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Digging down isn't full proof either. Dh had used small field fencing burried it what we thought was good enough. With our sandy soil it had already begun to get dug under. Had a coon (I think) kill 3 guineas & tear one up Saturday night. Sunday we dug WAY down & burried some leftover used sheet metal about 18inches deep. Did the guinea & peafowl cage already so we have 2 more permeant pens we plan on doing today & maybe tomorrow. Rolled out of bed today & found lots of sore muscles!!!! Both of those pens are 28x28 so that was enough digging & dirt pushkg for one day!
I do use chicken wire with my movable pens & have never had a loss, but honestly any critter could easily get in those since our soil is effortless to dig up. I have 4 empty cattle pannel style pens right now & I will only use them for quarentin or breeder pens. I love the idea of birds always being on fresh ground, but movable pens are not safe enough where I am at.
I have personally torn chicken wire with my own hands& wouldn't consider myself super woman. I would use hardware cloth-- the birds won't stick there heads through it & little birds can't escape it.
will get pics, but hubby made a concrete curb and set the fencing(chain link) in that- we have mostly rock, so nothing can dig in, but we do lock them in the coop at nite, and are here all day most of the time so haven't lost any that way
As we were digging yesterday I asked dh how many bags of quick Crete he had. He kinda growled & gave me a mean stare! I thought it sounded like a good idea, but he wasn't sold!
I have asked dh about aprons around pens thought after we got that skunk caught in the netting on the outside of a pen he would have been convinced it would help, but nope not yet! I have a good amount of hardware cloth somewhere I think. It seems to hold shape pretty well when it is bent. Maybe I can experiment with it. The biggest challenge I have is I try to do something & dh doesn't think it is good enough so he takes it all down & re- does it his way.
Just finished digging most of the way around the run for the lean too @ the barn. So we will be putting metal around there tonight. Wind is blowing to hard for me to carry any metal over there on my own. Looks like the fence was about 8 inches deep still on that area.