Vacation advice… Long post sorry!
We currently have 4 hens. We will be going away for a week in April. Currently our hens have a 5’x8’ chicken coop (7’+ tall) w/ their nesting boxes and roosting bars and an automatic door that opens up to an attached 4’x4’ covered “porch”/dust bathing area and their huge (~800 square feet or so) uncovered sectioned off area of our yard. Occasionally they will fly over their fencing in order to peck around our yard so when we leave for a weekend, we usually just leave their gate open and let them have our entire yard while we are gone to ensure no one gets stuck outside the enclosure. We ran into a problem in November when we left for one night and left the gate open for them to access the entire yard… A raccoon got one of our hens. (I think when we’re home and our dogs are frequently outside, raccoons are less likely to visit.) Otherwise, we’ve had no issues since then.
My question… When we leave for a week, do you think we should continue to let them have the entire yard and they’ll just be shut in their 8’x5’ coop at night (I can control door from my phone and see when all hens are in to ensure no one gets stuck outside)? OR do you think I should wrap hardware cloth around their 4x4 porch area and keep them confined to 8x5 coop plus 4x4 porch for the week to ensure they’re safety? Obviously they’ll probably be a little irritated since they’re not used to that kind of confinement… I’d love to know your thoughts! Thanks!
We currently have 4 hens. We will be going away for a week in April. Currently our hens have a 5’x8’ chicken coop (7’+ tall) w/ their nesting boxes and roosting bars and an automatic door that opens up to an attached 4’x4’ covered “porch”/dust bathing area and their huge (~800 square feet or so) uncovered sectioned off area of our yard. Occasionally they will fly over their fencing in order to peck around our yard so when we leave for a weekend, we usually just leave their gate open and let them have our entire yard while we are gone to ensure no one gets stuck outside the enclosure. We ran into a problem in November when we left for one night and left the gate open for them to access the entire yard… A raccoon got one of our hens. (I think when we’re home and our dogs are frequently outside, raccoons are less likely to visit.) Otherwise, we’ve had no issues since then.
My question… When we leave for a week, do you think we should continue to let them have the entire yard and they’ll just be shut in their 8’x5’ coop at night (I can control door from my phone and see when all hens are in to ensure no one gets stuck outside)? OR do you think I should wrap hardware cloth around their 4x4 porch area and keep them confined to 8x5 coop plus 4x4 porch for the week to ensure they’re safety? Obviously they’ll probably be a little irritated since they’re not used to that kind of confinement… I’d love to know your thoughts! Thanks!
