Protecting my chickens from badgers

[chicksandchickens]

Hello, I wonder if anyone can help here with some advice on badgers and chicken keeping. We have decided to have a little farm. To start with, we hoped to get just some chickens and ducks and a few bee hives with a view of taking on a couple of goats next spring. Our garden is of a quite generous size considering it is in the urban area (roughly 30x100m) with rear gate leading onto a copse. We get lots of wildlife in the garden, which is nice, but also starting to pose a threat to our dream of keeping a little farm. Badgers have moved in and created their set at the back of our garden and foxes have been having their den in next door neighbor’s garden. Despite of this, we have decided to go ahead with our plan with a view of using electric fence around the coop. Several of our friends have said that this method has been very successful in keeping the foxes away from their chickens. However, after I have seen some videos on strength, intelligence and persistence of badgers, I am starting to be worried, whether our measures are going to be sufficient. We have found ourselves in a peculiar situation with chickens and ducks already being ordered to arrive sometimes in May. We have also started converting an old wendy house into a temporary coop before building a permanent large one, once we determine the final number of poultry we would like to eventually keep. We hoped to reinforce the windows with some wire fencing, however, I wonder if a simple wendy house will be able to stand against the fierce strength of the badger. Do you think this project is still viable considering the circumstances, or should we give up before even trying as we have limited budget to spend of some extreme fencing protection? Thanks a lot for your advise!

 

[hayley3]

I'm assuming you are in Europe somewhere.
Electric fencing should work well if you place it where the badger will touch it.
It keeps out bears so it should keep out a badger. I was reading though and they need to touch their nose to the wire to get the shock.
If you can electrify your perimeter that would keep out both the foxes and the badger.
I would not give up my dream of keeping chickens.

 

[Acre4Me]

Welcome to BYC. Add your general location to your profile-this is helpful when others are giving advice. Sounds like you are not in USA, due to using metric measurements and other terminology (Wendy houses and copse, for example) so I’ll guess UK.


electric fencing should be cheap enough and can be re-used on new coop and run, so that’s good. I’m not that familiar with badger habits, but I think ground dwelling and not climbers...more of diggers? So, using a wire mesh, hardware cloth type of apron around the base of coop/run, should prevent them from gaining access. Usually an apron is about 18-24 inches wide on the ground and about 12 inches or more up the vertical side of the fencing.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

never really dealt with a badger. but they sure can dig.

you said your in a urban area (so am guessing shooting/trapping is out of the question)

i would go with an mesh of electric fence. don't use chicken wire that would not stand a chance against a badger.

they sure are annoying though,