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[chicks&chickens]

Hello, I wonder if anyone can help here with some advice on badgers and chicken keeping. We have decided to have a little farm. To start with, we hoped to get just some chickens and ducks and a few bee hives with a view of taking on a couple of goats next spring. Our garden is of a quite generous size considering it is in the urban area (roughly 30x100m) with rear gate leading onto a copse. We get lots of wildlife in the garden, which is nice, but also starting to pose a threat to our dream of keeping a little farm. Badgers have moved in and created their set at the back of our garden and foxes have been having their den in next door neighbors garden. Despite of this, we have decided to go ahead with our plan with a view of using electric fence around the coop.  Several of our friends have said that this method has been very successful in keeping the foxes away from their chickens. However, after I have seen some videos on strength, intelligence and persistence of badgers, I am starting to be worried, whether our measures are going to be sufficient. We have found ourselves in a peculiar situation with chickens and ducks already being ordered to arrive sometimes in May. We have also started converting an old wendy house into a temporary coop before building a permanent large one, once we determine the final number of poultry we would like to eventually keep. We hoped to reinforce the windows with some wire fencing, however, I wonder if a simple wendy house will be able to stand against the fierce strength of the badger. Do you think this project is still viable considering the circumstances, or should we give up before even trying as we have limited budget to spend of some extreme fencing protection? Thanks a lot for your advise!

[mullethunter]

I would think that electric fence, properly installed and maintained and at an appropriate height would work to keep out badgers and foxes. Without the protection of said fence though I would think a Wendy house certainly wouldn’t keep a badger out.

[The Dogmother]

On 4/6/2020 at 8:57 PM, mullethunter said:

I would think that electric fence, properly installed and maintained and at an appropriate height would work to keep out badgers and foxes. Without the protection of said fence though I would think a Wendy house certainly wouldn’t keep a badger out.

Agreed. I would also choose your new housing so that it's off the ground (mark 1 cube)  and have slabs under the run and extending 18" all round, and with slabs on top of the skirt. Surround the whole lot with electric fencing, or strong 6' fencing with a leccie wire around the edge, about 8" up. Sounds over the top, but badgers are very determined and destructive.

[Minnie&Moose]

We've had nearly 10 years experience of keeping hens in an urban garden with foxes and badgers as regular visitors - the foxes reared cubs in our garden on several occasions.  Electric fencing (electrified poultry netting) worked well against the foxes - but you need to be very vigilant and keep the fence on at all times, check the battery carefully and make sure the fence isn't shorting out on vegetation.  Badgers can be more tricky - we lost 2 hens during one badger attack - you need to make sure they can't get under the fence - we had one do this one summer evening when we were a bit late shutting up the chickens (the fence was on and functioning).  We also raised chicks in eglus & eglu runs on the lawn with no electric fence protection and we have camera trap footage of badgers and foxes regularly moving around between them.  I've had the odd claw scrape on the shell of the eglus but nothing has ever broken into them.  But, the rabbit I looked after for friends, lived in a wooden hutch.  I went to feed her one morning and something (I suspect it was a badger because of the pawprints on the garden fleece nearby) had managed to nearly rip the back off the hutch - rabbit was moved inside until we could get her a much more solid replacement hutch - so I would be very wary about keeping anything in a flimsy wooden structure - badgers are very strong, as evidenced by the damage they did to our neighbour's new wooden fence when she was unwise enough to try and block them out of her garden.

It's definitely possible to keep chickens in gardens where foxes and badgers visit - but I would advise caution re the types of structures you keep the birds in, and I would suggest you'd need to manage the electric fencing very carefully.  Good luck with it.

[Blackrocksrock]

Dont have chooks anymore since a fox got the last one but we have had a badger in the garden - lots of nose holes around and they were at the bird table for sunflower seeds and a couple apples we left out for the blackbirds.   Unfortunately now cant leave them out just hanging peanuts and fat balls.   Found badger poop in a couple places and kept removing it as its their territory scenting and tried olbas oil - no luck but lemon juice!  One lemon with water through the liquidiser and then sprayed around the edges of the garden had worked as they dont like citrus.   I used the whole lemon and a water bottle to spray it about.   Did this for 3 days running.  No sign since thankfully - I even had nose marks on the front door from it digging up the garden.   It would not harm them just deter them and I hope they have found a better place to be!