Gun Dog Forum

I am getting ready to build an indoor/ outdoor kennel where the house will be located inside a small building, and the remaider will be outside on fenced in concrete. I plan on having electric and water ran to the building.

For those of you with kennels:
What are some of the flaws you would change if you did it again?
Things you would keep doing?
Cost savings tips?
I would love some pictures as well.

Mark,

I do not have my kennels this way but one thing I would do is have all runs built up with a stem wall of concrete or cinder blocks with fencing on top and drain openings on one end. I don't have any pictures but I have seen several kennels done this way and it makes clean up much easier plus keeps your fence posts and fencing up and out of standing urine.

I can take pictures if you want but we have an indoor box with an outdoor run,
Works great.
Be sure to make the concrete pad under the kennel, and make it bigger.
Secure it to the ground good.
Dont go cheap chain link if you can, it only caused problems for us. but some dogs never try to get out
Isaac and Banks

put in a good drainage system and a good sewer system. Hair is a problem and seems to last for ever. Welded wire painted panels seem to work better than chain link. although I have not had a problem with chainlink. My dogs don't have free access to the outside and are only out when I am home. We have heat and AC in 6x6 inside kennels Cj

Kmack wrote:Mark,

I do not have my kennels this way but one thing I would do is have all runs built up with a stem wall of concrete or cinder blocks with fencing on top and drain openings on one end. I don't have any pictures but I have seen several kennels done this way and it makes clean up much easier plus keeps your fence posts and fencing up and out of standing urine.

Ditto.. That is how our boarding kennel is set up. The kennel is 25 years old, in great shape with regular maintence. Heat and AC plus a big exhaust fan to move the air when we don't need heat or AC. Good slope so the runs dry fast is also important imo

Mo

Drainage/septic system or a slope running into a channel to spray poop and urine out of the kennel area is the number one thing I would add. We only have 6 kennels but I would love to upgrade to some type of concrete channel at the end of the runs so I could just spray out the kennels into the channel and away from the area. If I ever build a larger kennel system, it will have heated concrete.

One thing we have done is add a large "running pen" around the kennels. It's about 120 feet by 80 or so - something like that. It surrounds the kennel and provides an added safety net in case you get fence-rushers who try to squeeze out past you. Also allows for letting multiple dogs out to run while you're cleaning kennels. We let the beagles run most days for a couple of hours in the larger pen. We used goat fencing since we had small beagles and the horse fencing wouldn't keep them in.

When we poored our cement we made it about 1/4 inch per foot slope away from the building

Thanks everyone. Anybody have pictures of what they have or would do?

Use the advanced search feature. Try words like "built new kennel". You'll get lots of hits of older threads on the subject. A number have pictures like this one: viewtopic.php?f=69&t=28470&p=260639&hil ... el#p260639 .

Thanks Bigshooter. That is what I am looking for.

viewtopic.php?f=69&t=39648&p=387143&hil ... ek#p387143

Here is a link to a thread on the construction of our kennel. It is nearing completion and we are just finishing up the electrical on the inside now.When it is done I will post a couple more pics.

mlittle wrote:Thanks everyone. Anybody have pictures of what they have or would do?

Here's what I've got. The run is on the east side of the house, so it stays shaded in the summer. It helps if you put the run on the north or east side of a building. I made the gate out of bull fencing. I put the remaining bull fencing underneath the gravel so the puppy can't dig. I got a large uplander box, which both will use when its cold or hot. I bolted a hanging water bucket to the dog house. I haven't yet, but I'm going to put an outlet behind the dog box and install a hound heater, then bolt the dog box to the house so the dogs can't access the outlet by knocking the dog house out of the way. It seems more efficient to heat the dog box than to give them an entrance into the garage and heat the entire garage. The dog box is closer to the gate so the dogs can relieve themselves in the back and don't have to walk through it. The back area doesn't stink as long as you pick up the dog poop. The run has lots of slope, so the urine runs off when it rains. I didn't want to put down concrete, so I used gravel. In hindsight, I wish I had used crushed granite. I've got a manure fork from a feedlot that I that I use for picking up dog poop. The gravel is just big enough that it doesn't always fall through the manure fork's tines. Crushed granite would be perfect. That's the only thing I'd do differently.

How many dogs are you building for ?

The biggest thing that I would change is how I sloped the kennels. I would add a trough on the building side of the kennels and slope everything to the trough, the trough would drain to a septic system that way there would be no scooping poo and you could just wash down the kennels from the outside. If you slope the kennels to the outside walk then you just end up walking in dog urine. I would also add a frost free hydrant as close to the run as I could so I am not fighting a lot of hose in the winter. I would also make sure that I faced the runs to the South in order to get good winter sun exposure.
Heated concrete would be a bonus for the wintertime depending on where you live.

cjuve wrote:The biggest thing that I would change is how I sloped the kennels. I would add a trough on the building side of the kennels and slope everything to the trough, the trough would drain to a septic system that way there would be no scooping poo and you could just wash down the kennels from the outside. If you slope the kennels to the outside walk then you just end up walking in dog urine. I would also add a frost free hydrant as close to the run as I could so I am not fighting a lot of hose in the winter. I would also make sure that I faced the runs to the South in order to get good winter sun exposure.
Heated concrete would be a bonus for the wintertime depending on where you live.

I guess the preferred location of your dog run depends on where you live. I'd rather have shade in summer than sun in winter because we get more 95+ degree days than dangerously cold days. I suppose I'd prefer the opposite if I lived at higher elevation.

It does depend on where you live but the sun kills a lot of bacteria, you can always put up shade or the dogs can go inside but it would be wise to face it so that it does get enough sun exposure to take care of the bacteria.

Right now I have 4 Brittanies. That will probably be a solid number for a year or so. I will have a litter of pups with my Oakley dog probably next year some time. I will keep 1 for me and 1 for my oldest son, as he gets out of college and it will be a dog for him to have when he is out. So in reality I will probably heve 6 for a period of time.
Georgia Boy, that is very close to what I am planning to build. I will probably just build a couple of runs, but the fenced area will be about 10X20. That way I can turn it into as many as 5 runs if and when I want to. I do plan on having a building with an upstairs area that will house the dogs houses, and hunting supplies downstairs. What I don't know is if I will make the building big enough to have a complete upstairs and turn it into a man cave (office, TV, computer, my Kegerator etc.) A man cave to have as an office, and a place to hang out with my dogs, my huintin and fishin stuff, and watch some ball games sounds appealing. I might not come back in the house!

I always heard the east side or south side is best.
East is better for summer, so they get shade.
But south is better for winter because of the North wind.
At least here in iowa
Isaac and Banks