The truth about chicken wire

[casportpony]

2x4 animal wire is not that expensive and works.

Skunks and small opossums can go through that.

 

[David61]

Skunks and small opossums can go through that.

yep, thats why you use HW cloth on your roost box/coop and lock them up at night. Day run 2x4 animal wire, hawk net and your family dog can handle day time needs.

 

[NatJ]

So I know chicken wire is a no no when keeping predators out, but if that is all I have is there potentially a way to make it work? Like layering the chicken wire? I have an abundance of it and I really would rather not waste it and spend a fortune on hardware cloth.

What would be considered adequate security? We have dogs but at night they come inside.

The chicken wire might work for a run the chickens use in the daytime. I would suggest a more secure pen for the night, probably using hardware cloth instead of chicken wire.

For the daytime:

Chicken wire will work to keep the chickens in (so they are not pooping on your porch, scratching up your garden, visiting your neighbors without permission, and so forth.)

If your dogs will chase off predators during the daytime, the chickens might be safe during the day. Some predators can get through chicken wire fairly fast, but even they need at least a little bit of time. The chicken wire keeps the chickens in a predictable place, so they cannot go hide away from the protection of the dogs.

If your own dogs want to kill your chickens, the chicken wire will not be enough to stop them. If predators have plenty of time to work on the chicken wire, it will not stop them either ("plenty of time" might be 10 minutes or it might be a few hours, depending on the predator.) Having the dogs outdoors all day would help much more than having the dogs outside only part of the day.

For the night:
Many predators prefer to hunt at night. Since your dogs will be inside, predators will also have much more time to figure out how to get in. So you need a more secure pen at night than during the day.

 

[Kiki]

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

What would be considered adequate security? We have dogs but at night they come inside.

Dogs out at night too. That fear of a canine ambush will keep almost everything away. They definitely won’t stay around long enough to start probing for weaknesses in the fence. In the 6 years I’ve lived on my current farm in the deep woods, the only varmint to raid my coops at night against my dogs was a black bear that twice tore the wire net off of the top of a coop but then ran off once the commotion started. Both times it came in on a rainy night downwind of where the dogs sleep, but the commotion apparently alerted the dogs and ran it off. Other varmints don’t even try the coops and won’t even come into the fenceless yard, except a couple of times possums have walked through the yard with negative outcomes for them.

 

[Painted Calls]

View attachment 3444127

Dang. Bard is killing it!

 

[The Moonshiner]

Dang. Bard is killing it!

Who the h*ll is Bard?

 

[Painted Calls]

Who the h*ll is Bard?

Some new fangled Google thing.

 

[Otterpup1967]

Run several well placed strands of hot wire around the set up.

THIS

 

[Kiki]

Who the h*ll is Bard?

https://bard.google.com/faq