My housing plans

[BarredCometLaced]

This is what i am planning to do. There will be 18 Barred Rock pullets that will rotate between the four fenced pastures, 2 weeks in each pasture with me moving the coop every other day. What do you think? What is the max number of chickens i could keep with a setup like this?

 

[calgal98]

You can keep a lot in that with rotational housing. Put your coop in the middle of the pastures so they use the whole area. They sometimes tend to congregate around the coop. If you supplement feed (which I would) they will be very happy there. 18 would be easy. double that would be too! I'm assuming you will be free ranging the chooks?

 

[itom37]

It sounds like you plan for the fence to be limiting. If so, sounds like a great plan! What if you put the coop in the center of all 4 and had 4 doors. You can simply open/close the doors you do/don't want them to use to affect their choice of pasture.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

Thats a good idea ( to put the shed in the middle)... And yeah, not free range (but almost!)

 

[ECBW]

Don't know how heavy and difficult the coop is to move, but moving it every other day could get old very quickly.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

It will be on wheels... and how often do you think i should move it? Not from pastures, but just so that the birds will go to a different side of the pasture?

 

[calgal98]

Are you rotating other animals in/out of the pastures or only the chickens? If just chickens, move pastures once a week instead of once every two weeks and just place the coop in a different location of the new pasture each time its visited. Limit the need to move the coop, as that WILL get tedious.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

I'm not sure if i will be adding mini nubians into the rotation.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Do you have the coop already? I can see a problem with moving the coop. You want 18 chickens, and that means a larger coop.. especially lets assume you go over and end up with 20 chickens. So this coop will be around 10X10 to house that many birds- I suppose you could fit them into an 8X8 since the grazing area will be so large. But even with an 8X8, think about how HEAVY that coop will be! I'm not so sure you'll be moving that thing around- if at all. That is a lot of lumber, and depending on what kind of walls and floor you put in- I couldn't even begin to guess the weight of that thing. I really like the suggestion to put the coop in the middle and either make 4 doors to open access to whatever area you want opened to- or to just open the entire area up to them. Maybe even build the coop a bit larger than you intended to accomodate this.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

I was planning to move it with a 4-wheel type vehicle. Would it not be strong enough? You can buy the coop with a chicken tractor add-on.