Hi! New here with a chicken run question.

[wind]

Hello! I've been lurking here for weeks as my husband and I prepare to get 1-4 chickens. Our coop is FINISHED (I'll post pics soon!)

I have a question about the run we're planning.

Our back yard is completely enclosed in chain link fence, and on one side of the house, there's a space that's about 4 feet wide (that has chain link fence going all the way to the front of the house on that one side) that we're going to cover in chicken wire on top as part of our run. That's a pretty big run in and of itself, yes? 20ish feel long by 4 feet wide?

But wait! There's more! lol

We're also going to use wood (not the green metal stakes that came with it) to frame in with a higher-grade/quality metal fence material another, openly connected area that's going to be at least 15 feet long and probably 10 feet deep, maybe 4 feet high (also covered with chicken wire on top to keep the hawk I've seen out, as well as any raccoon that might be able to scale chain link fence.)

We live in the hood in inner city Memphis, so the predators are dogs, at least one hawk (I've seen it) and racoons. So, that's what I'm going to be thinking of in terms of run strength.

Now, my question about the run: is that enough space to where 2 chickens won't turn the grass/weeds/etc into full on dirt with poop? Right now the ground is a mix of grass, wild strawberries, weeds, etc. It's a shaded area for the most part. And since it's only going to be 4 feet high, I **really** don't want to be having to stoop down and go in there a bunch to clean it (the coop/chicken house is designed for the easiest cleaning ever.) Also, if I make an "outside roosting bar" in the run, could I put hay or mulch or pine chips under that and maybe have just one small area that needed regular cleaning????

Thanks in advance for any guesstimate predictions! And thanks for all the collective wisdom I've mooched off you guys already!

Oh, and hi, I'm wind, I'm a homeschooling mother of 2 great kids with a great husband and one great dog, a pittie. (seeing how the dog adapts to the chickens will be challenging! I'm 75% sure if I bring the chicken, and we'll start with just one for a week or 2, in the house and hold it and pet it, the dog will accept that it is NOT PREY. So hopefully the dog at least won't become obsessed with tearing apart the run to get to the chickens. But I'll probably always lock the dog in our bedroom when I let the chickens totally free range in the whole backyard.)

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

It may be a little small for 4 chickens, without totally destroying the grass, what I've seen that's really neat is someone made squares covered with wire that can be played on the ground and the grass grows right up through that. You can periodically move the squares around to 'rest ' and or reseed areas....I would do that, give one area where they can scratch in the dirt...I forget where the pics are but it's somewhere in by.
Dogs and chickens can get along together, I think your on the right track. Good luck!

 

[wind]

It may be a little small for 4 chickens, without totally destroying the grass, what I've seen that's really neat is someone made squares covered with wire that can be played on the ground and the grass grows right up through that. You can periodically move the squares around to 'rest ' and or reseed areas....I would do that, give one area where they can scratch in the dirt...I forget where the pics are but it's somewhere in by. Dogs and chickens can get along together, I think your on the right track. Good luck!

Thanks so much for the quick reply!

What about if we just stick with 2 chickens?
(my thinking on getting just one to start with is figuring out if the dog will be obsessed with killing it. Not that 'm ok with the dog destroying the run to kill even one chicken, but better just one than 2, right?)

We built a coop that's big enough for 4 chickens, but I'm ok with just having 2, also, if it means little or no maintenance on the run ground. If my husband wants 2 more later (he's the one wanting 4 chickens anyway), then I can let him know about that great idea about putting wire on the ground in patches and it'll be his job to deal with that.

I just really, really don't want to have to go into the run and squat down to be able to move around in there, like, ever, if I can get away with it. lol.

 

[Maev]

One chicken would be very lonely by itself. Two would be ok. Personally three would be the minimum that I would get. That way if something happened to one of them there would still be company for the others.
About the run.
Given enough time they will turn your run into dirt. Somewhere on this site I read how many sq feet per chicken you needed to ensure this didn't happen, but I can't remember the number.
Would it be possible to section your run into two separate pens and then alternating which pen the chickens had access to? Kinda like rotational grazing. Maybe let them in one pen for three days in a row then the other pen for three days etc. But that does depend on how and where you have your coop set up. If it's in the middle of the run it would work, but if it's to one side or the other I'm not sure how to make it work. If you split the run in half you'd still be giving each chicken 10 sq ft. Which is the suggested minimum.
About how to preserve some of your grass.
You can build grazing frames to place over a section of grass. Here's a link to the thread where there is a link to plans for some grazing frames https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/627048/grazing-frame-plans-to-protect-grass-for-chickens. That way your chickens will always have something green to munch on.
About the dog.
Is your dog going to be in the yard where the chicken coop and run is? If so you will need to make sure that your run and coop are dog proof. I would suggest burying some of the fencing at least a foot deep to deter digging in. Also if the dog is going to be left in the yard with the chickens in the run for some hours when you're gone, I would be sure to give the dog a rawhide bone or something else to chew and play with so it's sole entertainment wouldn't be running up and down the run barking at the chickens.
Another idea would be to run a strand of electric wire around the run at your dogs nose level so if your dog gets to close to the wire it will get a little zap. That would teach the dog to leave the area alone.
Hope some of this helps!
And

 

[wind]

One chicken would be very lonely by itself. Two would be ok. Personally three would be the minimum that I would get. That way if something happened to one of them there would still be company for the others.
About the run.
Given enough time they will turn your run into dirt. Somewhere on this site I read how many sq feet per chicken you needed to ensure this didn't happen, but I can't remember the number.
Would it be possible to section your run into two separate pens and then alternating which pen the chickens had access to? Kinda like rotational grazing. Maybe let them in one pen for three days in a row then the other pen for three days etc. But that does depend on how and where you have your coop set up. If it's in the middle of the run it would work, but if it's to one side or the other I'm not sure how to make it work. If you split the run in half you'd still be giving each chicken 10 sq ft. Which is the suggested minimum.
About how to preserve some of your grass.
You can build grazing frames to place over a section of grass. Here's a link to the thread where there is a link to plans for some grazing frames https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/627048/grazing-frame-plans-to-protect-grass-for-chickens. That way your chickens will always have something green to munch on.
About the dog.
Is your dog going to be in the yard where the chicken coop and run is? If so you will need to make sure that your run and coop are dog proof. I would suggest burying some of the fencing at least a foot deep to deter digging in. Also if the dog is going to be left in the yard with the chickens in the run for some hours when you're gone, I would be sure to give the dog a rawhide bone or something else to chew and play with so it's sole entertainment wouldn't be running up and down the run barking at the chickens.
Another idea would be to run a strand of electric wire around the run at your dogs nose level so if your dog gets to close to the wire it will get a little zap. That would teach the dog to leave the area alone.
Hope some of this helps!
And

THANK YOU!

Our coop is about the size of a very large dog house, but elevated about 4 feet up, and on BIG WHEELS. Because I was thinking 2-4 chickens might go through that grass pretty fast, maybe. So, yeah, I have it planned out to where if the grass starts turning into poop dirt, we'll just move the non-chainlink fence side of the run to the other half of the backyard. I'm thinking we can lock the hens in the henhouse for a day while we make the move and construct the new run out of the old run materials? We haz the poor, so we are building the best thing we can out of old stuff. We have a pretty cool coop that we just spent $23 on (the roof was $20, and the hinges were $3 The wood came from pallets people were throwing away.) The wheels were left over from when I aspired to make balance bikes for toddlers.

I'm only going to have one chicken for one or 2 days, while I figure out if my dog is going to be coolish with the chickens (aka, not obsessed with them as prey.) On a scale of one to ten, his prey drive is "only" about a 4 or maybe 5. He doesn't usually obsess about killing prey, but twice now I have woken up to a slain animal (mouse/squirrel) on my bed beside my head, with the dog sitting there smiling and wagging his tail, all like "I got breakfast! I'm a good dog, yes?" lol

Yes, my dog actually knows how to open the door to let himself into the backyard at will, and he also knows how to let himself back into the house. My old dog was a geriatric lab that figured out how to do it as a puppy, and we got new dog before that old dog died, JUST so the new dog would learn that particular trick. Because a dog that can let himself in and out of doors is a kinda rare skill. And I figured young dog would just learn how to do it from old dog. And he did.

But...yeah. Our own dog is THE main predator we'll be worrying about. I really think there's an ok chance that, if we do everything right, (bring a chicken in the house, let the dog see us all petting it, etc) he will file it away in his mind as "family" (sorta).

If that doesn't work, we'll have to redesign the run (I've read that just pinning chicken wire to the ground about a foot or 2 out, and pinning it with bricks or big rocks or whatever, REALLY deters digging.)