Hi everyone. New to BYC. We just got a coop and 3 Rhode Island Reds from my stepfather yesterday and I need to make them a enclosed run asap. I think technically they are fine in the coop, but i do feel terrible that they cant run around yet. My questions are related to the run. The area i am going to move the coop to is next to my garden, which is on a slight hill. The run will be going across the hill. Is there any problem with the ground not being flat? I mean, its the outdoors and not every spot is level in this world, so i think it should be fine. The only reason i dont want to dig out and make it a little terrace is just to do runoff and whatnot (plus the labor!). Besides my question on the grade, should i leave it grass in there? Not sure if it is better to make it dirt. Do they eat the grass? Worried that it will get out of control in there and i'll have to crawl in with the weedwacker. I'm looking to start laying this out and finish by the weekend, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Chris
Should be fine as long as the its not sloping back to the coop area. Don't worry about the grass (they eat it). They will turn the run to dirt for you pretty quickly. Good luck.
I just started building my run off of a really old style coop. The ground is really unevenand had a ton of vegetationaround it. I dug out trenches to bury my bottom beams and wire where it was uneven.Then i plan on going back and mounding up dirt around alll of the boards. Mainly, i wanted my bottom boards to be straight and secure.And to help prevent predators digging, i was going to use straightened wire hangars pushed down into the ground like stakes The chickens have done a pretty good job at eating and scratching up the grass nd weeds. After they make it dirt, we will probably put some sand down.
The slope shouldn't be any problem for your chickens although it might make building a run a bit more of an architectural challenge, but far from impossible. As a previous poster said, unless your run is huge for the number of chickens you have you won't have any problem with grass and weeds because what they don't eat, they'll scratch down to the soil within a few weeks. Good luck.
