chicken run

Im going to backtrack a little and post about a few things that have happened around here in recent months. I do have a lot of photos and events that I'd like to share but I promise to intersperse them with current projects too! 

One very clever little brainwave that we created was a temporary chicken tunnel. Early in spring when the weeds greens were growing prolifically in the unused garden beds but not so much in the chickens usual enclosure, we thought it would be advantageous to the chookies to let them frolic amongst the greenery and at the same time save us the chore of clearing out the beds. We have a path that runs right through the middle of the garden and as we didn't want a fence stopping us from getting to the poly tunnel, we had to do some lateral thinking. 

    

So, the chicken tunnel was conceived! A small hole cut into the two temporary fences, a few dowels from another old cot (have a peek here for other ways I've used retired cots!) some lengths of small irrigation pipe, a piece of old wire netting and hey presto, happy chickens and more importantly, a weeded garden.

There was a bonus too - it was so cute to watch them jostle through in a hurry at mealtimes or slowly meander along at their leisure through their own private walkway!

 It has been pulled down since - the chickens are free ranging out in the paddock and there is a nice crop of potatoes in that patch now - but we will certainly be using the chickens in the garden over the next winter. It saved us a lot of work!