We had just moved from a lifetime of city/suburban living to our first modest, 2-acre homestead. Of course the first new addition was a dog. He was no pup. Approximately 3-4 years old, my friend called him “a very Christian choice” because my boys had picked out a dog with a crippled front leg. The shelter told us they thought he had been hit by a car, but when we took him to the vet, the vet thought there was some birdshot in his joint. Crippled or not, this dog was faster on 3 legs than most are on 4. Challenger (for that was the name the shelter had given him) was part hound and part Lab.
Our second purchase was 50 day-old chicks from a hatchery. They arrived at the post office one morning, and we went to pick them up with great excitement. We wanted eggs and some chickens to eat. This was early September in South Carolina when the days are still in the 80’s (if not 90’s), but the nights are starting to cool down. We didn’t have a brooder. So for the first week or two we brought them into the house every evening and kept them in our upstairs bathroom where the temperature stays quite warm as it is really part of the attic. We didn’t quite maintain the 90ºF temperature a brooder would, but we only lost two chicks. We very glad when those weeks were over as the aroma upstairs was not quite what we were used to. During those two weeks, we renovated the existing chicken coop on the property.
The previous owners had kept goats in a large pen which bordered the coop. We didn’t have goats, so kept Challenger in the “goat pen”. Normally I rise early and take Challenger out for a morning run. However, on one particular morning I left home at 5:30 AM for some meetings in the city. I returned home a few hours later to a mourning family.
Apparently everyone overslept. When the boys went out to feed the chickens and run Challenger, they came upon a terrible scene. Challenger was in the chicken coop. He had slaughtered 31 little chickens before the boys stopped him. He had dug a small hole under the fence and squeezed in. We are still not sure how he fit through that small opening.
My family placed all the chicken carcasses in one garbage bag but had not buried them. They were waiting for me. They were shaken by this sudden exhibition of 'survival of the fittest'. While digging a grave for the chicks my 4-year old son asked if I was going to shoot Challenger (not withstanding the fact I didn’t even own a gun at the time!). I replied, “Not yet.”, but wondered if the birdshot in his leg was from a previous chicken coop raid.
With 19 or so chickens left, I spent the next few hours heavily fortifying their coop with bricks, mortar, barbed wire, impaling stakes, and other protective measures. However, after more rational consideration, I revised the fortifications to a simple, but highly effective protection against our own dogs and other visiting predators. It has kept Challenger and other predators away from our chickens for 8 years. I am here to tell you about it today.
To start, our basic coop as we originally built it consisted of a 24’ x 40’ pen. The laying house is at one end of the pen. The pen is fenced with standard chicken wire 5 feet in height. The chicken wire was originally sunk about 6 inches into the ground, but chickens and environment will eventually bring the trenched wire up to ground level. Pressure treated posts are set about 4 feet apart. Overhead is secured with dog wire in some areas and 2 inch chicken wire in others. As we’ve seen, this wasn’t good enough to keep dogs out.
We decided to lay a digging barrier. We laid four foot chicken wire on the ground around the perimeter of the pen to create a barrier to digging predators. In some places we actually laid down some chain link fencing we had lying around, but chicken wire will do. Dogs and other predators can’t dig through the fencing laid on the ground and won’t try to dig under it as it is too great a distance. Initially we used metal U-shaped stakes designed for landscape plastic to keep the fencing in the ground, but over time, grass growing up holds the fencing down. We don’t want it overgrown, so we do let the chickens out to eat the grass from time to time.
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| Thomas showing the digging barrier several years after installation. |
Several years after we put in this system I found I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea. US Patent No. 6,289,639 entitled “Ground Barrier to Stymie Digging Animals” states:
Animals can be prevented from digging in an area by positioning a plastic mesh barrier on the surface of the earth where it is desired to prevent the digging. The mesh can be anchored so that it will remain reliably positioned and will become nearly invisible as vegetation grows through the openings of the mesh.
According to Bonnie Kaye Davis Robertson (inventor of this invention), plastic mesh is actually better than wire mesh. The invention described is not particular to protecting livestock, but if it as effective as the inventor claims, it seems it would be a cheaper solution than chicken wire. However, the chicken wire won’t break down in the sun as a plastic mesh will.
Over the years we’ve had an increasing number of predators try to visit our flock: wild dogs, fox, coyote, raccoon, but none have breached the simple protection we installed. Our chicken coop with the digging barrier has remained secure with only a modest investment.
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