which material to enclose a run?

[CoyoteMagic]

wish I could find the picture someone posted on what a raccoon did to a heavy duty wire trap.

 

[Badlatitude]

Quote:
Ive been doing NWCO for 15 years. I could fill 10 pages with storys like that. What it basically boils down to is make it as secure as makes YOU feel good. If you have some high population of raccoons wandering in your yard all hrs of the day you have a REAL problem that needs to be addressed. If your chickens are secured in a coop at night thats build well the run means nothing. Infact only 1 side of my coop is even connected to my run.


Just for peoples personal info
Trapping and "Re locating" is illegal in most states. Not to mention they will come back over 30 miles. The reason its illegal is if they are sick they will rub shoulders on the way home with others . if they arent they could catch something and spread it. being as they are passing thru others territory. Trapping and dispatching is the only real anwser for an over bearing predator population. Once they know dinner is there they wount stop. We hate yotes taking small dogs off the leash while being WALKED by their owners around here a few years back. When starving in they WILL find a way.

 

[Badlatitude]

Quote:
They probably tried to drown it in the trap ( weather they admitted it or not) Either that or it was one of thoose pieces of JUNK from Tractor Supply even Hav a hearts ARE NOT heavy duty. Coons wreck them in no time. I have a "heavy duty" wire trade grave yard.


http://www.safeguardproducts.com/ are a MUCH higher quality trap then a hav a heart

 

[Cindy in PA]

Just like others have said, it depends on how comfortable YOU are with the risks. I went 8 years with a 6 ft fence from a game farm used for pheasants (sort of like chicken wire) and never lost a chicken. Of course they were locked up tight at night. Then I went 5 years with a plastic garden fence until I finally lost one to a fox pushing under at dawn. This time they were not closed up and were out way to early. Now I have a dog kennel, but no small wire around it. I left them open in the summer when it was hot & one morning a gimpy BO got to close to the fence and a racoon halfway pulled her thru & killed her. This again was in the very early morning. Both times they would have been safe if they were locked up until the sun was shining. I am OK with this risk, although I felt bad for the two chickens. It depends on what risk you want to take & how much money you want to spend.

 

[CoyoteMagic]

not worth it

 

[happyhensny]

We have chain link dog runs as ours. Bought off of CL. Really easy to set up and then you just need a top - fencing, etc. Kept out the 2 Great Danes and 1 Big Rottie that escaped the owners house last year.

 

[patandchickens]

IMO putting hardwarecloth on the lower part of a chickenwire run is like putting a $80 super-hardened pickproof padlock on a loop of baling twine. Any self-respecting predator will just rip through the chickenwire above your hardwarecloth and away we go.

I would suggest that a better alternative would be something like 2x4 welded wire for the whole run, with something smaller-mesh on the bottom 2-3 (could be hardwarecloth, but could also be 1/2" poultry mesh if you can find it, or even 1" chickenwire with or without the addition of smaller-mesh plastic garden netting depending on how likely you think it is that chickens will fall asleep near the fence or try to stick their heads through). 2x4 mesh is reasonably comparable in price to chcikenwire and will hold up FAR better to assault by a dog. Yes, things can go through or over it, but realistically they can go through or over a chickenwire fence *too* so that is not really a difference from the 2x4 wire.

JMHO, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[CityChook]

One word of caution -- I used the 2x4 welded wire on my garden fence. It can be tricky to secure because the gaps are wide. We used the washer/screw method but have caught the fence twice on the lawn mower and pulled the edges up. I'm not sure how much I would trust the welded wire with a hungary raccoon and an open pop door. But I'd definitely trust it more than chicken wire...

BTW, when I built my coop, I was WAAAAAYYYYY over budget. We decided to go with chicken wire on the top half of the run, hardware wire on the bottom half. While I never had a predator problem (I religiously lock the girls up at night - with a lock), I did have a rust problem. The chicken wire didn't even make it through one winter. It ended up being a waste of money since I had to buy hardware wire anyways to replace it. I should have just bought all the hardware wire in the first place.

 

[fiddleblue]

I built my 300 sq ft chicken run principally this way: for the lower 3 feet of the whole thing, I used 1/2 inch hardware cloth, because the chickens can't stick their heads through that small mesh and so that reduces choking or entanglement hazard for them. I also placed this hardware cloth next to any raised perches/trees where they could get up high. Then for the upper part of the run (it is 6 ft high in places ) as well as the ceiling of the run, I MOSTLY used 4 inch welded wire, which is sturdier than chickenwire or poultry netting and less likely for a raccoon to get through. However for areas where I had to go around tree branches and/or trunks or do a lot of detail work I used poultry netting. I did have one animal dig under the run, I think it was an opposum, who got to the chicken feed, but I don't think any coons have gotten in.

 

[teach1rusl]

I did not read all of the other suggestions. I used welded wire (2x4") all over, including the top... with hardware cloth on the bottom 24" of the sides. I feel that's it's quite secure.