Mumsnet Talk

....do the chickens then walk on the wire??? How do you set this up so they have something pleasant to walk on and you can clean it regularly???

Best thing to do is to erect the wire with posts round the run but dig a trench about 30cm down and extend the wire down into the ground and then fil in so the rats cant dig under the wire. You dont need to make the floor of the whole run out of wire.

I'm going to be moving it around on a fairly regular basis MoreBeta, we're putting them in our wood, where I know we have rat holes, and I don't want to take any chances! CAN I line the bottom with wire without it being detremental to the chickens?

PS, thinking of the FSF Maggies 6 or Dozen with run, and will be adding wire to the bottom of the run. The girls will free range when we are there, but we also have foxes in the area, so I know we have our work cut out in keeping them safe!

Ah right. You will need to wire the bottom of the run.

I have a friend who has a run (an Ark) she wheels around and plops down on grass. The chickens seem happy to walk on wire as long as it is on grass. The wire in my friends run is square mesh about 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm and quite thick wire mesh not just chicken wire. The only thing is they can't really scratch about which is natural chicken behaviour.

All of our runs have wire on the bottom. the chickens are fine with it and better to do this than risk loss to he who cannot be named. we clean the run out by turning it all on its side and bashing on the bottom. obviously the girls are in a spare run but it only takes a few minutes to do. Rats are much less of a threat than h.w.c.b.n is. a bit of blue food directly in the rat holes usually does the trick

Ok, thanks for that both of you, good to know! mummymeister, will they still be happy when wire is on the leafy woodland floor then, rather than grass??

MoreBeta, am a sahm, so they should get the greater part of every day to scratch about to their hearts contect!

Ahem, content.

we wish we had laid wire underneath the brick floor of the "house" run for ours - we stupidly thought it was solid enough, but the rats undermined it. That said (and fingers crossed) some carefully targetted chemical warfare seems to have done the trick.

For other predator issues, may I recommend moving to live next door to a large prestigious commercial pheasant shoot? Our chickens are entirely free range, all the time, and don't even always get shut in at night - never say never, but we have not had an issue in 3 years.

OP - I have friends who have runs with wire on all sides including the bottom. Doesn't seem to bother the chickens much (but it is solid fencing-type wire on the bottom, not chicken wire, and I suspect aimed at large-predator prevention rather than rats, as I suspect rats could get through the holes).

Yep I have a chicken run, 7 chickens and I often consider the potential side effects of the chickens and the rats...but then i think this is natural! I bought an excellent environmentally sensitive rat scarer from The Green Directory....but I think that they have now gone bust though - maybe try StopDodo.com they were selling something similar.

Thank you both for your input.
Stealth, want to avoid chemical warfare as much as possible as we have a pair of beautiful Tawnies who live in the wood and I would be distraught if they ate a rat that had been poisoned and died.

Think perhaps wire mesh along the bottom, and then if you could tell me the brand of your fab rat scarer Anna that would be a good first port of call. (that or DH will give in and finally let me get the dog I've been after, but one thing at a time )

Finally ordering our coop today after WEEKS of deliberation...I'm sure I was much better at decision making before we had children!

I hear you cobweb - in the end we had no choice as they were in the house (ours, not the chickens') so chemical warfare it was, buzzards or no - we just removed any bodies as fast as we could.

Now that I can understand Stealth, we have mice, but RATS...shudder!

Everyone has rats - you just don't see them. Chickens are the best deterent for rats if your house is on legs and they can scratch around underneath the house. Chickens will eat any mice they can see, And they are fast enough to catch any mouse they see. All chickens. They swallow them whole.

Ours live quite happily in a wire bottomed run. We just throw in loads of wood chips and rake them out every now and then although probably not often enough and chuck it all on the compost heap. The girls don't seem to mind and at least we've got the peace of mind of knowing they're all rat and fox free. We let them free range when ever we're around, but it's good to be able to put them away and know they're safe when we go out.