Portable Chicken Coop Plans Made Easy

February 8, 2010 by fts  
Filed under Keeping Pet Birds

For any people with smaller backyards or those that are only needing to rear a few chooks a portable chicken coop is a great choice. The girls go for it because they get a unpolluted environment and a regular supply of fresh grass, and feed range. You will obtain an easy hen house to maintain, you’ll spend less on feed, compost for your garden and building supplies, while still getting those fantastic fresh eggs. If you are very lucky your chooks will also help to care for your grass.

This may sound silly and completely obvious but don’t ignore the benefit that having a coop that you can reposition nearer to the house, under the shade, or into a temporary shelter at a moments notice brings. Think of a unexpected snow storm or flash flood, or a day where the mercury shoots up to the roof of your thermometer, (don’t snort, they happen more and more often now days). If you had a static chicken pen chances are that you might lose the whole flock, but with a portable chicken coop you can transfer your chooks into safety quickly and effortlessly.

You also get the extra benefit of not needing to cope with a big pen that you have to work around or bear in mind every time that you need to reorganize the garden or mow the grass.

Putting together a portable chicken coop is easy but you will need to move it every couple of days so there are a couple of things that you ought to figure out to make sure that your enclosure is trouble-free to build and painless to manage.

Size and Weight:

Have a peek at the diagram that you are working from and check the materials that you will be using. You should be able to make an educated guess about how easy the coop will be to move. It is possible to replace some resources for lighter alternatives – in some cases even PVC piping can make great framing that is also light and strong.

As an idea, a portable chicken coop that is around 3ft x 8ft will probably be okay for most people to move about easily. Any bigger than this and maybe you could look at either attaching wheels on it or searching for a plan where the coop separates from the run so you can move both parts independently.

Wheels:

Fixing wheels on your portable chicken coop is a terrific suggestion and could prevent a whole lot of hassle! Make sure that the wheels that you choose are tough and easily replaced. (Psst – skateboard wheels are brilliant – just don’t tell your kids where their favorite sporting accessory has vanished to – they won’t think to look under the coop!)

Push or Pull?

Most blueprints for a portable chicken coop want you to push the coop around but in a few cases this may not be the most practical option. For example, those with a slight knoll in their back garden will be thankful for the ability to tow the pen uphill or push it back down again!

Collecting the eggs and poop from the coop.

One thing that you may not recognize is that chickens poo a lot. This is one of the reasons that it is especially critical to shift them often. Be aware of this and think of how you will gather the eggs, scrape up the poop for your garden and reposition the house without having to step through the poop!

Fortunately there are a great selection of plans available for when you want to build chicken coops that contain all the essentials with easy peasy step by step instructions. In fact it is so easy I bet it even makes your neighbors jealous and your eggs taste better!

Grab vital things to know about house train a dog – please study the publication. The times have come when concise information is truly within one click, use this opportunity.