So, a fox ate 6 of 8 of my chickens that were 17 weeks old (including the a Swedish Flower Hen), and then came back and finished off the other two a couple of weeks later. Now, I have 6 new chicks (including a Bielefelder) that are about 7 weeks old and I’m dead set on keeping them alive. They’ve been inside my house since they were born, and it’s time for them to move out.
Chickens create a lot of dust, so the room they were in was covered in an ever-thickening layer of dust – composed of hay, feathers, and probably poop – gross. Luckily, it was only really bad for the last week while I was setting up the new run outside.
Optimism Can Trick You
I was a little optimistic last time and thought my anti-deer garden fence would also be able to keep out the foxes, but the foxes were able to dig under the fence in multiple spots. I wish I could have figured out a way to improve that fence against foxes, but it is 660 feet of fence and I wasn’t about to dig all around to bury a fence that the foxes couldn’t get under.
So, I bought a steel chicken chicken run online at the advice of my neighborhood chicken guy, so that I could put the coop inside the run and bury fencing all around the run. The run is 20 feet by 10 feet and 6.5 feet high with a rounded roof (similar too a hoop house greenhouse). Since the perimeter is 60 feet, that essentially how long of a trench I dug to bury the fence.
Chicken Runs Run Deep
So, I dug the trench about a foot wide and a foot deep and then laid 1/2 inch wire hardware cloth mesh into the bottom of the trench and up the side of the trench closest to the run. Then, I used no dig fence panels to pin the free side of the mesh into the ground. The no dig fence panels went another foot underground, so unless the fox digs two feet underground and then 1 foot over and then 2 feet back up, they’re not getting in.
After putting all the dirt back in the trench along with some native plants, like ox eyes and foam flowers, I realized that without the no dig fence, it wouldn’t be that hard for a fox to dig through the disturbed earth. I put in a lot of effort to dig the trench, but now the dirt was no longer compacted and easier for a fox dig through. Luckily, the no dig fence panels don’t disturb compacted earth, since they are essentially just stakes in the ground.
2 Fences are better than 1
With the trench complete, I put up two layers of fencing on the rest of the chicken run. The firt layer of fence was a thin, coated chicken wire that came with the kit, but I had heard that foxes could chew through think chicken wire, so I added a layer of the 1/2 inch hardware cloth mesh on top. I used zip ties to tie everything together, and made sure that the seams of the chicken wire did not match up with the seams of the hardware cloth, so even if a fox got through a seam of the mesh, there would be a layer of chicken wire underneath.
I think the other other improvement I could potentially make to help protect the chickens would be to put a floor in the run – either just a floor of hardware cloth or a concrete board. But that’s about 200 square feet to cover. I’ve already left the chickens by themselves for a week, and they were safe and sound.