Well, what is up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Podcast. We are concluding an

amazing week with Lisa Steele of Fresh Eggs Daily. She is also the author of the book

Gardening with Chickens, which I highly recommend you check out if that's ever been in interest of yours combining those two worlds, Gardening and Chickens.

So today we are going to be talking about landscaping your chicken run and so I think maybe for the most obvious question the question that people probably already know the answer to but I'm going to ask it anyways Lisa is could we explain

really quickly what a chicken run is for those who don't know? Yes sure we're

we're sort of changing gears because all week we've been talking about sort of

letting your chickens out and about and into your garden and

doing that.

But there are a lot of reasons to have a run or a pen for your chickens if you work all day

and you're not home.

You don't want them just wandering around your yard,

wandering into your neighbor's yard. It's just safer. There's a lot of predators

everywhere. So you've got hawks and dogs and raccoons and fox and so having a pen

where your chickens just kind of hang out during the day where

they're safe.

It's usually covered on the top also it's just a really good idea because free ranging

doesn't usually end well ever. So a pen is really important, but you don't want it to look like Fort Knox, which is where the landscaping part comes in.

Right, right. Yeah, I have a friend who just set up his very first coop and he has a little pen, but he's also doing a run because he's kind of in East County, San Diego, where there are coyotes, where there are hawks that'll just come down and literally just probably grab them and fly away with them and so he kind of has to do it that way

Exactly and it really is better for the chickens I mean and and they can still be happy in a pen it should be large

You want a minimum of 10 square feet per chicken, but obviously the bigger the better, but you also don't want it to be an eye source.

So I really like to recommend some landscaping. Landscaping is great because it doesn't upset your neighbors because

they're not looking at this horrible welded wire or chain link monstrosity. It also provides

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