please help ~run questions

[nelgkel]

Hey everybody! Well, we still have little stuff left on the coop, but we started laying out everything for the run yesterday...and I think I convinced hubby to enlarge the run by 2 foot longer and by almost 3 foot wider! Original was 16foot by 8 foot...now we are looking at 18 foot by 11 foot...that way the chicks can do the weed eating! Question...if you look at my coop, to the right of the pop door is the privacy fence...we are going to go all the way to the privacy fence, which is leaning but solid due to a crazy hurricane!! how to I do an apron?? do i have it come into the run instead of away from the run?? also, our cat likes to use the area along the fence to urinate...I have heard chickens can get toxiplasmis from cats like humans can...how do I disinfect/clean this before chickens move into run??

any other suggestions?? more pics on my byc page...

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Wow! You're going to have a great run!! I don't think you can do an apron on the inside since an animal on the other side would still be able to dig under. You'd have to put wire under all of your run. Since you're not on the other side you wouldn't be able to see if anything was tunneling to your coop. You could just dig a trench along the fence and run the wire straight down. I'd put the wire and also put some heavy rocks you may have laying around the yard in it as well or a little bit of red-e-crete in the bottom of the trench to hold the fencing down.

Now, as far as the cat pee goes, I don't know how long toxiplamis can live outside the cat. I would just turn the soil under the best that you can and water the heck out of it. Let it leach out as much as you can.