I just finished a new chicken coop and run (thank all of you for previous advice) and I’ve gotten to the buried hardwire cloth stage. I’ve gotten about 16 inches (40cm) down and have hit a gravel layer. I was intending on 2 feet (60cm), is it worth it to go through the gravel?
I’ve got like 50 linear feet to do before I’m done but I’d rather do it correctly that fast or easy. I only have access to hand tools. Thanks!
by CRAkraken
8 Comments
id recommend securing a layer of hardware cloth on the ground in the cage and bury it in case there’s any weak spots.
That should be fine.
Easier than digging down so deep is to make a skirt of hardware cloth maybe 1 ft out and 4 inches down. Or 2 ft out and 8 inches down if you know there are lots of digging predators.
If you do the skirt method, you want the ground to end up looking the same where there is hardware cloth underneath as where there is none. Predators will come up to the fence and start digging. The smartest predators might back away a foot if there is like a 1 ft gravel border around it.
I like to go down then out a bit too. That way if they start digging along edge they still hit wire before going under.
I would imagine that the gravel layer would make it much more challenging for an animal to get through. I would just fold the edge over to make a lip that lays on the gravel layer and bury it that way. I would think that an animal that digs would dig right up against that barrier and when they get far enough down to hit the flat layer that they would just give up. They can only dig so much in the few hours of darkness you’ve got. I also have dogs patrolling though, so it isn’t as if any critters have much time to dig.
You can also snake proof by creating a lip that extends out about 12 inches, about 12 inches off the ground. The snake can’t figure out how to get past the lip, it sees it as impassable because it can’t crawl upside down. There was a company that was making a movable fence a couple of years before covid, but I haven’t seen anything remotely like it for a while and I can’t seem to find any videos to show you, but the idea is that the snake will try to go under and look for holes, and never looks to climb over the lip because it extends out too far. I’ve got some folded metal under my coop door that the chickens use as a porch, but it seems to be effective. I’ve not had any more snakes in the coop once I installed it.
That’ll be plenty and like others stated on the ground out so when they start digging they hit it.
Some rats will burrow under the whole coop and come up in the middle. The only 100% way is to pour a slab.
I’ve always heard 18″ down, 18″ out is the only way to be fox-proof. We don’t have foxes to worry about, so I can’t verify
I would just make it a full fenced in thing,
including the bottom.
So you can also relocate the whole thing
and don’t have to work like a horse.