The Chicken House Expansion - our $160 Chicken Run
There are a lot of crazy chicken ladies out there. I’m not sure yet if I’m crazy, but I do consider my chicken house to be my crowning achievement on this property. It also has gone through multiple iterations - the latest of which will be at least a three part series - highlighting my still undetermined crazy.
The expansion is the left side of the run. The hoop house!
This post is actually about the second iteration of the coop - one that I neglected to post when we finished it last year.
We started out with just 10 chickens in our original coop. We realized (relatively quickly) that our chicken math was a little off and we were not getting enough eggs to feed the family. So the following spring we added another 10 chicks. No problem, since we built the coop and run for growth.
Plenty of room we thought!
The coop is huge, we thought!
We built it bigger than we needed, we thought.
BUT - as large as the chicken coop seemed when we first built it, because we weren’t free ranging – too many predators – it was getting a little cramped in their 7‘ x 16‘ run.
So last summer, as our newest checks were reaching maturity, we decided to double the size of their run. We totally blew the budget on the original chicken house build, so we needed a low cost solution. After scouring the web, I decided on a hoop house design
It was so simple!
We drove two posts into the ground 153” out from the original run.
We attached 2 x 6 pressure-treated boards to each of the posts and finished off the end with another 2 x 6.
Then we painted everything white because it must be beautiful.
From there we took three cattle panels, which are exactly 51” x 16’ and lay them one next to the other. We used a home made clamp and screw, attached one end of each of the three panels to our 2 x 6, bowed them up toward the sky, and screwed the other end of the panel to the board on the other side. This created an arch that was the same height as our original run. We clamped the hoop house to the original run. In a few places and used baling wire to attach it all together.
Some leftover hardware cloth from the original chicken run went around the perimeter and folded under to prevent chickens digging under.
Finishing off the end was a conundrum. I already had a “door” that was left over from some scrap we had picked up off of craigslist.
That door got a red paint job and some chicken wire stapled to it. Easy. But how to mount the door and close the end?!
We still wanted to keep it simple and cheap!
Dad had the idea of creating the end from another 2x6 cut at angles to form an arch. We did this with some simple, angled miter cuts, laid it out on the floor and screwed it all together.
We put in a small frame for the door, painted everything and mounted the door.
Then we secured it to the open end - it is attached at the bottom to the 2x6 and the rest to the cattle panels. Those suckers are so strong, we didn’t need any additional support. The only attachments are four posts sunk into the ground, (we just used a post driver for this) and then the cattle panels are attached to the base, wired to each other and to each end with a few screws. In the end we decided to wrap the whole hoop in chicken wire. This wasn’t really 100% necessary but we decided we were going to just leave it open to the run and to the coop, so we wanted to keep it predator proof.
The entire build took three people (and some intermittent help from the kids) about 10 hours. We did this all in 102° heat.
Below is the parts list.
Three 2 x 6 x 16 PT $48
(3) cattle panels from tractor supply $90
(1) Round post split in two from tractor supply $10
White primer and paint that we had on hand. Frivolous step and unnecessary!
(1) 2 x 4 used to create a frame for the door we had on hand $8
50 feet of chicken wire, which we had on hand. $68 new from Tractor Supply.
Small roll of hardware cloth which we had on hand. $80 new Home Depot.
A couple pieces of bailing wire, which we had on hand.
Deck screws, and a roll of hanger strap that we also had on hand - this is what we made the brackets out of just using a metal punch and some tin snips. You can pick this up pre-perforated from Home Depot for $7.
We built it for under $160. You could do it for around $350 buying all new materials.
