Padlock System Design: A better way to raise chickens?

[silkieluver_07]

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One coop on wheels, just roll into the right area, you just need to have big enough doors.

That is basically how DH set ours up.

DH?​

DH= Dear Husband... its a forum/BYC abbrevation

 

[calista]

This permanent system is what we designed when we built our coop and, if you have the room, it is indeed a great way to raise healthy chickens. I'd add another two runs if I could afford any more hardware cloth!

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/silveira44a.html

 

[laughaha]

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MEN did an article on this too a few years back. DH and I have always loved the idea and were thinking of trying something like this. Could you please show pics of your system in use?

 

[raizin]

is this something you would use in a predator zone? It seems expensive for hardware cloth. If you have a free ranging system with an acre or two the chickens are not destructive. Just too much land and they move around by themselves. Of course this means predators have easier access. Currently, I use a free range method and only have predator problems at night. Since I started locking the chickens up every night I have not lost any. I could see how this would make for a cleaner and healthier chicken yard.

 

[j3707]

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I've been using a paddock system for the last year or so and think it's great.

Mine is a bit different from what you've got in your picture. Imagine one of your middle walls is actually a corridor with paddocks on both sides. My coop is stationary and opens up into one end of the corridor, the other end of the corridor is my access gate. The entry to each paddock is just an opening between two fence posts that can be blocked with a piece of wire fence.I've got two paddocks + the corridor going now, I should have two more paddocks fenced in shortly. The chickens love foraging in a newly opened paddock! I have grasses and some other seeds I'm experimenting with, but am also planting fruit trees in a couple paddocks.

If you've got the space, I recommend it...

 

[ryan112ryan]

I've been using a paddock system for the last year or so and think it's great.

Mine is a bit different from what you've got in your picture. Imagine one of your middle walls is actually a corridor with paddocks on both sides. My coop is stationary and opens up into one end of the corridor, the other end of the corridor is my access gate. The entry to each paddock is just an opening between two fence posts that can be blocked with a piece of wire fence.I've got two paddocks + the corridor going now, I should have two more paddocks fenced in shortly. The chickens love foraging in a newly opened paddock! I have grasses and some other seeds I'm experimenting with, but am also planting fruit trees in a couple paddocks.

If you've got the space, I recommend it...

It is a bit different, as you pointed out, but with having a open floor to the coop and making it mobile you cut down on a ton of cleaning work. You can simply move the coop a foot or so every few days and then at the end of the 10 days you have a uniformly covered area with chicken poop.​

 

[ryan112ryan]

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Right now I am planning this for a community garden, so I am not there for 3-5 days at a time. So I need something that is fort knox and doesn't require me to lock them up at night.

Remember that the interior fencing can be cheap chicken wire because it is only holding back chickens. You can do welded wire for the fence. I have seen welded wire that has a denser mesh 3/4" - 1/2" on the bottom 1.5 feet. Or just use hardware cloth on the bottom.

To prevent predators from digging I purpose this method:

On outside lay flat 3' welded wire, tie into base of vertical fence every foot, then cover fencing on ground with some topsoil. Seed with grass seed and let the roots establish to hold it all in place. Here is a pic to illustrate it. This way anything that is trying to dig will have to figure out to back off 3 feet and then dig down and that whole distance. This also reduces the amount of digging compared to burying the bottom of the fence.

 

[ryan112ryan]

posted multiple times for some reason - post removed

 

[j3707]

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I think your coop idea will work just fine, but I won't concede it's less work

Cleaning the coop takes me maybe 20 minutes every 6 months or so. I'll take that over having to move a coop every few days *forever*

.

Plus, being that they are in a limited space, the ground inside the paddock should be adequately fertilized just from the presents the chickens leave while they range. If you don't remove any chicken manure you may well end up over fertilizing. By necessity, you're bringing in a lot of external energy via chicken feed...and then droppings...you could easily overwhelm the lands natural ability to deal with it. Of course this all depends on how big the paddocks are and how many chickens you have. I'd guess that if you left ALL droppings in the paddock you'd need something like 100 square feet/bird to keep the system healthy over the course of several years. (That's just a semi-educated guess, it'd be interesting to hear from someone who has more experience). Anyhow...if you want to gather chicken manure for use outside the paddock, it would be easier to collect it from a single spot.

A very interesting project, please keep us updated!

 

[95yj]

IMO this system is just a complicated way of attempting to replicate tractoring. The grass will eventually get burnt out, the nitrogen will eventually start to pile up, and if the padocks are too big the chickens will probably only hang out in one area, killing off all the grass in that corner leaving the rest untouched. If its too small then they will wipe out all the grass period, and i'm not entirely sure that you can find a "just right" in this case. I have seen some very cool techniques where the coop is in the middle of a large garden, one side is the chicken run and the other is the garden, and these switch off yearly, preventing the ground from getting too burnt out from either the crops or the birds. I came off negative, but i really don't want to discourage you, its a great idea, i just think it needs a little tweaking, so please do keep us updated.