Wednesday, October 11, 2017

A Broiler Pen made from Repurposed Items

 This Spring we were needing a place to put our broilers for their growing up. We didn't need anything super great as they would only need it for a few months and not through the winter. We also weren't wanted to spend a ton of money.

  So, Aaron and I went to work with trusty pallets (we had some on hand that I had collected another time).

For the shelter (that would go inside the pen that we made) we used pallets and some screws and made the lovely contraption about. Then we took a lumberyard tarp (that we get for free) and folded it in half (or maybe more times) to make it even sturdier and then we stapled it securely on our "roof".

For the actual pen we decided to use the garden fence for one side of it. Then we made pallet fences for the other 3 sides. We had to dig a few places so that they sat nice and flat with no holes underneath them. We screwed them together as we went along.

 We worked the fence through and around some brush. I cut down as little as possible as I liked the idea of the brush hiding the fence on the outside and on the inside I knew that it would provide greenery and shade for the chickens.



This is the view from inside the garden.

We used another pallet for the gate and some zip ties served as "hinges".

We found some odds and ends of wire mesh that we had and put that up on the inside of the fence down near the bottom to keep little chicks in (since there were some cracks) and predators out.
 The chickens really enjoyed their new space.


 Mara, standing by our "gate".


It was a fun project that we made without having to spend money or create waste. In fact we used up some things that would normally be wasted. And it worked! It was a successful home for our chickens until time for butchering. We thought about getting a piglet after their butchering time but that didn't happen this year. Another nice thing about this pen was that it actually looked pretty decent and especially with it being in the brush it was not an eyesore on the property. Ken really appreciated that.
Have you made things out of pallets? What have you done?

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