My dad has suddenly decided he wants chickens – he’s planning a 3m run in their good-sized garden, fully enclosed and fox-proof.

But the thing is there’s also a fox den in the garden.

Will it totally traumatise the chickens and/or the foxes to be so close?

Chooks should be in bed by the time the foxes come out and vice versa. However if the foxes have watched Mission Impossible you could be in trouble. Sounds a wee bit unfair to me….

The STW of chickens is: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forums/

Edit: A fox nabbed my chickens, so I may be less tolerant than most.

kenneththecurtain – Member

Edit: A fox nabbed my chickens, so I may be less tolerant than most.

Your fault for not securing your chickens 😈

You’ll need some serious weld mesh in the floor.if you are going to fox proof it then.

Yes they will be scared and it will stop them laying for a week every time they see a fox.

I’ve had chickens for the best part of a decade, feel free to pick my brains about anything.

Your fault for not securing your chickens

Indeed. Doesn’t mean I’d not give him a mouthful of lead given the chance though…

You’ll need some serious weld mesh in the floor.if you are going to fox proof it then.

Yes they will be scared and it will stop them laying for a week every time they see a fox.

I’ve had chickens for the best part of a decade, feel free to pick my brains about anything.

Cheers, he’s talking about a fully enclosed run with skirt – is that enough do you think, or does it need a mesh floor?

If the foxes have dug a den, they’ll dig under the skirt and into the run, no probs. Armour the floor!

You need weld mesh going down about 2ft to stop a determined fox.

Chicken wire doesn’t stop foxes, it keeps chickens from escaping. So your enclosure needs to be firm too.

They can also go up, a long way, and chew through small diameter wood.

So armour floor, walls and roof, house them in heavy duty wood coop within cage.

Here’s what our latest coop looked like after we had a massive garden shift about.

We haven’t gone to town too much on the fox proofing as there aren’t many about round here. We have got weld mesh around the peripheral though to stop rats digging in more than anything.

Fox proof garden and a fox den in the garden ? So not fox proof then.

Don’t bother with weld mesh etc get a mains powered electric fence and run wires around the outside of the chicken mesh on insulators. Get the highest powered energiser you can afford.

Their garden is not fox-proof, obviously. His idea is a 3m welded mesh run.

I think that if the chickens can constantly smell the foxes its going to make for a very stressed existence for them. Poor things.

I have chickens and a fox den in the garden. There’s often fox poop outside the chicken run. The chickens are fine and happy, the foxes are now used to them and leave them alone.
I have my rabbits next door to the chickens too and so far, no issues there either (fingers crossed)

My runs are 2.4 x 5, one joins onto the next but the animals are separate. The runs are made from 2.4m fence posts dug in 40cm. No concrete. There are fencing gravel boards top, middle and bottom. Welded wire is used all round and over the top. The joins at the top are sealed with twisted wire. The wire is not dug in.
I’ve then laid paving slabs on top of sand all around the outside.

The chicken coup is the big igloo run. We had the 3m one and soon tired of moving it every couple of days. It trashed the lawn and didn’t give them as much space as I would like (4 birds).

Hth

We had chickens that could completely free range for 2 years before the foxes found them, I’m pretty sure we got the fox but there are still some about so built a run for them.

Simplest/cheapest option I could find was to get half a dozen Heras fencing panels and sink those into the ground, running the length of the back wall of our stables. I don’t think it’d be fox proof by itself but I’ve run an extra loop off the electric fence at various heights which should hopefully put the buggers off.

You could organise a fox hunt.

I’d imagine the Maryhill Hunt would be slightly different from the traditional fox hunt.

I can only imagine donning my Kappa trackies and Burberry baseball hat and pursuing a pack of Staffies whilst popping a 600 yard wheelie on my Carrerra. 😉

Well, we’ve had the chickens for several weeks now, and they’re brilliant. The fox has trotted past a few times while the chickens have been out, the chickens stared it down and it wandered off. I reckon our urban foxes have much easier food sources about, the chickens don’t seem bothered at all.