Building a cheap and easy chicken run

We were at Lowes a few days ago looking at fencing when I spotted these 20 foot PEX pipes marked down from $15 to 37cents. After Jason went to find an employee and make sure the pricing wasnt a mistake (it wasnt) we decided to take all they had left.$15.00 later we made our way home with a load of pex, some screws, conduit clips, zip ties, and an idea for building simple hoop coops for our chickens and ducks who are in between brooder size and big coop size. 

 

We already has some scrap wood and chicken wire at home and the kiddos were with their Nana for the day - so we got to work. We decided to go with 8 ft long and 3.5 ft wide so we could run the coops down the rows in the garden. This would help keep weeds and bugs down in the garden while giving the littles fresh ground every few days.

The frame was pretty basic - just make sure you reenforce it well if you plan on moving yours around like we did.

 And then came the pipes....

Our chicken wire was 2ft wide so we spaced our pipes at just under 2ft to make it as secure as possible.

Now, Im sure there is a better way to do this part, but we went with zip ties. They are easy to put on while fighting with the wire and they are super cheap.

For one end of the run, we added a solid sheet of wood. We will be cutting the door out of this end. One the other end, we just added wire. I plan on making some removable nest boxes to go on this end for when I need a place for my mama hens. We did end up adding some extra cross support on the end that would be used to lift the run.
Other things that will be added are wheels and a roll of hardware cloth around the bottom to keep critters out.

For now, Peaches the guard kitten is on duty watching over everything while we test the run out with some of the baby ducks, Jap chicks, and a bunny who thinks she is a chicken.