chicken run Archives - Summers Acres

Keeping Chickens Alive During Cold Weather

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Chickens are pretty easy creatures to raise. That is, until the cold season comes. Jordan Walker, the lead content curator of Coops and Cages, shares tips to improve the survivability of chickens during winter.

Chicken owners who live in mild climate regions are a bit luckier than most. Those who live in harsh weather conditions have to keep their chickens closely monitored especially during winter season. Find out how to prepare for such circumstance beforehand to avoid any untoward incidens when the time comes. Continue reading “Keeping Chickens Alive During Cold Weather” →

DIY: Building a Bigger Better Chicken Run

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We are just weeks (maybe a month) away from our move to our “new to us” farmhouse. We have been quite busy and we have failed miserably at keeping the progress updates flowing. We took a week off from work after Christmas with plans to get a lot accomplished at the new house. Although, we did stay very busy, the excessive rain we received delayed much of our moving and work outside. Although it was still wet Friday, it had dried up enough that we Jon was finally able to make some progress on the outside tasks. A big part of our move is of course moving our chickens which requires constructing a new chicken run.

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Adding New Chicks To The Flock

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Sunday at my parents’ house while sitting around the table eating lunch after church I began telling the family about my experience the day before with adding the new young chicks to our existing flock. As they sat around snickering at me my sister tells me, “That’s one for the blog!”. I thought to myself, “Hmmm, I don’t know if I want to share that or not”. But here goes.

First, let me clarify that our existing flock is not full grown chickens. They are about 10 weeks old now. They are getting close to full grown size, but not quite there yet. They also have partial comb and wattle growth, but they have not completely grown in. Here are a few pictures of them about a week ago, but they have already grown more since then.

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The Chicken Run Attached to the New Coop

Building The Chicken Run

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After building the chicken coop for our new chicks, we turned our attention to the chicken run. We wanted to give our chickens as much room to roam in complete safety as possible without spending a lot of money. They will get to free range in the backyard as much as possible, but we needed an area where they could be safe while we were away at work and still get out of the coop.

We wanted it to be completely enclosed and since chicken wire came in a 50′ roll, we decided on a 6′ x 10′ area. The coop would take up 3′ of one side so these dimensions required 49′ of chicken wire.

I began by digging a 6″ deep trench where the fence would go and 10″ deep holes for the posts. The chicken wire would be buried 6″ deep to stop digging predators from entering under the fence.

Next I built the back side of the fence. 3 posts with a top rail and a bottom rail that would sit on the ground. We attached the chicken wire to the fence with a staple gun and dropped the posts into the holes. This way we could bury the posts and the chicken wire at the same time. Do not be stingy with the staples. As we found out in our recent chicken disaster you do not want to have an area that is not securely attached. After that incident I went back and put a staple in every other ring on the chicken wire all the way around the run.

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