A couple of years ago, I started the slow process of converting a homemade livestock trailer that I bought at an auction to a chicken coop. The more I tore into it, the clearer it became that it required more work that I expected, but after while wheeling every surface, coating it in a couple layers of POR15 and a topcoat, installing hardware cloth over the ceiling, then repurposing old barn tin and some corrugated steel leftover from a friend's building for the roof and walls, and installing HDPE slat flooring, we finally had a functional mobile coop. The inside of the coop measured about 6x8, which is quite small based on the "recommended coop sizes" for backyard flocks, however this is a production tractor designed for the birds to free range all day every day.
I ordered 45 sexed chicks- a combination of white leghorns, cuckoo marans, easter egger and olive egger mutts. After the hatchery overshipping, we ended up with 52 live chicks upon delivery, and have magically lost none of them, despite brooding them in our unheated shop building. After they were ~4 weeks old, I moved the coop to my garden area where we began the slow transition of letting out for supervised time outdoors (contained by electric netting) until they were going to bed on their own reliably. After that, the net fence got used elsewhere on the farm and the chickens had free run of the garden area til I was able to get a mountain of wood chips moved out of the way, and get them out onto true pasture. I've been moving them every couple of weeks to new digs, and they seem to roll with the punches every time, I've even moved the coop mid-day before (but only about 100 feet). I couldn't tell you exactly how many chickens we have at this point, but we gave 3 away to a friend who wanted some, and have seen no evidence of predation, so I'm assuming we're still in the 50 birds range. 3 ended up being roosters, a very handsome white leghorn and 2 of the marans. We weren't expecting eggs til the 20 week mark, but just this week, I set up the nest boxes (and allowed access for the first time) and we have gotten both a white pullet egg and a small double yolker green one. There was initial concern that I would have far too many birds for this coop, and while I understand the concern, and we still haven't been through winter yet, so far, we haven't maxed out roost space and there's no more squabbling than you'd expect with a group of chickens that large.
I ordered 45 sexed chicks- a combination of white leghorns, cuckoo marans, easter egger and olive egger mutts. After the hatchery overshipping, we ended up with 52 live chicks upon delivery, and have magically lost none of them, despite brooding them in our unheated shop building. After they were ~4 weeks old, I moved the coop to my garden area where we began the slow transition of letting out for supervised time outdoors (contained by electric netting) until they were going to bed on their own reliably. After that, the net fence got used elsewhere on the farm and the chickens had free run of the garden area til I was able to get a mountain of wood chips moved out of the way, and get them out onto true pasture. I've been moving them every couple of weeks to new digs, and they seem to roll with the punches every time, I've even moved the coop mid-day before (but only about 100 feet). I couldn't tell you exactly how many chickens we have at this point, but we gave 3 away to a friend who wanted some, and have seen no evidence of predation, so I'm assuming we're still in the 50 birds range. 3 ended up being roosters, a very handsome white leghorn and 2 of the marans. We weren't expecting eggs til the 20 week mark, but just this week, I set up the nest boxes (and allowed access for the first time) and we have gotten both a white pullet egg and a small double yolker green one. There was initial concern that I would have far too many birds for this coop, and while I understand the concern, and we still haven't been through winter yet, so far, we haven't maxed out roost space and there's no more squabbling than you'd expect with a group of chickens that large.
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