In our first couple days we talked about...

-> Temperature
-> Predators
-> Essentials to consider before building
-> The most important coop building materials

In today's note, we'll talk about portability or mobility.

There are many reason why you might want a portable chicken coop.

• Chickens can quickly scour a small area of all grass and other foods very quickly - so they need to be moved often to have fresh food to scratch at.
• So they can't get into your garden and other plants and eat them. (When they are cooped up in a mobile coop, they can't do that)
• You can quickly and easily fertilize different areas of your yard (chickens are well-known to be great organic fertilizer producers and so a 'chicken tractor' can help with the gardening where once the chickens have finished preparing and fertilizing a garden bed or other area they then get moved onto another section to get to work on.

Whether you are making a traditional A frame coop or rectangle single or two story chicken house and run, one of the easiest ways to make a coop portable is to use 2 x 2, or 1 x 2, framing lumber, instead of larger 2 x 4 lumber. This makes your framing light, but sturdy enough to handle your flock. To help make your chicken tractor more moveable you could add wheels to the base or even place a piece of pvc pipe underneath the frame when you want to move it which should roll with the coop as pull it along.

Here's a picture showing you the type of lumber pieces I'm talking about:

The most important thing about portable chicken coops is...

If you need to move it regularly it is probably best if you can move it by hand. Some are built to be moved by cars or farm equipment, but unless these are easily accessible, you most likely will never move the coop (see the 2nd mistake people make when building a coop)

So... easily movable, by hand, with 1 or 2 people is going to be easiest for you in the long run.

You can check out some mobile chicken coop plans here:
https://www.chickencoopplan.com