Show me pics of your windy, cold weather runs.

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Please

 

[patandchickens]

Hm, I am in a VERY WINDY and cold location, and am pretty well satisfied with my setup, but don't seem to have any pics of things fully rigged up for the winter. Sigh. I never think of these things til it's too late

But, to give you the general idea, here is the front sussex run when it was nearly complete a year and a half ago. What the pic does not show is that I staple 6mil translucent plastic onto the back end and about 1/2 of the long side of it, which keeps wind out as well as snow (thus, it is not normally snowy like it is in this pic). There is now another, larger run halfway done (so far) behind this one, which will be treated the same way for wintertime.

The runs on the opposite (upwind) side of the building have a roof, too, and I have tarps in some place and burlap in other places (next year I might go to all-burlap) on the exposed N and W sides to cut the wind. I leave the front, S side of those runs open.

And the front pen on that side also has this little south-facing lean-to run, shown here wrapped fully in 6 mil plastic for wintertime. Please note that you cannot normally wrap a run 100% in plastic like this, it creates horrendous humidity problems. But because this run attaches to a large building with few chickens and good ventilation, and I do my darnedest to keep the ground dry inside that run during wintertime, I can use it this way as a solar heater to warm the building somewhat. You could do this too, as long as it is *in addition to* rather than instead of your normal run and normal ventilation... I would highly recommend a wooden or concrete-slab floor in the run, though, instead of dirt which is what mine has. In summertime I remove the plastic (half is already off, this time of year) and replace with shadecloth.

Oh, and all the popdoor doorways have wide strips of heavy translucent vinyl shelf liner hanging down curtainwise, to further decrease the breeze going in/out. On super windy days, I do not open both sides of the building at once; the sussex (E) side gets their popdoors open in the morning, then I switch at noon and the other side gets to go out. This is only an issue if you have popdoors on both sides of the building, though (which I strongly recommend you try to AVOID if you are in a windy location!!)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[CityChook]

Cold in San Diego?

Here's my run. I haven't done the plastic sheeting idea yet, but probably will next winter as my girls refuse to go out into the snow. My run is covered, but it still blows in from the sides. Last winter the snow was 2.5 ft. deep around the run (up to the cross supports), so it made somewhat of a protective wall on the lower half...

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Tarps! Lotsa tarps! Especially when you have coops on top of a hill in a place called "Little Chicago." And our wind will bust any string used so I go through a lot of zip ties and after about 2-3 months I have to replace those.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

@ CityChook, Yes! It gets cold in the mountains of San Diego. Plus, were perched on a hill looking down at the desert so we get that crazy wind coming from that direction! (45-75+ mph for days at a time...and two miles down the road in town it's just a soft breeze).

@ Pat, Good idea about making a vinyl flap door for the pop door. I was wondering how to handle that.

@ Nadine, I've used tarps here and they just rip out the grommets....I guess I'd have to come up with a better way to secure it. From time to time we find neighbors tarps
in our yard too...hehehe.

What I noticed from two of the pictures is that your runs share a long wall with the coop. Mine will share a short wall

So I'm thinking of making a covered run with a solid
back wall and a solid roof. I'm definitely going to put a solid wall on the front about 8 feet out (with a window in it) because of the ridiculous wind coming from the desert.
Thankfully THAT wind is never cold.

I'm trying to figure out the best solution for the west end of the run. I thought about putting a wall half way over and I could even put a window in it to be able to open for
a breeze (I have several used windows I can use for the run). I just don't want to enclose it too much that there's not enough circulation. It's going to be a minimum of
10 x 20, possibly 10 x 24. I will also be free ranging them assuming that all goes well in my environment. My goal is to have a nice dry unwindy area for them to hang out
in no matter what the weather.

Thank you all for your response. I LOVE looking at others work and get so inspired!!

 

[patandchickens]

The trick to using tarps is twofold: a) the structure to which you're attaching them needs to be extremely darn well constructed and affixed to the ground, so the increased wind-load from the tarp does not cause it to come apart or land in your neighbor's yard. And b) those happy little grommets ARE NOT useable tie points, you have to put lumber or rope or mesh across the outside of the tarp and affix THAT to your structure.

The only example I actually have a photo handy of is this:

In which some semi-rotten old deck boards are screwed as battens across the tarp to minimize flapping. You can also use a bunch of lengths of rope (I use the heavy-gauge baler twine off the 700 lb large square bales I buy), or wire mesh e.g. old pagewire fence scraps. The idea is to divide the tarp into a number of small independant areas, none of which will get to flapping too awful badly, as opposed to it behaving as a single baggy object that can thrash quite severely and rip itself apart/off.

Highly recommend this type strategy for anyone wanting to affix plastic or tarps in a windy area. (It doesn't appear in that old pic of my greenhouseified front run, but this past year I added two vertical aluminum battens, where those supports are, to minimize the plastic flapping, and will for sure do that again next time as it was quite useful)

I have been extremely happy with the landscape burlap I used this year, too, although I have no photos handy. Although a good bit of wind still passes through, it is vastly slowed from its original velocity, and not much snow gets in. And because it does not *stop* the wind, just slow it, it doesn't result in such severe stresses on the structure it's attached to.

Pat

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

Landscape burlap is a great idea. I think I'll leave that end open then and just tarp it or put up some burlap during the winter months. It faces the road so I was trying to be nice to the neighbors and make it look pretty too.

Thanks Pat for the descriptions and photo. I am totally a visual person so it really helps me to see a picture when trying to describe something to me.

 

[jBlaze]

I ought to go dig out the pict of our collapsed run, so you can see how not to do it! LOL.

 

[bigoakhunter]

Maybe not the most glamorous picture,but it shows a Michigan winter run. You are seeing the West and North sides. Completely covered with heavy mil plastic. The run has a covered steel roof and the south and east sides are not covered with the plastic. My chickens came outside in the run every day in the winter! The heavy mil plastic really kept snow and wind out. Worked good for me.

 

[BankerJohn]

I live in West Central Florida, about an hour north of Tampa. We had 13 days straight where it went below freezing at night. {grin} for all you Northerners with snow

Varmint protection: mil-spec M40A3