Working On The Chicken Run

It has taken us several months of weekends but we got the chicken coop in pretty good shape.  We have built PVC pipe waterers that are connected to a 50 gallon rain barrel, and we have one inside the coop and one outside the coop on a South facing wall...hopefully it won't freeze this winter.  I still need to make the feeders but at least we have the water done.  We set all the posts for the chicken run into cement and the run is not as big as I had planned now, but the posts are set, the door is on and I have started putting up the hardware cloth on it.  The chicken run is about 13'x16' instead of 16'x16'...but I am going to convert the grow out pen to a chicken coop now too and probably a smaller movable run as well.  Chickens really need to be the same size when you integrate them into the flock, it makes things a lot easier if they are.  They also tend to hang around together if they were raised together and sometimes hang around with the other chickens that look more like them.  My Blue Andalusians will hang out with my Blue Splash Marans...they are very similar looking...but the Marans have feathered legs and feet.  The Black Copper Marans will hang out with the black Sex-links and the Cream Legbars will hang out with the other barred chickens.

It takes me a lot longer to get projects like the coop and run built, I have to rest a lot and take care of the animals too.  I got the baby ducks set up on the back porch now, they are in a kiddie pool with cage wire around it, they have learned to drink out of the nipple waterers now too.  I moved the chicks that were in the house to the back porch brooder now too.  The chicks that were in those brooders are now in the run.

I put hardware cloth and boards to attach it to up 8 feet so far on one side of the chicken run and got hardware cloth hung on the other two sides and currently it is just attached to the 4"x4" posts and the 2"x6" boards at the bottom of the run.  There is a slight gap in the middle at the moment, but the chicks out there can't fly very well yet and I hope to get the 2"x4"'s up today and finish attaching the wire with heavy duty staples.  The main thing is keeping the grown chickens away from the youngest ones.  I tried to put a few in the chicken coop, but the roosters chased them and grabbed them and picked them up or tried to mate with them.  There is a pretty good size difference between a five and a half month old chicken and a 7 week old chicken...so at this point, they will stay separated.

It is starting to get cool at night, so I will have to come up with a smaller shelter inside of the run for the littles so they can huddle up and stay warm.  I went and picked up a bunch of dry grass and put a tote on it's side with grass in it and put a bunch of grass on the ground for them to snuggle into, if they want.  The ground is very sandy out here and they picked a corner and were really getting into dust bathing when we were watching them.  It is funny watching them interact.  We took the Cream Legbar chicks out of the chicken coop and put them and the Blue Splash Maran out in the run with the smaller chicks too.  They had been hiding a lot and seemed afraid to go outside with the other chickens.

We have a cold front on the way and it is suppose to get down in the mid 50's this week at night and the highs will be in the seventies and 80's instead of the upper 90's...good for me while I am working outside...but a bit cool for my youngest chickens.