Thinking about Chicken Paddocks

We have been free-ranging our little flock of four chickens.  They are good egg producers, with mostly superior quality.  We attribute the quality to the amount of protien the chickens obtain by freely attending to the most productive (i.e., wormy) areas of our property.

The problem is that we are planting beds.  We like flowers and plants growing there.  The chickens dug up and destroyed my wife's daffodill bed.  They dug up my row of onions, wiping out mostly all of my onion plantings in one location.  (Fortunately, they have not yet destroyed my other three onion beds.)

We just acquired six additional chickens.  A flock of ten could be destructive to our planting efforts.  Therefore, we are thinking of a means to contain our chickens.

Paul Wheaton's Raising Chickens 2.0: No More Coop and Run has some analysis on keeping chickens.

A thread on Permies discusses the chicken paddock shifting concept and throws out ideas here and there.

A mobile chicken coop is foremost on our thoughts now.  That will be needed if we are to paddock shift the chickens.

Possible construction materials for light weight coop that can be moved:

1. Mesh wire;
2. Polyethylene tubing;
3. Metal tubing.

Alternatively, find an old trailer like the one pictured above.  May visit my neighbor to see about his broken down trailers.  He wants to sell one.

Most chickens do not fly over the floppy plastic netting.  They like to fly up and light on a taught top, then hop on.  The floppyness of a soft plastic wire netting keeps them from going over without wing clipping.  If you get a rogue, then you can hobble her.