Broiler Pen!

I designed this broiler pen based on one used by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in VA, and pictured in Chicken Coops book by Storey Publishing. Fabulous book!

We built it in 2 days & I still need to do the actual cost calculations.

It is 8'x8'x24". It has 1 - 4'x4' "house" in 1 quadrant. The roof of the "house" part is a hinged lid & there is also a lid on the quadrant of the yard diagonal from the "house".

We just used chicken wire because we had a large portion of that on hand. For it to last longer and if you have a significant predator problem, you should use something more substantial like woven wire with 2" x 2" or 2" x 4" holes. We also used very thin OSB (only $5.77 at Lowe's for a 4'x8' sheet) for the house part & 2"x2"x8' for the whole construction so it would be as lightweight as possible. We had lots of exterior stain/sealant already on hand, so we did not buy treated wood. We may very well regret that in the future, we'll just have to wait & see.

In calculating our total cost of bird + feed for the final calculations of table bird pricing, we will not be counting any housing we build as it can be re-used and re-used indefinitely.