water tower for chicken house

[Frank S]

Seeing where your nest box is and all the chicken wire, you must have to protect your chickens from some bad critters.

I have several acres of pretty dense wooded area behind the chicken coop with just a cleared and mowed area of about 50 feet wide separating the two. When we first built the pen a few years ago we had numerous critters not favorable to the continued existence of young chickens, not so much now since I have thinned their numbers considerably through the years Maybe the Fox weasels skunks bob cats and coyotes have all figured out there is a crazy bugger who takes pleasure in using them for target practice keeping my skill set honed for the eventual invasion of the starving city dwellers when they figure out their life in the concrete jungles is no longer sustainable. Our county sheriff has said numerous times just don't tell him where the bodies get buried and if my backhoe won't start I can always borrow his.
so to protect the chickens the sheet metal that makes up the lower portion of the pen area is buried 18" into the ground with 5 strands of barbed wire buried in the trench the walls were built in. This discourages digging or burrowing critters the entire North wall extends to the full height or the run are for a couple of reasons is protection from any critter trying to sneak up from the woods and it blocks the North wind the coop itself is sandwiched between a small utility shed and the run area the poultry wire also covers the run area this prevents the dive bombing hawks from being able to get in as well. We let the chickens and Guinea foul out during the day to free range where ever they want. Not many day time predator's to worry about especially with our 4 dogs around. hawks don't seem to be interested in full grown chickens and I have a small fully enclosed cage in the pen area for hatchlings where they remain until they are a couple months old