8x16 Standalone Chicken Run Plans

Lay the run out 96" by 192", outside face to outside face, and check the diagonals against each other before a single hole is dug. They must match within 1/8". Everything after this inherits whatever error you leave here. 12 posts, every one 96" long, 24" of it in the ground. Ground-contact rated, not merely 'treated' — these are buried. Buy 10-foot 4x4s for these, not 8-foot. A 96" post cannot come out of a board that is 96" long: you need a square cut at both ends and a saw kerf, and the ends of yard stock are usually split or dented. The buy list orders 10-footers and you will have a 24" offcut from each. That waste is real and it is on the material list — it is not hidden in a fudge factor. The posts are BURIED, not stood on pier blocks, and that is the one real difference between this and the run attached to a coop. An attached run is lag-bolted into the coop's corner posts and the coop box is what stops the whole thing racking. Nothing here is bolted to anything. A standalone screened box 72" tall is a sail, and the only thing resisting a side load on it is the posts in the ground. Set them the way you would set a fence: hole about 10 inches across, 6" of compacted gravel in the bottom so the end grain drains, post plumbed, backfilled in layers and tamped hard every 6". In a freezing climate go below your local frost line, which is very likely deeper than 24". Ask your building department for the number; frost heave will lift a shallow post and rack the frame out of square in one winter. Posts along the length go at 47-1/8" centres, across the width at 46-1/4". Those spacings are not an even division of the run — an even division of this frame lands on a number you cannot mark on a tape. Each one lands on a sixteenth and the last bay takes up the rounding, so the frame still closes on 96" by 192" exactly.

The bottom rail closes the gap between the cloth and the ground and gives the buried apron something to screw to. It sits with its bottom edge ON grade, flush with the outside faces of the posts, so the posts and rails make one flat plane and there is no gap anywhere behind the cloth for a predator to work at. Ground-contact stock for this course only. It is lying on soil. The gate bay gets a threshold instead of a rail. This is the detail that most run plans miss and it is the one that loses birds: the buried apron cannot run under a gate that swings, so the gate opening is the one place on the whole perimeter where nothing stops a fox digging. So a ground-contact 2x4 is laid FLAT across the gate opening, bedded into the soil, the apron passes underneath it and is screwed to its outer edge, and the gate closes down onto it. Without this the run has a 43-5/8" wide hole in its predator barrier that the drawings do not show.

3 more courses of rail, at 32", 64", 72" above grade. Why there are this many. Hardware cloth comes off a 36" roll. A course started at any rail has to reach the next rail with a lap to spare, or its top edge is floating and a raccoon peels it. 32" spacing gives every course 4" of lap onto solid wood. The run attached to a coop in our other plans has rails only at grade and at 32", which carries cloth to 68" and no further — one reason this frame is not simply that one with a fourth wall added. Rails butt between the posts and are fastened with two 3-inch structural screws driven through the post into the end of the rail at each end. The top rail is what the purlins land on, so get it level all the way round before you go up. The gate bay gets its top rail — that is the gate header — and no mid rails.

5 purlins across the width, one over every post row, 96" long — full width, flush with the outside faces. 2x6 on edge, not flat. These are roof members. They carry the roof cloth, whatever snow does not fall through it, and the weight of a raccoon standing on the middle of the span, which is the load that actually decides the size. A mesh roof spanning unsupported sags into a hammock, and a raccoon can bear a sagging roof down far enough to get a leg through. Clear span here is 89". Toe-screw each purlin down into the top rail at both ends. Head clearance under the purlins is 68-1/2" at a 2x6, 66-1/2". Tall people will duck. That is the trade for a run you can buy 8-foot posts for.

The gate fills a whole bay — 42-5/8" of clear opening. Most run plans hang a 30" door in a jamb inside a bay, which needs an infill panel and gives you an opening you cannot get a wheelbarrow through. Sizing the leaf to the bay removes the jamb, removes the infill, and gives you a gate you can barrow bedding through. Leaf is 42-5/8" by 68-1/2": two stiles, three rails, and two diagonal braces making a Z. Both braces run from the bottom of the HINGE side upward to the latch side. A brace the other way round is in tension and does nothing; a gate this wide with cloth on it will drop its latch corner within a season without them. Each brace is 45-15/16" long with the ends cut at 39 degrees. Three hinges, not two — the leaf is wide and the cloth adds real weight at the outer corner. Two latches: a two-action catch at hand height, which is the one a raccoon cannot work, and a barrel bolt at the bottom dropping into the threshold. The bolt is not redundancy — it is what stops the bottom corner being levered outward, which is how a gate that latches at the top still lets a dog in. Hang the leaf with a 1/2" gap each side and 1/2" over the threshold. Cloth goes on the OUTSIDE face of the leaf, same as the walls.

The step that decides whether you still have a flock in two years. Quarter-inch, 19 gauge, not half-inch and never chicken wire. A least weasel goes through a half-inch opening and does not go through a quarter-inch one; a raccoon reaches straight through hexagonal chicken wire and pulls a bird apart against it. Sources: Univ. of Kentucky Cooperative Extension ID-245 and Virginia Cooperative Extension 2902-1092. Half-inch is genuinely raccoon-proof and is not weasel-, mink- or snake-proof. Cloth goes on the OUTSIDE of the frame. A predator leaning on the wall then pushes the cloth against the wood instead of off it, and the fasteners are in shear rather than pull-out. This is the opposite of what looks tidy and it is the way round that holds. Courses, bottom up, on all four sides: - course 1: 36" tall, bottom edge at 0" above grade - course 2: 36" tall, bottom edge at 32" above grade - course 3: 12" tall, bottom edge at 64" above grade Each course laps 4" onto the rail above and is screwed through fender washers every 6" along every rail and post it crosses. Staples alone pull out — a raccoon works an edge until it finds one that gives. Lap cloth to cloth by 4" and hog-ring the laps every 6"; a lap that is only adjacent is not a lap. The top course is deliberately over-height. It is cut 12" for 8" of wall, and the surplus folds over the top rail. The roof cloth laps onto that fold, so the wall-to-roof joint has no open seam at the top corner — which is the corner everything climbs to.

A run without a roof is a bird feeder. Hawks and owls take hens out of open runs in daylight, and a raccoon climbs 72" of post in about two seconds. This is not the optional part of the build. Courses run the length of the run over the purlins, lapping 4" at every seam, hog-ringed at the laps and screwed through fender washers to every purlin they cross. The bottom edge laps onto the fold of the top wall course from the previous step and gets hog-ringed to it all the way round. 96" by 192" of roof.

Everything that wants your birds digs. An apron is what stops it, and it works by being in the way rather than by being deep: a fox or a dog digs where it meets resistance, which is right at the wall, and an apron turned OUTWARD puts wire under the exact spot it starts. 12" down against the outside of the bottom rail, then 12" turned outward, in an L. Screw the vertical leg to the outside of the bottom rail through fender washers, lap it 4" onto the bottom of the wall cloth and hog-ring that lap, then lay the foot outward and backfill over it. Grass grows through it in a season and you will never see it again. It runs under the gate threshold too. Dig the threshold trench first, lay the apron through it, bed the threshold down onto the apron and screw it to the outer edge. The gate is the weakest point on the perimeter and it is the one people leave out. Do this AFTER you have graded and surfaced the run, not before — you cannot regrade under a buried skirt.

A run that ponds turns into mud, mud turns into the coccidiosis and bumblefoot problems that cost people their flock, and no amount of hardware cloth fixes it. This step matters more than any single piece of framing above it. Three things, in the order they matter: Grade the run to fall. An inch of drop over eight feet is enough and it costs you nothing but a rake. Keep the run surface ABOVE the surrounding grade, not level with it, so it sheds instead of collecting. A run dug into a low spot cannot be fixed later without taking the apron up. Top it with 3 to 4 inches of coarse sand or 3/8in drain rock — not topsoil, not straw. Coarse sand drains, dries fast, and rakes clean like a litter box. 2 cubic yards for this footprint.

This run has a mesh roof, which casts no shade at all. That is the honest statement and it is why this is a step rather than a footnote. Hens have no sweat glands and begin to suffer above about 85F. A wire-roofed run in open sun is the most common way a flock gets hurt in a run that is otherwise built correctly. At least a third of the run has to be shaded at midday, and the coop does not count unless the birds can reach it without crossing open sun. Fasten a panel of 70-80% shade cloth over roughly 43 sq ft of the roof — about a third — zip-tied to the purlins, on the side that takes the afternoon sun. Shade cloth rather than a solid panel: it does not hold snow, it does not need a fall to shed rain, and it lets the run stay a run. Put the waterers under it, and a second one at the far end, so a bird at the bottom of the pecking order is never cut off from water by a bird at the top. This run houses nobody overnight. Site it against the coop's pop door if you can; if it is detached, the birds still have to be shut into a coop at dusk.