So I'm probably about 50% through my new pens (thread in signature if you wanna check them out) but going forward I'm looking at ways to cut costs with the same design. I'm paranoid about things digging in because last year I tried to get back into birds and ended up feeding them to something that dug under (from size of opening it was a coon or a opossum). Therefore for my new pens I put hardware cloth on the bottom against the ground, but I'm wondering if I could use something larger. Chicken wire is still expensive and I think that it'd be hard of their feet, I was wondering about the 2"x4" welded wire? Would that work underneath? The exterior sides of course would still be hardware cloth. Main thing I'm worried about digging under is raccoons, all my chicken coop area is fenced with 6' no climb horse fence so I sincerely doubt coyotes or other large predators would go through the effort required.
