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.

Building the Chicken Tractor, Part III

In addition to the modifications described in the first two installments, I made some other changes to the original design.  One is that I added a couple of cross-braces at the top.  These increase the strength of the frame somewhat and also provide places to hang small feeders or waterers if desired.  For a while, I had a three-pound feeder hanging from one of the crossbars.

For reasons I haven't figured out, I have a lot of movement of the top in relation to the frame--this is noticeable with the latching hasp in the middle of the tractor body.  Sometimes it doesn't line up.  It can shift to either side.  I put some corner braces inside the top hoping it would help, but it largely hasn't (shown below behind the late black widow, which was discussed in an earlier post).

One very important modification addresses one of the structural vulnerabilities in the design.

Shown below is the back of the tractor.  The milk crates serve as nest boxes (you'll also note that the hasp is reversed from the plans; I think the original plan is better but I just assembled it wrong).

The milk crates themselves are part of the back wall.  The openings at the bottom of the crate are bigger than with the half-inch hardware cloth, but not too bad.  The holes for the handholds on the crates, however, are pretty big.  I was aware that this was a potential problem at the time I was building the tractor, but thought it probably wouldn't be a problem, because the chickens would be roosting on the bars at the front of the tractor.

As it turns out, the chickens do like to roost back there.  As the picture above shows, the nest boxes are at the top of the frame--this simplifies construction because they're right up against the top bar of the frame, but also puts them relatively high in the tractor. I think the next time I make one of these I'm going to lower the nest boxes down a little bit.  That will complicate the design but may make them less attractive.  There is a flip-up perch in front of the nest boxes that is intended to be used to block the nest boxes if the chickens start roosting in there, but my chickens just flipped it back down when I tried to block the nest boxes.  Also, depending on ones' schedule, that might not be viable.  If you leave for work early in the day (before the chickens are moving around), it's not feasible to flip the bar up in the evening and down in the morning before they start laying.

So the chickens who roosted in the nest boxes essentially are within reach of the handholds.  And eventually, I did lose some birds that way (two in one  night).

It was a fox that got them (the above picture is not from the night of the attack, but does indicate that there are predators in the vicinity).

Mitigation is pretty simple (I think).  I simply attached some hardware cloth to the board that serves as the gate holding the nest boxes in.

For now, the hardware cloth is overly large.  To actually open the gate and pull the boxes out, some of the hardware cloth on the left edge of the picture will have to be trimmed.  However, the cutaway around the hasp should allow this to open and close.  The two pieces of firewood at the bottom hold it in place, but may not even be necessary.  This should solve the nest box vulnerability (this was done the day after the attack, by the way, which is why blood is still visible on the back of the tractor).

It would also be pretty easy to just service the tractor from the top, collecting eggs that way.  My chickens aren't laying yet and I don't know if they will even lay in the milk crates. Time will tell.

 One other thing I've done that isn't really a modification of the tractor: As seen in the picture at the top, I cut a 6x8 white tarp to drape over the top.  This is so that the sun isn't hitting the galvanized metal directly.  I don't know if it helps keep the tractor any cooler when the sun hits it, but the chickens seem to be doing okay.