Do you use them in the winter?
I did last winter but decided against it this year. Last year, it was so cold the wheels froze to the ground and I couldn’t move it and the poop build up inside was so bad it ripped the wire off the bottom when we tried to move it. Lost a cockerel to a possum because we couldn’t get the coop fixed soon enough. I’m fixing to primarily work with permanent fencing and coops and only work mobile systems in the other 3 seasons of the year.
I'm considering putting an auto open system on it some how for that reason! But yes that's what I want to do to is follow our beef cows with it! I'll have to look up this coop your talking about. I'm sure I've come across it in my research but the name isn't ringing a bell.I have the plans... They’re so cool, but I haven’t decided for sure whether to use them. I kind of don’t think I will. Counting up the roost space he provides for, I think it would be okay for a bedroom only for my 17 layers. The problem is that we have very long days in summer. I’m not getting up at 4:30am every morning to open the door for them. Not happening. Soooo, they’re gonna need a roomier coop.
I bought materials to make one of John Suskovich’s walk-in tractors for some Color Yield chicks I’ve ordered (meat birds), and if I like it, I’ll likely make a couple more as portable coops (not for confinement-style pasturing) for the layers and for the heritage turkeys I also ordered. I’ll let the new layer chicks stay in the permanent coops and yards all summer as they grow up.
The Suskovich tractors will provide shelter for the meaties, the mature layers and the turkeys as they follow my three heifers around their progressive grazing adventures (hopefully eating up all the fly larvae and spreading out the cow patties as they go.) That’s the plan, anyway.
I’ll be interested how the chickshaw works for you. Maybe I’ll find a use for it at some point. Hope so.
Oh yes! I remember them now, yes I like that design for meat birds too, I was telling my husband that it is big enough to be multi-purpose, could be used for Turkey or to quarantine a small animal. We hope to add meat chickens in 2020. Right now we just have 10 egg ducks and the cows. So were adding egg chickens and bee hive this year and hopefully meat birds and the butcher equipment in 2020!
I would like to add, the “meatshaw” as Justin Rhodes calls it is almost certainly a 3 season housing system. It doesn’t have any walls and will not protect from winter winds. I would steer clear of it as a permanent housing system unless you live somewhere tropical like FL. Even then I would be careful because it can get below freezing there.
