Post contains affiliate links. If you buy something after clicking on my links, you don’t pay any extra, but I make a small commission. Thanks for supporting Boxy Colonial! 

Last time we had chickens, in our old house, we started out with a chicken coop smack in the middle of the yard. Then we realized that this resulted in an awful lot of mud and eventually moved it under our porch. Which was better.

So this time around, we knew right away that under the deck was where we wanted our chicken pen so as to skip all that unpleasantness with the mud. As a sign from the universe that we made the right choice, it’s rained pretty much non-stop ever since we finished the pen. But the chicks are warm and dry! (relatively dry; it’s under the deck, not the covered porch, so some rain does get through).

And we’re really happy with how it turned out! Our last chicken pen was a chain link dog kennel with hardware cloth wrapped around the bottom half and a border of cinderblocks, so this is a definite improvement. We are way classier now than we used to be. Apparently.

Before I get into the building process, some sad news: we used to have four chicks, but now we have only three. Our cat, Athena, got into the room they were staying in in the basement and killed poor Lois Lane. RIP Lois Lane.

On the upside, the remaining chickens, being chickens, don’t remember that Lois Lane ever existed. And we’ve nicknamed Athena, “Murder Kitty.” But now the chickens have a kitty proof and everything else proof (we hope! knock wood!) pen, so they can spend their days eating worms and taking dust baths and other assorted chicken hobbies without fear.

I’m not going to do detailed building plans here, because odds are quite good your deck does not have precisely the same dimensions as ours and detailed plans would therefore be useless. But I’m going to tell you about how we built ours in enough detail that you could recreate the plan under whatever deck you happen to have.

So one nice thing about building a chicken pen under a deck is that you can use the existing supports to build your pen around. In our case, this gave us about a 6 by 10 foot area to work with. Our city’s limit on chickens (if you have less than acre) is six, and I’ve read that they should have 10 square feet each, so that worked out really well for our current chooks and for any future flock expansion. When they get bigger, we’ll start letting them out to roam in the yard sometimes when we’re home, too, but we have so many hawks (and coyotes and who knows what else?) around that I don’t anticipate they’ll ever free range full time. Oh, and our dogs. Fiesta and Fergus are, respectively, totally indifferent and fiercely protective of the chicks, but Rory literally licks his lips when he sees them, so….

Anyway, we used the six 6×6 posts (laid out in two rows of three) that support the deck as the frame for the new pen. Then we basically built big panels out of 2x4s and hardware cloth and attached them to the outside of the posts with deck screws.

That’s the main idea, that can be adapted for most decks. Now for some details:

Making the panels: The size of the panels was determined by the spacing between the posts, and it happened to work out nicely with 4′ rolls of hardware cloth. Dave built the panels separately, using his staple gun to attach all the hardware cloth (to the inside of the frame, so the staples would be hidden and it would look nicer). Most of the wood is 2x4s, but we used 2×6’s on most of the corners so they would completely cover up the 6×6 posts behind them. The corner braces are for extra stability and to make things look a little prettier. IMO.

Filling gaps: this part was hard to visualize until we had the basic frame up. On the top, we extended the hardware cloth until it had somewhere to attach to to make sure there were no gaps at the top that anything could climb into. In some cases, this meant wrapping the hardware cloth under the edge of the deck and stapling it to the underside on the edge. Other times were were able to bring it straight up and staple because there was a conveniently located joist. Some gaps (mostly around the hutch) we filled with pieces of plywood cut down to size.

Hutch: we opted to buy a kit to assemble for the hutch, rather than building our own from scratch. I’m really happy with the decision, because the hutch is adorable and seems pretty well made, and I doubt we spent much (or any) more than we would have on materials.

We bought this one from Amazon (it appears to be out of stock as I’m writing. I know they had the same one for sale on Walmart’s website when we were looking). We like it a lot and the chickens seem to as well. There’s tons of room in there for our existing flock and there should be plenty of room to expand. A couple of quirks: that third story? The chickens can’t get to it. It’s completely inaccessible from the second level. We turned it so the door faces out of the pen and we’re using it to store feed. Also, the latches on the nesting box doors are really flimsy. Unless you have a secure pen that goes around the outside of the whole thing, you’ll need to add some extra locks. Like so (original latch on left; ours on right):

We opted to use our hutch as one side of the pen, with the hutch itself on the outside. We set it on pavers to get it up off the ground and little and protect it from moisture. We built a panel to go across the top of the roof and then sealed off additional gaps as needed.

Predator Proofing the Perimeter: Alliteration! There are two basic methods–that I’ve heard about anyway–for keeping critters from digging in to your chicken pen: you can dig down and have the hardware cloth continue straight below ground level, or you can bend it out and make an apron. We opted for the apron (our ground is rocky and hard to dig in, plus it’s what’s holding our deck posts up). There’s a two foot perimeter of hardware cloth all around the outside of the pen, covered up with marble chips, held in place with that green landscape fencing stuff. This also helps cut down on muddiness right around the pen.

Door: The door is basically a piece of plywood with a frame around the edges. When we built the panels, we left a gap big enough for a narrow door and then cut the plywood to fit that. It closes against the frame and overlaps it so that there are no gaps for anything to get into, and we added these latches, secured with carabiners, to keep it closed and locked. There’s also a hook and eye lock on the inside of the door so that we can close it from that side when we’re in there with the chickens.

I think that mostly covers it! If you have any specific questions about how we did anything in particular, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer. We moved the chickens out here about a week and a half ago, and I cannot tell you how happy I am to have them out of my bathroom! They stayed inside longer than chicks usually would, both because we got them in winter and it was really cold out and because it took us forever to finish their pen. I think they’re very happy to be outside and have more space to roam, too.

We got them a waterer like this one at the feed store. They have to push on the little metal nipples to get the water out, and I was skeptical, but the guy at the store assured me that “people say” chickens usually figure it out quickly. So I took it home and hung it up and….our chickens are geniuses! They figured it out almost immediately! Well, Metropolis and Alma did, anyway. It took Susan Owl a few minutes. She kept staring curiously at the waterer over her head, then trying to drink drops of water off the ground when they fell down, then watching in wonder as the other chickens managed to get water out of this contraption…but she finally figured it out. Good chicken!

Maybe you would like to pin this?

SaveSave