, not good.
Mary

 

[shiggensnsuch]

Sorry this is long. I’m dealing with the same issue now and could not for the life of me decide whether it was gophers, rats or ground squirrels. We have them all in spades here and I too have grown tired of the relentless underground network of hollow death traps. I was sure the holes I started seeing in the coop were ground squirrels, but one night while red light hunting I saw a rat pop up and that was the last straw. I assumed it was using a pre-existing tunnel, but they also create underground burrows/tunnels so Honestly, I don’t care which of those 3 critters is primarily getting in there, they can all carry crappy diseases and parasites.

Solution: I picked up some rolls of 19 gauge galvanized (rust resistant) hardware cloth and started digging up the run section by section. I’m going a foot down and wrapping the wire up the sides to meet the base of the pavers that line the enclosed run. The depth may sound excessive, but I only want to do this once and this way they can dust bathe/dig without me needing to be concerned about them reaching the wire or any pests getting anywhere near them. I made sure none of the wire was poking out anywhere and placed larger rocks in front of any areas I wasn’t 100% about before filling it back in with the dirt. I laid a solid section of pavers under their attached coop ahead of time so I haven’t had to stress as much about their sleep area. I’m definitely kicking myself though, I should have known it was bound to happen.

 

[Folly's place]

So glad you fixed this!
Keeping chickens safe is an ongoing problem, for sure. And now we have avian influenza, just one more thing...
Mary