The ‘chicken palace’ was an old shed my brother refurbished so the location wasn’t one chosen for the coop - it was use what you have. Despite ‘improvements’ & fixing places where critters got in, they would always find a new place to dig, climb, squeeze, or whatever. There was another smaller coop in the yard ... I helped put up the fencing for that one - buried fence at least a foot deep (or more) all the way around. Except for one small spot ... of course, the fox found that spot & massacred 5 chickens in one night.
No permanent ‘coop’/run for me. I want a chicken tractor & after looking at some commercial ones, I ‘think’ I can keep the critters out & keeping it moving should help keep the critters guessing.
That’s true about the varmints - shoot (pun intended), we get them on our back porch sometimes because we leave food for my daughter’s cats there often.
We’d dragged a water heater that failed out there, and my daughter got the idea that the cats could jump up to the top of it from a nearby railing. (World’s biggest house-cat feeder?) I noticed, however, that they’d always hesitate before jumping back down. That made “the little light bulb” in my head go on, and I tacked a few feet of a small (5/8”?) branch to the side of the water heater. Then I rigged up an old metal pan to put “bait” in - say a half bad tomato or something the cats weren’t interested in — with the pan to fall off the heater and alert us if disturbed. (Ok, this was pretty diabolical, maybe I’m “disturbed” too. :-) Hahaha!)
Yes, the cats would knock the pan down sometimes, but kinda seemed to learn to not to, too often - I’d go out and yell at them. Better yet, in only a couple nights, a ‘possum showed up, and when I cracked the door open, it seemed confused about how to get down. Big mistake - a .22 air rifle pellet did the job. 3-4 opossums and a couple raccoons have made this mistake...
A “dog proof” trap beside the porch gets some too, but, some raccoons in particular seem to avoid it. I prefer shooting the varmints anyway- it’s more humane than having the animal struggle for hours in a paw-trap, which we often don’t hear...
The “chicken tractor” (chicken trailer?) may well help. I’ll be curious if it does. Our smaller coop needs to be rebuilt, and those Harbor Freight wheels are not too expensive when on sale...
Arrrggghhh!!! I spotted the Opo plant (etc.) chomper. It is a freaking squirrel. Just like they like to cut off ends of branches in trees, for no apparent reason.
This squirrel is unusually human-shy. It took off, scooting away at least 200 ft. before I lost sight of it, when I was still 75-80 ft. away when it spotted me. Usually the squirrels around here are a little more used to humans, and don’t scamper up, up, and away, until a person is maybe 40-50 feet away.
So, this is a problem: A squirrel will be darn near impossible to block or repel away from the garden. I can try repellent spray on elevated routes in, assuming healthy “jumps”, but, I’m dubious of efficacy. I could pee in a can a few times and spray THAT. Hahaha. I just DON’T have the time to lay in ambush with my .22 airgun rifle. I can probably poison some grain, putting it in spots the chickens would not get into, but I might kill a few wild birds. The grain might kill some other rodents, too - not a big loss.
Temporarily, I have a fairly large dog cage. The weather is nice the next couple days — I could literally put that cage out there with our male cat in it. Give him plenty of his favorite foods and water, and the old “cat bed”, and he will complain a bit, but be ok. That’s only good for a couple days though - then the weather gets rainy. And the squirrel may figure out the cat is caged. Better might be to use the old doghouse as shelter for food for the cats, so they stay out there more. No food near the house, and hope I’ve caught all the other raiders who might eat it. Keep the chickens penned up for now. :-(
I have a small trap I can bait with dry corn and set up, but, I’ve never caught a squirrel in it.
Other ideas?