Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

Aldarion said:

Good lord man that sounds like a lot of work.

Our chicken run is just chicken wire on a wood frame. No wooden roof needed, its covered with chicken wire on top. We do put a shade cloth on top, for shade.

The chicken house I built is about 8x8, raised off the ground. That made a big difference, nothing can burrow in if its not on the ground. We havent lost many chickens since I built this. Only issue we had was a fox, those little fuckers are smart, but after trapping that we havent had any more.

We've kept 10-20 chickens this way for years in an area with plenty of smaller predators. We don't have bears on my property so I can't speak to that.

My little brother in VA just had a bear eat a bunch of his chickens, so I guess that is a thing. Hard to imagine bear proofing a chicken run though.

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BrutulTM said:

Raising it off the ground is a good idea. You don't need to keep wood shavings down for them. They sleep on roosts, not on the floor so it doesn't matter if there's crap on the floor. I've even seen coops where they put chicken wire for the floor under the roosts so the shit just falls out on the ground. In the winter we put straw in to help them stay warm but that won't be an issue for you.

Do make sure that the coop has good ventilation but the windows can be closed during storms/high winds/etc. Also think about how you're going to shovel it out periodically. You don't want to be crawling around on your hands and knees in chicken shit to clean it. One of our coops has a 5' 8" ceiling and it's fucking torture for me at 6' 2" to shovel that thing out hunched over all the time.

Chain link is probably overkill compared to what most people do for a run but it will certainly get the job done. You don't need a roof over the whole run but do put something out there that they can get under for shade.

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lurkingdirk said:

Foler
How many chickens are you looking to get? You live alone, right? So you don't need 30 eggs a day. If you're looking at just a handful of chickens it is entirely possible to make a coup that you can move around the yard (keep your lawn healthy). But if you're looking for something more substantial I 100% agree that something off the ground is the way to go. Make it big enough that they all get into it easily. We shut our chickens away at night. They get their evening feeding in the chicken house, and then we shut them in. We have a chicken wire outdoor coup, but ours often wander the property during the day. Not as much right now because a family of foxes has moved in. I buried the chicken wire 8" down on all sides, and stapled it to old railroad ties which we then buried. We then put another railroad tie on top of that which is above ground, making the entire parameter very sturdy at the ground level.

Separate and apart from that I have 40 laying hens in laying cages that are entirely enclosed in an indoor coup. That's strictly for eggs.

I'd advise against putting it too close to the house, because they can be noisy, even just hens. And maybe for the first time in a matter of this sort, I must disagree with BrutulTM . I think you need to put a mesh wire top on your outdoor area because you have plenty of birds in your area that will make a tasty meal of your chickens. If you want to be super safe you can make your outdoor area under your coop, fence it in, make you chicken coop four feet high, and have a ramp for them to get into the coop. It's a compact plan with plenty of safety benefits. Something like this, but not so silly:

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lurkingdirk said:

Yeah, for just a few like that a kit like that would be ideal. And if you use heavy gauge wire around the bottom you'd have no trouble with coyotes, hawks, or bobcats. Probably okay for bears, too, especially if the chickens roost inside at night, but bears are going to do what bears are going to do.

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