Farm Friday: Chicken Tunnels

Chicken tunnels.

Surely you've heard of them?

Surely you have some?

No?  Then you must build yourself some.  They are the perfect way to get your chickens from point A to point B without either making a huge coop or letting your chickens free-range, which means they will never even make it to point B.

In my case, I wanted to funnel my chooks from their run behind their coop over to our old vegetable garden, which I converted into my compost bin (which isn't really a "bin" per se).

My idea was to build an enclosed space to throw kitchen scraps and yard/garden waste that the chickens could have access to, so they could scratch and poop and do all things chicken-y to turn the scraps into Gardener's Gold.  I decided the raised bed that came with my house was too small to use for my garden, but was a good size for a compost area, and situated close-but-not-too-close to the house, so it would be ideal.  But it was about 45' or so from the chicken coop.  

Enter chicken tunnels. 

Since I already had nice sturdy livestock paneling as my existing fence, I had a great base from which to build.  I don't have a "how-to" picture tutorial, but it was pretty simple.  If you plan to build a free-standing tunnel, your design will need to be different, so off you go, look elsewhere.

Anyway, here's how I made them...

What I did was to take shorter hog panels, as opposed to the taller cattle panels, and laid them on the ground.  I placed a 2x4 lengthwise on the panel where I wanted it to bend.  Then I just planted my feet on the 2x4, grabbed the upper end of the panel, and pulled so that it bent.  I just moved the board down and pulled up on the far end and kept going back and forth till I had the curve the way I wanted it. 

I only needed the tunnel to be "dig-proof" on one side.  On the inside of my fence (the backyard side), I was making a long row of raised beds for my vegetable garden, which you can kind of see in some of the pictures, but not all.  So since that side had a 20" buffer with the raised beds, I didn't need an "apron" of wire.  I did, however, need that on the other side in order to keep any predators from digging into the tunnel.  Sort of hard to explain, but I attached chicken wire to the existing fence with zip ties, then attached the new tunnel panels to the fence with zip ties, then wrapped the chicken wire over the tunnel, attaching here and there with - you guessed it - zip ties.  Where the tunnel met the ground, I ran the wire out about 12", and secured the chicken wire to the ground with garden staples, the kind you tack landscaping cloth down with.  The grass just grows right up through it, so it is not a problem mowing over it, and you'd never know it was there to look at it.  In fact, you don't even need to weed wack up against the tunnel because the chickens just stick their little beaks through and weed wack for you, considerate little creatures that they are.

So I just kept repeating this down the length of the fence till I got it to where it needed to be.  I overlapped the panels a bit.  You know what I used to secure one panel to the next?  I'm not even gonna say it.  It's good to have a little mystery in our lives here and there. 

Again, apologies for not taking pictures as I went along to make this a tutorial.  It just wasn't in my mind at the time.  But hopefully it makes sense.  If not, head over to Pinterest where I'm sure you can find some legit tutorials with pictures and everything.  I think that's where I got my idea, and then just tweaked it to work for my particular situation.

By the way, my chickens just love it, and it's been working beautifully.  I've had zero problems with it.  And I could do worse for entertainment than to sit with a cold one at the end of the day and watch them darting back and forth like hamsters in a Habitrail.

Beatrice, ever the pack leader.

Veggie garden-turned compost bin.

                                             

                                         Scraps turned into gold, right before my eyes.