Automatic chicken keeping - Introducing the Eggmobile

 

I'm hugely excited about this new aquisition

Well that just looks like an ancient rusty horsebox I hear you say. And what's more, you add,  you don't have any horses. 

But look, I retort, it has a tow bar on the front and four reasonable wheels.

You notice it's lacking a back door and most of the floor...

However, undaunted by your negative observations, I'm still excited. These drawbacks are not a problem. This lovely old thing is going to be transformed into my new mobile chicken house - Introducing the Luxury Eggmobile!

I will explain how it will work.  But first let's look at the problems.

The Problems

Having kept chickens for many years now, I've tried all kinds of ways of making life easier. For them and for me. These are the major difficulties I've encountered -

1. Chickens scratching areas -the chickens' tendency to strip away the plant life from any area where they are confined for more than a few weeks. We don't want bare earth or worse, bare mud. 
2. Chicken perches and thereunder - chickens need perches to sleep on and what comes out of the rear end overnight tends to accumulate under the perch and has to be cleaned out regularly to avoid a build up of manure and associated smells. Although the chicken droppings can be composted for the garden it's not a pleasant job, smelly and dusty in the summer and smelly and muddy in the winter.
3. Red Mite - This horrible pest of domestic chickens hides in the cracks and crevices of wooden hen houses and particularly under the often used roofing felt, and comes out at night whilst the hens are roosting to bite them and feed on their blood. We want to avoid this. 
4. Predators- Chief amongst these for me are foxes and occasionally rats. We definitely don't want this as predators can wipe out our flock in no time at all. Possibly overnight. Ask me how I know.

The Solutions

I decided some time ago that movable houses were the way to go. I tried hen houses  with wheels on and moveable runs. Whilst it kind of works, the wheels were too small, the houses too heavy and with the rainfall we have were soon mired in the winter mud and difficult if not impossible to move. And there was still the floor to clean out.

We tried the Heras Panel chicken house copied from Kev Alviti on An English Homestead. This worked well in the summer for table birds and I'm definitely keeping it for that purpose, But for layers it's a bit heavy and impractical for me to move, though I would still recommend it as a low cost option for people with just a few birds.

So to the Eggmobile  -I cannot claim credit for the Eggmobile myself, it's a straight copy of Richard Perkins idea on the Ridgedale Farm You Tube channel. Richard's plans are intended mostly for people wishing to have a profitable business but the idea is scaleable for anyone, and has been replicated in many forms all over the world. 

I'm a huge fan of Richard Perkins and have watched his many and varied videos on You Tube about small farming. One of his best ideas is the Eggmobile which is essentially a hen house on wheels with a slatted floor. The advantage of this which you will immediately realise if you keep chickens, is that the droppings go straight through on to the grass fertilizing your land and avoiding the job of cleaning out the floor of the hen house. The house is surrounded by an electric fence, and being on large wheels the house can be towed to new area of grass on a regular basis. I think this will work for me. As all my hens will now be in the one house, I'm also investing in a new electric pop hole which will let the birds out into a protected area at dawn and lock them in at dusk. Additionally I will have rollaway nest boxes to make egg collection easier and cleaner. 

Richard's houses are made of metal sheeting for lightness, and my horse box is aluminium (under the flaking paint and rust), so quite light to move and unattractive to red mite, hopefully.

I will keep posting about the ongoing project,  as we go along, and hopefully I will prove your skeptical observations to be entirely groundless.