Logistics - is a fully enclosed run necessary?

[Folly's place]

About dogs, and predators generally: Some individual chickens will fly up into trees when scared, and are easy for raptors to get, or for climbing critters like raccoons. Other chickens freeze under shrubs on the ground, and are easy prey for ground predators.
Our worst episodes involved a sick fox who got ten free ranging hens one afternoon, and he seems to have selected birds who were producing eggs, not males or barren hens.
When our dog fence failed one day, one of our rescue dogs got out and killed over twenty birds in about an hour, boom, boom, boom, fast and efficient. She came from a fighting dog situation, lots of practice killing critters...
Raptors will take one bird at a time, never good, but a lot fewer deaths at once.
I'm glad you haven't had bad experience with predators and hope it continues...
Mary

 

[StinkyAcres]

From my perspective it looks like the average chicken owner keeps sickly breeds in unnatural, micromanaged conditions that create the perfect recipe for tragedy

I've heard countless stories about feral dogs killing entire flocks. Well I've had eight feral dogs attack over the years and not once did they touch a single chicken. The chickens just... flew away

I suspect the people having chickens die to stray dogs have them trapped somewhere with zero escape routes (ie a coop or small fenced in area) and possibly clipped wings as well. It's a man-made tragedy

If one has healthy breeds and doesn't trap them somewhere they're pretty good at keeping themselves alive

Well, yeah, that's what we humans do when we domesticate animals - we create breeds that cannot survive on their own. And some cannot free range due to reasons other than predators - escaping the property, pooping all over neighbors' yards and porches, freezing temperatures, etc.

 

[casportpony]

Our worst episodes involved a sick fox who got ten free ranging hens one afternoon, and he seems to have selected birds who were producing eggs, not males or barren hens.

Almost all of the ones I've lost to foxes are hens.

 

[Altairsky]

I have a coop with no run and I free range in my whole property (which is fenced but no predator proof).
If you free range you might lose birds to predators. But confined birds have other issues.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

Well, yeah, that's what we humans do when we domesticate animals - we create breeds that cannot survive on their own.

I was never talking about "surviving on their own". The specific example I used was escaping a dog and even my fat, old RIR are capable of this

And some cannot free range due to reasons other than predators - escaping the property, pooping all over neighbors' yards and porches, freezing temperatures, etc.

We all have different situations we're working with, and the purpose of my post was to point out general principles that many can apply regardless of their circumstances. Critiquing coops was only a portion of my post