cattle panel run caves in with weight of the snow last night

blueskylen

Songster
11 Years
Mar 3, 2008
682
6
151
WV
Hi all,

we had built our chicken run with cattle panels in a hoop style covered with a large tarp- has worked great until last night!
I went out to feed and water this morning , and as I got to the chicken coop saw that the entire run had caved in - down the middle - with the weight of the snow sliding off of the coop roof. luckily no chickens were in there,as they were still locked up in the coop.
DH went out and shoveled the snow out of the middle, and went inside to raise it up with his shoulders. he managed to get all of the panels raised back up, and braced landscape timbers down the middle of the run. it won't cave in now,
but we wanted to let anyone who may have built a hoop style run out of cattle panels to make sure to support it down the middle.
 
I have seen some of those cattle or horse panels that bent very easily-within a couple of months they were pretzels. Some of them don't seem to be strong at all.

Glad your chooks are OK.
 
I also used landscape timbers to brace my hardware cloth covered cattle panel run.

coop_braced_12-20-08.jpg


In addition, the curve of the panel is reinforced by several lengths of wire acting as a collar tie would on a framed roof.

coop_side_dwg.jpg


Good luck. We've got several feet expected to fall before today's storm ends.

'Tis the season....

Wayne
 
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Hi! We did that but with 2 panels- set the ends of the panels on the ground hooked it to t -posts, coop inside the pen. Panels for ends also. I didn't take pic's dec. of 07 was our ice storm and our coop had a tree branch on it, caved but hit the top of our coop and sprang back after the ice/limb was gone. We run a extention cord along one side then into the coop. We have peas in ours.
 
I saw that and thought it was adorable, was actually looking to see if it was the "chicken door" before realizing that the panels are the inside of the run to keep them in, not let them out.
 

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