preventing coyotes from digging into coop

[GretchenM]

Hi, all,

I am new to backyard chickening. My fiance raised them for years in upstate New York. We are in Central Texas now, where the greatest non-bird predator is definitely going to be coyote. Our thought is to put a couple layers of concrete block underground as a base for the walls of our coop.

How deep will a coyote (or other predators) dig to get under a fence and into a coop?
Any other thoughts about this plan?!

THANK YOU for your help! We're very excited about out chickies (10 days old today)!

 

[Diamond Wire Farms]

Your best bet would be to attach a wire "apron" made of welded wire. When animals dig under a fence the dig down and hit the cinder block wall, they will continue to dig deeper. If you attach welded wire to the bottom at a 90 or 45 angle, they hit the cinder block, and the the wire, and there is no "deeper" to dig.

 

[woody1]

If your situation is such that you can do it, an electric fence works wonders. The last place we lived I put a double electric fence wire around the chicken run. Two wires about 8 inches apart with the upper one about nose height to my yellow lab. The only thing that ever got in was a feral cat and that was after I quit using the hot wire. Regards, Woody

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Coyotes (I am pretty sure it was coyotes anyways) dug under my run fencing once- and they dug down about a foot. They made two simultaneous tunnels under it at a corner- one on each side of the corner.

 

[panner123]

Quote:
Great minds and neighbors think alike. Not only will this method keep coyotes out it will keep any digging predators out. The apron should be about two fett out from the base of the fence to work right.

 

[GretchenM]

Y'all are all AWESOME!! Thank you so much!!
Gretchen

 

[GretchenM]

To clarify: would you suggest going down with something like cinder blocks maybe one layer, then a skirting out from that? Or just skirting? THANKS AGAIN!

 

[SLWyandotte]

a pretty fix is roses. just takes a lot of them and it takes a while for them to get big enough to do the job. but after they are fairly large and planted all along the run and interlaced, most critters don't want to deal with the thorns. if you ever fell into a rose bush as a kid you know what i mean. (this option also made chickens a much more pleasant option to my DW since she got a few dozen rose bushes out of the deal.) planned a single row of standard roses about every 3 feet with pigmy rose bushes in between the standards.