How good is chicken wire?

[rooster brandon.]

Ok i have read on here about how bad chicken wire is well why is it because my papaw has kept chickens for over 42 years now only using chicken wire and nothing broke in and i have used chicken wire and nothing had ever got in my coop my question is what is the fault in chicken wire what makes it so weak i am using the old type f chicken wire and well it is stronger i guess and smaller holes but what make chicken wire so weak?

 

[Lesa]

Chicken wire is excellent at keeping chickens in... Perhaps where you are, there are no predators? If you take a minute and read some of the past posts, you will see many others, who are not so lucky...There is no law saying you can't use it- and if you and your family have been using it successfully- go for it. On the garden site, someone just had raccoons tear apart the wood on there coop. There is nothing that is perfect.

 

[Katy]

The old time chicken wire was much heavier guage and was better to standing up to predators. What they sell now days is pretty worthless except for keeping the chickens in.

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
Yeah, that.

My first tractor used chicken wire I found in an old chicken barn. That stuff was probably from the 60's and was pretty tough stuff with only a tad of rust. Bought a new roll from home depot and it is certainly thinner and much more flexible (softer).

 

[Q9]

For what it's worth... When we built our coop, I took BYCers' advice to heart and advised Dad to get hardware cloth (as recommended here!) rather than chicken wire. I was skeptical upon finding that the much-vaunted hardware cloth was, in fact, plastic. Well, we went ahead anyway. Dog promptly busted through and killed all 4 chicks. We replaced it with metal chicken wire, and she (the dog) hasn't touched the chickens since.

It may just be the store we went to, but I think you guys have hardware cloth and chickenwire backwards.

 

[rooster brandon.]

Well believe it or not one day about 6:30 just when it started getting dark i went out to the car and i heard something and i looked over and Bam a huge raccoon was staring me dead in the face and it jumped down off of the chicken coop and suddenly it just started running at me making the worst sound that sounded like a car running out of gas........ppuutt ppuutt ppuutt............And my dog named outlaw was tied up with a steel cable and he broke that cable and came running and hit that raccoon like within 5 feet away from me and my dog killed it!And after all that we went and had my dog and the raccoon tested for all them bad things like rabies and stuff like that............I really don`t care if you believe this or not but the reason i typed all this is because i wanted to tell you that i see raccoons EVERY WHERE on the road playing in the yard i mean every where and thinking of raccoons it reminded me of this story but sadly outlaw the dog.....Died 3 years after that........

 

[theFox]

Quote:
You did not get hardware cloth. Hardware cloth is metal and a lot stronger than chicken wire.

 

[mulewagon]

There is a soft plastic mesh that's also called "hardware cloth". I used it when my chicks were small, to keep them from crawling under the chicken wire and into little crevices. But of course the hardware cloth that everyone recommends is a heavy, stiff wire mesh with tiny squares.

Another strike against chicken wire alone: tiny chicks can pop right through the holes!

 

[silkiechicken]

Yeah, hardware cloth as in the wire mesh welded together:
http://www.twpinc.com/twpinc/products/TWPCAT_4

 

[CMV]

Raccoons can easily rip through chicken wire, but hardware cloth is another story. They can't penetrate it even if they make a good go at it. The only thing you have to remember about hardware cloth is that it's only as tough as what you nail it down with. I tried stapling it with 3/4 inch staples to my tractor frame and something tried and pretty much succeeded in just ripping the staples out and bending back the wire. I rectified that by using washers and screwing the stuff down to the frame.

Another problem with chicken wire is the openings in standard chicken wire are big enough for a chicken to pop its head through. Raccoons take advantage of that by popping their heads off when they do that.