Chicken housing

So, I was looking at the Lowes website for fencing for our backyard which currently bordered by essentially a poor man's chain link fence and I found this awesome thing for $218:


It's a dog run that measures 7'6" x 13' by 6' which I feel is perfect enclosure for the chicken pen. Because of the cat killer dog next door, and our crappy fencing, we really can't have free roaming chickens, so we need to do some kind of pen around the coop to protect them. The chicken coop measures 5'2" by 4'1" by 5' so there is almost a foot of clearance from the top of the coop to the pen, plenty of room to put netting over, or even a cover (which I also saw).

I went and staked out the two areas I would like for the chicken coop, and I'm more of a fan of the one not against the house.


Ron wants to build it from scratch with just some stakes and chicken wire, but with the disastrous placement of the compost bin (we placed it in November in what we thought was a great spot until spring came and neighbor's tree covered it in shade for 10 months) I'm very hesitant to have something that we can't just pick up and move if we make another mistake.

In other news, the roofing felt is still not on and I have not gotten the plywood to spruce it up. Current plan is to have chickens by March.