Building a chicken coop

Hmmm... it looks like this thread has gone to the birds... you guys crack me up- both those posts were rotten!

So, you'll find that a 'temporary' henhouse, regardless of 'how' you do it, will still have strategic weaknesses.  Not saying 'permanent' ones don't, but it's much easier to 'harden' one with a 'permanent' attitude.

I trenched down about a foot, and put hardware cloth vertically, then folded it horizontally so that it extended out about 18" from the vertical.  When I installed the wire mesh down the SIDES, I brought it to ground, then 90 degrees out to the mesh that was down and over.  Any varmint that tries to dig in at ANY point, will get VERY frustrated.  The mesh goes all the way up to the soffits, and I even put the folded mesh across the soil at the openable end-door, so that they get vexed there, too.

To defend against tree-scaling critters, I put a steel roof on it... they climb the tree overhanging, jump onto the roof, and find themselves sliding all the way down, off the end, and into the flowerbed.  My wife does NOT like things that jump into her flowerbed, so when she sees it, she puts out the live trap, and once said critter has been trapped, she has me make it a 'dead' trap...

My henhouse has basically four stages of protection between outside and the nest boxes and roost... that means, although the pen is well armored, even if they got IN, they STILL cannot get into the roosting, as they'd have to pass through the automatic door, OR try to chew through the stainless-steel floor and walls... it's like a citadel... once they're all the way inside, sun goes down, door closes, and nothing comes in or goes out.

The tricky part, is raptors.  Once you harden everything against walking/climbing bandits (raccoons, skunks, oppossums, etc), and running/digging bandits (foxes, coyotes, dogs), then you have snakes, and raptors.  Snakes coming in during the open-door times is a difficult thing to stop, save for the buried mesh... it's pretty effective at stopping the types of snakes that'd come in and steal eggs.  Fortunately, I've never had snakes kill the birds, but I suspect that someone, somewhere, probably has problems with birds killed by snakes...  but raptors... eagles, hawks, owls... it takes street-smarts (your chickens' smarts, that is) and overhead cover... if your chickens are free-ranging, or working an open-top garden, they NEED to have overhead obstructions, and the ability to see and hear the skyward attack.

Friend of mine had a GREAT solution for his garden- he put poles at the corners, stretched strings of lights like it was a patio.  The strings of obstructions made flight-attacks complicated.  He also took chicken-wire, and formed it into 'tubes from his chickens' favorite foraging areas, into his hen-pen...  when they sensed an attack, the birds would run into the tube, which was naturally very good defense againds avian and canine attacks.  Simply having good cover obstructions helps... they have someplace to run IN, any attack gets tangled or dead-ended.