I get my coop and run, what I thought was complete and put our chicks out for the 1st day/night and what do I see coming out of the sstorage part of our barn? A rotton opossum, and since I know they are a predator of chickens I brought them inside with the Sultan til tomorrow so I can be sure all cracks and crevices are metal screened up. We only have 4 chicks that will be out there for now, but they are my chicks and I refuse to lose them on the 1st night out. I angled the security light at our backporch toward the barn/coop and that's when I saw it. How irritating it would be to go through raising my chicks from 1 d/o and have some stupid predator get them. Might have to get a powerful pellet gun. that thing right out of here...
We live in the country, I think it would take a good 1000 traps to keep them out of here. But I can secure all small crawl spaces with the wire screen we have in the barn and secure it tight with wire fenceing. There aren't many spots that anything could get in, I'd just rather be safe than sorry.
I use Hot Wire around my coop & run. My run is pretty safe. I have chicken wire & welded wire buried. Plus the run is covered with chicken wire. I still didn't feel safe because I was afraid something would dig into my coop. So I hot wired the entire coop & run. Two wires one a couple of inches above ground & one 15 inches above ground. Cost around 60 bucks. So far so good. The wire is hooked up to an outdoor timer. Comes on at dark & shuts off at 8 am. I also have auto pop door on a separate timer. But I still worry about them. Dang birds are worse than my kids.
We wouldn't be able to hot the run, no electricity out to there. But the good news is I climbed up on the roof and securely attached chicken wire around the edge of the walls and roof so nothing can get in that way. And the run door is chicken wired and heavy wired to block anything from getting into the run. I took pics but until we get our internet working again (darn thunderstorm) I can't post them. All 5 chicks have been playing out there all day. I soon have to bring the Sultan in for the night tho.
Home depot havahart trap is $44 in my area.Worked good.Would not get the traps at harbor frieght. I would try to get the pos,and then keep the trap set for those critters you never see.
