Moving on up.

For longer than I had planned on, our chickens have been living in a jerry-rigged pen, which was built in a hurry because I got tired of chickens pooping on the patio once I decided that the chicken tractor we bought was not quite big enough for 5 birds. 

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.