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smallscalepoultry_mech_2.indd 1
The Small-Scale
Poultry Flock
An all-natural approach to raising chickens
and other fowl for home and market growers
$39.95 USD
9781603582902
Chelsea Green
Heres the ultimate book for those who want to know everything
there is to know about raising poultry. Gene Logsdon,
author of Holy Shit and The Contrary Farmer
Ussery
Harvey Ussery
8/26/11 11:49 AM
11 | MOBILE SHELTERS
If you day-range your flock, or use temporary fencing anchored on the henhouse to rotate the flock over
fresh plots, the birds always return to the same shelter
at night. If you pasture them farther afield, however,
you will need a mobile shelter of some sort to rotate
them to new ground, and to shelter them at night or
when it rains. Ive seen hundreds of mobile coops,
and no two are ever the same.1 The design you come
up with will depend on the size of your flock, how
you intend to use their services, leftover materials
from other projects begging to be used, the nature of
your climate and groundperhaps on how whimsical you happen to be feeling.
The first movable shelter I built was a copy of the
Fig. 11.1 My friend Jon Kinnard combined whimsy, utility, and the urge to recycle into this micro-flock mobile shelter. It is entirely selfcontained, with feed storage and nest in the bin under the hinged metal roofing and roosts in the rest of the shelter. PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH
MOORE
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M O B I L E S H E L T E R S 109
Fig. 11.2 A movable pasture shelter based on the classic Polyfacestyle broiler pen. Note the 2-by-4 constructionthis was a first project
for its builders and is overstructured. PHOTO COURTESY OF SAMUEL MATICH
Fig. 11.3 As you can see, it is possible to build the same-sized pen
with much lighter framing, making good use of diagonal bracing.
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Fig. 11.4 Cody Leesers ingenious design for a small wagon-mounted shelter and a separate wheeled pasture pen. She moves the pen each
morning, then docks the shelter onto the pen and releases her hens for the day.
the flock into two smaller shelters rather than keeping them all in one large one that is more difficult to
move.
The heavier a shelter, the more difficult, and possibly
the more dangerous, it is to move. On the other hand
the lighter it is, the more likely it is to be tossed into
the next county by a rambunctious wind. Of course,
it would be possible to anchor even the lightest shelter
to the ground; but again, the more difficult we make
a moveundoing and redoing a complex anchoring
routinethe more inertia will inhibit frequent moves.
Shape also plays a part in stability in heavier winds:
I have found the boxier-type shelters with a higher
profile catch the wind, while hoop or A-frame shapes
tend to keep their feet on the ground. (The classic
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M O B I L E S H E L T E R S 111
Chicken Cruiser
Andy Lee introduced the idea of the chicken
tractor (or as I call it, a cruiser)a small, easily
moved chicken shelter sized to fit a single garden
bed, a key to putting chickens to work in the
garden. A few laying hens inside till and fertilize
the bed while finding free food in the form of
worms and slugs and snailsand laying eggs
but have no access to immediately adjacent beds.
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Fig. 11.9 Hinged access from the outside makes it easy for Annecy
and Camille to collect eggs from my latest A-frame shelter.
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Materials
Mobile shelters have been made in just about every
material other than titanium. Which materials you
choose will depend on which you feel comfortable
working with, what might be in your recycle pile, and
considerations of weight and climate.
Wood
I am more comfortable working with wood, so all my
shelters have had wooden frames, with one exception
a hoop structure based on half-inch solid fiberglass rods
as purlins and as arches, anchored into a wooden foundation frame. I dont use any pressure-treated wood
anywhere on the place remotely connected to producing food. To help prevent rot, I coat all framing pieces
in direct contact with the ground with nontoxic sealer,
renewed periodically as needed. Using a highly rotresistant woodeastern red cedar in my areawould
be a better option if you can get it. You might design so
that the bottom railsthe parts most subject to rot
can be replaced without taking apart the entire shelter.
Or mount the frame on plastic rails. (See below.)
When out of service over the winter, a wood-frame
shelter should always be set up on blocks. You might
even want to block each corner after each move, to
keep the rails out of contact with the ground.
Plastic
Beginners often think of lightweight 1-inch plastic pipe or the like for framing a shelter. Ive never
seen one that inspired much confidencesuch plastic is pretty fragile and breaks down in sunlight.2
Heavier plastic pipe (Schedule 40 PVC, for example)
is another matterIve corresponded with many
flocksters who have used it for shelters that are both
sufficiently rugged and easily moved. (See figures 6.8
and 6.9 for examples that could be scaled down for
smaller shelters.) Ive never used plastic pipe myself.
This year I experimented with recycled plastic
decking3 to make two 6-by-10 pasture shelters for
nurturing young birds through the vulnerable (to
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M O B I L E S H E L T E R S 115
Fig. 11.10 An 8-by-8 A-frame mobile shelter covered with 24-mil woven poly. Ten years old at the time of this photo, it is still going strong.
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