My Solutions

So, through the years it seems to be one thing or another.

For the last 3 years I decided to free range my girls. Never had a problem until recently where I had 2 girls killed by a hawk. I decided I had to put the girls inside which is basically a run and a coop. Well, they didn't care for that very much. Their unhappiness and my guilt led me to create a chunnel system for them. Here's a pic:



Basically I used this caging from HomeDepot and cut them all the same size. So far I've only used half of it. The joy of it is I can reroute so they don't wear out the same strip. Next week they'll be going through the garden to get it ready for spring. I don't put any hardware underneath because outside of hawks there really isn't a predator that can get to them during the day. The whole thing cost me about $50.

The other thing was I had to get the feed out of the coop. Birds and squirrels get to it and they're messy eaters. The setup in the pic below isn't complete. I intend to enclose it so food won't get wet.



Squirrels and birds can still get into it so I put a screen floor on it to catch the scraps. That way I can keep it clean and not have to worry about rodents. FYI, I've used a treadle but my girls have proven incapable of figuring it out. Anyhow, here's the pic of the screen floor:



Ignore the feed scattered there. That was the work of birds and squirrels while I was putting this contraption together.