in this quick video i'm going to show you how you can build a simple chicken run
i'm getting really excited hey this is tim from organic backyard gardening
in this video i'm going to take you through how i built this chicken run
we purchased this chicken coop um in a hurry because we're getting chickens and we didn't
quite have anything i didn't have time to build a coop so we bought this from tractor supply
and it's a very nice little scoop it's uh it's all metal has a nice roof um and the piece is wood
here and the chickens really like it but obviously this is really small we have six chickens and they
need a place to go out and out in the winter i've been letting them free range during the
day but in the winter they need something that's that's covered so i built this run for them and
this is built a lot of pressure treated has a metal roof and it has has wiring all around
the sides and in the bottom so let me take you through here put a little door on it
and there's quite a bit of space we can hang their food tray
their water and what i did for the bottom get through so we put crushed rock at the bottom
and then i put a hardware mesh i'll show you what the mesh looks like so there's mesh
wiring all throughout the bottom and this will prevent uh predators from uh digging underneath
and then coming up into the coop so that's what happens a lot of times people will put mesh all
around their their run but they'll forget to put mesh at the bottom so that's important so
i did that and i'll take you through how i built this so what i first did was i i saw the idea
of this this coupe on a blog online it didn't really have the full plans so it improvised a
little bit but i basically copied what the blog did and i'll put the link down below to the blog
and so what i first did was i leveled out the the ground and i built the perimeter
and then once i had the perimeter i then figured out what type of pitch i wanted on the roof
and i just put the boards up and i clamped the boards and then i
i marked them off and then once i got my pitch i then just started building everything on top
of the the bottom frame and so you can see here how i used these are two by sixes on the sides
so these two by sixes on the corners for a little more stability and then everything
else is just two by four pressure treated so you can see on the sides here i just angled these
um over here in my back two by sixes i just angled these as well to match the pitch and
then around the sides i put i'll show you on the inside here i basically sandwiched in the screen
to give it a little more uh stability so if something's pushing this is sandwiched in um
inside the outside so whoops just locked myself in
so brighten this up so i just ran a 2x4 all the way along the edges
so 2x4 all the way along the edges just unlock myself here
if you like this video please click the subscribe button and the bell to
be notified when we post new videos and then i just cut sections to sandwich in
you can see inside i built a little perch for them
and so the roof i didn't use any braces i just used um just used screws and i angled
angled all the roof joists and then at the top here uh same thing i put in sections and then
i put another support beam on the top here and i lowered it just a little bit to give it a nice uh
a nice little look and then i have one support going all the way across i just block those and
i have um support going across so let me take you to the roof to show you what i've done
now for the roof i use sheet metal and since the roof length was a little longer than what i had
expected i just used a couple sheets of drip edge on the back side so that they would fully
be fully um everything would be fully covered so ideally it would have been nice if this
was longer and i could leave a little bit more of an overlap but that wasn't the case
um one other thing so the way i
the way i secured these were just staples and a hammer so i just use staples here if you have a
staple gun like a heavy duty staple gun that would really uh really would have helped out
here's what the perch looks like from inside
i just cut an angle here um almost in the center and then i angled this here
so that's about it and then from the uh from the coop all i did was i
cut a little hole in here and this allows him to go travel back and forth hey girls
hey come on come on
yeah so they really like that in the morning they can just come in here
and we let them out during the day when we're home we had a couple that were taken up by a coyote
so two were eaten by a coyote and then we have some neighbors that have um we raised a bunch
of them and we gave half of them to our neighbors and they had four of them um gobbled up by hawks
so we um we leave them out while we're home we'll probably get some more and i think what i'm going
to do in the future is i'm going to build a bigger coupe i have an idea on something i'm
thinking about probably cutting into here and then building a larger coupe right off of this
this run so you can have something larger right here they only have i mean there's six chickens
and they only have like there's only three nesting boxes so they definitely need some more room
but at least now we have something in the winter where they can come and play won't be full of snow
they're getting really excited
yeah they're getting really excited hey
and uh this is something my wife found this is a pretty neat um pretty neat little food station
and then this is their little water station and i'm going to put some hoops here we can
take it on and off quickly to wash it and we're probably going to put a bin in the section in
the middle here to give them the garden scraps in the garden in the winter we have plans to sprout
a lot of grasses in the winter so they can have some fresh vegetables so we'll be using these
mostly for eggs so this is just another thing we're trying to do for to build a
self-sufficiency yeah this is the last part here on the door i put a um just a little hinge here
a little handle and then some looking for some ideas i will put the link down below
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