Official BYC Poll: What Do Your Chickens Live In?

[DobieLover]

Coop with attached run with a solid roof, 1/2" hardware cloth walls and 2' predator apron where the door between the coop and run are never closed. All this plunked down inside a 1/3 acre pen enclosed with poultry netting powered with a 10,000 volt charger. This setup keeps all the local ground predators at bay including the neighbors rotten dogs and the local black bear who lives in the woods behind our property.

They have this shrub among other landscaping to shelter under for aerial threats and to keep cool during the heat of summer.

Inside the run

 

[Birdsong 82]

Coop + run and free range. Usually fussing to get out to the yard early even though they have a nice large run ....(spoiled) I hate the dangers of free ranging but my girls are so happy and I love seeing them explore. They seem to find the safest areas on the property after awhile but there's a lot of room

 

[SueT]

We used to let our older chickens free range nearly every day all day, but due to hawks this year, everyone is confined to large runs, covered w bird netting. Gates to the outside are shown in red but remain closed now.

There are various little gates for access to different sections and the chickens have no problem finding them.

 

[azure_]

I voted other because my chickens have a and a run that they go in, but when the weather is good and we haven't had predators lately I let them free range.

 

[BY Bob]

Mine have a coop with a porch, a run complex, and on most days access to the fenced yard for free range. The yard has 6 foot privacy fence around it.

The coop

The run is behind the coop with an extension forming a U shape around the birch tree. Here is the porch and extension to the big run.

And this is the inside of the big run.

Here is a shot of part of the yard they enjoy while out to free range.

 

[CHlCKEN]

Up until fall of last year, our chicken run was pretty huge. Electric fencing wrapped around a large area on the left of the barn, this meant that the back wall of it opened into horse stalls, which we used one as a winter coop, and the wash station which we ran power from for their outdoor water heater in the winter. We had bought one of those hand made coops a while back and where using it as a spring-fall coop until we switched to the winter coop, which was a horse stall, where the access to the rest of the barn in the half wall, was cut off by some window blinds- that didn’t stop them from flying over the rafters and having
Daisy Jr regularly laying her eggs on the tractor This winter coop had a ton of space- our horse stalls are actually pretty large which fit all 16 birds in our flock (including the ducks) to roost wherever they wanted on some of the roosting bars we installed, while the “cool kid birds” roosted in the rafters or on the frame of the half wall. We originally decided to use it as a winter coop because our pullets/cockrel where still using it as kind of a “chick space” despite being 7 months old.

anyway the horse stall coop worked really well! I loved using it and the chickens where probably Great full

 

[Willow2253]

Coop + enclosed run + free range
They get to free range most of the time, we mainly just lock them in the run when nobody is home or there are visitors with dogs.

 

[Laura_BelgianBantams_63]

They have a coop, a very large run attached and they get to free range most the time on 5 acres, but at the moment they are in the run because of a recent fox attack that took Perri.

 

[the3quail]

This is my quail coop, they seem to emjoy it.
it's 5x4
holds 15
I have 10 right now

 

[TooCheep]

Mine live in a chicken tractor which is a mobile coop + run. They also get to free range for a period each day.