Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

nice portable coop solution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IdyrPUwdeM

We average about 10-12 a week out of them, one only lays every other day. Don't know why, plenty of food, hoping it is because it is a young pullet and it will get more consistent over the comming months. They free range most afternoons after I get home and just discovered the vegie patch which is a good thing as it is a slater gold mine.

Mine became more interested in the vegies than the bugs over time. They stay in their Hilton Hotel pen now. I reckon they cost me 50% of my cauli, brocoli, and cabbage stock in winter.

I have nothing of interest in there at the moment unless they want big tomato plants, pumpkins and artichokes so until the seasonal planting changes that I welcome them. All my salad greens up up out of their reach in the AP. Apricot tree will dump a heap of flyblown fruit in the coming months so I need them to stay on top of that. Not worth trying to contol the fly here, you can't win, it's a real pitty as the tree is always laden with beautiful sweet fruit.

If you ever think of cutting it down Mike, let me know ! You may want the trunk to make something with, but I'll happily take the branches for wood in my smokers.

Well that one did make me laugh.
But I would never keep my chickens that way, they need access to the dirt for scratching, digging, searching for bugs and seeds and dust baths.

Bolt some rubber fingers and it's a coop that pre-plucks:)

Not so long ago some one commented on the chicken tractor the Cook was putting together. Saddly, he sometimes just starts cutting and building without giving much careful thought to function. That one had to be re-designed (chickens kept roosting on the edge of the nest boxes and pooping in them, not nice for collecting eggs, I like my eggs clean.

Here is the Hen Cart I've just put into use. It is a cart for nest boxes and feeders can hang under it to stay dry. The nest boxes are designed that they can be used as trap nests when we want to cull the flock and otherwise I leave a board holding the doors open for them to use the nests as normal.


As you can see they adjusted to it already


The back opens up for egg collection and chicken removal when in use as trap nest

One more picture of the front trap doors


I have a board currently wedging the outside part of the door up.

When in use as a trap nest, I remove the long board and use a bamboo stick to prop each individual door. When the chicken walks into the nest they push down on the top part of the door inside the nest and the bamboo prop under the outside of the door falls out. The door is hinged so that the outside part of the door is heavier and will lift the inside part of the door to block the chicken from getting back out till we can check to see if she laid and egg or not.

The only thing I bought specifically for this project turns out to have been some hinges, everything else we had on hand (from the first attempt at a chicken tractor.)

So now that we have a functional portable nest box. We then needed to address a portable roost.
I fear the pictures don't do this one justice. I'll have to get some better pictures next time we move it cause it will probably get a re-vamp of it's covering.


It is basically a cattle panel, a couple long 2x4's, a pair of wheels, and rounded 2x2 perches tied at different levels to the cattle panel arch. Cover with tarp and use old bifold closit door as ramp. It moves like a rather unweildy wheel barro but it is not that heavy, only a bit awkward.

The roosts are only tied on so fairly easy to re-arrange and we could probably adjust the whole thing a bit smaller to make it easier to deal with once we see how the girls are about using it. Probably over the weekend we will make them try it out.