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?