Between the three of us, the pen is finally complete. It is five feet wide and ten feet long. The only wood is the base of pressure treated 2X4s. The archs are ten foot 1/2 inch PVC with 1/2 inch mesh hardware cloth. We attempted to replicate the arch for the end as a door, but it did not work well. So we filled in a section in order to attach a vertical post and attach a rectangle door over the end. We used a lot of zipties to attach the wire to the PVC while stapling the wired on the outside of the wood frame.
In an effort to reduce sway, you may see a few "right angles" of PVC attached to the center next to the arch. One of the right angles is also where we have hung their rain-proof feeder for easier access to feed them.
These two are great foragers and within an hour of putting the pen into place, they had the vegetation mowed down!
The shiny "cover" over the pen is just a clear table cloth for those rainy days our area is renowned for. The pen is considerably lighter than our eight foot by four foot pens built out of 2X3s!
If we ever decide to combine our two chicken flocks, the coop and pen together are big enough for all our chickens. Or, we can just keep it set aside for raising a couple of turkeys each summer.
