Lost a hen to what I'm fairly sure was a fox that dug under the run fence. Garden is about 8 metres square so the run is small and close to the house. I can afford one of these properly: either skirting the entire run perimeter with buried hardware cloth, or running a two-strand electric wire around the outside. Which actually stops a determined digger?
Whichever you pick — chicken wire is not predator proof. It keeps chickens in, it does not keep foxes out. Use welded hardware cloth at 12mm or 19mm, and check the gauge; the flimsy stuff tears. Also, most losses I've heard about weren't digging at all, they were an unlocked pop hole or a gap at the roof line.
And use proper two-step latches. A fox can work a simple sliding bolt, and racoons where you have them absolutely can.
Small garden argument for electric: it protects a fox from learning that your garden contains chickens at all. Once one has had a meal there it will come back nightly for months. But it needs a clear strip mown around it, which in 8 square metres you may not have.
Cheap addition either way — automatic pop hole door on a light sensor. Removes the human error part, which is honestly where most flocks get lost.
@shallow_well_shea · 11mo ago · 3 replies
Hardware cloth, and you don't need to bury it. Lay a 60cm apron flat on the ground all the way round the outside, pegged down, and let the grass grow through it. Diggers start right at the base of the fence, hit wire, and don't think to back up and start further out. It's less work than trenching and works just as well.
Electric is excellent as a deterrent but it fails in ways buried mesh doesn't — vegetation shorts it out, the battery dies, the fox learns where the gap is. In a small garden where you can't get much distance between the wire and the fence, I'd take the mesh.
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@shallow_well_shea · 10mo ago
Peg it every 30cm with proper ground staples and put a few inches of soil or bark over the top. After a month of grass growth you won't know it's there.
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@raised_bed_rue · 11mo ago
The apron rather than a trench makes this far more doable. How do I stop it being a trip hazard for us?
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