Is This A Good Idea... Update: ~PIC~ PG 4# Post 31#

[The Wolf Queen]

Here it is. My first chainlink coop. Its done except for... imagine it with a 14 x 18 tarp for the long walls and two 6 x ? for the two short walls. I will make at least 5 more like this

 

[bobeena]

One problem with a tarp-covered dog pen -- and I speak from sad experience -- is that raccoons can carve through it like a knife through butter.

We started that way and, after animals cut through the tarp or got between it and the top of the pen, finally built a roof (wood frame, topped with that green corrugated plastic stuff). And, at the advice of someone on this forum, sunk concrete blocks under the pen's frame to stop predators from digging beneath. (My husband, who did this digging in cement-hard Carolinas red clay, still talks about what a brutal job that was.)

The other thing we were forced to do to our pen was completely line the interior with hardware cloth, which has smaller holes than a dog pen has. We did this after the night we and our neighbors were awakened by the horrible screams of our barred rock being eaten alive from outside the pen by a raccoon. The raccoon reached through the pen's large holes, grabbed the sleeping/roosting hen, who was flush against the side of the pen, and ate her face off. I know this is a gruesome thing to read, but I just throw it out there was a warning. It was AWFUL and though I know a coon is just being a coon, it forever changed the way I think about them!

Anyway, since our retrofitting, the pen has not been compromised by a predator. Wish we'd done it right at the start.

 

[Zahboo]

Rain will cause the tarp to rip if not sloped. Maybe getting a pole a foot taller than your pen and setting it up in the middle?

 

[WriterofWords]

I'd go with the pole idea for the slope for the roof, cover the top with chicken wire or hardware cloth and then the tarp. If you don't have that sort of predator issue then go with what you know will work for you.

I don't have coons in this end of NM, I have coyotes, skunks and rattlers.

 

[The Wolf Queen]

The way im gonna set it up is that all the tarps will be removeable and what i will do is unless it rains which it did tonight, i wont move the roof part. The walls will be able to be rolled up or rolled and tied down. Since the the long walls and roof will be on big tarp ill just have to roll it over and back. Not hard

Soooo....yep and luckily I only have skunk problems and even then, not that bad.

 

[Zahboo]

 

[The Wolf Queen]

I HATE STORMS!!!!!!!!!! All the stinkin rain tore the netting and some of the tarp

. Now I have to go buy a wood flat board for roofs this weekend then put holes along the sides of the boards and tie THOSE down. CRAP! I sure wish my mom had mentioned that idea earlier but did she... NOOOOOOO!