New to Chickens

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Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.
As you've already read, chicken wire will not protect your chickens. Go with hardware cloth. In the long run, it will be less expensive.
Build a covered run. I will be having a shingled roof run attached to my coop with a 2' wide predator apron of 1x2 welded wire buried around the entire coop and run. I also have my setup inside an electronetted pen with additional hotwires going around the coop and run. Nothing has gotten at my birds inside the pen although aerial attacks are certainly a possibility when they are out of the run. It's a risk I'm willing to take because they enjoy being out. I do offer lots of cover for them to give them a chance. They also have a cockerel who loves to alert when he sees hawks fly over. And crows and sometimes blue jays and, yeah, once a bunny rabbit on the side of the road. But he is a very watchful guy and the girls listen to him.
 
If i were you i would start by compleatly evaluating the coop you have.
Any gap or hole you might think only a mouse could get thru is a problem. Because a weasel can get in that way and destroy your flock in one night.
Then the run. Chicken wire is made to keep chickens in, not preditors out. Hardware cloth, electric fencing, trail camera to see what comes calling at night. All these things are basic and essential equipment for chicken keeping.
Having a flock if chickens is a joy to many of us, but you have to put thought and a lot of effort in it in the long run.
What i have learned is EVERYTHING EATS CHICKEN.
We are here to help you in your chicken journey.
Post pictures along the way. We love that.
Welcome to the backyard!
 
Hello and welcome to BYC - thanks for joining us.

This is a useful link of BYC guides to take a look at announcements-feedback-issues-guides.3 I’d suggest including your location using the guide in the link. You can use this link to contact members in your area - Find your State's thread.

Best wishes

Pork Pie
 
Hi and welcome to BYC :frow We're so happy you've decided to join us :ya

We have a contest going on right now just for new folks like you. In order to enter you'll need to copy the link from your first post in this thread and post it in the contest thread.

To copy your link address, right click on the link to your thread and click copy or copy link
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then click on the following URL
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...t-new-byc-members-win-a-byc-calendar.1287752/
Go down to where it says "write your reply..." tell us this is your entry and then click on the link button
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Paste your URL into the box and click "insert", then click "Post Reply".
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That's all there is to it. Once you've finished this, you're eligible to win a nice BYC Calendar.
 

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