Chicken City: The Details

Free Guide · Inside the Chicken City Build

The measurements, the materials, the rooms and the rough plans behind my chicken run.

Chicken City is a walk-in chicken run of 160 square metres, about 1,720 square feet. It measures roughly 16 metres by 10 metres, about 52 feet by 33 feet, and stands 2.4 metres tall, about 8 feet. It is built from treated pine and metal mesh, with a central chicken house in the middle and four gated rooms around it: a fruit cage, a berry cage and two annual vegetable rooms. The gates are the whole trick, because they decide which plants the chickens can reach and which they cannot.

Wow, what a response I had to my first post, My Garden Ecosystem. People got in touch through Instagram, Facebook and email, all asking the same thing: how is Chicken City actually built? So here it is, in as much detail as I can give you.

This is the page I send people to when they ask for the specifics. Every measurement, material and decision below is what we actually did, including the bits that did not go to plan. I garden in Macedon, Victoria, which means cold winters with real frost and hot dry summers, and I will say where that changed a choice so you can adjust for your own patch.

The plan, and why there are rooms

The idea was to have chickens housed in with fruit trees, berry canes and vegetables, where they could fertilise and turn the soil, keep the grubs and pests at bay, and eat any spoiled produce and turn it into eggs. Great in theory. Anyone who has watched free range chickens loose in a veggie garden knows they can wreck it in a matter of minutes.

So the plan became a central chicken house surrounded by four rooms, each reached through a gate that I can open or close as I like. That is what makes the whole thing work. I am not trying to stop the chickens doing what chickens do. I am choosing where and when they get to do it.

My Chicken City plan, the rough drawing we actually used for construction.

That drawing is the one we built from. The final measurements differ slightly from the plan, but not by much: 16 metres by 10 metres, about 52 feet by 33 feet, which is 160 square metres or roughly 1,720 square feet, and 2.4 metres tall, about 8 feet.

The build

We hired a local furniture maker, Les, to build Chicken City, and I could not have been happier with the attention to detail and the quality of the finished thing. It is not something I could have come close to replicating myself, and I would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

The frame

The entire structure is treated pine, cemented deep into holes in the ground. That is the part that has to be right, because everything else hangs off it.

The walls and the roof

Once the frame was up, the walls were filled in with sheets of metal mesh. The roof was the challenging part, and we ended up covering it with rolls of a lighter metal mesh.

I am paranoid about foxes, and there are plenty of them here, so the mesh is also buried into the ground to stop anything digging underneath. The benefit of all that meshing is two-fold. It keeps the chickens safely in, and it keeps out everything local that would love to eat the produce: birds, wallabies, rabbits and wombats.

The gates

Gates went in on both sides of the structure for easy access, plus a double gate system at the front so no chicken can slip out behind me. If you build one thing from this post, build the double gate.

The raised beds

Each room was then fitted out with raised beds made of treated pine and filled with quality soil. No bed is more than 1.2 metres wide, about 4 feet, so I can reach the middle from either side without standing in it.

The chicken house at the heart of Chicken City

The coop itself is a work of art. Here is what is in it.

• Water. The drinkers are hooked up to a mains pressure tank with a ball valve, so the chickens always have fresh water without me thinking about it.
• Feed. Two automatic no-spill feeding bays of 4.7 litres each, which I top up weekly. I bought mine from Dine a Chook.
• Nesting boxes. Roll away boxes, so the eggs roll forward into a collection point and the birds cannot get back to them once they are laid.
• Roosts. Tree branches collected from around the property. Free, and the birds do not mind a bit.
• Size. Around 6 square metres, about 65 square feet, and deliberately very tall, so I can get a rake in there and give it a proper clean out.

Chicken roosts and roll away nesting boxes.

The height is the detail people skip and then regret. A coop you have to crawl into is a coop you will clean less often.

The plants

The structure is 2.4 metres tall, about 8 feet, so everything inside has to grow under that. Every fruit tree in here is a dwarfing variety that grows between 2 and 3 metres, roughly 6 to 10 feet. We have dwarf peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, cherries, pears and apples, and believe it or not the fruit itself comes out full size.

In the berry cage there are blueberries, raspberries, loganberries and blackberries, plus a fig that we are going to try very hard to keep small enough.

The two annual vegetable rooms rotate between winter and summer crops. One room takes the things with a long harvest, the other takes the quick ones. That long and short split is the useful bit, and where you draw the line depends on your own climate. Mine is Macedon, Victoria: cold winters with real frost, hot dry summers.

Dwarf peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines.

The chickens

When I wrote this there were five feathered friends living here: two Wyandottes and three Silkie hens. The Wyandottes are great foragers and love free ranging. The Silkies are friendly and endlessly nosy, and for the most part the mixed flock gets along well.

The bit that did not go to plan

The alpacas

Kath and Kim, our two gorgeous alpacas, keep the grass short, the ground fertilised and the chickens safe. Alpacas are very territorial and foxes are scared of them, which I am thankful for every single night. They are fenced inside a huge paddock with Chicken City sitting right in the middle, and they roam happily around it.

Ellen with our alpacas Kath and Kim.

How the rotation actually works

This is the part that turns a nice looking run into a system.

• The chickens have year-round access to their coop and to the middle chicken play pen area.
• Three compost bins sit in that middle area. The chickens can get into them when the lids are up and cannot when the lids are down, which is a switch I get to flick.
• Most of the year they also get either the fruit cage or the berry cage, and I alternate between the two so the ground and the plants get a rest.
• Once the early summer harvest is finished, I let them into one of the annual vegetable rooms, where they absolutely destroy everything left standing.
• Then they are locked out again, the winter vegetables go in, and the second annual room is opened up to them. And the cycle continues.

The hens making an absolute mess of what was left of the annual vegetables.

Two years, and what I would change

Chicken City took two years from conception to completion. There were many, many hours of researching, planning, refining, shovelling, digging, hammering, planting, watering and raking, and every bit of that investment was worth it, because I could not be happier with the result. So far I have not found anything I would change, though time will tell.

I hope my experience helps spark and refine your own backyard farming dream.

Every one of those rooms exists so that something ends up on a plate. When a basket comes out of the annual vegetable rooms, the thing I reach for is a salt that Mum and I hand make ourselves in small batches, because we could not find anyone who would make it the way we make it at home.

Alyce's Favourite

For everything that comes out of the veggie rooms

Alyce's Organic Flavour Bomb Salt

The all-rounder that started it all. Brilliant on veggies, potatoes and a good bowl of soup.

Shop the Flavour Bomb Salt →

Shop all the Flavour Bombs

Your questions about the Chicken City build

How big is Chicken City?

It is 160 square metres, about 1,720 square feet. Roughly 16 metres by 10 metres, about 52 feet by 33 feet, and 2.4 metres tall, about 8 feet.

Does the chicken run have a roof?

Yes. The roof is rolls of a lighter metal mesh over the treated pine frame. It was the challenging part of the build, and it is the reason the birds do not get the fruit before I do.

How do you stop foxes digging into a chicken run?

The wall mesh is buried into the ground rather than stopping at the surface, so there is nothing to dig under. Our alpacas in the surrounding paddock are the second line, because foxes are wary of them.

What fruit trees can you grow inside a chicken run?

Whatever fits under your roof. Ours is 2.4 metres, about 8 feet, so every tree is a dwarfing variety that tops out between 2 and 3 metres, roughly 6 to 10 feet. Dwarf peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, cherries, pears and apples all work, and the fruit is full size even though the tree is not.

How long did Chicken City take to build?

Two years from first idea to finished structure, including all the researching, planning and refining before anything was dug.

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