a few chicken tractor construction questions from a newbie

[pixiepunk]

My husband and I are working on designing a chicken tractor for 8 one-year-old Rhode Island Red laying hens that we are getting from a friend of ours. We have been devouring the information here and other places on the web, but have a few specific questions that we have not been able to find the answers to, so i'm hoping someone here can give us some insight.

1) we want to have a hinged roof on the coop so that we can lift it up for easier cleaning, and we've seen many pictures of coops with this feature. but we're having a hard time figuring out how you would keep it from badly leaking when it rains.

2) for our chicken wire, we happen to have some 2-inch hexagonal that we had around our blueberry bushes before we fenced in our garden, and had thought to use that. but it seems like the openings might be too big? What is the ideal size for the netting for the run portion of the tractor? would the stuff we have work, or should we get something else?

thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[goldnchocolate]

Here is a wonderful site with individual videos showing how to build a chicken tractor and I'm sure that it must show a way to cover the hinged area so that it doesn't leak...maybe a piece of vinyl or something that overlaps the area.

http://www.monkeysee.com/play/10774-how-to-build-a-chicken-coop

When I first got chickens I built them a double sized tractor to use as an outside run and I ran into problems the first winter because of the heaviness of the snow on the roof, it almost collapsed, so I spent that first winter shoveling it off everytime it snowed

 

[pixiepunk]

thanks for the welcome, and for that great link! i'll have to show it to my husband this evening. it's so cool that there's so much information out there, but sometimes it makes it harder to find!