Fox and rodent anti-dig protection - advice please

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Margaid

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How far out does anti-dig protection need to come?

I'm thinking of raising the Poutry Palace on paving slabs just around the edge so they extend beyond the enclosure. I don't want to put the whole thing on slabs as the design means there's a dry dust bath under the main house.

Will the fox see the slabs and just start digging further out? This is belt and braces as I'm going to use electric poultry netting as the first line of defence.
 
We have had rats that have dug under an entire paving slab (18") by following the gap between them. Took about a week though. Bad news for a fox as an undermined slab will drop on its head! Usually the wire is turned out a foot and covered with soil. If you turned the wire out and put a paving slab on it, if the soil under was dug out the slab would drop taking the wire with it I think. So no gap above for it to get through. When we move we are turning the new perimeter fencing out a foot and covering it with rocks, so same thing really. The rats over there are Coypu though, so they will be a problem!
 
How big is the run? Had you thought of just laying 1/2in wire mesh right over the base, overlapping it where required and wiring it together along the joins with garden wire, also wiring the edges to the mesh sides and roof so in effect, you have a mesh box? I covered the mesh floor with garden landscaping fabric so the hens can't scratch mud up into the floor litter, whatever sort you use, pegging the fabric down with tent pegs because the small-gauge mesh wouldn't allow plastic pegs to pass through it. Buyt the idea was that nothing else could get through it, including rats as well as foxes, and after several years it's proved its worth as a worry-beating and mud-preventing investment.
 
I buried mine about 8 inches and then turn it out by 12.

We are on clay soil here though so it does make digging difficult.
 
Thank you all for your replies.

What I intend to do is put a hen house or two in a large run with 50m electric poultry netting round it. The gate in the netting will be open during the day whenever someone is at home so the hens can free range over the adjacent fields if they want to.

The house I want to make (probably from Stokboard rather than Ecosheet) is shown on the cover of Michael Roberts book - see the link if you want to see what I'm on about. It is the large house at the back of the picture on the front cover.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poultry-House-Construction-Gold-Cockerel/dp/0947870210 (why won't this show as a link?)

I'm going to extend the wire sides and block in another section to give the birds more weather protection, so the total footprint will be about 8 foot square. The design uses one of the wire panels as a full height door to let the birds out but I'm going to put a pophole with automatic opener in one of the sides.

The ground is uneven and it's easier to lay and level a square of paving slabs - i was then going to put some gravel around that, particularly by the pophole to try and reduce mud being tracked in. I wasn't intending to put any litter on the ground inside the Poultry Palace enclosure so I don't want to pave it completely. We are on virtually solid clay - about 2 inches of topsoil before you hit the clay (awful to dig even with a digger, it's either dry and rock solid or wet and sticks to everything) so the land is old permanent pasture as it won't grow anything else.

If I decide to move the hen houses at any time, the slabs could just be lifted and relaid in the new position

The birds love the Poultry Palace my friend built - they dust bath underneath and can shelter from the rain (just as well - it's been bucketing down since 4pm).

It may be that this idea won't work, or you know of some objection from the point of the hens welfare.

Any further thoughts will be most welcome.
 
That has foxed me well and truly - the link didn't show in blue when I was typing!!
 
I've got a poultry palace - best coop on the place! It's been in continuous use for the last 8 years and is now in the process of being repaired and minor adaptations made. I found it difficult to get the birds out of the top section when I wanted to dust them etc. (usually done at night) so discarded that idea quite early on. Split the nest box section in two and used half for roosting and the other half as a nest box. That worked well.

The back is having see through panels at ground level up to where the nest box starts to let more light in underneath, as it appeared to be quite dark using a full length wooden back.

All in all a great piece of kit. I kept seven birds in mine and just let them out to free range when I could.
 
If you have slabs over clay soil, might you have drainage problems, especially in wet weather? I did try a slab run once, years ago, but I found it very difficult, nay impossible, to keep clean - I imagined I could just hose it down, which did deal with the slabs, but then the slurry just piled up in a semi- liquid stinking heap that wouldn't drain, even though there's good drainage on our chalk hill - there wasn't anywhere for it to go. The birds were walking around in sticky poo as well, because like you i didnt plan to use any litter on top of the slabs. You could leave gaps between the slabs but this would in itself reduce drainage and the gaps would instantly fill up with muck, as would any gravel you put in the spaces. If the run had a roof to keep it dry there would be fewer problems in wet weather because the mess wouldn't start off semi-liquid and could be scraped off or picked up easier.
 
I think slabs would be fine as long as they are big and heavy enough and would have almost the same effect as wire. Also as you say, they would be much easier to move if you want to move the house/run at any time.
 
Usually a 12" to 18" is sufficient, put bent stiff wire pegs (like staples) around 4" - 5" long (depending on soil) in the outer edge about every 2 - 3 ft, and if poss cover all with light soil and let grass grow thru it (if a permenant pen). The only other real solution is electric fencing, there are some powerful/cheap'ish!? at around £80-90 on the market. Good luck.
 
Thanks again for all the advice. I had already decided that electric poultry fencing was the answer, the paving slab idea was just in case Mr Fox somehow got through that ( it happened to my friend when the battery went flat and her son didn't notice). OH said the answer was to run a trickle charger permanently. Mains power is no good because we get power cuts and I haven't found an Energiser which will switch from mains to a battery backup. The Poultry Palace doesn't have a floor and the hens use the are under the nest box level as a rain shelter and dust bath so I want to maintain that for my hens.

I'm not really sure what the local fox population is like, I haven't seen much evidence but then I haven't really been looking. We also have badgers - there's a sett near the lane about half a mile as the crow flies and I have seen one in the cottage garden which is about 150 yards away down in a hollow.

I can only try to keep the hens safe, it's always a compromise between quality of life and ultimate safety, but they'll be shut in the hen house inside an electric fence at night and only allowed out of the electrified compound in the day when we're here - and it is quite close to the buildings. I did see a fox in the daytime about 5 years ago - it walked right through the middle of a field full of grazing ewes and lambs. None of them took any notice of the other!
 
Hello Margaid
Further to your previous regarding controlling foxes. It sounds to me as though you don't have either a firearms or a shotgun certificate so couldn't use shooting as a control method. Your only real control is going to be mains electric fencing or via a 24Volt battery (gives a good kick!). Electric fencing is effective and just like horses or other animals - Mr Fox soon learns there is easier and safer food available! I have also caught them using a Fox cage, which was presented by affixing to inside of run by cutting a hole in netting staking cage tight up to wire on inside of run. Mr Fox sees hens on inside, walks round looking for a way in, the cage appears to go inside run and hens are seen through it - Fox goes in, door slams down and hey presto. You then have to get somebody to dispatch it for you, or take it in the cage many miles away and release.
Happy Hunting - Farmer Giles.
 
Thanks Farmer Giles,

We are thinking about some kind of gun licence depending on the most appropriate type of gun. I have PM'd you about this - not sure if this post is a response to that.

We're on 36 acres of our own land and the buildings, and where I will keep the hens, are well away from the public highway, although we have a couple of footpaths crossing the land. As well as the potential fox problem we have lots of magpies, crows and rabbits all of which cause their own problems.

I'm thinking of maybe getting a Crosman PCP 'ratter' for despatching chickens and also anything caught in a trap - we're trying to catch a stray tomcat at the moment but he's just for the snip. The kittens are still too young for neuturing. I don't know whether that would be powerful enough to deal with a fox though, and I don't like the idea of keeping any animal in a trap longer than necessary while I find someone amongst the busy farming community who can come and do the deed.
 
For shooting foxes you would need a firearms license, and the most humane method is with a high powered rifle...22 or better still .243. Using a shotgun isn't really ideal unless very close range, in that case you would get away with just a shotgun license. Hubby has both licenses and does shoot as as well as our neighbours.

We use electrified fencing running on both mains and battery, the mains has a battery backup in case of failure
http://www.electricfence-online.co.uk/shop/electric-fencing/energisers-mains-powered/phoenix-hlm700-mains-electric-396058.html.

We prefer that our local foxes get used to the fence as a deterrent, the odd rogue fox would get shot, although this is a very, very rare occurrence. So far we have not lost one bird/duck to the fox in the electrified areas, however when the ducks fly out we have lost a few that way to the fox over the years.
 
You can get Fox cartridges for shotguns. 36 gramme BB in boxes of 10 which is the biggest stuff I've ever seen. Avoid ones saying Semi- Magnum as they need full Magnum proofing for the gun. Avoid any shotsize smaller, regadless of what the salesman says. Run them through 3/4 choke and they will kill outright at 30, perhaps 35 yards.
 
Thank you both for your reponse.

We were concerned about pellet scatter using a shotgun - I'll have to investigate the Fox cartridges.

I haven't been able to find a mains energiser with battery backup - I obviously hadn't found the right search algorithm. We don't get as many power cuts as we used to but our spur can be disconnected if the cut is due to damage just on that length. I will be using electrified netting, how much do you run from that energiser Foxy? A Gemini 80 with plenty of lead out cable came with the 100m of netting I bought secondhand so we have the option to run mains or battery with that - OH was going to arrange a trickle charger, but I like the fact that it deals with vegetation. How does it cope with snow loading? Does it short out?

I was feeling fairly confident in using the electric netting until Chris' post about the third fox strike, and I've been seriously considering getting some Heras style fence panels to create a run inside the netting with a anti-dig skirt around it. It means the place starts looking like Fort Knox which is not really what we want!
 
It's our intention to set up a compound in France at the rental. Although there are few foxes it only takes one to completely wreck our breeding quartets. So we will still timeshare the ranging and use pelletised feed. If they were just a flock of 'chickens' we would do as the french do locally, let them free range over acres and accept the losses, as replacement is cheaper than feed for confinement. When they are really spread out you will only lose a few at a time.

5 foot plus chicken wire fence made using two rolls of 1 metre with a foot dug in. Posts 1.5 metres apart. Single electric strand at 12" and another at 5'. We will enclose 50 metres square of woodland and subdivide internally with plastic fabric. Will take us a month to build it! Yes it will look like Fort Knox but we will do something a bit better when we have a permanent place. They need the shelter of trees for the heat of Summer. In Winter they may need to go into a barn -don't know yet.
 
The Heras panels are 10' wide by 7' high - the mesh panels you see around building sites. I visited a breeder at the weekend who uses them for his breeding pens - 2 panels deep by 1 across, a row of about 6 pens. He nets the top to keep the buzzards and magpies out and pushes the short feet into the ground with horizontal mesh laid at the edges. He doesn't have too much problem with foxes as he has two "hen dogs" - collies that live outside 24/7. It's amazing watching them round up the straying youngsters.

It was he that warned me about snow on electric netting - he's 1000' up in the Black Mountains. I'm still dithering about the panels - there should be plenty about after the Olympics, apparently they have used 76 miles of temporary fencing!
 
Cheap way of stopping Crows and Magpies (we have Buzzards be the trees get in the way) landing in the run is to put garden canes in the ground at random about 2 feet apart. So predators can't land or take off without crashing into them. We've had crows sit above in the trees watching the 6 week old chicks but can't get down to them. May work for foxes jumping over the side as well? I do know that foxes won't jump a staggered line. Prince Charles has an incredibly posh chicken coop at Highgrove. It is surrounded by a stake fence made from random lengths 4 -7 feet. Security cameras saw 5 foxes one night walking around the run trying to work out how to get in. A lot prettier than chicken wire as well !
 
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