[Stereo]

I keep my flocks in large, grass pens which works well in the warmer months but it seems that a bad winter ends up with the run trashed and it never recovers. So I'm considering some sort of deep litter housing for winter. Flocks are usually around 12-15 birds. Considering the future possibility of bird flu being more common, I'm thinking that actually they would be better off in a fixed run but not sure what sort of size I would be looking at / depth of litter. Supply of straw / woodchip is no problem. I've been looking at those metal, walk in runs you get on eBay with a view to fitting a proper onduline roof or similar.

I've got a fair few flocks so it needs to be really low maintenance if possible.

Any comments welcome.

[cloddopper]

60 years ago ....... The biggest problem we had with 2k chickens on a free range & deep litter regime was that in wet weather the area where they came & went out their buildings to the big runs became a bit damp .  ammonia fumes then started to be a problem . Red mite also had to be sorted by us three kids  scraping the perches carefully each Saturday  & spraying them with diluted Jeyes fluid .
Dad did the top up of the litter with several bales of dry clean barley straw every week .

We had nest boxes in those days . They would also get cleaned out every Saturday by Mum ,  given a very diluted spray of Jeyes & refilled with clean barley straw .

[Marches Farmer]

We have game bird panels from Agrigame which work well.  Drawback is they're only 5' high which means most adults have to stoop if you roof them. Dog run panels (mesh not bar) work well for us and Onduline fits across the top of a 3' wide run (we tie strong spars across the top and screw the Onduline to it, to make it easy to dismantle or move).  We've also used twinwall polycarbonate roofing with some success, although it can tear away from the screws in a very windy spot.