We are just about to start building our chicken tractor which is being designed to use the frame of an old 8x4 trailer frame. My husband and I have different opinions about the flooring. I believe that it should have a solid bottom covered in some sort of inexpensive sheet vinyl. He wants to have only chicken wire as a flooring, meaning it would be open to the ground below. He says that during cold months he would put a skirt around the trailer to help protect from the cold.
Thoughts?
Chicken wire flooring is a bit thin and not at all predator proof.
If he's insistent on a wire flooring, 16 gauge ½ inch hardware cloth would be more secure. However, I'd not recommend it. Wire is hard on the birds' feet among other things. If he wants a floor that will allow pooh to drop through (I'm guessing that's his reason since wire's more expensive than lumber/vinyl?), he could consider slatted flooring, or a floor that is entirely a ramp raised at night after the chickens roost.
Ours have a solid wood floor with a ramp off to one side of the roost. We seal the wood of the floor with a fiber roofing compound and I absolutely cannot remember the name of it. It works well, is extremely easy to clean and very portable and can be sealed up tight at night to protect from nocturnal predation.
I'm all about night time predators. We have two hawks here that fly over sometimes but between my son and my husband always out and the dogs running amok...they don't tend to bother the birds. At night, however, it's a totally different story. Snakes, coyotes, foxes, owls, raccoons, opossums, skunks, etc. are all over the place. And a determined fox or coyote can break through flimsy chicken wire. The smaller predators can reach through the chicken wire to do serious damage to your birds (raccoon, opossum, skunk). So, I tend to avoid using regular chicken wire unless it's to deflect avian threats. The bottom section of all my runs and the lower section of my coops are all done in ½ inch hardware cloth because of my predator concerns.
