Build a Chicken House Run
A chicken pen or run is the protected outdoor area attached to the hen house, where the chickens can roam safely while they forage, hunt for insects and get some sunshine. It also keeps the chickens away from your prized flowers!
Pens are designed to give hens plenty of room to move about because overcrowded birds tend to stress themselves more easily and can stop laying. Hens need space, the more the better, although this will depend largely on the garden area you have available. The chicken pen should have plenty of green vegetation growing in it for the chickens to forage, otherwise they will need daily feeding. Remember that hens also need access to water, because they tend to sweat easily especially in warm weather. If their beaks are open and their wings splayed, they need a drink.
Hens are placid animals that are easy prey for many types of predator, including raccoons, weasels, foxes, birds of prey, rodents and neighborhood dogs and cats. You must provide proper protection for your hens, so your chicken run must be designed to give them a safe environment while they go about their daily activities.
There is nothing complicated about a hen pen, but it has to be well-made. For example, if the wire mesh is not buried sufficiently in the ground, rodents will be able to burrow under it and get into the chicken coop. Then you will miss out on those nice fresh eggs for breakfast! This is where you should consider getting some tips and advice from experts knowledgeable in how to build a chicken house run and keeping and rearing chickens.
Check the perimeter regularly, because it is not unknown for foxes or dogs to work away at the wire over time to make a large enough access hole. We positioned our coop and pen so that they could be seen from the kitchen table, a lesson learnt from bitter experience.
You might want to think about installing some sort of drainage for the chicken pen as well. Over time hens can make quite a mess, which will be aggravated by wet weather. If possible, try to site the pen on slightly sloping ground, which will help to overcome the problem. Some chicken keepers put tarpaulins or even permanent roofing over their runs but this can be expensive and is not really needed if the pen is big enough.
Instead of a permanent pen you could decide to build a chicken tractor or portable chicken coop, sometimes also known as an ark. This is a small structure, usually triangular in cross-section, which combines a coop or nesting box with an attached run. The tractor can be moved around to give the chickens fresh weeds and bugs, and to save your yard from being scratched bare. It also gives free fertilizer for your garden! However, because the tractor has to be moveable it can be quite small, perhaps 6 to 8 feet long and 4 or 5 feet wide, so is suitable for only a few hens at a time. A chicken tractor is very cheap and easy to make, however, so you could have several spaced around your garden if you have many hens.
It pays to get expert advice before making your chicken run, unless you are familiar with space, feeding, shelter and health requirements for keeping hens. Putting up a chicken run is very straightforward but, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it is so easy to underestimate what your hens need to survive and prosper. They will pay you back with a regular supply of lovely free-range eggs.
Related Articles
- Looking For Innovative Chicken Coop Designs & Chicken Coop Plans? Your Search Ends Here In order to protect your chickens from predators, weather and injury it's important to build a chicken coop to shelter them. If theft is very common in your locality, design your chicken coop to prevent theft as well.
- Why You Need Chicken Nutrition Facts Chicken nutrition facts are important to find, as you may know if you are starting to watch what you eat. Some chicken products have more calories from fat than others, which will mean more fat on your thighs. There
- How To Find The Best Chicken Coop Plans Many chicken coop plans are available on the internet, but which ones give you what you need to build a good-quality hen house? If you are already familiar with keeping poultry, are good at detailed planning, making your own blueprints
- Chicken Coop Designs, Measurements and Numbers If you are a backyard chicken farmer, you may be thinking of designing your own chicken coop after looking at all the different chicken coop designs on the Internet. This can be easy enough to do, but there are
- Custom Cedar Dog House – Advantages Of Building Your Own Wooden Dog House No one knows whether dogs actually prefer dog houses or not. But cedar dog houses are one of the most common materials used to build dog houses. If you have a large sized dog in your home, then a
- A Guide To Wren Bird House Of course before you can really go through with any wren bird houseplans, you are going to have to learn more about what the wren is and this way you can make sure that you are going to be able
Comments
Leave a Reply