Rebuilding the Broken Chicken Run

After a stormy winter and spring, our chicken run was no longer functional. It had some trees fall on it and some really heavy wet snow this winter, causing the top of it to collapse down.

The run looked like a battlefield, with fallen branches and debris scattered everywhere. There were gaps in the fencing where predators could easily slip through, and some sections were barely standing.

It wasn’t on the top of the priority list since our chickens mostly free range, but it’s an invaluable safe area for them to hang out when we aren’t home, and the only place the chickens will willingly go outside during the winter.

Now that the gardens are well on their way it’s time for the next experiment. We wanted to make some improvements to it anyways, so we figure that now’s a good a time as any to do it!

Considering how the top of it collapsed under the weight, we figure that the first important step is to reinforce it so it can withstand the next winter. We will be adding in some triangles into the framing to add that extra strength and stability. We would like to make the area larger but since the fencing is buried 1.5 feet deep to prevent digging predators I think we will leave it the same size.

Ultimately we want to move the coop and the run to a better location, but that will have to wait until next year since where we want to move it to has other things that need to be done to it before we can.

The coop is near the forest edge, and that seems to be bringing in more predators than if we had it closer to the house. Most of our issues have been from raccoons, but we have also had a few weasels, fox, hawks, howls and skunks. Since weasels seem to be able to get into anything 1 inch or bigger and the fox and raccoons can get through chicken wire, we have decided to use a combination of cattle fencing and ¼ inch steel mesh to keep them safe. We also enclosed the top in the same materials to stop any top attacks

First things first, we’ve got to clean up the broken mess and salvage what we can.

I will update this post as we progress through this build, so keep checking back!