Once you get some chickens, there is a desire to get even more. But that takes more space. My daughter volunteered to help me build a run - which was good in any case as we discovered the hard way that we shouldn’t let the chickens out, even if we were watching over them. This project broke my rule of not buying material but we needed the pressure-treated wood as it was dug into the side of the hill.

The finished chicken coop was about 4’ x 8’, which I had thought was big enough for 2-3 chickens, which was what we first planned on having. But then we got 4 and wanted more and that was pushing it.

The first task was a lot of digging. You can just see the pile to the left. You can also see the root to the left that had to go.

After digging holes for the posts, installing and pouring concrete around them, we started getting the initial frame and exterior pressure boards for the retaining walls, starting from the corner of the existing coop. Where Morgan is standing will be the full-sized doorway to access the run. We will later cut out a chicken-sized doorway where the shovel is to allow the chickens to come and go or to shut them out of the run (or the coop) for any maintenance or behavioral issues.

Continuing from the doorway, more retaining walls. You can also see the studs above for the roof, which will be covered by hardware cloth.

Finally connecting back to the coop.

Building the planters to grow some chicken-resistent herbs.¹ We had also laid overlaying hardware cloth sheets on the ground and stapled them to the sides and then covered them with gravel to keep the cloth down. Sadly, 90% of the gravel then traveled up to displace the earth put on top of the gravel due to granular convection.

When finished, we covered the sides and roof with hardware cloth - thicker than the typical ‘chicken wire’.

Finally, inside the finished chicken run, with the ill-fated plantings. The Barred Plymouth Rock chicken Morgan is holding was named Peppercorn.

Peppercorn posing with Papa.

The finished chicken run.

Footnotes

1. Spoiler: There are no chicken-resistant plants. I was able to keep some rosemary going for some time but finally they squashed it. ↩