The ideal cover for our chicken house needs to be water-proof, create shade, be light-weight, and not disintegrate in direct sunlight or pollute. Challenging in its own right but add to that a shoe-string budget. This makes it nearly impossible to meet all the criteria. However.
Four to five times per season, we order our feed in bulk and it comes in giant 2000 pound sacks that are made of woven plastic mesh. Needless to say 4 to 5 sacks a season really start to build up, taking up room in the barn.

In the quest for an alternative, I hit on the idea of using these sacks for chicken housing. It could be a win-win.  They are roughly 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide and our houses need a 8 x 12 foot roof. The real ah-ha moment came when I realized that if I cut the sack in half on one side and remove the bottom, the sack laid out flat becomes 4 x 12 foot tarp. Two sacks and you’ve got a roof!

Now I realize that this is pretty close to what we were previously using. But they meet many of the criteria (including lasting a lot longer then the tarps we used previously) and most importantly we are taking potential garbage and giving it a second life (I would rather use it on a chicken house then send it to the landfill). But best of all it’s free.

It’s not all roses however. It has one glaring fault. It’s not water-proof. Which seems silly if it’s intended use is to store grain, even if temporarily. To remedy this problem, we used 5 mil clear  plastic that does degrade in sunlight and placed it underneath the sack. This means that water doesn’t get into the chicken house, but the feed-sack tarps keep the plastic from degrading in the sunlight.

Viola! New chicken house cover!