It looks great. It's a death trap.Well I keep a camera on them 24/7, and I've never seen any type of predator come up - day or night. The crows are the biggest birds I see around, and they just stare at the chickens from the roof or fence posts. Once and a while we will have a cat walk through the yard, smell the ground and keep walking. I put the 1/4" garden wire around their dog run they sleep in. Their dog run has the 1/4" garden wire only around the bottom and only bird netting around the rest of it - the run has 2"x4" spacing and it's done well so far. I figured that chicken wire and fully bird netting it would be as good? Maybe I'm wrong! I've lived in Saint Pete for about 9 months and I have yet to see a single raccoon, hawk, osprey, or alligator anywhere near our home. Not to say they're not around because I'm sure they are! Fortunately and unfortunately, where our home is, there just isn't much wildlife that comes around.
I wouldn't call it temporary, but this is going to be their run while I'm at work. Not the one I lock them up in at night. It's cooler in temp than what they have now and larger. They free range whenever we're home and outside, and they are inside their locked up coop that's inside of their other run at night. A predator would have to get through the outside 1/4" wire, through the bird netting, through the kennel, through the coop (that has garden wire and wood frame), and somehow open the sliding door or chew through the wood to get to the chickens. I just had to do away with keeping them in the dog run during the day because of the size and roof. I'm planning on putting an actual roof on their dog run or something, the tarp situation has got to go. In the original post, I didn't mean "get rid of" like the entire thing.. but rather get rid of the horrible tarp part of the set up, not so great as a main roof in the wet season here
Before anyone says oh Shadrach, your so negative, read the ER threads. Read lots of them.
Read the ones that say we don't have predators around here. Read the ones where a predator has ripped open the chicken wire and dragged a chicken through the hole. Read the ones where a predator has just slipped under the base of the run and killed every chicken in it.
Seriously, I'm doing you a favour. Get rid of the chicken wire and replace it with half inch gap hardware cloth and put a skirt around the base of the run.
