A common way to pasture chickens is in a chicken tractor, and this works well with smaller flocks, but what if you have 100 hens? Free range is not usually a good idea, despite what most people think. Predators are a big problem, as are hidden nests of eggs and chickens in places where you don't want them.
Most tractors can only hold about ten hens, so you would need ten tractors to house that many. You would also need to fill ten waterers, and ten feeders at least once a day. That might be fine for some people, but it takes a lot of time, and is much more expensive that just having one big waterer and one feeder.
Also, some chickens that were previously free range just don't take to tractors. That was the problem we had to deal with when we first moved here. Our chickens had been basically free ranged at our previous house, so when we put them in tractors here, they would go crazy running up and down the tractors slamming their heads into the walls trying to escape.
So, in this blog I will show you what we do to pasture our hens now, using a mobile coop and electric fencing.
The Coop
If you are frequently moving your chickens, the coop is really only for a sheltered spot for them to perch, lay eggs, and eat grain. So, they only need 1 sq. foot of space each.
We plan to have about 50 laying hens, so we built a 5X10' coop. We made it four feet high because that was the height of the plywood we were planning on using temporarily for the sides. However, it ended up being a pretty ideal height. It's high enough so that when you put perches in it, they actually use them and don't try to roost on the roof.
We put the nest box on the outside, so we didn't need to leave room to access it from the inside. We just made it the width of the coop and 20" deep. We didn't divide it into sections so more chickens could fit at once.
The roofing we used was the only one in stock when we went, it has worked fine, but I would recommend that you use either metal or plastic roofing, as the stuff we used is quite a bit heavier than other roofing materials.
For wheels we used EggCart'n, which is a heavy-duty wheel system designed for use on chicken tractors. We didn't slope the roof because it's so rare to have perfectly flat ground, it will usually be on enough of a slope that the rain will run off.
The Fence
We use Premier's four-foot poultry netting and their 0.6 joule solar energizer. We try to move it every other day, although we only have about twelve chickens and eighteen ducks in it right now, once we have more chickens we will have to move it every day.
I would say that one 100' roll of fencing per 25-30 chickens is good if you are moving them every day. However, unless you design your coop so that you can close the chickens into it at night, you will need two sets of fencing so you can put up their new pen without having to let them run everywhere. You don't need two energizers though.
What about Hawks?
We have never really had a problem with hawks, if you are, or think you will, I would recommend that you keep your chickens under trees as much as possible or make their pen long and narrow.
This will decrease the chances of a hawk trying to get them. However, especially if you aren't raising hybrids, chickens tend to be pretty good about running for cover. And since they are being moved frequently in small pens they won't usually be very far from their coop.
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