[Justin]

We'll be getting chickens in the next few weeks, but first we have to prepare a suitable home.

We have a section of our land, an old orchard space where the trees hadn't taken and so it's been cleared out. We're going to turn it into a large fenced chicken run. The idea being that within it we can fence off sections if needed, probably quarters at a time, in which we put the hens and move the house as needed to whichever section is in use. This will hopefully give the ground time to recover. The chickens will also free range in the garden and the next field under our supervision but the run will, hopefully, be as proof against predators as I can make it. We're starting with 4-5 hens but are likely to increase that in the future once we've more experience so figured I'd do the building stuff just once.

You can see the space here, the run will cover most of the space, but not quite all the way to the far hedge with the gate, 13m x 17m. The view in this photo is looking directly west so there'll be shade for a good chunk of the day. The hen house will go in the top left corner with the pop hole facing towards the camera as the prevailing wind is south westerly and the hedge will provide some shelter against it.



The hen house will be on legs with room to shelter underneath, I'll also put in a couple of posts and a roof for additional shade, along with some pieces of tree trunk etc for perches.

For the run itself, the plan is to bang in 9' fence posts to a depth of 3' every 3 meters, giving a 6' high post out of the ground. The corner posts might be concreted in to give a strong structure to attach and tension wire to, near the ground and at the top.

Then dig a foot deep trench and 4' wide weld mesh ½" x 1" will be fixed to the posts with the bottom foot underground and angled outwards. Another 4' wide weld mesh, 1" x 1", will go above that, overlapped 6" and with a wire woven through the join. the mesh will be joined to the top and bottom tension wires with hog rings every foot or so and will hopefully prevent any sagging.

On the outside of the mesh I'll run some standoff insulators attached to the posts and run a couple of strands of electric fence wire at fox-nose height and another a bit higher to hopefully make the foxes walk away from attempting to climb the fence.

I'm hoping this will give me a 6' high run secure against most predator attacks. We're planning on being in the property for 20 years so I'm prepared to spend a bit extra now on good materials so that it will last a long time.

Any additional things I've missed thinking of? The weak points are likely to be the area under the gates on either side, not sure how best to deal with that?

[Justin]

Just looking for mesh suppliers and Hills of Devon are out of stock of some sized. Wondering if 1" x 1" at the base and 2" x 2" at the top would be ok or if the holes are too large.

[marklunn3602]

Hi Justin

Excellent plans to keep the fox out but have you priced up some electric fencing? You seem to have planned a lot of work there with a lot of expense for just a few birds. Why not buy an electric fence kit for around £300+ which you can then move around to manage the land giving the birds fresh grass every few weeks with ease & much much cheaper. As (or if ) you expand your flock you can either add additional portable electric fencing or revert to a more permanent plan which would justify a large flock.
Im currently looking for an acreage to expand my flock and that's what ill be doing.

Just a suggestion, hope it helps.

Mark

[Justin]

Hi Mark,

thanks for the advice. We already have an electric fence kit, with poultry/sheep netting, but it occasionally gets used for other things. We have a local farmer with a post banger rig on his tractor who can put in the posts for us and there's some other digging work being done on the farm so we have an excavator on site which means digging and infilling the trench wouldn't take long. Seemed to make sense to do it while the big tools were available. Mesh for the run would be £200-£250 plus the cost of the poles. Galvanised wire isn't unreasonably priced and fixings are relatively cheap.

We figured that a solid secure run capable of lasting 20 years was a good investment and I figured a fox could easily clear a 4' electric fence, which is about what the usual electric nettings are.

We're looking at small-time smallholding for 20 years, the chickens will always be a part of that and the flock is bound to grow. There'll get access to other areas of the fields but a secure place at night, particularly if/when we have to go away for occasional days seemed sensible.

[Greenerlife]

I would add some netting to the top too.  I get magpies and pheasants and crows who take the food for my chickens otherwise!  In fact, at the moment I have two magpies who dive bomb the 2inch netting and get through!  Cheeky beggars!

[Louise Gaunt]

Netting will also provide protection from flying predators e.g. Buzzards. I have had hens killed by buzzards so now have bamboo poles holding up strings in a matrix across our large hen run. It seems to be effective, but isn't stopping the squirrel with a taste for the hens corn!

[Justin]

Ah, now attacks from above I hadn't considered, thanks for that. I think the run is too big to realistically net over, that would involve taller fencing and a fair number of additional posts to support a roof net that big. Perhaps some lines of monofilament strung from post to post might work. Probably still need to have taller posts though or I'm likely to garrotte myself when going in to feed and clean out.

[Justin]

I wonder if one of those fake owls on one of the fence posts would work to keep prey birds away?

[Louise Gaunt]

I will try to post photos of my bamboo pole / string arrangement, if I can work out how to make the file size small enough to post! Otherwise, if you send me a PM with your email address, I can send you some photos directly.

[Steph Hen]

Impressive plans, better than what I have! If you wanted to save your selves a bit of work, i have a small suggestion:
pheasant release pens have the wire at the base just laid on the surface, and obviously they bury themselves a bit over time so you don't see the wire. Saves digging a trench around the pen and just as good (so I am told).

On s slightly different note, next time I build a pen I intend to adapt a bit of it to have  a crow ladder trap roof somewhere (Google it). If you get into any breeding and have chicks, and sometimes just for catching birds, it's handy to have a smaller pen within a large pen. Might not take too much more effort to put another post in in one corner and make a 3x3m or so pen with little gate you can get through and ladder trap roof..? My thought is that I'll bait with eggs and feed the hens in there to get crows used to coming, then one day shut the gate with couple hens inside and fit ladder in place and hopefully all the troublesome crows can be killed in one day. No protection from Hawks or buzzards, but I've only had sparrow Hawks after chicks twice so I'm not too bothered about them.

[Greenerlife]

I have Heras fencing as my chicken run, so I guess about 6or 7 foot high and my netting holds up pretty well and doesn't sag but inside the main rectangle I have got a support panel midway that comes halfway across the rectangle (if that makes sense?) This also helps when you are moving the chickens around.

[Marches Farmer]

What are your local predator birds?  Here it's buzzards, which will take growers.  Siting the house next to a hedge is giving cover for predators and rats.  Having a small roofed run area outside the house and within the large run will give shelter in very bad weather and somewhere to contain them if you need to catch one in a hurry, especially if you train them by scattering a little corn each day.  It will also keep litter clean for longer as they won't be tramping mud into the house.  You could just make it a roof on legs, like a mini pole barn, and screw a sheet of ply into the windward side over the Winter.  We use game netting over some runs but beware of it getting weighed down by heavy snow overnight.

[Justin]

Steph Hen, thank you very much indeed for the suggestion of the ladder trap. I'd not heard of that before but crows are very common in our fields. The idea of making a corner pen sounds ideal. I could make a weather protecting roof for it that could be changed out for a ladder trap roof when needed. Also useful for separating off birds if needed. Have now added that to the plans.

Marches Farmer, we have a couple of buzzards that occasional fly over, I'll keep that in mind if we get younger birds. Plan, to start with, is just a few point of lay birds but I'm sure that somewhere down the line there'll be more. Knowing my girlfriend, chicks will happen eventually 

[Womble]

I'd echo what the others have said about this being a lot of work for just a few hens, but if you're wanting to future proof it and expand your flock in the future, go for it!!

There's no need to dig a deep trench to bury the netting, since as Steph Hen says, it's just as good to lay it out along the ground in an L-shape, or if you prefer lift the turf and place the netting below that. However, if you've got the digger and don't mind the effort, it will certainly work.

We're going to turn it into a large fenced chicken run. The idea being that within it we can fence off sections if needed, probably quarters at a time, in which we put the hens and move the house as needed to whichever section is in use.

I reckon you're going to run into problems with this TBH. We recently moved our hen house all of six feet to the left, and come dusk all the hens just clustered around where the door USED to be and looked confused!!

To save you the effort of moving the house, and confusing the birds, I wonder if you could set it up permanently in the middle of the four quarters, on an area of type 1 or similar that won't get muddy. You could then have pop holes or gates from this central area out into the other four quarters, and rotate the ground they're allowed out onto. It wouldn't be hard to do, and it would save you from having to move the house ever.

What does everybody else think?

[Justin]

Hmmm, more thinking. Perhaps just having the wire coming out on the top is all that's needed. I'd been going on what I read about foxes tunnelling under but certainly it would save time not digging the trench if that will work.

Interesting idea putting the house in the middle. Again, I'd been reading that they want shade and shelter, but I'm open to suggestions, hence all the questions on here.