I'm with the secure coops crowd... Raccoons are very intelligent and quite strong, but they aren't actually supernatural. I'll take that back when something gets into my coop,
but so far we have had chickens about a year and a half and have had a big fat 0 in losses, despite the fact that their coop is out in the woods, the coop and run have a dirt floor, I leave the door to the run open all night, and the chickens free range all day.
I expect to lose someone eventually during the day... as Nova can attest, you see a hawk over our house practically every time you look up, but they also have a lot of cover from large, established perennials and trees. I will be very surprised if we lose someone at night, though.
Hardware cloth is very strong, as long as the way it is attached is as strong as the material itself is, I do not believe anyone is getting in. Ours is attached to wood
that is in good shape, with fence staples
and screws
with fender washers. The run is enclosed entirely in hardware cloth with the exception of the floor, and there is a
3 foot hardware cloth apron all the way around both coop and run. Not only does the door to the run latch tightly and "out of reach", I don't trust to out of reach and I lock it with a padlock every night. Not a big fancy padlock, it doesn't have to be, just a little cheapy.
I think a raccoon could figure out how to climb the hardware cloth and manipulate the latch. I am pretty sure they are not going to figure out how to come in my house, get the key down from where it hangs by the door, and go back out to unlock the coop.
Yes, I am pretty confident. No, I don't think there isn't any possible way anything could ever get into my coop. But I will be very, very surprised. Part of my confidence comes from knowing that my set up has been tried many, many times, by pretty much every predator we have around here, and those are just the times I have caught something. I am sure that it is tried most nights. I know we have raccoons and opossums come in the back porch any night I put the cat food out, and have had a fox come to the cat door, too.
I dragged one of my cats in last night at 4am because he was making so much noise having a tussle with something. He had it cornered in the barn that shares a wall with my coop. I couldn't find a light and I wasn't about to go in a pitch black barn with a mystery creature, so I just left it. I won't say I wasn't at all worried, knowing that I was leaving something out there that was assuredly in the middle of trying to get into my coop, but I wasn't worried enough to go back out and check when I did finally find the lantern, simply because I know it goes on all the time, I just don't normally know.
If raccoons could get into anything if only they wanted to badly enough, we would have them in our houses all the time. However, the only time I have had raccoons in my house is when I left the door open. It didn't matter that I was there, in fact, it didn't matter that I was sitting
right next to the cat food it wanted. It just walked in, walked over, and helped itself.
There, have I reminded everyone yet that they don't actually miss having me around?
