A look around our chicken run

One of my commenters asked for a look around my chicken run. I said I would do a post on it and then didn’t get round to it. I think that comment was over a year ago. Sorry!

I thought now was as good a time as any. Better late than never.

So this is the outside as I walk up to the top of our garden.

Our chicken run

Inside the chicken shed

This has featured on a few posts recently. There are two more perches across the right hand corner. The back perch is favourite and the top left perch is Freckles spot. The pop hole automatically opens at dawn and closes at dusk reacting to a light sensor.

View of the chicken’s patio area

This shows the chicken shed door, now closed, with my broom hanging at the left of it, the two little coop nest boxes on the left and the store cabinet, plus grit and oyster shell dispenser on the right and Cinnamon and Apricot with some bits of apple.

Inside the store cabinet

We chose a tall store cabinet because the previous shorter one meant that the girls would get on top of it and not only make it dirty but eventually they trashed the top of it.

The big plastic buckets on the bottom left have chicken pellets and corn. The clear bucket on the right has my coop boots. Behind that the other bucket has all the sprays and smaller items with the brush and dustpan in front of it.

The top shelf has pine shavings on the left, plastic containers of sunflower hearts, corn, grit and oyster shell, the red container has wet wipes, there is kitchen roll, disposable gloves and two torches.

There have been lots of other items in here but I have recently had a chuck out and got it down to the every day stuff.

There is a layer of marine ply cladding the fence along the patio area (behind the little coops and the store cabinet) and the right hand side looking out into the run. This is tough and doesn’t rot and can’t be chewed through by rats. It is sunk into concrete on the patio area and goes underground on the right hand side of the run into a layer of tiles and chicken wire. From past experience we have modified the run to keep rats out and haven’t had a problem since we installed the marine ply.

Looking out from the chicken’s patio

This section of the run can be closed off for the integration of new girls by closing the open gate and closing the square hatch.

The two chicken shelters

There is a chicken shelter in each section for extra protection on cold and windy days. Above there are roof panels which are solid on the right hand half of the run to insure that stays completely dry and the left hand side has panels which can be opened on warm and sunny days to let the sun in but closed at other times. They keep it mostly dry but parts drip at the joins in wet weather. There is weld mesh over the top of the panels to keep the roof secure.

The bottom part of the run

This part of the run has the ladders which are constantly used by all the girls. They like the ladders and the high branch perches above them. Again the two halves can be closed off while integrating new girls. There is a dividing gate in the foreground which is kept open most of the time.

There are branch perches all around the run in high and low positions. The girls like to perch in the shelters and on top of them and there is a round metal table behind the biggest shelter that they also love to sit on.

I  have recently given all the shrubs in the run a hard prune as they were getting up into the run roof and growing through the weld mesh. They have all had a hard cut back before winter but will grow back again in spring.

The weld mesh goes down under the ground and then horizontal on the inside of the run to stop anything digging in and outside there are rows of bricks where there aren’t path or patio slabs.

The outside of the chicken shed also has weld mesh stapled to the bottom three feet to give it extra protection from anything trying to chew their way in and is on concrete.

We have worked on the run to make it as secure as we possibly can.

The run has evolved over time. I am happy with it and it only needs occasional tweaks these days. Over the years we have been constantly improving it and I think it is pretty much as good as we can get it.