Until now, our chick(en)s have been living inside a small cage on our enclosed front porch. They spend their nights in there and their days in their run outside and it has worked surprisingly well, but for the clean up. Chickens scratch. Ducks dabble. I guess all poultry have their "thing"... and scratching chickens makes for a very littered porch!
So this week I decided it was time for them to move to the barn. Of course then I got slammed with flumageddon so it didn't happen as soon as I wanted, but today I finally finished the indoor chicken coop, but for the hinges on the door (which are currently in the trunk of our station wagon, a couple of towns over... boo).This will look a lot nicer when (if) I get around to white washing the interior of the barn this summer. Please excuse the mess, as well. I tend to keep my barn tidier than my house, usually... I put the pallet in there for the chickens to roost on for now. I'll be building perches (as well as another little project I intend to reveal in the next couple of weeks) just as soon as I get around to it. That little chicken-sized door is the door that Gertrude (my ~80 pound ewe) leaped straight through the other day. What a weirdo.
This is a shot of what will be the outdoor chicken run. It looks pretty ridiculous right now (and will probably continue to do so, honestly) but it'll work! I'll be putting in a door at the close end, and then screening the whole thing with deer netting and zip ties. These little pvc-pipe enclosures work well, and we've had our one for the ducks for over two years now with little wear. This run will be the more "permanent" run for the meat birds. It'll house the birds that have little interest in hunting/foraging. I have another run that I'll be putting on wheels that I'll move around for the egg ladies.
Do you have any improvised livestock runs or pens? How did you build yours?
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