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Welcome to BYC. When we first got chickens, we lived about 30 minutes from our property. My husband, (retired) drove out once a day. We had a very secure coop and covered run. They had 24/7 access to the run.
My husband enjoyed the chickens so much that he and the dogs, began staying in a travel trailer on our property, and I would out on weekends and stay. We decided to sell our house in town, and build a new one on our land. Its been several years now, and we are so happy out here.
 
tickens33 said:
Thanks so much for the welcome and for sharing that info!

We will probably not be able to drive out there every single day, but we have a family member who lives within 15 minutes who can go on the days we aren't there, just to check up and let us know if there's anything that might need more urgent tending from us (and collect eggs when it's time). We both have flexible work schedules so will be camping on the property for 4+ days pretty much every weekend. So at most the chickens might go 36 hours unattended and will have multiple continuous days with our presence each week.

Other than the in-progress coop, there's no structures out there right now, but we're hoping to build a residence there within the next 1-2 years. In the meantime we plan that the birds will have a feed container large enough to last them at least a month, and multiple redundant water sources in case one gets compromised when we aren't present.

As far as letting them out and back in, our plan is to strongly predator-proof the run, which we are in the process of building right now (for example- a hardware cloth skirt extending multiple feet down and outward along with other measures) and allowing them 24/7 access to the run. We looked into the automatic doors vs. free run access and it seems that the latter works best for our situation right now.

If you have any thoughts on the above, please do let me know. In all honesty, my partner is the builder out of the two of us, so largely responsible for the coop designs, and his plan is pretty set and unlikely to be changed. But if you or anyone has more perspective about aspects of this that might not work as we planned, I'd still love to hear it.

Thanks again!
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Welcome. Because there will be considerable time that they are not attended, I would recommend high security. 1/2 inch hardware cloth everywhere where there there is more than an inch of space. Also, what about the ceiling? I have hardtop in half the run, and hawk netting in the other half. But I can only do this because someone is always home and able to listen.
 
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