Run around the garden, anyone have this

Fisherlmiranda

Songster
Feb 25, 2018
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Morrow, Ohio
My chickens are free ranged all the time in a mobile coop and get shut in at night. That hasn't been working for us as of lately. We have lost several to wondering dogs and other predators lately. So im considering building an 8ft wide x 8ft tall run all the way around my garden. Which is probably 50ft x100ft. I'd house my 4x4ft mini Justin Rhodes chickshaw in it. My garden needs a fence so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone kinda. We currently have a poly fence around the garden and a poly fence around the chickshaw and it's just not enough for either. Was wondering if anyone used this style run. What the pro and cons were. I kinda of see that in a few years we could expand the garden to include run and then put the run on the out side again and as our family grows so could are garden! Would love to see pictures 🥰
 
If you do a search on these forums for "chicken moat" you will find that a bunch of people have done this. There was also an article in Mother Earth News years ago about how a moat benefits both the garden and the chickens, since the chickens will eat lots of the bug pests before they can get to the plants.

The only con I can see is that it requires a tremendous amount of fencing to make a secure run around a big garden.
 
If you do a search on these forums for "chicken moat" you will find that a bunch of people have done this. There was also an article in Mother Earth News years ago about how a moat benefits both the garden and the chickens, since the chickens will eat lots of the bug pests before they can get to the plants.

The only con I can see is that it requires a tremendous amount of fencing to make a secure run around a big garden.
Thanks I had no idea that was the name for it, I'll look for that now
 
What about electric fence? An 8 foot fence is pretty hard to build.
I have a 4ft electric fence now and even with clipping one of there wings the manage to get out... so I bought a 8ft tall roll of wire and 10ft t-post, 10ft tall wooden corner post already. Just deciding how I want to arrange it. I probably will run a strand of electric on the out side close to the ground for predators.
 
My thoughts would be to build a good outer fence and protect it with electricity. Make your entire garden predator proof, including rabbits and raccoons. That is your expensive fence. Then use something cheap to make the inner fence. After all, that is just to keep the chickens out of your garden, the outer fence stops predators. A fence that high will even stop deer.

That is going to be a huge run, unless you have a real large flock they will not keep it bare. They will eat what they consider the good stuff and let the stuff they don't like grow so it takes over. You'll need to keep the green stuff from shorting out your electric fence anyway. So you will need enough room for a weed eater in there as a minimum, maybe even a lawn mower. Or build it so you can easily take the interior fencing down to mow and clean it up. I'd want it tall enough that I could stand up in there. If that 100' x 50' is accurate that will amount to a run over 300' long. Can you imagine crawling through that?

Gates might be challenging. You need to have them protected by the electricity but also be able to get through with whatever equipment you want to, let alone walk through. It will take some thought but shouldn't be that hard to plan a gate. Where will your coop be? How will that be incorporated?
 
I've been thinking about a chicken moat around some of my very large garden too. I don't have the fence to go all the way around, but I could do part, and then move the moat to another part. I'd use a chunnel ("chicken tunnel") to connect the permanent run to the moat.
 
My thoughts would be to build a good outer fence and protect it with electricity. Make your entire garden predator proof, including rabbits and raccoons. That is your expensive fence. Then use something cheap to make the inner fence. After all, that is just to keep the chickens out of your garden, the outer fence stops predators. A fence that high will even stop deer.

That is going to be a huge run, unless you have a real large flock they will not keep it bare. They will eat what they consider the good stuff and let the stuff they don't like grow so it takes over. You'll need to keep the green stuff from shorting out your electric fence anyway. So you will need enough room for a weed eater in there as a minimum, maybe even a lawn mower. Or build it so you can easily take the interior fencing down to mow and clean it up. I'd want it tall enough that I could stand up in there. If that 100' x 50' is accurate that will amount to a run over 300' long. Can you imagine crawling through that?

Gates might be challenging. You need to have them protected by the electricity but also be able to get through with whatever equipment you want to, let alone walk through. It will take some thought but shouldn't be that hard to plan a gate. Where will your coop be? How will that be incorporated?
My coops are a 6ft by 6ft mobile chickshaw. And a 4ft x4ft mini chickshaw from justin Rhodes on YouTube. I have about 50 birds, 2 breeds, id probably split the run in half. One breed on one side, and other on the other side. I'm planning a hatching eggs business so want to keep them separate. The plan is it have the whole run tall enough to walk into. And gates to pull the mobile coops in and out of. In the winter I park my coops in the garden already and let them stay there till about March. We start gardening end of may in my zone. We lost alot of crops to a family of bunnies this last year so that definitely was part of the decision to do this to the garden!
 
I've been thinking about a chicken moat around some of my very large garden too. I don't have the fence to go all the way around, but I could do part, and then move the moat to another part. I'd use a chunnel ("chicken tunnel") to connect the permanent run to the moat.
If you build this then you have to show me!
 

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