Three chickens down

[Jt and Chicks]

The dogs that I use to hunt coons are used to chickens and we will kill the coons it will help us with competition hunting anyway

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Hi. I can't tell for certain, but it looks to me as though your hardware cloth is attached to the INSIDE of your wooden frames. If so, that would be pretty easy for the raccoons to push on and dislodge the staples. Put the hardware cloth on the outside of the wooden frames, and tack it down securely by laying wooden strips (lath) over it, or as some have said, use screws. Then when the raccoons push on it, they will meet with resistance, hopefully enough to deter them. Unfortunately, since they have been successful in the past, they may not be easily deterred. Can you install electric fencing or netting around your coop? That would probably solve your problem.

 

[chknlittle17]

I added some pictures to the original post. The first two pictures are where it got in last night and killed one chicken. It opened that door and pushed the cloth out on the right sode

Raccoons can open latches easily. You need some type of lock. If a toddler can open something, so can a raccoon. The hardware cloth really needs to be secured better. I would have placed wood trim inside the coop screwed through the overlapping hardware cloth layers to make it to where it could not be pushed in or out. We also have wire mesh buried around the outside of my coop 2 feet out from each side. Many say to bury the mesh deep, but our soil sucks and without some type of excavator I couldn't bury it more than 4 inches.