The Chicken Run

When enabling your chickens to free range is not an option, the second best thing to keep your ladies happy and to ensure that their eggs are as nutritious as plausible is a chicken run. A chicken run provides a place for chickens to safely follow their natural foraging and scratching impulses.

The ideal chicken housing condition is to have four square feet per bird in the mew, and ten square feet per bird in the run. Unlike chicken coops, chicken runs are pretty easy to construct. Plans are readily available online. A Web search will turn up ready-made runs ranging from $50 to $250, baseding upon size and construction.

Before opting for a run to buy or build, the following is a list of some challenges you need to address:

1. Varmints - You'll need to keep your birds safe from adjacency pets, raccoons, snakes, and raptors for example, hawks, owls, and crows. You don't want pigeons swooping in for a complimentary and outdistancing nasty diseases. Netting, screening, or fencing for the run shouldn't have gaps above an inch, to exclude raccoon paws and snakes. You should seriously consider having the same caging material over the top of the run to stay out the flying varmints.

2. Escape - Chickens can fly and can clear a five or six-foot fence. Though they are foraging, ground-dwelling birds, chickens rely on flight to escape predators by winging into the lower branches of trees.

Chickens also want to sleep at elevated roosts for safety reasons. This makes the netting across the top handy for keeping your chickens in, as well as keeping varmints out. An alternative, if your chicken run is too large to enclose the top, is to clip the flight feathers, a painless procedure.

3. Mud - The ground of the run will be your biggest challenge. Always locate your run on high ground with good drainage. Filling in mud is not good for your birds, making them prone to disease.

As foragers, chickens love to scratch around in the dirt and amongst low-lying plants. Even at ten square feet per bird, it won't take covet any greenery to be pecked to oblivion.

4. Stationery vs. Convenient Runs - If your run ought to remain in the same place, you will eventually have to provide terra firma or litter. Many types are acceptable, but 2 to 3 inches of pine chips is recommended.

Ground cover of this nature is easy to clean by just raking it a few times a week. It dries quickly after a rain and keeps the birds off the dirt and beyond their droppings. Replacement of the ground cover should be done three or four times a year - the refuse can go onto your compost pile.

You can build or buy portable coops and runs, called "tractor coops" or "tractor runs." These allow you to relocate to new ground once the birds have had their way with the old. These are quite handy for a suburban environment.

Place the coop and run in an area of the lawn that needs help, let the chickens peck for a week approximately, afterwards move all contraption to another area of lawn. You'll be pleasantly awed by the lush, verdant regrowth of the old chicken run site.

The most ideal aspect of a chicken run, beyond making your hens happy, is the natural value of the eggs they produce. Feeding grains regularly is not a healthy diet for egg-producing hens.

Studies have shown that chickens allowed to forage in grassy or weedy areas produce eggs that are higher in Omega 3 and vitamins A and E, as well as lower in intensities of total fat, hydrogenated fat, and cholesterol. And they just taste better, too.

Allowing chickens a place to portray chickens is necessary in several ways. Would you like being "all impounded" everyday? Chickens portraying chickens makes them more festivity and interesting to watch, which is part of the pleasure of having birds. And then there's the healthy eggs.

When putting together your comprehensive chicken-keeping strategy, you should place an enormous preeminence on your chicken run.

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