We live in a wooded area with coyotes, hawks, raccoon, snakes, etc. You get the picture. We also live on a hill and the ground is almost impossible to dig into due to the roots and roots. We have our coop up on a platform but having difficulties designing the run. Should we use hardware cloth and run it along the bottom of the run (chickens would walk on it) or should we place it outside the run extending the hardware cloth 1 foot at 90 degrees from the bottom outside the run? Open to any suggestions? Thank you in advance for your help!
Either would offer some protection vs digging predators. I would bury the wire if used inside (on the run floor) so that it's not directly underfoot of the chickens. If it's not possible to dig deep enough to bury it do to the roots, I'd bring in top soil or use the exterior apron method.
Most of my problems happen at night, mostly when I forget to secure things. We use an ax to dig in a little but if you can't dig in it stands to reason neither can anything else. If you actively let the predictors know your going to protect your stuff they'll stay away, also they are watching for you to let down your guard.
I have gone rounds with several different types of predators from stray dogs to weasels (Which were the most devastating!) If you can not dig down well, which I understand as my run is in a wooded area also, there are places along my fence where I laid the wire on the ground headed out away from the run, then decorated the area with topsoil and rocks or wood to spruce it up a bit. You can also plant vegetation in these areas and use the rocks to protect their roots. Just remember to use hardware wire, not chicken wire, as a racoon, dog, opossum, etc can break or chew through that. The hardware wire also stops the weasels, which can fit through a hole in the coop as small as a quarter. I am guessing your ground is also fairly uneven, so I had to use tent stakes in areas where I needed a little extra security to hold the fence to the ground. Also, if you get enough light to collect on solar lights, possibly add some of those to your coop area, with a little extra money you can get the motion sensor ones. If you have electricity going to your coop, you can wire in a motion sensor light, which can also help deter the pests. Best of luck to you and your flock!
We are using 6 in. Landscape staples to hold our hardware cloth apron down until the grass reestablishes itself through the wire. We have a small stump at one spot that we had to work the cloth around. The staples seemed to work well. I got them from Amazon because they are supposedly really heavy duty professional staples. My sister said she got hers from Home Depot....but they were only 4 inches. It was around $20 for 100 on Amazon. Couldn't get the link up.
Much cheaper than our tent stakes! We just had them laying around after our oversized puppy tore through the wall of our tent!
