We finally decided on a run idea for the chickens and its now finished! Originally we had planned on making an run attached to the coop out of wood, the dimensions being 8 feet long x 4 feet long and 3 feet high. But after having them running free around the yard, that seemed too small for them, even though they would have had an additional 4x4x3 area under their coop. So we decided to just fence off a portion of the back for them, which ended up being easy and inexpensive. We used t-posts and deer netting, and it took about 2 hours total to get it up.....that deer netting is horrible to work with! It gets snagged on everything, and is really hard to get even. I know it looks a little trashy now, especially with the tarp covering the coop (hey - its been raining!) but it works and I will no longer have a deck covered in chicken poo. Here are some pics, although you cant see the netting well, so it looks like we just have random posts stuck all around!
The original plan had been to follow the line of the deck straight up to the fence, but that would have cut them off from their favorite dust bath spot. We decided to follow the fence line for a bit before going up the hill, to give them access to their bath spot, shade from the tree above, and just a tad more room. We also made a makeshift gate, which we hopefully wont be using much because its flimsy, but its there if we need it. The chickens seem pretty happy, although a little confused about why they cant get past the fence. I have caught them walking along it a few times today, looking up and trying to make sense of it all. Hopefully they don't figure out that they can probably fly over it if they tried hard enough!! We will probably let them out a few hours before dusk every night so they can get over to the grass and eat bugs and stuff to keep them happy. Speaking of happy, here they are in the above mentioned dust bath spot:
The original plan had been to follow the line of the deck straight up to the fence, but that would have cut them off from their favorite dust bath spot. We decided to follow the fence line for a bit before going up the hill, to give them access to their bath spot, shade from the tree above, and just a tad more room. We also made a makeshift gate, which we hopefully wont be using much because its flimsy, but its there if we need it. The chickens seem pretty happy, although a little confused about why they cant get past the fence. I have caught them walking along it a few times today, looking up and trying to make sense of it all. Hopefully they don't figure out that they can probably fly over it if they tried hard enough!! We will probably let them out a few hours before dusk every night so they can get over to the grass and eat bugs and stuff to keep them happy. Speaking of happy, here they are in the above mentioned dust bath spot:
