Chicken Coop Designs- Portable Chicken Coop

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 move some of them onto garden areas at the end of the season so your chickens can glean anything leftover from harvest. They will 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. In less than a week, with chicken that are not moved around, your backyard can be surprisingly reduced to bare earth. Then, it becomes a muddy every time it rains, and your chickens don’t get all that nutritious greenery to eat.

The ark is an example of the chicken coop design that can be portable. This is an A-frame that is triangular pen with wide base at the bottom and 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 should hold nest boxes and perches. A small opening lets the chickens out into 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 portable chicken coop design has the coop in the top third of the A-frame and the chicken run beneath it. The coop provides shade this way, and the chickens are able to sleep up off the ground in a protected area. It will be easier for you to clean the coop and collect eggs if there are small doors at each end. 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 a chicken coop that has wheels for easy moving and so it can be moved even with a single person.

You can make portable runs out of wire or 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.

Filed under: Pets

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!