Chicken Run

Well, we finally did it. We quarantined our thirty two chickens by putting them in a chicken run. They no longer have the freedom to peck around our entire acre, plus the eight acres of our surrounding neighbors' properties, plus the neighbor's lawn across the road. Because one acre was just not enough for our pampered (very) free range chickens. Something about the grass being greener, I guess.
I resisted the idea of a chicken run for a very long time. I like to be able to look out the windows of the house when I'm going about my day and see the chickens pecking and scratching. There's something very satisfying about seeing chickens going about their chicken business. To the naive (to which category I once belonged), it may seem that chickens are fairly innocuous creatures, but they actually can be very destructive.

Last summer our chickens ate all my potted petunias, geraniums and impatiens. I ended up putting all the pots on the hot tub (so attractive) to try to prevent further annihilation by my feathered friends, but even this would not deter them. They just flew right up and continued to eat their feast. I'm sure they enjoyed the lovely view the hot tub afforded them as they munched the last of my tender summer flowers.

The chickens also got into our very high raised vegetable beds and ate the tomatoes, including all of the heirlooms, the desire of my heart. They smashed down all the bean plants and they ate the zucchini flowers (we still had plenty of zucchini, though--ha, ha).

But the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was the poop. Poop, poop everywhere. Poop on the sidewalk, on the back porch, on the newly refinished picnic table and benches and all over the lawn. The poop basically rendered our half acre back yard unusable for any company we wanted to entertain outdoors. And every time our kids came in the house, I had to catch them at the door to check their shoes. All day long, in and out, stopping what I was doing to check shoes.
So we decided enough was enough. Enough with the poop! Matt and Paul built a chicken run in a couple of weekends this past month to keep the chickens contained. They still have plenty of room to peck and scratch and they have their favorite forsythia bush to nestle under (and eat the blossoms off of). They still have access to shade under the chicken house and also to plenty of the bugs and green grass that make their eggs extra yummy.True to form, for our chickens at least, we've already had a few escapees. Some of the chickens have managed to fly out at the run's end and then head over to the forbidden neighbor's pasture, but not before leaving several deposits on our front sidewalk. In general though, the poop problem has been greatly reduced and we do expect a spectacular looking lawn this year due to all the extra fertilizer it received over the winter.