The Chicken Run

When enduring your chickens to free range is not an option, the next best thing to keep your ladies happy and to ensure that their eggs are as nutritious as attainable is a chicken run(http://chickensdirect.co/products-chicken-runs/ may also be of interest)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_coop may also be of interest). A chicken run provides a place for chickens to safely follow their natural foraging and scratching hunches.

The ideal chicken housing condition is to have four square feet per bird in the corral, and ten square feet per bird in the run. Unlike chicken coops, chicken runs are pretty easy to construct. Plans are readily available online. A Web search will materialize ready-made runs ranging from $50 to $250, relying on size and construction.

Before assessing a total buy or build, the following is a list of some challenges you have to address:

1. Varmints - You'll need to keep your birds safe from adjacency pets, raccoons, snakes, and raptors specifically hawks, owls, and even crows. You don't want pigeons swooping in for a free lunch and abandoning nasty diseases. Entangling, screening, or fencing for the run shouldn't have gaps above an inch, to stay out raccoon paws and snakes. You should seriously consider having the same caging material over the top of the run to keep out the flying varmints.

2. Escape - Chickens can fly and can clear a five or six-foot fence. Though they are foraging, ground-dwelling birds, chickens reckon on flight to escape predators by winging into the lower branches of trees.

Chickens also like to sleep at elevated roosts for safety reasons. This makes the netting across the top handy for keeping your chickens in, as well as keeping varmints out. An alternative, if your chicken run is too large to enclose the top, is to clip the flight feathers, a painless procedure.

3. Mud - The ground of the run will be your biggest hurdle. Always locate your run on high ground with good drainage. Standing in mud is not good for your birds, making them prone to disease.

As foragers, chickens love to hunt in the dirt and amongst low-lying plants. Even at ten square feet per bird, it won't take wish for any greenery being pecked to oblivion.

4. Stationery vs. Light and portable Runs - If your run needs to remain in the same place, you will eventually have to provide covert or litter. Many types prove out, but 2 to 3 inches of pine chips is recommended.

Ground cover of this nature is easy to clean by just raking it a few times a week. It dries quickly after a rain and keeps the birds off the dirt and insufficient their droppings. Replacement of the ground cover should be done three or four times a year - the refuse can go onto your compost pile.

You can build or buy portable coops and runs, called "tractor coops" or "tractor runs." These allow you to relocate to new ground once the birds have had their way with the old. These are quite handy for a suburban environment.

Place the coop and detain an area of the lawn that needs help, let the chickens peck for a week approximately, and afterwards move the whole contraption to another area of lawn. You'll be pleasantly amazed each lush, verdant regrowth of the old chicken run site.

Optimal aspect of a chicken run, beyond making your hens happy, is the nutritional value of the eggs they produce. Feeding grains regularly is not a healthy diet for egg-producing hens.

Studies have shown that chickens allowed to forage in grassy or weedy areas produce eggs that are higher in Omega 3 and vitamins A and E, and also lower in stages of total fat, saturated fatty acid, and cholesterol. And they just taste better, too.

Allowing chickens a place to copy chickens weighes in countless ways. Would you like being "all corraled" everyday? Chickens acting like chickens makes them more enjoyable and interesting to watch, which appertains the pleasure of having birds. And after that there's the healthy eggs.

When putting together your overall chicken-keeping strategy, you must place a tremendous significance on your chicken run.

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