As in, I've built one. Good fun and it worked well... apart from a requirements change which I only half implemented!

Back to the start of the story. My better half bought 6 chickens in June. Complete with a chicken hutch, deluxe, complete with extension. They are very healthy looking chooks, on point of lay when we received them. We've had one or two eggs each day since, no more, each the size of a bantam egg, if that means anything. Small is the word. Delicious is another! Two make a really good sandwich! Especially with HP sauce.

Anyway, they need moving every week or the ground where they've been is all chewed up. So, I decided on a 6x4m chicken run. Google tells me that chooks, even with their wings clipped, can fly over 4 feet, so I started to look at a 6 ' high enclosure. Netting was hard but not impossible to find. Posts were silly money. I reckoned on one per metre length of fencing so it added up. I pondered this till speaking to my brother in law who suggested a one metre enclosure with a netting roof! Duh moment again.

Google found me some timber, 47x22 treated, not planed. No problem. I bought that, ripped it on the bandsaw and fed it through the thicknesser, finishing up with 21mm square, which just fits nicely inside white plastic waste pipe marked as 1 1/2" (say 34mm). Six inch lengths of that, let into the ground meant two 6' lengths of piping. No problem and not expensive. That just left the problem of drilling a 35mm hole (os diameter of the plastic pipe) 6in into the ground. A masonry bit came out at thirty pounds plus! I Screwfix gave me a fourteen pound bill, which, when extended using a hex bit holder, gave me the depth I wanted. Later I found a better buy! As you do.

Ripping and planing the timber, then treating the cut edges with preservative, was about half a day. Right tool for the job! I started drilling holes Monday afternoon. Quite a technique developed over the 21 holes. Ours is flint and clay, a good mix for drilling? Water to lubricate, common sense to retain the diamond edge. The bit was well polished by the time I'd finished. Even tiny stones were enough to stop me. I'd go digging in the mud with an 8" screwdriver, attempting to loosen the stones and drag them to the top without disturbing the sides too much. I didn't want the holes any wider than needs be. Once finished, insert the waste pipe, pack it with the sludge/clay I'd just dug out and in 24 hours it was very firm!

This is where the requirements change came in... or the cock-up, whichever you prefer. I'd originally said make it 3.6m wide, i.e. 3 widths of netting plus an overlap. Then I thought about future expansion... i.e. moving it and arranging it differently. So I shifted it out to 4m again; except I only moved one marker post, leaving the other end at 3.6m. So I dug 6 holes, with the line tapering from 4m one end to 3.6 the other! Then realised and had to drill them all out again.

Started the netting today. I'd ordered 45m of netting (one inch chidken netting. Had I thought, I could have placed an order for the sides, 1.2 m wide, then another for the 'roof', 6mx4m. I didn't, so today I've been sewing lengths of netting together to make up the roof.

So far so good. It's odd having the chickens watching me and 'commenting' on my work! I'll get some flickr fodder as and when it's finished