what can chew through chicken wire, kill chickens, but not eat them?

[Fanci Feathers Marans]

They'll charge you shipping, was like $60-80 when I asked.
Best place to buy HC is on amazon, cost of products gets you free shipping.

Sixty bucks?! Where are they shipping it from, China?

 

[aart]

Sixty bucks?! Where are they shipping it from, China?

Shipping is expensive, goes by weight and size.

 

[twilightgecko]

the only thing i hear of killing chickens without eating them is weasels and weasel family animals..

 

[Ole rooster]

Just about any animal can get through chicken wire. But your problem is dogs. Any other animal kills to eat. Dogs kill for sport. A lot like some humans.​

 

[chickengeorgeto]

With a hole torn into the side of the coop, run, or pen, a dead chicken, and more over nothing ate from the chicken's carcass you have described the classic dog attack.

Almost any lumber yard and every real farm supply store that I am familiar with stock hardware cloth. Perhaps you should get a copy of the real yellow pages and let your fingers do the walking.

The common sizes of HC are one half (1/2), one quarter (1/4), and one eighth (1/8), inch openings with 1/2 & 1/4 inch being the most common sizes.

Hardware cloth has many uses when raising chicks.

I use and like 1/4 & 1/8 inch hc for the flooring in off the ground and out of the filth brooder pens. These brooder pens are clean, coccidiosis free, dry, and a safe refuges for both mother hens and her children. But that doesn't mean that you can safely chunk medicated chick feed.

All the chicken manure and spilled feed falls through the opening in the wire and the chickens running lose, daily clean up the spilt feed. I use 2 x 4 inch welded wire to divide the brooder pens into two separate rooms or chambers. Each chamber is 2.5 to 3 feet long. All standard hens that I am aware of cannot squeeze through a 2 x 4 inch opening so this keeps the hen confined to one end of the pen. This also makes it so that you can install a chick door on the opposite end of the pen from the hen. Now your babies have not one but two safe rooms to run to if they step on an alpha chickens' toes and the A list bird comes after some payback.

I like my brooder pen floors 12 inches or one foot off the ground. Feed your hen whole corn and pellets in a cup suspended from the 2 x 4 welded wire on the opposite side side from the hen, and set the chicks' feeder where the moma hen is unable to get ahold of it because she will grab the feeder with her bill and turn it over in a New York minute, spilling all the chick food through the hardware cloth and onto the ground.

Leave the chicks' drinking fountain where the hen can get to it but where she is unable to upset it. Chicks can run to mama at anytime they feel the need and beg for a little warmth, and if you keep your chick brooder pens in a barn or shed there is no need for solid sides and a rainproof roof. But it is best if you put double doors on top and inclose the top and three of the four sides with used roofing tin. With a proper perimeter or layered defence in depth, you can get away with either 1 inch or 3/4 inch chicken wire (yes they make 3/4 inch chicken wire) on the sides but by siding the brooding pens with reclaimed roofing tin you can likely save enough to put 1/2 inch hardware cloth on the open side.

PS: Don't leave your setting hens on the hardware cloth floor for over 3 or 4 weeks because HC will quickly result in big gnarly clauses on your hens' feet. At this age the chicks should be old enough to follow mama to the roost, eliminating the need to 'educate' your chicks in how chickens sleep. *Some (a few) 'day old' chicks can and do occasionally squeeze through 1 inch chicken wire, but after a few days they have grown too big, but this is another good reason not to set the first or small eggs that a pullet lays.