This tutorial will teach you all about building a chicken pen for your backyard flock.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!As a family, we decided that we would like to try raising chickens. We decided to start with a little flock of four chickens which we purchased as baby chicks and hand raised. It has been really enjoyable having our little flock of four chickens. Our family enjoys watching them free range in our backyard and collecting farm fresh chicken eggs daily. It has been quite a joy for our family!
Some Problems:
We ran into a few problems along the way. This led to a need to come up with some solutions. The first chicken pen included a chicken coop and about three feet of chicken wire fencing around the coop’s perimeter. We thought that clipping the chicken’s wings would keep them inside the fenced enclosure. That didn’t work for us.
Our chickens were able to hop the short fence. We really didn’t mind as we enjoyed watching the chickens free range, but soon, they began to hop the neighbor’s fence and this became a nuisance to our neighbors as well as to us. It was time to build a new chicken pen!
This is what our chicken pen looked like before.
The only thing missing in this photo is the chicken wire fence because my husband took it down before I took a picture.
The chicken coop is an old child’s playhouse that we purchased from Craigslist. My husband added the door, a nesting box, a perch and a ramp inside for the chickens.
This picture shows my husband, Mike, and our oldest son, Owen, standing in front of the new chicken pen that they built together.
Without a doubt, these guys worked hard! It was the very first father/son project that they have completed together. As a result of their hard work, these guys accomplished something great and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Benefits of Our New Chicken Pen:
There are some incredible benefits to this new chicken pen. One of the biggest benefits is that the chickens can no longer poop all over our yard and on our patio. No more stepping in chicken poop! Yay! Now, the kids are free to roll around and play in the grass again with no fear of accidentally rolling in chicken droppings.
The extra protection of our flock from predators is a very important benefit. We no longer have any concern that a hawk could swoop down in the middle of the day to fly off with one of our ladies.
Our neighbor is very happy, as well.
My husband and son did such an incredible job building this amazing chicken pen. My dream of having chickens has come true and I am incredibly grateful to my husband and son for making my dream come true!
How To Build a Chicken Pen:
This wonderful chicken pen was made from 2 X 4 pressure treated wood. It was faced with 1 X 6 pressure treated wood at the top just to add a more finished look. The bottom 1/3 of the pen is faced with hog wire panels and the rest of the pen is enclosed using chicken wire. The chicken wire extends along all the sides and across the top to ensure that the chickens are safe from predators and are fully enclosed in their pen.
Here a few more pictures of the process.
Here is a picture of the final product.
As you can see, this was a successful project. We are glad to have happy (and now very safe) chickens.
If you would like information on how to build a chicken coop, click here.
If you would like to view another one of our backyard farm projects, click here.