Inspiration & Advice
Create a fully enclosed chicken run
Create a secure yard for your feathered friends.
Are your chickens cooped up? Give your flock space to frolic, making sure they’re safe from predators and giving them a safe refuge and a happy home.
Curious explorers at heart, chickens love bug chasing, wing stretching and feather preening. A chicken run provides room for their roaming, with plenty of space and height inside for you to join their adventuring. Safety is the first priority especially from foxes and other predators!
We’ve created a simple chicken run with the help of Jack’s Project Mesh to keep our chooks nice and safe.
What You'll Need
Tools & Materials
Additional materials needed for this project:
- 100x100 Cypress Posts (length depends on desired height + 600mm)
- 150 x 25mm Treated Pine Sawn (Qty depends on size of run)
- 90 x 45mm Outdoor Framing H3 Treated Pine (Qty depends on size of run)
- 40mm U Nails (Qty approx. 200)
- Screws
- Wire Cutters
- Drill or Driver
- Safety gloves and glasses
Design your Yard
The size of your run will depend on the space that you have available. We had plenty of space, so we made our run 18m x 3m and the height 2.4m. This is plenty of space for our 8 chickens to stretch their wings and legs.
For our plans see chicken run plans
Choose your mesh
Foxes are sly and creative animals that can easily tear through the thin wire and sneak through the small opening. To prevent this from happening it’s important to install a sturdy mesh wire on the exterior of your coop.
The guage should be less than 100 x 100.
Install your posts
Dig holes and cement in your posts. Our posts were 600mm deep, but you can alter this based on your conditions.
Secure the posts with crossbeams (which will later form the roof).
Attach the project mesh to form the walls
Attach to posts using 40mm U nails
Join the upper and lower project mesh with Mesh clips and secure the project mesh to the timber frame using Panel Fixing Clips.
Build the roof frame
To build the roof frame we used 90x45mm Outdoor framing H3 treated pine spaced 750mm’s apart, with crossbeams every 3m.
Attach wire netting to roof
We used Bird Netting for the roof.
Our walls are 2.4m high so we could afford to use a lighter weight material as the risks of foxes climbing the walls if low. For shorter walls you may like to use a heavier duty mesh.
Attach a Project Mesh 'wire skirt'
Stops foxes from finding a way in. They're now not able to dig underneath to get inTo protect against predators digging underneath, attach a ‘wire skirt’ around the outside base of your chicken run. Chickens love to scratch in the dirt, so attaching the wire skirt to the outside allows them to scratch uninhibited.
