Novice building covered chicken run

[ChickenMan]

I’m hoping to get a little bit of advice for a newbie with a bit of an urgent need to learn some joinery skills. I need to build a covered run for my chickens to stop the fox getting to them, and although I have a rough design in my head, I’m struggling to work out some of the joints. I’ll try to explain this as well as I can, apologies for any stupid stuff, and feel free to ask me to clarify anything if need be.

The design in simple terms is like a cube with a pyramid on top. I’m looking at 12 feet long x 12 feet wide, using four corner posts, and on three sides there will be intermediate posts as well (fourth side will need a gate, so both gate posts will act as intermediate posts there). The corner posts will be approx 5 feet high, and will have a rail running at that height around the entire perimeter, forming the “cube” part of my design, albeit a slightly short cube.

For the roof, I’m looking at a central vertical post about 7 feet high, with angled roof braces going from it to each corner post and each intermediate post, as well as to the two gateway posts. So this will give me the "pyramid" part, and then I’ll use wire mesh all over.

I hope that makes some sense and gives an idea of the simple design. Now for the joints.

I’m thinking of using 3’x3’ wood all round, and joining the rails to the posts with biscuits and bolts. Ideally I’d like to be able to take the thing apart so I can treat the wood once a year. But the roof braces have me a little stuck. Those going into the four corners will be sitting into a 90 degree joint. So I wonder if the best thing to do here is to mitre that end, and butt it up to the post, but bolt it to the rail instead of the post. That should make things a little less busy in the post itself?

The roof braces going to the intermediate posts are easier I think, because I should be able to use biscuits for them as well.

Could anybody give a desperate newbie an opinion on whether I’m on the right road or in the wrong galaxy here? I haven’t even got to thinking about the joints on the centre post yet, but I until I can get my head around joining the roof braces to the corner posts, there doesn’t seem much point thinking about that yet.

Many thanks for any help - it will be very much appreciated!

 

[Spindle]

Hi

Look up birds mouth joints - that should give you some food for thought

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=birds ... CFwQsAQIIQ

Regards Mick

 

[Woody2Shoes]

Hi,

could I suggest that you actually have two separate problems:

1) Keeping foxy off your chickens;

2) Giving your chickens a cosy place to roost and to lay.

We've kept chickens and geese for many years and we see foxy most days of the week on his/her regular patrols. The reason we don't lose any birds is because we use electric poultry netting - it just works! It also means you can move the birds about a bit so they don't completely wreck one piece of grass/ground if you have enough space.

For example, this type of thing http://www.renco-netting.co.uk/poultry.htm

If you took up my suggestion re. the netting, would you still need a new chicken house? How many birds do you have?

Cheers, W2S

 

[ChickenMan]

Ah, excellent thanks Mick! That definitely looks like it could be a winner, I'll take a deeper look into that.

W2S, funny you say that, I have electric netting already, but we lost one recently because she hopped onto the roof of the coop and jumped over the top. She was always a little Houdini, but gutted to see her meet her end that way. At present I've increased the height of the fence using an additional four strands of electrified twine running between 4 corner posts, but I want something a little more permanent and complete than that. So we decided the only way to ensure they stay safe is to have them in a covered run, that keeps the fox out, and keeps them in.

Edit - to answer your question, we only have three left, but I'm aiming to buy a couple more in the spring

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I forgot to say! We put the netting clear of trees/hedge and put the coop in the centre of the netted area - yes, they do hop out occasionally but we're around most of the time so can usually quite quickly put them back in - they do learn not to hop out, especially if they've got everything they need within the net.

I'd be tempted just to build a caged run out of lengths of 2x2 joined with small triangular gussetts made from 12mm ply and woodscrews covered in very light duty chicken wire. It only needs to be about a metre high.

Cheers, W2S

 

[ChickenMan]

Yes, our problem is that we're not normally around in the daytime as well. Damned work...

I also forgot to add that their current run is effectively permanent - I've currently got a 16m electric fence in a square formation, with pallet wood edging and hardwood chips inside. We just let them out to wander in the rest of the garden whenever we are here during the day. So I need something that I can walk into to feed and water them. Wife and I are both shorties, hence the low design - I'm already referring to it as a "stoop-in run".

But good to know you think 2x2 should be up to the job - I was wondering if I could get away with that, as it would make the whole job cheaper and easier.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

You could maybe use 3.0m or 3.3m lengths of 2X2 and make a kind of square enclosure which sits inside your square fenced area and allows you some circulation space around it. If you use light duty chicken wire then it has little more than its self-weight to support (I'll ignore snow!) and could be moved about by two people. I'd really only bother with having it about 1m high - with a small door to put in/out food/water and a link to the coop. It's easy to spend a lot of money on these things! Cheers, W2S

 

[ChickenMan]

That's a very good point - simpler and cheaper is an attractive thought!

 

[Wizard9999]

That's a very good point - simpler and cheaper is an attractive thought!

In your original post you mentioned you are a newbie, if that is the case I really would suggest doing it a simple way. I am also pretty new to woodwork, but I have been doing it just long enough to be able to say that even when you get your 'head around it' that is just the easy part, it is the getting your hands to create what you have in your head that is the really tough part. That roof you have in mind sounds really quite complicated with some interesting angles, yet I struggle to see why you need it, make a flat roof and save yourself a lot of pain and potentially wasted wood.

That is of course if you don't follow W2S advice, which does sound spot on to me.

Terry.

 

[WoodMangler]

Make sure you completely clad the chicken house itself with chicken-wire or somesuch - we lost our last (bantam) chickens to something (we think probably a pine marten) from inside the closed-up top section of a 'proper' chicken-ark, when whatever it was chewed its way through the tanellised 1/2" t&g boards on one end and killed all 3, in one night, in the garage.

 

[ChickenMan]

Ah, that's a shame. I've also been thinking about stoats and weasels - I snipped the power to the bottom two strands of our electric fence, after finding a dead hedgehog in it one morning. Because they ball up rather than run away from trouble, they tend to ball up over the electric fence until the shocks kill them.

At that point I decided that losing the odd chicken was a worthwhile risk to save any more hedgehogs having a terrible death, and having now lost a chicken as well, I've decided that the only solution is to go full cover.

 

[nev]

simple, rough and ready and been up for about 5 years now with no intrusions or escapes. (apart from squirrels)

split posts, 6x1 cross pieces for rigidity, and old roofing panels cut into 2ft strips and hammered into the ground about a foot to prevent tunnelling. from the 6x1 up is just 2x1 tan. battens up and around with bird netting over the top to prevent the buzzards dropping in, and of course chicken wire all round, tougher stuff down low, lighter stuff up top.

not a carpentry joint in sight #-o just a load of screws.

 

[ChickenMan]

That looks excellent Nev, thanks for posting! I'm still mulling over how best to do this, but the help here is fantastic - many thanks to everyone for their input