Predator Abatement for the Rabbits

 As I have mentioned before, I have an abundance of predators in the neighborhood. In addition to foxes and raccoons, I have once or twice caught bobcats on trail cameras, though never near the chicken tractors.  Rabbits are also pretty low on the food chain, and I have found signs of predation in my back yard (piles of fur, and once, a severed rabbit head).

The cages are pretty strong, especially the bottoms.  All sides are 14 gauge wire.  And the cages fit pretty tightly in the hutch and can be secured with wire.  Because of the location of the hutch, it's not really practical to put electrified netting or rope around the perimeter, meaning physical barriers will have to work (I suppose I'll revisit this if I come out to smashed cages and dead rabbits some morning).

The main point of vulnerability is the top of the cages.

I don't think anything could get in, but having a fox pacing on top of the rabbits probably wouldn't make for a very pleasant situation.  Eventually I will have water lines running along the top edge of the cages, as well, although that's paused for now because of winter.

My solution is to put some fencing along the top edge of the roof frame:

The distance from the frame to the top of the cages is about 24 inches, so the top row of the 28-inch fencing was clipped off and pieces straightened as before with the cages.  With the thinner-gauge wire, straightening it was relatively easy, and it was easily hung from hooks.

I'm using a couple of carabiners to hold the wire to the top of the cages along the sides.  I don't think this needs to be as seamless as would be needed if it were on the ground--anything trying to get on top of the cages will be jumping, and hitting a small gap won't be easy.  So for now, this looks good.

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.