No one wants to wake up one morning to discover that a fox has attacked your backyard chickens. As such, it is important to make sure your chicken coop is fox proof.  It is horrible to see what a fox can do in just a short period of time inside your coop. You'd be surprised how many city people don't even consider foxes when setting up their chicken coop. There are many reports of foxes in urban areas, so don't assume that foxes are only for rural areas.

As manufacturers of mobile chicken coops, we've had many customers tell us about the brazen foxes in their area. Some come as close as their back porch in the early morning, and that's in a metropolitan area! Don't wait until you see a fox in your area, or hear of a fox attack before you safeguard your chickens.

Ensuring a mobile chicken coop is fox-proof

Fox proofing is undertaken slightly differently if you have a mobile chicken coop compared with a fixed chicken shed and run. If you have a mobile chicken coop that has a run attached to a housing section, it's important to make sure that foxes can't tunnel underneath the outer edges of your coop. Even if you're on reasonably hard soil, foxes can be quite determined to access your coop.

One of the best things to do in this case is to wire a large mesh floor to the base of your coop. If it's attached to the base itself, it will be able to be moved along with your coop when you move your chickens to a fresh area of your backyard. Chickens love to have area to scratch, so you want to make sure that this mesh floor has large enough squares to still allow your chickens to scratch, but small enough that a fox won't be able to enter. We've found that mesh with 10cm x 15cm rectangles is ideal. If you stood this mesh upright, a fox could actually fit through, but when it's wired to the base of your coop, a fox will not be able enter the coop due to the angle of their burrowing.

Another option is to fix a mesh 'skirt' around the outside of your coop. This gives your chickens more freedom to scratch, but makes moving your coop a bit more difficult We've tried both methods and the skirt is very cumbersome, but may be the preferred option by some.

It's also important to make sure that your mobile chicken coop is made from strong enough mesh. Unfortunately, some of the imported coops that I've seen on the market are made using very light 'aviary' style mesh. We've been told of foxes that have chewed through this thin mesh to gain access to the chicken coop. So just make sure that the coop you purchase, or make, has strong enough mesh. I would suggest mesh that is 2.5mm thick. We've found that this cannot be damaged by foxes trying to chew through, or children who love chickens and clamber all over the chicken coop!

Keeping foxes out of a fixed chicken coop

If you've got a chicken coop that stays in a fixed position, the main issue is making sure that the run area is fox proof. Most people with a traditional chicken shed and run erect a permitter of high chicken wire to form the run. This wire should have holes no larger than 80mm in diameter. As this style of run generally has no 'roof', it's important that the walls are high enough to prevent a chicken from flying over as well as to prevent a fox from entering (around 1.8m high is generally adequate).

When your run fence is erected, you also need to make sure that the wire at the bottom of the fence is dug into the ground, not too far below the surface, to a distance of about 50cm. As mentioned, foxes will dig to gain access to your chicken coop. If the wire is dug into the ground, the foxes will hit the wire when they start to burrow and eventually stop trying to get inside your coop when they realise that they keep hitting the wire barrier. Another way of achieving this barrier is to but something heavy like wooden or concrete sleeps on top of the mesh at the bottom of your fence.