Chicken Coop Designs- Portable Chicken Coop

Portable chicken coop designs are perfect when you have just a few hens that you want to move around your yard. Also known as chicken tractors, these little coops have a small area for roosting, eating, drinking, laying eggs and foraging. Since the coop is moved every few days to a week, your chickens are getting plenty of grass and bugs to supplement their diet.

You may wonder why you would want a portable chicken coop design. Moving the chickens around keeps them safe and secure while giving them new foraging grounds. They can be moved about the yard to eat grass, bugs and add their droppings to your yard for fertilizer. It is also better to put your chicken to your garden areas after your harvest so they can eat any leftovers. They will also fertilize your garden. The droppings will decompose over the winter, leaving your spring garden ready to grow more luscious produce for you the next season. In less than a week, with chicken that are not moved around, your backyard can be surprisingly reduced to bare earth. Then, it becomes a muddy every time it rains, and your chickens don’t get all that nutritious greenery to eat.

An example of a portable chicken coop design would be the ark. This is a triangular A-frame pen with the wide base at the bottom and the peak at the top. The ark can be made small or large. The only thing that should limit you for size is whether you can move it or not. The two-thirds of the ark is for outdoor run and one-third of it would be the coop. The coop can hold perches and nest boxes. Small openings allow the chicken out to the run. A bigger door placed on the opposite side of the coop allows you to easily access the coop to collect eggs, feed the chickens or clean the coop. The chicken run has a door at the end so you can easily access. Arks can be moved by attaching long poles so two people can lift and move it, or they can be hooked up to a vehicle and towed.

Another A=frame type of portable chicken coop design is the one that has top third for coop and beneath it with chicken run. The coop provides shade this way, and the chickens are able to sleep up off the ground in a protected area. It will be easier for you to clean the coop and collect eggs if there are small doors at each end. These coops are generally built to house two to four hens and are moved by hand.

Small portable chicken coop designs can also be imaginative. Build a chicken coop that has wheels for easy moving and so it can be moved even with a single person.

PVC and wire can be used to create a run for portable chicken coop. You can even use a dog house as the coop itself with a few modifications to make it easy to access for egg gathering and cleaning.