hilariously, our “backyard” chickens have never actually been on any of our backyard pasture. for some reason, we started them in the front yard and they never ran out of green spaces to occupy. now, though, after a year of having them, they’ve made their journey to the back. and with that journey came a new way of piecing together their fencing. instead of the usual 6 cattle panels that made up their old chicken pen, we’re only using 4 of those panels, permanently tied together on three of the four corners just like with our goose pen. we also are not rolling their house inside the pen, instead using it as a fifth side that the two unattached fence corners can lean against. the space between the front wheels of the house  and the house itself act as perfect slots for holding the 2 fence pieces in place. one of those connections act as the gate, and all you have to do to get in is lift the fence up and over the wheel and walk on in. bird netting is still draped over the top to deter hawks and escaped chickens, and a metal bar is leaned up against the base of the house to prevent small bantams from escaping that way. we have 2 wooden poles with tennis balls attached to keep the netting up higher and we remove when we move the fence so that the netting won’t get too taut from pulling and rip.

our backyard chickens get a newly designed pen!

some of our reason for making this change are:

• once the chickens go in their house at night and we close them in, we can easily roll the house whenever we want without first disassembling all of the cattle panels and step-in posts that we used to use.
• once the house is rolled away, we attach the open side of the fence with a clip and can slide it along the same was we slide the goose fence, with the netting still attached. the square shape is really easy to move, we’ve discovered. this also requires no posts at all!
• since the gate is right by the house it is so much more helpful to be able to set food and snacks on top of that while you walk into the fence. i’ve always found it annoying and difficult to get inside the fence holding buckets of food while chickens walk under your feet or try to fly up in the air to land in your bucket.
• since the square shape of the pen can be pulled on to be made more diamond-shaped, it will be easier to fit their pen in tighter spots in the the yard (like in and between garden beds and trees).
• even though the area of their pen has been cut in half, since the house is no longer inside that area, they probably have 3/4 of the actual grassy area that they had before. and since they are so much easier to move now, this is a benefit for them. they’ll probably get moved every 5 days or so (they used to be moved every 2 weeks) and they still get 3/4 of the pasture area that they did before. it a good deal for all of us!

our chickens, enjoying their fresh grass.

.:.