Walk-In Run

We're having a bit of a change around with the chickens at the moment. We had got them living in an Egglu Cube, with the bottom third-ish of the garden fenced off for them to peck around in - having experimented with them having full run of the garden and watch it slowly turn into a grassless bog over the winter months, they have been confined to their own area for a while now!

But Leigh wants to get a bit of that garden back and has been thinking about a walk-in run for a while - we have finally gone for it! It's 3m x 2m on the ground but also 2m high, so although it feels as though they have lost some ground space, we can put large logs and things in so that they can climb and use the height of the new run as well. Leigh and I put the run together last night (which was reasonably straightforward if time-consuming - and we both have lots of insect bites to show for our efforts today!), then moved everything around today and the new one is in place - they still have the Egglu for night time and egg laying, but their daytime activities are all within the new run now. The bottom end of the garden doesn't need to be fenced off any longer and the whole area looks bigger just with the old fence gone.

The plan is to plant up some grass seed and also have a vegetable patch to reclaim the previously chickenified piece of garden.

Here's how it looked before...

Here's our handy helpers getting everything unpacked...

And how it looks now

Brilliant!