Breeding Pens

I have a couple different breeds of chickens, I want to do some projects with. Does anyone have any good ideas or pictures of breeding pens, or where I could find some ideas. Thank you BYCer's for all the help.

Here is a description of how we build our breeding pens at Greenfire Farms. Hope this helps. Good luck!

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Thanks those will help!!

Stone your breeding pens are a work of art! Very nice.

Mine will look shabby by comparison but they are working well for me. My DH is a builder so I got free labor,
but I was shocked at how quickly materials added up....but I asked him for storage, easy maintenance, safety, and versatility,
and enough run space for 7-10 birds per pen. He built me a perfect setup.

I started with a quad, but then told him I needed 2 more to raise juvies in, so we added 2 more. Of course I've decided to add
another breed, but these can be added on to easily (until we reach the property line).

Here in Florida we don't need a lot of coop space, as the birds are outside except during thunderstorms, so we went with 2 story 4'x4'8' coops.
For the exterior coops, the nest boxes are on the outside, and we have 2 4' roosts, so I can house up to 10 in these. The interior coops have
nest boxes inside with one 4' roost, so I keep 6 or 7 in these.

The runs are 5'x20' so they have plenty of outside space. We've had no predator problem as we first buried two lines of barbed wire
below 6" of hardware cloth. The 1/2" hardware cloth extends another 2 1/2', Then we have 4' of 2"x4" welded wire above that.
We used chicken wire on the top and between the pens.

Back, side and front view of the setup:




Interior:


The coops each use 4 sheets of 4'x8' pressure treated siding. The bottom stories have dividers inside to give me storage space
for pine shavings, feed, oystershell, etc accessible from the outside . The remaining 4'x 3ish area is open to the birds,
and very versatile. I can hang a heat lamp and put 2 week olds out early, or my broodies can take the young ones in at night and
the babies can get away from older birds if need be (I've successfully had several mommas raise chicks within these pens with this setup).
I've also blocked them off from the inside to temporarily house a roo who doesn't play well with others (before rehoming). In established
pens I have a 12lb hanging feeder, protected from the elements.

Some features I like:

The bottoms of the coops are actually slide out drawers. I open the side doors and pick out the major poo every day. They are
4' wide, so I can reach every area. This takes 20 min a day, but my eggs are clean because the girls don't walk through poo to
get to the nest boxes, and I've no fly or odor problem. I can pull out the drawers and dump old and add new shavings every couple
of weeks.


Tops of coops are accessible by side doors, bottoms by back doors. On the interior coops I can reach both eggs and poo for a quick clean.
The outside coops have nest boxes with bolted doors


Cheap and simple, springs on the doors work to auto close when I'm working quickly between pens, nobody slips out.


If one does slip out...(yikes, where am I, what do I do!!) They run right back into the V of the doors and are easy to catch .
The doors under roof keep me from getting wet if I'm feeding in the rain.


BCM Claire is modeling the auto waterer. These are not very expensive, and we've hung them between so each services 2 pens.
They are not totally maintenance free. While they do not get pooed in, some beak dirt ends up in them. I swish them out and let
them refill every day...but it takes minutes and so much easier than hauling water.

Hope you get lots of good ideas...good luck on your pens .

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Are you kidding? These are wonderful! I absolutely love your set up! Thanks so much for sharing them with us! I would love to see more pictures of them.

i have been collecting photos and looking at breeding pens for weeks, these are some of the best I have seen.

Thanks for your input, I will try to build something that resembles them (am so not a builder).

all ours are moveable, all walls can be taken apart and move to other areas...

I'm building a smaller ones at the moment enough for a trio or quad about 6x3x3.

Wow, I love the idea of being able to move them around. They are Fantastic.

I like that idea too .... moving them around would be nice for the soil, too.

Very nice breeding pens and ideas. I hope to tear down and redo some this year when the weather cools.