Predators and Predator Abatement

This is mostly just a collection of night pictures of the chicken tractors, along with some fixes.  Everybody loves chicken, as the saying goes.

Initially, I put my chicken tractor out on grass, moving it daily.  I put a trail camera on it to see if there were any nighttime visitors.  Sure enough, there were.

I didn't necessarily see predators every night or even every week, but they did come frequently and get up close and personal with the chickens.

As noted previously, one night a fox did get two chickens--without ever making it into the tractor. I'm assuming it was a fox because the camera did capture a fox that night, although there were no shots of the attack itself.  At the time of the attack, I had six pullets and two cockerels in the tractor.  One of each died.  The predator attacked through the handhold opening for the milk crate.

Unlike many, I haven't had much of a problem with digging, but did see clear signs one day:

In response to all of this, I have implemented a series of preventive measures.  One was discussed in the post on tractor construction.  To close off the handhold openings, I put hardware cloth on the gate:

 

The gate still opens. To guard against digging, I put split cordwood around the tractor in any areas where there are visible gaps.

This also deters the chickens from trying to dig out.  Other than the one incident shown above, however, I haven't had a digging problem.  Finally, I realized that incidents like the one shown above--with the fox on the top of the tractor--weren't good for the chickens, even if they were secure inside.

To deal with this, I set up electrified poultry netting.  That has worked very well.  Since starting to use it, I haven't captured any pictures of anything inside the net (although deer and birds have come inside).  Although foxes could jump over, they seem to be disinclined to.