Chicken wire kills chickens. It should not be used to build chicken coops. In this article we’ll tell you why it is dangerous, why it even exists and how you can best protect your flock. Hint: Use 1/2 inch Hardware Cloth, NOT chicken wire to build your chicken coop!
Improper Use of Chicken Wire Kills Chickens
This article has a title that is a little click-baity because it seems to be the only way to combat the deadly misuse of chicken wire when it comes to covering chicken coop doors and windows. It is hardly a new chicken keeper’s fault when they buy chicken wire to build their chicken coop – after all, we are exposed to images of chickens peering out from chicken wire from childhood onward, even on product packaging. (I would like to applaud the Everbilt brand, which has added an informational video to it’s poultry netting pages that encourages flock keepers to opt for hardware cloth when building chicken coops. Sadly, the video ends with them putting chicken wire over a window using a staple gun, which raccoons can rip off!) Let’s look at why such confusion exists.
Chicken Wire is Used to Keep Chickens Out of Vegetable Gardens
Chicken wire is used to protect growing vegetable plants from being eaten by chickens. Hardware cloth is used to protect chickens from being eaten by other animals. Raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes, bobcats and bears are common predators of chickens. If you are trying to protect hens from other nocturnal predatory animals, you must use hardware cloth. Chicken wire, with its 1 inch or wider hexagonal holes lets a raccoon reach his entire arm into the coop to decapitate your sleeping hens with his bare hands so he can eat the part raccoons seem to like best (the heads). You will be horrified to find that a raccoon will kill every chicken he can reach; murdering the entire flock if he can. All made possible by thin, flimsy, wide-open chicken wire, which he can actually chew through if he desires. The body weight of a large raccoon climbing on chicken wire is usually enough to loosen the staples holding it in place and allowing entire panels to be peeled back. This is why chicken wire kills chickens – it simply cannot keep raccoons out long-term.
Think of Hardware Cloth as “Raccoon Wire”
If chicken wire keeps chickens out of veggie patches then “raccoon wire” (hardware cloth) keeps raccoons out of chicken coops. Everything eats chicken so you must protect them by using ½ inch hardware cloth. Predators also eat Coturnix quail, including rats, so quail need the protection of ¼ inch hardware cloth, which has even smaller holes so rats cannot reach through it. Hardware cloth is made of a thicker gauge wire, making it incredibly durable, so it stands up to every common suburban and rural predator, except bears. Always use hardware cloth to protect backyard birds.
If you have bears, your secure coop must be inside of a 10 foot tall heavy gauge chain link fence, with metal posts securely concreted into the ground and an inward slanted anti-climb top strung with high voltage electric wire fencing.
But I’ve Seen Chicken Coops Made with Chicken Wire!
I have too. When I was a new chicken keeper, I made a chicken tractor with chicken wire sides and had multiple birds killed inside of it because raccoons could reach through to decapitate my birds. Learn from my mistake! Chicken wire coop sides, coop windows and coop doors eventually result in dead hens.
Always Use Hardware Cloth!
I hope this quick article has been useful in educating you on why chicken wire kills chickens and that using ½ inch hardware cloth for poultry and ¼ inch hardware cloth for quails is the proper way to protect your sweet birds!
Rhonda Herr says
Hi, I love your page and the beautiful photos you share! I am hoping after retirement in about 2 years to start refining my egg production and colors. I am wondering if I breed a Welsummer rooster to my small flock of Whiting True Blue pullets later this summer, can I expect their offspring to produce olive eggs with speckles or is it only is the cross is the other way around with the WTB Rooster and Welsummer hens?
Tay Silver says
Hi Rhonda!
A Welsummer roo over your WTB hens will produce 100% olive laying offspring BUT the speckling on their shells will depend on his individual genetics; it could be beautifully present or disappointingly absent. If you are able to hatch him yourself from a very heavily speckled egg from a heavily speckled Welsummer line, do it! If he is coming from a hatchery or breeder, you’ll need to test-breed him to see what his offspring lays. It is believed that speckling and tint color are better inherited from the father so you would have a reasonable expectation of speckling from his offspring. I use a WTB roo over Welsummer hens so I can see what the hens lay and hatch from the heaviest speckled eggs. This is how I have ended up with speckling almost guaranteed in my F1 generation. The Welsummer hens who lay eggs with lots of dark, fine speckling all over the shell produce better speckled olive eggers than hens with larger, splotchier or lighter speckling.