My meatie setup (pic heavy)

[SteveH]

Nice set up . Hopefully the coons will not come calling , but if you do have a problem a couple of hotwires ran around the outside will discourage them . Battery or solar types work well for relatively short distances if its difficult to get to electricity .

 

[Dogfish]

I like that setup. Very nice. I think I'll build a tractor or two for next year's meat birds.

 

[FarmerRob]

Quote:
By the time you do meet that racoon it will be too late for your chickens. Chicken wire is only good for one thing--keeping chickens in. It does little to keep out predators. Especially the ones you should worry about the most like racoons, dogs, coyotes, bobcats, etc. Any large determined predator can rip through that stuff like it was rice paper. I hope you don't have any problems but adding some hardware cloth on top of the chicken wire on your coop area would go a long way toward making sure of that. Good luck in either case.

 

[Kim_NC]

Nice looking! And your birds look really good too.

 

[[email protected]]

Quote:
i have these same birds and my hens are laying eggs so i am going to hatch them and get more and continue to raise them i have a total of five left 4 hens and one rooster

 

[cluckcluck42]

Good set up and yum, your birds are looking good!

 

[Chicken411]

Thanks everyone. DH finished the roof yesterday, so it is finally finished. These chickens will be ready to process in a week, so maybe after this batch I will get hardware cloth. Now I have to decide though if the hardware cloth or the electrification is a better option? It seems that even hardware cloth wouldn't keep a determined predator out, but maybe I am wrong? I can't imagine losing all of my chickens to a predator, it would be a devastating loss at this point, both financially and emotionally. Does everyone use hardware cloth, because it seems like the tractors I've been looking at used chicken wire? Why do they even make chicken wire so crappy? It's such a waste.