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If you have a yard with lots of grass or other similar stuff growing in it, you may benefit from keeping chickens in portable chicken coops. These are just what they sound like: normal homes for poultry, only movable. This helps to keep your grass from overgrowing throughout your entire plot of land, because chickens will eat any greens as part of their diet. By making their coop, and its attached run, portable, you can essentially use them to keep your whole garden trimmed.
Another great benefit of using portable chicken coops is that it can help to keep your expenses on feeding the chickens lower. Since greens are a natural part of your birds' diet, you won't have to buy as much pre-mixed foods for them at a store. Instead, you can supplement a grain diet with the grasses that a movable chicken run will allow your chickens to eat from your garden's natural growth.
There are many different ways to build portable chicken coops, such as different ways of making them portable, and differences in the construction materials.
Regardless, though, you should follow the same guidelines as with a regular size coop to ensure that your chickens stay healthy and happy, and produce a good amount of eggs.
* Give your birds enough space. Each chicken should have at least 4 square feet of room within the coop itself, and at least 10 square feet of room outside in an enclosed chicken run. Chickens should have about 3 horizontal feet to themselves on a roost so that they have adequate room for sleeping.
* Make sure there is enough air circulation in your design to keep your birds comfortable. Windows are a good idea, as they allow stale air to escape from inside the coop, and keep your birds' off-gassing and excrement from poisoning the air and, subsequently, your chickens.
* Make sure your chickens feel safe in their coop. Build the walls out of a solid wood material, and make sure that it's predator-proof. Although wire is acceptable for the fencing that stops animals from getting into the chicken run, it's not a good materials for the wall of the coop itself.
One way to make portable chicken coops, and possibly the easiest, is to add wheels to one end and a long handle to the other, kind of like a wheel-barrow or hand-cart. This allows you to move the coop around with relatively little difficulty, and at the same time you won't have to worry about it moving by itself when you want it to stay stationary.
One common problem with portable chicken coops is that they can be harder to make predator-proof. This is especially true for the chicken run part of the coop, because unlike with stationary coops you cannot "predator-proof" the bottom of it with some sort of ceramic tile. That would be both hard to implement and would defeat one purpose of having the coop be portable in the first place. Your birds would no longer be able to snack on all the tasty grass lying around your yard. One way you can cope with this is by adding wire mesh underneath the run in addition to on its walls and ceiling. That will stop predators from getting in, but your birds will still be able to eat the grass through the mesh.
Kor Rassad is a chicken coop designer. He owns and maintains Chicken Coop Advice, a resource for portable chicken coops builders and hobbyists.
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