Chicken Courtyard

Backyard Poultry

The New Pen

Here's a view down into the open pen created by the runs. As you may have noticed, it's scattered generously with carrot and celery scraps from our kitchen. The chickens don't know what feast they have! Actually, that's true in more than one respect, since all that grass will not be there for long. It's very difficult to keep vegetation of any kind in a chicken pen because of their constant scratching and pecking. So we will see how long it takes seven chickens to demolish thick, healthy grass. Did you spot Peeper going for those dandelions?

New Chicken Pen

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Rearranging Runs

 Having failed at our wonderful plan to let all seven chickens run free on leashes, we turned to making a larger stationary pen for them. This way, the hens would have more room to run about all day, and we wouldn't have to drag a chicken run out to pasture and back at nightfall. It was quite simple: use all the runs as perimeter fencing and create an open courtyard in the middle. The poultry seemed to enjoying running in and out of all the chicken run doors!

Spring At Last

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The Other Side of the Fence

Ever seen one chicken on both sides of a wire fence? No, I did not cut a larger hole in the wire, or touch any of the chickens. And yes, despite all that wonderful grass I described in my last post, the spoiled hens soon grew bored and began to look for snacks elsewhere. Peeper had a competitive advantage from the start since it had a naturally very small comb. This allowed easy passage through holes in the wire which would otherwise cut or trap a regular hen's taller comb. Dandelions seemed to be the first choice food once Peeper successfully had its head and neck outside to freedom. And I never even knew chickens like dandelions!

Enjoying the Sunshine

Acorn seems much happier outdoors than stuck in the coop. Or is that a bit of a mischievous look yet I see in those eyes?

Spring Grass

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Back to Grass at Last!

However, nothing can match the rich green grass of spring. Do you think the chickens were happier in their spacious house with specially-bought and prepared collard greens or out here in the elements eating self-producing weeds? Well, I'm not the one who asked for winter! Anyway, you can see that our hodge-podge collection of runs survived the winter and were ready to put to use on the field again. We discovered one time-saving change to make at this point: we used only one of the runs to take the hens back to their coop at night rather than dragging all three back every day . . . hummm, why did that take so long to figure out?

One Last Run!

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Side Runs on Coop

Here are the other runs with their tarp and straw bales. The tarp is fastened to the shed (chicken house) wall using ferring strips, about a foot above the tops of the runs. Then there’s a long 2x2 pole on the opposite edge of the tarp, weighting down that edge to hang over the runs. It worked well, with the same drawbacks as the other run, except it was very easy to remove—just roll it up! Also, it didn’t block out light into the house like our original plan (see it here), since it was attached below the window. The straw bales worked also quite well to shelter the runs’ sides, even leaving a little peephole for the hens.

Winter Poultry Runs

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Tarp-Covered Run Against Pophole Door

Want to see our chicken run tarps in action? Observe, there is snow all around, but not on the heavy-duty tarp nicely protecting the run. And underneath are the happy chickens enjoying dry dirt to stretch their legs on! Oh, and for insulation, there are a couple straw bales under the tarp too. The crates of rocks hold it down in strong winds, along with our handy-dandy bungee cords! Yes, this system did work pretty well, just a couple catches: 1) must keep snow swept off to less than 1/2” or it will freeze rock-hard, 2) cannot access dirt or chickens inside run without a half-hour operation on tarp, and 3) chickens get a tiny bit bored cooped up on 20 square feet of frozen dirt. But, as I said, it worked well enough!



What Does Puzzle Think?

Fresh Straw

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Pepper and Midnight in Straw

We put loose straw down inside the runs frequently so the chickens would have something fresh to scratch in when the ground was frozen. Their droppings got pretty concentrated over the winter in such a small space. The hens always loved to scratch through and eat the hay seeds left in the straw. By spring there was quite a layer of (somewhat moldy) straw to deal with, but it worked okay. The straw made great compost!

Second Try

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Design #2

This tarp design worked a little better. Sorry I don’t have a better picture. This one is attached to the shed wall right above the run, over the straw bales, and held down by crates. The only drawback was having to clear the snow off as it accumulated so as not to bend and break the runs. The one around back of the shed was attached right below the window, slanting a bit over both runs, so the snow slid off somewhat. I still couldn’t let them in really severe weather, like when it got down to 0 or 5 above outside, but then they were pretty happy to hunker down inside anyway.

Stranded!

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Nighttime Dilema

Ahem...one detail we overlooked…. The tarp made the chicken house drastically darker. The window under that tarp is its only light source. Cover it up and the whole house gets dark at least several hours earlier. Which means the chickens must come in that much earlier or they can’t see to roost! Well, as you can see in this picture, they were taken by surprise and have gone to the place with the most light—the outside run—in the cold wind and snowflakes! I had to take a flashlight in to get them inside that night.
Oh well...it's back to the old drawing board!

First Tarp Try

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Tarp Canopy

Here is our first try. Pretty impressive huh? ...Or tacky? It was quite an operation: 1) We lined the runs up along the house, opening into the pophole. 2) We lined the perimeter of the runs with straw bales. 3) We mounted heavy 15’x20’ tarps on ferring strips underneath the eaves of the shed. They draped down over the runs and were secured with bungee cords and rock-filled crates at the bottom. I’m telling you, it was an operation! Do you think it will work?

Chicken Peephole

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Peeking out of Tarp

And here are those spoiled chickens looking so pitifully out the end of the run after the storm. They’d run back and forth like that trying to get out of the wire runs. And I never let them out. For some reason, I thought they’d fly away or run out on the road and get hit or something! Not so—chickens can hardly fly and prefer to stay around their home anyway. Though they can run, they’ll come back to you even faster for scratch. One time they all got out of the run when I left a door off. According to my mom, my reaction was along the lines of panicking!!

Tarps Storm Style

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Side Runs

Okay, if you still don’t believe it, here’s another pre-hurricane picture. These are the runs along the side of the shed/chicken house barricaded with still more skids and rocks. Honestly, I don’t know how the runs stood up to all that weight on top! Though we’d never get hurricanes here in Ohio, do you think they would withstand a tornado? By the way, I have heard of tornadoes that stripped chickens clean of all their feathers!

Run Tarps

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Set Up for a Storm (Hurricane?)

Here is a demo of the tarp in full use. This is one of the lighter runs (3x8) that we used beside the henhouse, with a second 3x6 run, whenever the chickens weren’t out on grass. And yes, you are correct if you thought those were skids on top. This was set up for a predicted high-wind thunderstorm when we thought the runs might blow away. I think that was a possibility, with those tarps acting like kites. Ever thought to shut the chickens in the house during a storm?!? Well, live and learn. The chicken house was a bit small for a still-growing rooster and eight spoiled hens, I guess.

Fall Garden Day

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Chicken Runs with Garlic

I’ve always like this picture of home-grown garlic, in the seedbed ready to plant, with happy free-range hens in the background. Really, there’s nothing like working in the garden with your own chickens nearby! Click on the picture to make it bigger—you can see Puzzle and the hens eating from the troughs, and that’s Acorn in the right-hand run beside the nest box. The doors are put up at the end to shade the nest box a bit. (What was all that talk about using tarps??)

Garden Runs

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Chicken Runs in the Fall Garden

Um...well...maybe this is still not a picturesque scene, but it’s better than rocks and styrofoam! Also a lot less work, though more improvement will come. Here you can see the chickens in the garden beds. We put them on finished beds to scratch up the soil, and they found plenty of beetles and worms too, I’m sure. This is the idea of a “chicken tractor,” where you keep the hens concentrated over a patch of soil to turn it over naturally. It didn’t work fantastically for us in the end though—they mostly just dug dust holes, and left the rest alone. I think the soil has to already be pretty loose to work very well.

Runs & Tarps

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Poultry Runs

Just like our chicken house, the poultry runs kept changing (improving?) as well. A while back, we built a third lightweight run—yes, to pasture still just nine chickens. At first we used boards, styrofoam insulation, and rocks to shield the runs from wind and sun, but our setup began to look a bit like a shanty town. So, we designed a complicated system of tarps to replace it. One run had the tarp permanently fastened to one end of the top; it could unfold to cover the whole run if needed. The run above is similar; the tarp is actually on a frame so it folds up for access into the pen. The switch from scrapwood to tarps was one very important improvement!

New Chicken Run

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Exploring the Pen

Eventually it dawned on us that one run was not going to be enough for eight hens and one very big rooster. Also, the run’s weight was getting to us. So, we set out to build a very light run that could join to the first for more space. By cutting down 2x4s to 1x2s, using corner braces for supports, and replacing one-inch wire with two-inch, we cut the weight down by more than half.

Completed Frame

This is what the assembled frame, measuring three feet by six feet, looked like without the wire. The corner braces made the structure quite sturdy. You can see the door on the end which slides in and out. This proved to be a good design and we built several more like it.

Inspectors

Now we see what the chickens think of it. They were always very cautious of anything new, but soon they began to really enjoy running in and out of the door between the runs. Here we see Acorn trying out the new doorstep. The Rhode Island Red in front was later named Cherry; it was one of Puzzle’s favorite hens.

Fun Outdoors

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Up on Top

There’s nothing like a bird’s eye view of your play pen! We actually had to lift up the chicken run to get this box in and then crawl inside with the feed and water. Getting the chicks back in the box was even harder: luring with treats, scaring with a broom, and climbing in to catch them didn’t work; eventually we created a cardboard/string system to herd them out. Now I know, this is the first reason not to take chicks outside! (Did you spot the chicks huddled in the back corner? They look pretty scared of Acorn!)

Chicken Run

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Moveable Poultry Pen

This is our first chicken run. It was designed to be portable, predator-proof, and economical. Two-by-fours, scrap wood supports, and one-inch chicken wire did make a cheap four-by-eight-foot pen. No raccoons have ever even approached the thing. The catch is the “portable” part—it takes two strong people on each end to move it! Not being wiser, we hauled it around anyway. We’d take the chicks out to fresh grass every warm day and sometimes even move them while in the run!