My cityslicker homemade townhouse...

[froggiesheins]

I live in Southern CA and just have a small yard, but am still zoned for livestock. I built this handy-dandy little 2 story townhouse out of whatever I had laying around, or could find for free. The only thing I had to purchase was 50' of plastic chicken wire fencing. This is cheap in its finest! My Dad (may he rest in peace) always told me: "Never throw anything away, you never know when you might need it". Listen to your folks, cuz he was right!
Thanks Dad!

I also have a smaller day playpen with aluminum screening for my little babies to start in. The townhouse will be the perfect size for my Silver duckwing bantams after they hatch.....I have 8 eggs cooking, only 15 more days to go!

 

[MomtoSyd&Emma]

I think that is a really cute lil townhouse! I to love to use stuff we have lying around! My only advice is to watch predators with the plastic fencing, its not real sturdy (we use it too though on top of our coop) but we have never had a predator on the property (city lot too)

 

[NottinghamChicks]

It is quite cute and I love the shade! They should be quite happy in your recycled coop.

Your Dad was right!

 

[elmo]

As another commenter has noted, the plastic fencing on the pen isn't predator proof, and if that's chicken wire on your coop, your coop isn't predator proof, either. But if you replace the chicken wire with hardware cloth (welded wire, with small openings...say 1/2" by 1/2"), and lock your chickens inside their coop at night, you'll have a pretty secure set up.

Raccoons are pretty much everywhere, even in urban environments. It's like playing Russian Roulette. How long will your luck hold out? Of course it's up to you whether you decide to take that risk, but I think it's important that every chicken owner understand that there is a risk to using chicken wire. In my opinion, the stuff's misnamed: they ought to call it "Chicken Death Wire." Just last month one of the checkers at our grocery store told me he lost two birds to a raccoon who ripped through the chicken wire to get into his coop, right in the middle of the city of Dallas. He didn't know...he thought chicken wire was what you were supposed to use!

You might also want to think about putting some substrate down in the run. Concrete is hard on a chicken's feet, and they're going to scratch the grass part down to dirt in no time flat.