Recent content by georgiagail

Newbie beekeepers here (and long time chicken owners). I agree with your assessment regarding a new queen; I'm assuming your hives are now queenless or soon will be to help deal with the aggressive traits being passed on to the bees. Gail

We use Brace Rail Clamps to attach the PVC pipe to the top rail of the dog kennel. They can be found in the chain link fencing section of big box stores like Lowes; typically under $2 each. A 1/2 inch PVC pipe will fit into them. You attach them to the top rail with a socket wrench...

Love my little bantams! Loved your article...

"How did you attach the PVC pipe to the wall of the run?" See the posting above these few showing the brace rail clamps holding the PCV pipe. Attach these to the top of the run, place your PVC pipe in them and tighten the bolts. Gail

We've used dog kennels for all our runs. Picked these up at Lowes and through www.yourfencestore.com. Gail

I'm not sure this will help you but for our runs we've used dog runs. For the tops we add brace rail clamps (found in the chain link fencing section at Lowes for under $2 each) to the top rails, then add PVC/electrical pipe and run hardware cloth over these, attaching them to the rails and the...

In the far right hand corner you might be able to see where we placed one of our coops IN the 5 by 15 dog run but then added another run (using PVC pipe and hardware cloth) to give these bantams a bit more space)...

Pictures of a couple of ours with the dog runs... We use the runs from Lowes; they can be set up as a 10 x 10 or a 5 x 15 run.

Sure; the coop doors get opened before I go to work in the morning (this morning it was 5:30 am so they were still sleeping and it was still dark) and they stay open so the chickens can go out in the run and back in the coop to (hopefully!) hit the nest box to lay eggs all throughout the day...

If this helps...we've used clear panels on all our coop roofs with no issues of chickens not feeling safe nor the problem of the coops getting too warm (chickens are out in the runs during the day anyway). Gail

Well, I just took a piece of cardboard, cut a hole in the center of it and "duct taped" it to a clamp light and it's worked fine for me for a number of eggs. Gail

Actually, they really don't need either unless you wish to do so and then I'd suggest sand over dirt. I use newspaper...if you do the little ones will soon be making confetti out of this (and soon afterwards you look forward to putting them outside!). Gail

Couple of our runs are made with PVC pipe (these are built on former raised beds for roses). Doing fine so far. Picture of the latest one... Our other runs are all dog runs....

One of ours...

What we recently did with our last run (built it over a former raised bed rose garden). This one out of PVC pipe. Did use 36" hardware cloth but ran two rows (cable tied together) so the end product is six feet tall.... Mention this because it's a way of working hardware cloth into the size...