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Chicken Coop Designs for Portable Chicken Coop
By Dog Lover | July 1, 2009
Portable chicken coop designs are perfect when you have just a few hens that you want to move around your yard. Also known as chicken tractors, these little coops have a small area for roosting, eating, drinking, laying eggs and foraging. Since the coop is moved every few days to a week, your chickens are getting plenty of grass and bugs to supplement their diet.
You may wonder why you would want a portable chicken coop design. Moving the chickens around keeps them safe and secure while giving them new foraging grounds. They can be moved about the yard to eat grass, bugs and add their droppings to your yard for fertilizer. You can even place some of them onto garden areas at the end of the season so your chickens can glean any leftover from harvest. They will also fertilize your garden. The droppings will decompose over the winter which can also be used as fertilizers for your garden soil that will allow more luscious products for you. You’d be amazed how chickens that are not moved around can reduce an area down to bare earth in less than a week. After that, it becomes a muddy mess every time it rains, and your chickens don’t get all that nutritious greenery to eat.
An example of a portable chicken coop design would be the ark. It is a triangular A-frame chicken coop with wide base at the bottom and the peak at the top. The ark can be made small or large. The only thing that should limit you for size is whether you can move it or not. The ark is made so a third of it is the coop and the other two-thirds is an outdoor run. The coop can hold perches and nest boxes. Small openings allow the chicken out to the run. A bigger door placed on the opposite side of the coop allows you to easily access the coop to collect eggs, feed the chickens or clean the coop. The chicken run has a door at the end so you can easily access. Arks can be moved by attaching long poles so two people can lift and move it, or they can be hooked up to a vehicle and towed.
Another A=frame type of portable chicken coop design is the one that has top third for coop and beneath it with chicken run. The coop provides shade this way, and the chickens are able to sleep up off the ground in a protected area. Small doors at each end of the coop will let you collect eggs and clean the coop easily. These coops are generally built to house two to four hens and are moved by hand.
Small portable chicken coop designs can also be imaginative. Build one that has wheels so it can be moved around more easily.
Portable chicken coop runs can be made from wire and PVC. You can even use a dog house as the coop itself with a few modifications to make it easy to access for egg gathering and cleaning.
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