In fact, the pen was SO ghetto, I guess I never even posted a picture of it, so, here is an example of what my chickens have been living in for the last 10 months or so. It's not white, I just took the picture on a frosty morning.
Yup...some t-posts, some 4-foot chicken wire, and then I used the snips to cut a hole in the chicken wire to cut a door so we could mount the tractor/coop up to the pen. After the chickens proved they could clear a 4-foot fence, we installed the bird netting...and it worked. It wasn't pretty...but it worked.
Now, we have something that is pretty, and it works.
It's 10 X 10 X 6 dog kennel that we bought at Lowe's today. After accidentally displaying limited amounts of competence assembling trellis's for the garden, my wife started talking to me about building a larger pen for the chickens. It didn't take long for me to convince that that wasn't the best idea. The leap from trellis's that don't have to be square to a pen that does, not to mention the price difference between untreated 1 X 2 and 2 X 2's for trellis's and treated larger lumber for a freestanding pen, well...it didn't feel like something I wanted to attempt. We determined for roughly the same price, we could buy a kennel.
It still took some assembly...the only thing that came already together was the actual door for the gate. Other than that, it took my wife and I about 2 hours to put it together...and man, if you ever want to test the strength of your marriage try stretching wire fencing around a 10 X 10 foot frame.
We aren't putting a roof on it for now. While the chickens made it over the 4-foot chicken wire, they have never made it over the 5-foot fencing around our yard. If we did do a roof of some sort, it would be more to protect the chickens from outside threats.
Of course, now I need to clean up the mess from the last run at some point.
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