It will house just 4 chickens, and will be behind our garage.
My thinking is something like this one, but the run will be perpendicular to the coop, making it an L:
The garage has a 4' eave in the back, so the house and part of the run will be sheltered. Outside the coop, I'll run a fence from the back of our garage to our yard fence, giving them an approximately 15' x 20' area to roam in when we don't let them run around the entire back yard.
I'd appreciate any advice.
Don't overbuild- seriously use light materials. I used 4X4 for legs s and 3/4ply. I recommend using as light a material as possible to make it easier to move. Fence boards 2x2s etc. Use tight weave mesh and go all the way around the run (under over etc) rodents dig under, and trash pandas are can pull chickens out of the chicken wire mesh piece by piece. Think about where you want to put the light. I use a solar powered light in the winter, it doubles the egg laying period and totally worth it. A watering bucket and nipple is a must. Chickens poop everywhere, the nipple prevents poop in water problems. Ideally you would have some way to add food without opening the coop in the morning. Oh and #1 tip. Make it easy to clean. Make sure you think about cleaning access, from all sides in all areas. So 1-2 feet to any areas for cleaning is ideal. If you need to reach in 3 feet+ then you probably need another access door/hatch. I have a sliding tray in my upper coop but nothing in the lower which makes it hard to clean the lower bits. That run in the photos will be annoying to clean because you will have to get in there all hunched over and shovel poop out of there. In a couple weeks the entire bottom area will be covered with chicken poop and you will have to remove the poop and put more chips/dirt there so make it tall enough or accessible enough to clean comfortably.
We had a large fenced in area around our chickens, about 4 feet high if I recall correctly, and it kept the chickens in. The fencing was cheap wire fence from Home Depot, kept in place with metal stakes in the ground. We kept the coop in the same place and shifted the fenced area between the right and left sides as the grass got eaten up. I'd recommend getting a compost tumbler. You can rake out the coop once a week and throw all the straw and chicken shit in the tumbler, along with kitchen scraps. It makes awesome soil in a short time (a few weeks, again if memory serves). 4 chickens is a great number. If you go to 10 you'll have more eggs than you can eat and enough to give to friends. I'd get a mix of chickens based on egg color. It is a lot of fun to take your child out every morning to gather a mix of eggs in white, brown, blue, green, pink, and white with brown speckles. It's like Easter every morning. Advice: do not have 75 chickens. This is exactly the wrong number of chickens to have. Enough to create serious work. Not enough to create money from egg sales. 4-10 chickens or over 300.
I've seen more movable coops like this around lately https://goo.gl/images/BkLZ2R We've come a long ways... You're a chicken hipster now.
Depending on the breed of chicken and size of fence, this is totally possible. My parents had an issue with a particularly liberty thirsty hen trying to fly the coop and had to extend the fence around the chicken run about 3 feet up in order to contain her.I am wondering if they will hop our chain link fence into the woods behind, however.
Making it an L will make the coop harder to drag to new places. Leave it in one place, and they'll kill the grass in their run pretty quickly. This is my Dad's coop: Houses anywhere from 10 to 18 birds in a 70'x100' area. Flock size depending on how effective the dog has been at keeping the foxes out, how many random birds have joined the flock (happens from time to time in the country) and how the hens feel on nesting vs eating their eggs. The run is also home to two rabbits! They weren't invited, but have set up shop anyways.
Interesting. I guess that begs the question of whether or not I need the smaller run attached the the coop, or if I should just let them run around the entire area behind the garage. My ordinance says: "A covered enclosure or fenced enclosure shall not be located closer than ten (10) feet from a property line of an adjacent property nor shall it be located closer than forty (40) feet to any residential structure on an adjacent property." It might be worth having some fenced enclosure connected to the coop (which will meet the distance requirements) so I can make the argument that our yard fence isn't the enclosure itself. We have a bunny that spends a lot of time in our yard. I wonder if it will like the chickens.
We had chickens who constantly escaped from their run. Bear in mind that you have to get them back into the coop every night before sundown or every raccoon/coyote in the neighborhood will treat your yard like a buffet. We lost a couple chickens that way; another got injured, and then her coop mates pecked her half to death because what do you know, chickens are assholes. I had to kill that hen myself just to put her out of her misery, and it was a pretty messy experience. Anyhow. Chickens don't always get that they have to retreat to the coop. Which means you have to chase them into it. This is easy with a run. It is not easy without. It'll end up dominating your early evening, depending on how many chickens you're getting. To top it off, chickens don't fly far or well, but they can fly far enough to get over a fence, depending on how resourceful they are about finding the highest take-off point. Then you'll have to chase your chickens through the streets. Also, chickens obviously shit everywhere. And chicken shit is great for yards, but more by way of introducing it in an orderly manner via compost. If you just have chicken feces willy-nilly throughout the yard, it severely limits your ability to walk around out there, and if you have any kids who play in your yard, you have to worry a great deal more about salmonella and all that jazz. I once read that chickens are more likely to have salmonella in their poop if they've been eating rat turds; thus, if you're letting your chickens run around wherever the hell throughout the day, especially in an urban/suburban setting, they're more likely to find and eat said turds and again disseminate them throughout your relaxin' space as they please.
Ha. My cousin has like two dozen chickens, and they follow her to the coop each night like soldiers. She did lose a few along the way, and maybe it was for the best. I'm definitely not going to be chasing chickens down the street. If they want to strike out on their own, then I wish them all the best. I'd rather 2 obedient chickens than 4 rebellious ones. If it takes some selection pressure, I'm ok with that.
I'm on my phone and I'm super lazy - so we should probably talk on the phone about this... Chickens are dumb and awesome. The eggs are fantastic. When you get them, lock them in the coop for 2 days straight. This seems to reboot their brains and they go in there on their own every night. I never once had to chase a chicken. The closer it gets to sundown, the closer they got to bed. Seriously. So dumb. And so awesome. While they can and may hop/fly over that fence... I doubt they will. And if they do, they'll come back. Honestly - I'd chuck a cheap/temp fence up from the side of your garage to the back fence and let them roam that whole area. You can build/buy a simple coupe to close them in at night. Keep it simple. Keep it easy to clean. All the stuff everyone else said. Let em roam.
Maybe if you get chicks, they'll imprint. We inherited our chickens from our landlord- they owed us no allegiance.
Being able to contain them in a run comes in handy if you use your yard at all for non chicken activities. Some people (kids) think chickens are pretty neat, but others find 'em unnerving. Especially when they mob you because they're out of food. I quite like the chickens, but my sister hates being around them.