Who really rules the roost at your place? We’ve had backyard chickens for about a year and decided we needed to build them their own chicken run instead of letting them free range in our entire yard. Our build is working beautifully and so I’m passing on the information to you! Read on for how to build a chicken run which is functional, affordable, and versatile! Bonus YouTube videos and photos throughout, of course!
I do have affiliate links in this article.
What is a Chicken Run, Anyway?
A chicken run, or a chicken pen, or a chicken yard, is an enclosed space where your flock has access to grass and sunshine. It’s usually connected to their chicken coop so they can ramble around inside and outside as they choose. A good chicken run has at least 10 square feet of space per bird, is secure and safe from predators, and provides your birds with fresh food and water on demand.
If you’re new to chickens and not sure about some of the more common terms, you can read my introductory explanation here.
What Does a Chicken Run Need?
To continue the last point, a chicken run needs to allow your chickens to be outside safely. So you need to “predator proof” your pen.
A chicken run also needs to have shade for your chickens, even if you’re not in a warmer climate.
Other requirements include access to their food (pellets or crumble) and water, and preferably a way to access their coop so they can go and lay eggs when the need arises. And of course, a safe and secure way for you to get in and out!
Optional features include a dust bath or a pool of very shallow water, treat balls, swings, roosts and branches, and other things to keep your chickens occupied!
A Chicken Run Design
I have a few suggestions for you once you’ve decided that you need a chicken run, but aren’t exactly sure how to design it.
Look at your existing space. Do you have trees, fences, structures big or small (a chicken coop or a shed or a house) that you can use as some of the border? Use existing structures as much as possible – it’ll save you on supplies and time, and will be a great way to safely and securely confine those darn birds!
Look online. (Hi there!) Check out people’s images on Facebook groups or just search image results. Do you need a roof? How many birds are you housing? Will you rotate out spaces or is this going to be their chicken run for life? Pick your location and be sure that you have a minimum of 10 square feet per chicken (more if ducks, geese, turkeys, or larger birds; slightly less if you have quail).
Ultimately, the design that we liked the best was from Ranch Coop. They had a lot of ideas that seemed to make sense. However, we didn’t feel it was necessary to buy their pre-cut wood at $200, so we opted to make some tweaks and essentially build our own chicken run!
Our chicken run uses our existing six foot wood fence on two sides, and the chicken coop on one corner. The chicken run is a total of about 16×38 feet if you include the chicken coop. We’d need about 50 feet of utility wire to make up the remaining two sides.
We determined that we needed to build wood posts: for the end of our chicken run (against the wood fence), against the coop on two sides, and then an additional one mid-way to keep the utility wire from sagging. Five posts, five boards.
We found that we could make each post out of a single 8 foot long 2×4, by cutting the wood at 4 feet, 1.5 feet twice, and then using the last foot to cut up into smaller pieces a few inches long. That way, each 8 foot board would make an entire post. Each post also needs one galvanized nail, and three wood screws, to completely assemble.
Our Supplies
For our chicken run, we needed the following supplies (that which we didn’t already have was bought from Lowe’s Hardware in south Texas in spring 2018):
- 50’x5’ utility wire ($49.47)
- 8 2”x4” untreated wood posts ($3.46/each = total $27.68)
- 10 12” galvanized nails ($.67/each = total $6.70)
- 15 3″ wood screws (flat Phillips head)
- Wood cutting saw
- Power drill
- Wire cutter
- Sand paper to smooth wire edges
- Hammer
- Grand total: $83.85
Putting It Together!
Ready to build? Hoorah let’s go!
I recommend that you leave your birds locked in their coop while you do the building. It’s safer for the birds, and ensures that you can focus on the work and not stepping on a chicken. (We didn’t do this and you can see the hilarious video on YouTube of my DottieBird totally confused and lost by the chicken run being built around her!)
We built the five posts first and carried those into the yard. That required us to measure and cut the wood, then use two wood screws to affix the two-part base to the post. Then we attached the swivel lock mechanism at the top with the third wood screw. Finally, we drilled holes in the bases for the galvanized nails to go through, holding the post into the ground.
Building these posts was, by far, the most labor intensive part. (And I say “us” but really it was Real Simple Daddy and my own pop! Thanks guys!)
Next we placed the posts where we wanted them to go, and made sure that our roll of 50′ utility wire would still work. When we confirmed that it was, we cut the wire as needed. We used the swivel locks at the top to hold the wire, and we nailed the posts to the ground with the nails.
Final Considerations
Make sure that the birds’ wings are clipped and that all surfaces are at least 5’ tall.
Ensure that your chickens always have access to their food, clean water, shade, and a place to lay their eggs.
Avoid using fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals near your birds.
On mowing/edging day, keep your birds in their coop so they don’t get injured.
Double check your predator-proofing and routinely inspect the entire chicken run and the coop for attempted break-ins, or for improvements.
While flies don’t usually bother the chickens too much, they’re gross (and hell, they bother me.) Fly traps are fine as long as the chickens can’t peck them or get stuck on fly paper.
Walk your chicken run and check for plastic, glass, or other trash. This is something I do often since our house was flipped before we bought it – reno debris is all over the place, even now. You hope that your chickens “won’t eat that because they know it’s not food”, but then again…
There you have it! You now have all of the information I’ve gathered through the process of building a chicken run. Overall we are so happy that we chose to do this, and our design has worked beautifully.
As always, comment here or email me if you have questions or suggestions. And thanks for pinning and sharing!
Finally, as promised, here’s the other chicken run composite video that I made for y’all – enjoy! (I know you’re jealous of my Crocs and skunk socks. It’s ok, everyone else is too.)
I'd love to hear from you!