Run or outdoor enclosure for your chickens
The perfect playground for your poultry
Offer your chickens retreat and cover
Even the largest run is useless if your chickens can’t find any cover and don’t dare to go outside, often loafing around in the coop . Low bushes or hedges and fruit trees turn your run into a chicken paradise. If there is no natural vegetation, your poultry will be happy to have an old stool, an inverted construction tub with an entrance or a camouflage net to provide cover and shade. Additional seating options such as tree stumps, wooden blocks or upturned buckets are often used as an escape route in the event of fights.
Dust bath – body care with the Huhn family
Just as cats groom themselves by licking their fur, our chickens also make sure their feathers are clean. To do this, they look for a place that is as dry, sandy or dusty as possible and scratch a hole in which they then roll around extensively.
The parasites that have not made it from the hen to their safe hiding place in time before leaving the coop are more or less thoroughly brushed out of the feathers by this dry washing.
Chickens often change the location of their sand bath so that they do not constantly become infected with the parasites they have gotten rid of. They are very inventive in the garden when it comes to choosing new sand baths.
Additional weather protection
If you mean well with your chickens, or if your coop is a little too small for the number of chickens you have, you can encourage your chickens to spend less time in the coop even in very bad weather by providing additional shelter.
For example, stretch a tarpaulin diagonally against the rainy side of your run and put a little bark mulch on the ground underneath and you will see how your chickens spend more time outside even on really nasty days. An old table jacked up on two stones so that the water runs off the table top turns into a first class outdoor perch if you add a perch underneath.
If the floor of the run turns into a muddy mess in winter, bark mulch is the best way to get things halfway dry again. Especially breeds with feathered feet such as Brahmas or Cochin will thank you for a dry run floor. The tannic acid in the pieces of bark also hinders the growth of harmful bacteria.
