wire around coop

[Birdielee]

Yes,first San Francisco,then Napa,then Sonoma- where chickens,goats,rabbits- oh and 4children happened

Yeah, don't forget the kids!

 

[Birdielee]

Only 2 chickens at a time in NP! What's up with that?!

 

[lightchicks]

I now live in the country where we have all manner of varmints. Prior to that, I lived in town. We had as many, if not more, raccoons in town than we have here. And I always suspected a possum was living under our concrete patio although I never saw him. Some animal was. We had more deer in town that we do here. In short, varmints are everywhere.

This is how I installed the wire apron around the house. This is 1" x 2" 14 gauge welded wire.......part is 2 feet wide and part is 3 feet as the place I bought it from ran out of the 2 foot, which should be wide enough to do it.

So there is a 4 inch leg bent along the house side into a L shape.....it is tacked to the runners with fence steeples.......not staples....steeples. The runners are the same as what could be the wood base of a run. The fall is then laid out on the ground and staked down. Since mine was laid out over grass, I got out the lawnmower and scalped it down to 1 inch, and laid the wire on that. Part was on bare ground where my compost bin used to sit.

To hold the wire down along the edges, I used 99 cent tent stakes I got from Walmart......basically large nails with a perfectly shaped plastic head, to hold them down. That holds the wire aprons tight to the ground and I can then mow over them. After 2 weeks or so, the grass has grown up enough you can hardly tell the wire is there. A digger will know when he tries to get past it.

This is how they looked when I installed them and then again about 2 weeks later.

Thank you very much! This was very helpful!!

 

[ibhux]

Should I lay wire all around the coop on the ground to stop animals from digging under the coop ?

I will be aproning mine with hog panels, that will be hinged with hog rings, so I can raise them up to mow around it.