Increasingly Aggressive Rooster

[Folly's place]

I had a run with chicken wire, and a chicken wire roof, for maybe ten (?) years, and it worked fine for me too. Safe, not really, but we were lucky, and locked the birds in every night, and got away with it.
Our bantam chicks could slip right through it too...
Mary

 

[bobbi-j]

Come spring I'm going to make the run walk-in height and use hardware cloth in place of all the chicken wire.

Great plan! Our first run was chicken wire, not covered and only 4' high. Nothing got into the chicken wire, but the dog we had at the time figured out that if he ran around the run, the chickens would panic, fly out and he could catch and play with them. So, we put a cover on it (more chicken wire). I soon discovered that even though I'm only 5'3", it was still hard to get around in the run if I had to go in there for anything. Didn't take long to change that.

 

[JoeInPA]

Great plan! Our first run was chicken wire, not covered and only 4' high. Nothing got into the chicken wire, but the dog we had at the time figured out that if he ran around the run, the chickens would panic, fly out and he could catch and play with them. So, we put a cover on it (more chicken wire). I soon discovered that even though I'm only 5'3", it was still hard to get around in the run if I had to go in there for anything. Didn't take long to change that.

Yeah, I built my run very hastily in an attempt just to get the chickens out of the brooder and into something bigger (yep, another rookie mistake, bought the chickens before I built anything). It served it's purpose well for that, but its' shortcomings are making themselves very apparent at this stage.

Initially I just had it covered with chicken wire, but it didn't provide them with any shade so I was hanging towels over it and it was looking rather ghetto. It also gave predators (hawks in particular) a clear line of sight at them.

So I bought the polypropylene panels and roofed it with those and they work great. The birds get some sun, some shade, and the hawks don't bother them anymore. It's been a lot of trial and error but I think I finally have figured out what will work best. Here is pretty close to how I have it currently set up, and it works pretty well other than being too short-

 

[Rammy]

Not time for that here yet.

It was ment as a joke. Kinda.