Chicken Run
Our chickens have a nice outdoor run attached to their house now. The previous owners had built a run there with a handy little chicken-sized door for access from the chicken house but the fencing was rusted and broken, and the wooden posts supporting it had rotted. So we tore that down and built a new run. This one is made of 2"x4" welded wire and T-posts, and has a "roof" in addition to walls. We built one side 4' high and the other side about 20" high. The thinking is that the slanted "roof" will shed leaves (and raccoons?) better than a flat roof. We have lots of predators here and although the chickens are locked up in the coop at night when most predators are out, we wanted a secure place where we could put them if we're going to be away for the day.
The chicken shed attached to the run is a homely thing, made mostly of slab wood and cardboard (to block the wind in the winter). It also has a nice assortment of corrugated metal and blue tarp tacked attractively here and there. We inherited it when we bought Palazzo Rospo. It has a pretty decent layout and tons of character. I like it.
The chickens are 13 weeks old now and won't be given freedom to roam Palazzo Rospo for another month or so. I was advised that if they had big chickens to teach them how to hide from hawks or stray dogs that they could be let out when they were pretty young. But because we got these as day old chicks, they will have to figure everything out on their own. Thus, I was told, it is smarter to wait until they're about 4 months old. That's when they'll be fully feathered and able to fly a little in an emergency.
It's surprisingly difficult to get a decent photo of busy chickens. They're an attractive bunch, I think. The roos are beginning to get shiny green tail feathers. The hens have really pretty pheasant-like feathers. They're really friendly and curious, and come up to talk to me when I feed them. They'll let me pet their breasts but if I try to pet their backs they scuttle away. I think it bothers them when they can't keep an eye on what I'm doing. The roosters are starting to make weird cracked goose-honk sounds. Crowing practice with an adolescent voice :)
Labels: chickens
posted by Leslie @ 1:13 PM
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8 Comments:
Hi Leslie,
Thanks for checking out my blog! We moved up here the end of Aug. 2004, and learning something new every day. Our chicken tractors and coops are very crude (yours looks like a palace compared to ours), but we're hoping to build something more permanent this fall.
Good luck with your birds Leslie. I've decided to let mine live out their lives and then take a poultry break for awhile.
I think Hal at Ranch Ramblins has the prettiest chicken houses I've ever seen...mine are more "rustic", I think Hal's chicken house construction budget is bigger than mine :)
hey, as long as it's a good, stout weather proof house that's all that matters!
At least that's what I tell myself when I look at our coop..lol
Well thanks, guys. Sometimes we think "We need to rebuild this thing!" and so far we've decided that our money and effort are best spent elsewhere. It really will need to be replaced eventually - it's on a creek and the creek bank is right underneath the back wall of the chicken house. It's only a matter of time before the creek wears away the bank until the floor of the chicken house is gone and there is a big hole to the great outdoors. It won't be very secure then!
FC, why the hiatus?
Hi Leslie! I say if the chickens are happy and dry, keep the budget low as long as you can. :) My husband calls ours "The Thousand-Dollar Chicken Coop." Ugh. Well, when you've always lived in an apartment you don't exactly have a stash of odds and ends of lumber, hardware, tools, etc., so he had to keep running to the store. It's too bad the previous owners allowed the barn to deteriorate so much. Oh, our chickens' voices are changing, too. Isn't that honking sound a riot? I thought they were having a species identity crisis or something.
Hiatus explanus:
The kids have gotten big and busy so I find the chickens are my job more and more. They're banties we bought to be a "decorative" yard flock, but they insisted on roosting (pooping) on the porch at night.
I like them, but no new chicks for a while.
...now lab puppies, ...I could be talked into lab puppies.
The photo of "lichen' is actually of some kind of shelf fungus.
Isabeats, thanks for that correction. Fungus, mold, mildew, lichen, and mushrooms all fall into the same nebulous "is it a plant?" category in my brain.
For anyone else reading, the post that Isabeats commented about is here: http://gardenplotter.com/rospo/blog/2006/08/im-lichen-this.html
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