HOUSING STYLES
From traditional coops to mobile chicken tractors.
Chickens’ easy-going realestate requirements are one reason chickens have been such popular barnyard critters for thousands of years. The shapes, sizes and configurations of coops are limitless. When it comes to your flock’s housing, just about anything goes as long as it provides for the hens’ basic needs.
From traditional coops to mobile chicken tractors, you have
choices in how and where to keep
your birds.
Confined housing
So Many Options…
Most keepers meet those requirements by using one of four basic types of chicken coops:
• Free range, which is seen most often
in rural areas
• Permanent dwellings, which is the most common housing method for small chicken flocks
• Portable dwellings, which are used on farms and in family gardens with lots of land
• Specialized housing, which includes dwellings for show chickens and baby birds
Free Range
Free-range living means that birds have free range of the land they live on. They roam unbound, foraging for food and nesting (and laying eggs) where they see fit, returning to their roost each night.
Is free ranging right for you and your charges? As idyllic as this type of chicken keeping may sound, in most cases you should – as a responsible owner and backyard flock keeper – confine your birds to the safety of a chicken coop. However, you can do so and still reap the benefits of free-roaming birds by housing them in a mobile pen.
Permanent Dwellings
A permanent henhouse is the traditional method for housing homestead poultry and other small backyard flocks. Depending on the property and the number of birds being kept, these built-to-last structures can vary in size from a few dozen square feet to potentially thousands of square feet.
Generally speaking, there are two types of permanent chicken coops: confined housing – those designs that keep the birds within the structure – and yarded housing – those designs that allow the hens access to a fenced yard.
Portable chicken coops and pens are easily moved around the yard or pasture, providing the birds with an enclosed space for safety and roosting as well as access to fresh greens – and giving you the benefit of having a larger area of land fertilized. In general, you’ll find two types of portable chicken coops: a chicken tractor, or a mobile coop that keeps the birds within the structure; and a fenced range, which features a movable pen just like a chicken tractor, but it’s surrounded by a movable fence, which gives the chickens more space to scurry around in.
Special housing options include brooders, which are coops for young chicks, and isolation pens, which are one-chicken shelters
With a chicken tractor, your birds can live in a safe, contained
space while spreading their manure across a pasture or
garden.
Confined housing
where a single bird can have its own space. For more information on brooders, check out page 12.
Isolation pens are for birds that need to be separated from the flock for whatever reason – sick, henpecked, grouchy, or just need space. The pen is intended to be a temporary place to stay, so it’s not very large. However, it still needs to house all the items an adult chicken needs, including perches, a nesting box, food and water station, and a place to scratch and dust off.
Yarded Housing
PROS
By providing a balance between protection and freedom, this option allows chickens access to more open space where they can engage in free-range behavior.
When provided with hiding places and secure fencing around the coop, the chickens are for the most part safe from predators and foul weather.
With yarded housing, you can expand your flock more easily than with confined housing, as long as the henhouse is sized appropriately.
This type of housing works well if you have any chicken-unfriendly pets (these could include dogs and cats – though agile cats may be able to hop the fence and harass the birds anyway).
CONS
Fencing is expensive. Unless you cover the yard, the birds may be more vulnerable to predators from above.
A flock of chickens can denude a pasture or expensive landscaping job in no time. If you want your girls to eat their greens, you’ll need to replant regularly.
Because the birds are roaming free in the yard, their droppings will fall where they may – and that can create a muddy mess, particularly in wet climates. Yard rotation can help. This is when you rotate your ladies between a number of yards.
Chicken Tractor
PROS
The birds can live in a safe, contained space while spreading their manure across a pasture or garden area and aerating it with their claws.
They have access to fresh greens and bugs to eat – but only in areas where you let them graze. That means your prized roses will be safe from nibbling beaks.
You’ll have less cleanup to do because the chickens will spread the droppings themselves
A portable pen will let you move your chickens to different areas
for foraging.
Chickens will enjoy picking
through the garden for grubs.
as you move the tractor around the yard.
Even though the chickens are mobile, you can still collect the eggs or grow the chickens as broilers.
CONS
Because the ground is not always level, the pen may not sit flat, and that could mean an entry point for predators.
To get the full benefit of the mobile pen, you need to move it regularly. How often depends on the size of your flock and the size of the pen itself. A small 4-by-6-foot pen with two birds, for instance, may need to be moved weekly; a larger 8-by-16-foot pen with a half dozen hens could stay in place for two weeks or longer.
If the chickens aren’t used to being tractored, they may get bored. That can result in behavior challenges, such as spats or intermittent feather plucking.
Depending on where you live, tractoring may not be right for every season. If you live where it regularly snows in the winter, for instance, your girls could develop frostbite in the snow.
Confined Housing
PROS
Because the birds are confined in one place, cleanup and care are easy, as is collecting compost from the coop’s floor.
Being confined also guarantees that your chickens won’t be ravaging your vegetable garden or leaving droppings on your back deck for you to step in.
Confined housing works great if other pets, such as cats and dogs, share the backyard.
Confined coops suit young chicken keepers as well, from those doing 4-H projects to those caring for the chickens as pets.
CONS
Confined housing limits the number of birds you can keep.
It will require more maintenance – scooping compost, adding fresh bedding, and so on – to keep the coop clean and sanitary.
The ladies may not be able to engage in natural behaviors, such as foraging for weeds and bugs. So if the hens get into spats, the lowest chicken on the totem pole might be harassed and even injured. Like humans, hens have their own personalities; even if you provide enough space, squabbles may occur.
If a predator gets in, your birds are toast because they have nowhere to go.
Free Range
PROS
Chickens love chomping on bugs, slugs, spiders, and even mice. Note that it’s not safe to use pesticides if your chickens are roaming free.
Your chickens will rake and scrape the ground with their claws while they nibble seeds and green foliage shoots. This action efficiently controls weeds and spreads mulch around your garden.
Really, it’s a hoot to watch and listen to the hens go about their hunt-and-peck business as they forage.
CONS
Without the protection of a fence or shelter, your chickens could be dinner for a neighborhood cat, raccoon or other carnivorous critter.
Hens that roam free may also be exposed to harsh weather, such as extreme heat or cold, which could threaten their health.
Depending on where you live, keeping free-roaming chickens might not be the most neighborly thing to do. Your hens may cross property lines and turn up the neighbors’ gardens or leave messy droppings on their lawns or patios. Not everyone loves these feathered friends the way we do.
Make sure to clean confined
pens often.