Truth About Raccoons & Chicken Wire? Please add your experience

[Nifty-Chicken]

Great responses, thanks!

My current run / coop is Fort Knox. I actually have chain link fence on the sides, top and even the whole bottom is chain link (a few spots are 2" welded wire). Nothin' is getting in there. (I was pretty paranoid when I built it)

I'm mostly wondering about my next coop and if I have to be as dilligent. I see so many coop pics that just have chicken wire and I guess those people don't have coons or even anything like them.

 

[silkiechicken]

I still use chicken wire... but am rather proactive about predators...

 

[dixonzoo]

Coons are very intelligent and very serious in their quests. From all I have researched because of my own battles with coons is that usually coons will leave your chickens alone unless at some point they have had a taste of blood. Once they have had that taste, they will settle for nothing less and are pretty resourceful and destructive. This I have experienced first hand. I had to redo my chicken house because of this once before. I also rewired all my pens for my chicks with 1/2 wire, believing that would be the end of it. Not so! My chicks were still being ripped through their cages. I became quite adept at rigging traps, and rerigging traps, etc. You literally have to get ingenious sometimes. If you have a blood thirsty coon on your land there is only one resolution - trap and kill. I have many coons on my land and only occasionally have to deal with a blood thirsty one, but when I have to deal with one it is a battle that can end only one way. That was hard for me as they are so cute.

 

[CUDA]

Quote:
Yep, me too, but coons and possums don't dare poke their heads out near my property...lol If I don't put a bullet in their butt first, my dog takes care of it for me, and I am in the process of training another dog too!

 

[stilwellchick]

Chicken wire is for keeping chickens in not predators out. Hot wire is probably the safest. Most predators are out after dark and we lock our birds up at night.

 

[thechickenchick]

Are coons only a problem at night? Or do they come around during the day? Also what about fox? I have never seen a fox on our land until yesterday.

We are getting ready to put our first flock in their brand new pretty coop! I would be devastated if I lost 1, let alone the whole flock.

 

[thechickenchick]

By the way Cuda, that is the prettiest dog I have ever seen.(Dont tell any of mine that!) What is he/she?

 

[Stormhorse23]

its a pyrenese..i think. sorry if i screwed up the spelling

 

[Corey NC]

The way I have done it is that I have predator resistant run and a predetor proof coop.

If a predator really wanted into my run they could but I've never had a predator attack during the day accept a fox (but that was only when they were free-ranging and he didn't try to get them during the day when they were in the run). So at night they are locked up tight and two have-a-heart traps are set.

A coon will always go to the food easiest to get which is in the trap.

As long as you are good about always locking up the chooks right at dusk and your runs are resonably predator resistant I think you'll be fine.

 

[KingsCalls]

Truth...........IT DOES NOT WORK! Chicken wire is easy for a coon to tear apart or just reach through and kill and pull out the chicken peice by peice! It's happened here too many times before I wised up and started using either 1/2x1/2 wire or 1/2 x 1 wire. If I would have known this before I started raising chickens I'd have been much better off.