- Thread starter
- #11
Thank you all for your input and designs!! It has been extremely helpful. My wife and I visited a friend who has about 80 chickens - they have a somewhat "Open-Air" design as well. They said most of the time their chickens will just sleep outside on the toys they've placed for them.
I am thinking we are going to end up doing something very similar.
-The coop design I posted above would remain the same EXCEPT, the entire backside will be open to the "run".
-The "Run" will measure about 20'x25' using hardware cloth as the pen walls. The "roof" of the run I am thinking can be a type of netting that will drape from points in the center of the run over the hardware cloth fencing.
We learned that people here lose chickens like crazy from Hawks, Possums, Raccoons, Coyotes....Even if we did "free range" our chickens we would probably lose half in 1-week sadly. We were advised to only "Free range" them if we were outside WITH them as even the hawks and eagles don't care about swooping down a few feet in front of you.
I am thinking we are going to end up doing something very similar.
-The coop design I posted above would remain the same EXCEPT, the entire backside will be open to the "run".
-The "Run" will measure about 20'x25' using hardware cloth as the pen walls. The "roof" of the run I am thinking can be a type of netting that will drape from points in the center of the run over the hardware cloth fencing.
We learned that people here lose chickens like crazy from Hawks, Possums, Raccoons, Coyotes....Even if we did "free range" our chickens we would probably lose half in 1-week sadly. We were advised to only "Free range" them if we were outside WITH them as even the hawks and eagles don't care about swooping down a few feet in front of you.
