Yeehahs Chook Pen

This is the original bantam acommodation, a smaller version of the Chook Dome in Linda Woodrow's permaculture book. This one is made from 1" poly pipe wired together, covered with second-hand chicken wire. The neighbours' visitors didn't tie their dog up after a party one night, and although the cage had a skirt of chicken wire all around the outside, weighed down with rocks, the dog found a way in.

I have only used it for day-time guinea pig accommodation since then. I imagine that if I had made a wired-on floor out of say large chicken wire/netting, it would have been safer, but it would have stopped the chooks being able to scratch properly.

Front view of the two chookhouses. They are made from steel fence posts,
a.k.a. star pickets, hammered into the ground 3m (chookhouse #1, on the
left) or 4m (chookhouse #2, on the right) apart. Then I've threaded 2"
polypipe over the posts, I think that CH1 had polypipe 7m long, but I can't
remember for sure. The first end goes on reasonably easily, the second end
got tricky. The best tip is to keep spitting on your hands before you pull
the second end down, to provide grip!

Covered both in a combination of netting (cheaper and thinner than chicken wire) reused from old chookhouse, and new galv chicken wire. I wish I'd had the foresight (and money) to use wire with smaller holes, because the sparrows get in and eat the chook food. And probably bring lice, too, so it's never ending. CH1 has the end filled/covered with recycled roofing iron. I won't ever try cutting that much to shape with tin (aviation?) snips, I'd rather buy an angle grinder. It took ages. Because CH2 is wider, I couldn't reach to get the iron on, so the shelter is a little chook-sized hut with an old bed frame, old doors, sheets of roofing iron and the shell of a chest of drawers as nesting boxes. Recycle, recycle!! Foxes etc don't get in because, apart from having an 18" skirt of chicken wire on one long side of each chookhouse, the other sides have an edging of fairly large rocks, and the tinned end has house bricks dug in standing up.

The sandpit fills the space between 2 sets of swings, with a shadecloth
cover over it. This photo looks over the sandpit for a side view of chookhouse2. Directly behind the sandpit you can see the freshly dug dirt where I'd not long finished the brick edging.

A view of the inside of chookhouse1, March 04. Growing through the wire on the right hand side is a rampant spaghetti squash vine. There are beans further up the wire, behind the squash, not very recognisable in this shot. The wooden props hold up the sagging polypipe, they're not attached.