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Sometimes I envy people with roofs over their chicken runs. I can see that being an advantage in some situations. However, probably the biggest reason I have a backyard flock is to make compost. My chicken run only has bird netting on top, so when it rains, everything in the chicken run gets a good watering.
I had considered building a partial roof over my chicken run to prevent snow from filling up the chicken run. But, where I live, it would have to be a pretty strong roof to support our average snow weight loads. That can get to be expensive.
Fortunately, after a number of years, I finally figured out how to encourage my chickens to go outside in the winter/snow months. I saved up a bunch of leaves in my stackable compost bin and spread them out on top of the snow, as needed, and the chickens would go outside and walk on the leaves. This past winter, I don't think there were but maybe 5-7 storm days in total that they were stuck inside the coop. That's really good compared to prior years when they were living inside the coop for ~5 months of snow outside and never going outside.
Of course, that pallet wood stackable compost bin is a project that I worked on last year. It has proven to be of some value to me, and I will be building more tiers this year to either add to the existing tower, or making another tower, or two. The pallet wood I am salvaging from the Euro pallets I just got have a lot of full-length boards that I need to make the sides 36X36 inches.
For anyone not familiar with me storing leaves for winter use in that stackable pallet compost bin system, here's a picture from a few months ago...
