I recently bought a new coop and chickens to keep in Ohio while I am at school. I was working on the run for them today and chatted with a neighbor who also raised chickens. She said her husband set a live trap to see what killed one of their chickens and over a period of a few weeks they caught 10 raccoons! I forgot that raccoons were such a issue in Ohio. Where I keep a minority of my chickens, Northern Virginia, we really sdont have to many issues with raccoons just foxes. Even then we are lucky and predators are rather lazy and only take a bird maybe every 4-5 months if that. I'm afriad my normal pen structures will be easily broken into. I was going to have a pen attached securely to the coop with boards running along the bottom (which I have found to help a lot with escaping chickens and nosing predators) with a fully enclosed fenced pen. I got normal chicken wire but am afriad this wont be enough sonce so many people tell me about raccoons ripping the fence up. Any suggestions? I was thinking of running a electric line across the bottom and top of the pen or possibly barb wire because I have a limited budget and think it will have the same effect (just look a little menising lol). Thoughts? Oh! I was also going to set a trap sometime to to see what I catch and possibly stop the culprit before he strikes. I'll load a picture of what I have so far so everyone can get a better idea. Phone won't let me at the moment...
I used 1/8 inch metal fence wire and I used wire to "tie" it to my coop, which will be stronger than staples. It has worked so far, and we have racoons in our area, but my coop is also not very wide. It would probably work on your coop as well, but you will have to think about the dimensions first.
Use hardware cloth. It's more expensive but raccoons can grab chickens through chicken wire and eat them through the fence. Seriously. I read about it happening to people on this forum all the time. Hardware cloth is expensive so maybe make the run walls out of chicken wire and just attach the hardware cloth to the chicken wire on the bottom 3 feet. If a raccoons hand and fit through any holes and gaps then they can get the chickens.
