Sounds very cool! How do you plan on keeping your hens from tearing up your gardens as they grow though? I had ideas of doing something very similar until I ran into the wall on trying to figure out how to allow myself access to the plants but not allowing the chickens...I'm trying something a little extreme. I've had great success in the past with intensive cropping raised beds and vertical gardening, we needed a run for our new 1/2 dozen reds and some ducks, and while we have plenty of water and mild winters (sorry Texas that drought really has been terrible) we are also in the midst of a veritable game preserve. Across the street we have the edge of Maryland's largest State park, where the deer rule (very limited and regulated harvest). To put it into context, the nearest State road that runs through the Park right down the hill from us has over 400 deer kills a year along a stretch less than two miles long. I can count five fox dens within a few hundred yards of our front door, and the stream across the street assures that our hillside becomes a virtual critter highway each evening. Copperheads to Bobcats, skunks, groundhogs, possums, coons, feral cats, oh yeah... and in addition to the Red Tail Hawks, owls, kites and herons, I saw a young eagle take a rabbit just up the hill the other day. Suffice it to say, the deer treat our gardens like a salad bar and our ponds take care of feeding everybody else, so we truly fear for our new flock.
My grand plan to whip Mother Nature into submission (sounds like an epic fail already doesn't it?) is to enclose our little orchard and a bunch of raised beds with the poultry run. It's 30'x40' and the interior is a maze of raised beds and 3-4' mulched path ways. The perimeter is shaped by 4x4 posts set in concrete and the tops are tied together with 2x6's. We downloaded Bryon's "Stop Chicken Killer Dogs" to help us retrain our Aussie's (Bryon is fantastic and his methods are amazing... definitely a highly recommend!). While watching his videos his run gave me the idea of using hog pen or cattle pen sections and covering with poultry fabric (he was also extremely helpful in responding to my strange email questions about his run construction and has been an absolute peach). The panels are pretty cheap, and quite sturdy, so I'm kind of copying his arched roof, but I'm going to try splicing two 16' panels end to end to cover the whole top. I am using center posts and a ridge beam, so the effect is one of a skimpy pole barn frame with heavy gauge wire walls and roofing, all covered with 17 gauge galvanized wire stucco lath (it was cheap, my wife works for a retailer that handles closeouts and we got enough to cover the entire thing for about $200). I'm still going to add a roll of 1/2"x1/2" heavy gauge fabric around the bottom as extra rat, fox and snake deterrent and bury it about a foot deep.
While wrestling with how deep to bury the edges to thwart fox raids I thought - why not just run some more beds around the entire perimeter and let the walls of the run do double duty as trellising for some more food. I won't be able to protect it from the renegade deer, but hopefully the dogs will handle the better part of that once we move some other fences. When it's all done we'll have 3 dozen dwarf fruit trees and all kinds of vegetables inside the run, along with a ring of peas, beans and cukes covering the outsides. I got it all worked out right up here in my head (he says pointing to his backside). The perimeter planters are gonna be 2x8's so they'll effectively make anything trying to dig their way in have to go another 7 or 8 inches in addition to the 12" that's already in the ground. We have a mess of relocated butterfly bushes and new blueberries that we're using to disguise it all from the road (we're still in a mainly suburban type area so we're trying to keep our little farm project on the Q/T as much as possible). I'll post some pics as soon as we finish the build, and once everything starts to grow and leaf out. It'll probably look like I'm making a really pathetic attempt to hide a big green airplane hanger.
