After all your advice, after all your how to's.....

[perchie.girl]

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your parimeter is 60 feet. that leaves you 40 feet of wire for the top. You wont have enough left over for the top. You will have enough to cover an eight by fifteen section of your coop with ten feet left over if there is no waste. That leaves seven feet more to cover. At the very least you will need another 30 linear feet of wire to finish the top un spliced. Id get another fifty foot roll to be on the safe side.

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It will sag but outside of not looking nice it should stay together You could get some chainlink top pipe at Home depot. It comes in ten foot lenghts and is designed to nest inside of itself. Buy two nest them together and secure with a sheet metal screw. Then cut the assembled pipe the length you need. Make it a little bigger than your coop so it wont accidentally fall or get pushed in. Make sure you cover the ends with duct tape or a cap or something so people wont bonk their heads and get cut. You can cut it with a hack saw. With Chicken wire It should support the weight of the roof. But nothing more. You could probably get away with a single pipe across the middle.

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Tin snips they make some nice ones that look like scissors on steriods. they are good enough for even 16 gauge wire.

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When you are ready for the pergola you can attach your hardware cloth up underneath that and remove the chainlink top rail support.

 

[patandchickens]

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2x6 ON EDGE is fine, actually you might well save money by using 2x4s ON EDGE and just use a few more of them, having a few more of them will actually support hte hardwarecloth better.

They do need to be VERY SECURELY locked into place. If it were me, I would not connect them directly to the top bar of the fence, I would attach a 2x4 "ledger" or "beam" type thing along the top bar of the fence and attach the 2x4s to THAT, either atop it (using hurricane ties aka rafter ties) or on its face using joist hanger type hardware (you may only be able to find ones for 2x6s, you can hammer the excess 'ears' down over the rafter)

(edited to add: meaning no offense to anyone, the suggestion of electric conduit is unwise because it will not hold up well to snowload in that configuration, and while just lying pipe across the top would be fine in San Diego it is not a smart setup for places with strong storms and snow); and a tarp is going to blow off sooner or later, usually sooner, and not-infrequently taking part of your run with it; also just propping it up circus-tent fashion does NOT prevent it from catching snow in a heavy wet March type storm.)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Gold Griffin Chicken Mom]

Wannabchick, you could just use chicken wire as your roof. Less expense and even if you go with the one inch hex size, there will be less metal to hold snow. My other thought was to use the hardware cloth you have to do the perimiter of your top and fill in the middle with chicken wire.

Be careful when you start these construction projects when... "high", lol. You might not remember what you were trying to do later.

 

[srolle1lsu]

on the fencing isle at any big box store you can find clamps that fit over your round fence posts or cross members. the clamps are made to have either a pole or 2x4 easily attached to it. just make sure to turn the 2x4 on end so that the narrower section faces up/down, so it doesn't sag.

btw, if you can't find the clamps on that isle, look in the building section for simpson strong ties. there's a large selection but a few will work for your application. measure the diameter of the pole you wish to attach to before you go.

 

[mcostas]

I purchased the tarp top for my kennel, and ran wires from the tarp support to the welded wire. The welded wire is easier to work with than chicken wire for this I think. I also have a hardware cloth apron around the bottom.

You can see how I overlapped the welded wire and zip tied the seam together. because the wire is made of squares it was easy to get straight. You can't tell, but there are wires coming down from that pole, and tied around the wire. The wire "roof" doesn't sag. I might even put a box fan on top of it in teh summer so my chickens can have a ceiling fan.

Here is a view looking down from the top. The tarp has held up fine in wind and rain so far. It will be easy to replace when it's time.