Expanding the Run for Chickens!

Happy New Year to all our Rusty Duck Homestead family!!!!

First, I wanted to Thank You ALL for allowing Stacie and I some time with our families and getting caught up on day-to-day running of our own homes.

Now on to the first article I have for you.

During holidays we tend to have a project or two we plan on getting accomplished.  This Christmas was no exception… To my kids horror of course!

I have 10 hens that are as of today 1 yr and 3 months old…. They are a wonderful addition to our family. When we got the girls we had a plan to place them at our uncles property close to our own home. Plans as you know get changed and we had to find a place for them here. We had to scramble to get a coop and run area set up and we did not have a whole lot of room to do that. We are in an area where we cant let them free range. We have a fairly small run area for them although they were happy and healthy we wanted to do better for them. Our run area was a dog run changed a bit to accommodate chickens. Also, we wanted to be able to make the 2 runs separate so when I get chick babies in the spring they have an area close to the older girls but safe. My Husband came up with the plan and I think its perfect.

The original human door we had for the old run can be left open so they can run between them and closed to keep them in a specific area. Also great for cleaning the run without chickens getting in on the action!

We moved a few things and purchased another dog run and  went about extending the run.

Here is the dog run we got for them. It came in panels ready to be placed and attached where we wished. We also could angle one panel to allow access from the other run area.

This is the space between the old run and new. My son and husband were attaching poultry wire to the top of the fence and coop to keep those critters our and our critters in.

A cordless, screws, washers and zip ties really made the job easy.

Here it is… The run addition! We purchased the tarp roof to help with rain and sun. I know my girls love the new space!

 

I know I cant draw at all but this shows the coop and run area.

We were able to get it done in 1 day and cost us about $300 for the dog run, and poultry wire. We had some materials already from other projects.

So I hope you like our new area for our chickens…. They sure love it!  Until we had to adjust it a bit and that is coming in the next article!

Please feel free to share and comment I would love to hear how you set up your run area or if you have ideas!

Lisa