Our next construction project after the duck house was a movable chicken coop (also known as a chicken tractor) for our Rhode Island Red pullets (young hens). We decided on a light weight A-frame style with some metal roofing to keep out the rain and provide protection from the sun.
Here's Patrick our "construction manager" adding chicken wire to the ends. This end will hold the egg boxes later in the year but for now it will just be chicken wire.
We also added two clear plastic panels to each side to allow light into the roosting area.
From this view you can see the end with the door and the roosting area inside. The roosts were just 1" poles we cut from the woods and crisscrossed inside the tractor. Just inside the door we allowed for enough room to hang their feed and water. We also used electric wire netting since it is easy to move!
This is moving day! The kids are excited to let the pullets into their new home.
Here are the girls (and a few boys!) enjoying the fresh grass in their new home! It took them a few days to find the roosts but they easily adapted to the new area. Eggs coming soon...
Just a few bits of info if anyone is interested...
We could not find any info on chicken tractor designs for pastured egg layers online when we started this project. Hope this may be helpful to someone else.
We could not find any info on chicken tractor designs for pastured egg layers online when we started this project. Hope this may be helpful to someone else.
This coop was built for 50 hens but could hold up to 70-75.
It is 16' long and 12' wide.
The total cost of materials was around $1000.
The electric netting was purchased at Premier we have184 feet in two sections.
We use a hanging metal feeder that we bought at Tractor Supply.
We use this style dispenser for water that we also bought online.
We have found that the tractor needs to be moved twice a week, once within the fencing and another when we move the entire fencing system. We will update this with the egg boxes when we get them on.
UPDATE: Check out this post to see how we added the egg boxes on to the back.
UPDATE 2013: This year we needed to add 100 new laying hens to our flock to keep up with the demand for our pastured eggs. We are trying out a new tractor/coop in order to house them all. We were also wanting more space for egg boxes since we have had some issues with broken eggs and eggs being eaten by the hens. Below is a link to the post with a few photo's of our new set up. We also added double the amount of electric netting as we had last year. The new house is quite hard to move right now since we have not added the wheels. We are moving it by slowly dragging it along with the farm tractor. We would love to elevate the whole thing on some kind of steel frame with wheels and then be able to hook on to the frame when moving.
Post 1 with construction photo's inside and out.
Post 2 with photo's in the field.
UPDATE: Check out this post to see how we added the egg boxes on to the back.
UPDATE 2013: This year we needed to add 100 new laying hens to our flock to keep up with the demand for our pastured eggs. We are trying out a new tractor/coop in order to house them all. We were also wanting more space for egg boxes since we have had some issues with broken eggs and eggs being eaten by the hens. Below is a link to the post with a few photo's of our new set up. We also added double the amount of electric netting as we had last year. The new house is quite hard to move right now since we have not added the wheels. We are moving it by slowly dragging it along with the farm tractor. We would love to elevate the whole thing on some kind of steel frame with wheels and then be able to hook on to the frame when moving.
Post 1 with construction photo's inside and out.
Post 2 with photo's in the field.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave us a comment, we love feedback!