It is well understood, I believe, that outdoor aviaries should not use plastic hardware cloth, because predators easily chew through it to get to the birds. It also is no good for rodent cages for the same reason. If you can cut it with a knife, you can cut it with teeth.

What critters are you trying to keep out? Might work for rabbits as they generally move on to easier things... like clover in the lawn. It is one thing to keep an animal in a cage, quite another to just dissuade it.

tj

Rabbits, but squirrels and chipmunks also, they dig and eat seeds and look for nuts they have buried.

Squirrels for sure would chew thru it, just look at bird feeders - anything made of plastic has teeth marks on it and/or chewed. That's my experience...

Animals can chew through plastic; the question is whether they would want to. What do you want to protect with it? I concur with Tsugajunkie; plastic barriers are best used to discourage animals proactively. Once animals know that something they want is inside the barrier, they will chew through it. For that reason, an opaque fabric - such as Remay or Agribon - might be more effective than hardware cloth.

I tend to agree with Zeedman. Yes they can chew through it, but it still might serve, depending on how you use it. Pulled taut like a fence, it may be easier for them to chew through. However, the year squirrels kept slashing the pumpkins, we covered the bed with plastic bird netting. It is hard to manage in so it worked for us to harvest a few pumpkins that year. They absolutely could have chewed through it but I suspect they did not like the risk.

Animals are less likely to chew their way into an enclosure, since it will offer few escape routes. A fence, with open sky above it, is another matter. This year, though, I had a deer jump my 6-foot garden fence for the first time. It landed, saw that it was fenced in, and beat itself against the fence trying to get back out. After 4 tries, it escaped... without eating a thing.

If plastic hardware cloth is strongly discouraged for protecting birds in aviaries from carnivores (by folks who are expert at that stuff), seems to me the same has to apply to protecting vegetables. Animals will chew their way into an enclosure if there is good stuff to eat there. Frankly, I suspect rodents are pretty clueless in thinking about how enclosed they will be. I'm here, the food I want is there. Chewable plastic in between. That's the equation they're solving. I've put chicken wire fencing around veggies, and squirrels burrow under it to get in to get those veggies. They get in and gorge. Yes, they're sorta enclosed, but there was a way in, and that's the way out.