Build your own Portable Poultry Coop!

the porta-pen lives on this quarter acre section of our yard which is the only flat section that we have here is one of the landing wheels in the downward position so the frame is sitting right on the grass the anti-digging guards are also in the deployed position which stops animals from burrowing underneath the unit the front steering system also in the landed position so the entire frame is right on the ground if you push the front lever down then the entire frame lifts up okay let's go in through the front door which is also made from hog panel and hardware cloth with the frame right on the ground someone who's about 5'8 can walk around in here without ducking here's the roosting area door same design made out of conduit and hog panel the walls are made from coroplast which is a lightweight corrugated plastic that you can get at a hardware store we mainly use tarps and rope now because you can roll up the unit on a hot day or completely cover it when it starts raining and that works quite well the roosting door also has a smaller door and that makes it easier to corral the birds into the roosting area when it's time for them to go in at night the smaller door isn't completely covered it's just hardware cloth that way there's some airflow and we can see what's going on in there hardware cloth is also wrapped on the first three feet of the frame so when the chickens are small they don't just walk right through the hog panel openings and it also keeps other birds from just walking right through into the unit and they will try all the doors lock with pins so that smart critters like raccoons can't just figure out how to get in so that's a tour of our portable poultry tractor everything is built using simple tools and parts that you could get at just about any farm supply store okay here's a demo on how one person can move the unit around the yard the anti-digging flaps swing upwards towards the frame since they have their own hinges they just sit there once they're lifted the flaps surround the entire unit so there's no chance that a predator can find a weak spot the hinge design of the anti-digging flaps also allows them to drop down on uneven ground this really worked well out here because we don't really have a lot of flat ground in fact the only flat ground we have is really what you're looking at right now we have a lot of hills in our area okay once all the flaps are up it's time to raise the landing gear pushing down on the lever raises the front wheel and then a pin locks it into position the rear landing wheels work the same way just turn the lever and the wheel lifts the frame off the ground and now the porta pen is ready to travel the bicycle wheels make it really easy to push around the yard and once you get moving it's almost effortless on flat ground because the steering wheel can turn at almost 90 degrees you can turn the unit right around in an area of about the same as its length [Music] it also doesn't matter if you're pushing the unit or pulling it by the handlebars it steers equally as well in both directions moving is a little slower with birds inside although they do tend to race towards the fresh grass they really get used to it after the first few times we move the unit [Music] once we've landed on fresh grass we reverse the procedure to park the unit rear flaps and landing wheels first the side flaps also have smaller flaps that extend out in front of the wheels there is no unprotected section around the unit that a fox or skunk can dig underneath now the front landing wheel comes down to park the frame right on the ground [Music] the front flaps also extend in two directions so that there is no exposed area around the landing wheels [Music] even if there was a small gap under the frame because of uneven ground the flaps would still stop predators from getting underneath even with 30 chickens inside it only takes us about 10 minutes to move the unit to a place where grass is greener on the other side all right let's go into the diy zone for about 15 minutes and i will show you how i made the porta pen the main structure was built using galvanized fence posts and hog panel that we purchased from our local farm supply store the hog panels shown here are 16 feet long and 53 inches wide the hog panels can be flexed into a nice round shape we learned this when we started using them in our raised beds to grow climbing plants we actually use the hog panels in a lot of places in our garden they're really useful the fence posts are 9 feet long galvanized and two and a half inches in diameter these were certainly heavy enough for the 20 foot by nine foot frame that we made for the porta pin the hog panels are also made from galvanized steel so it weathers very well the openings are about four inches by six inches we used hardware cloth on the first three feet of our frame because the small chickens could fit through these openings i found that bending the 16 foot long hog panel into a semi circle around the 9 foot galvanized fence post was just perfect just enough headroom to walk around inside i welded two of the nine foot long fence posts end to end so i would have an 18 foot long chicken tractor and here are the ends prepared for welding i have only a basic hardware store welder and hand tools but you can build a lot with these tools you do not have to have a machine shop this photo shows the two fence tubes lined up for welding end to end if you have a farmer homestead welding is a great skill to have it's easy to learn and for a couple hundred dollars you can get all the equipment you need from a department store we are constantly repairing something with the welder we don't have a garage out here so everything is built in place usually i just set things up on buckets and bring the welder over to where i need to work there really is only four welds to make on the main frame the two long pieces joined end to end and then the nine foot pieces at the front and back that join the two side rails together this photo shows the piece i'm going to cut out of the end tubing so i can join it to the side rails i just used a handheld angle grinder to cut out the round section and you can see here that it now fits against the other tubing and it's ready for welding this is the main frame for the porta pen 9 feet wide 18 feet long and i have it set up on buckets here level and ready to weld together a few people have asked if it's possible to build this frame without welding and you probably could if you could find a way to join the tubes together like this so they're secure bolting it together might actually work okay the wheels and landing gear are all made from scrap bicycle parts that i had laying around here these are 20 inch bmx wheels and they're nice and strong the lever system that moves the rear wheels up and down is made from bicycle cranks these were cut from a couple of old bikes that i found at the scrap yard you can also get these parts new from just about any bike store the rear wheels are bolted to one side of the cranks and the other side acts as a lever so when you push down on the lever the wheel comes up and lifts the frame off the ground this system really worked out well and for the front steering system once again just parts i chopped out of an old bike that i found at the scrap yard just about everything i make is built using recycled parts so i never throw any metal parts away it only took a few hours to get the basic frame set up and here it is sitting on a few blocks ready for the landing gear to be welded to the main frame i keep my welder on a cart so i can just bring it over to where i need to work the front landing gear is actually the most complicated part of the entire project but again it's just made from parts i had laying around like some bolts some extra tubing and more bicycle parts this photo shows how the front end pivots allowing the frame to drop right to the ground the lever out front gives you mechanical advantage so it's easy to lift the heavy frame it's easier to see how the front end can pivot in this photo since i have the primer on the parts since i'm working outside i usually paint as i go long so the parts don't end up all rusty and here's the rear landing wheel hardware being painted there is a chain welded to the frame and that sets the lockout height for the wheel when it's in the lifted position this can actually be adjusted if you want more clearance for uneven ground after a day of work i had a complete rolling frame and i remember there being a lot of mosquitoes out at that time so i called it a day and went back to figure out the rest of the project here's a close-up shot of one of the rear wheels and it's sitting in the parked position which places the frame right on the ground and here it is in the up position you can see that the chain is locking it out to the height that i wanted which was about six inches off the ground i use this one-inch chain a lot in the build not only for the wheel lockout but to hold the hog panel to the frame i cut the links in half and then i weld them to the galvanized tubing and that's what holds the hog panel this is a lot easier than welding the hog panel right to the frame and as you can see here it can move a little bit so less chance of a weld cracking if there's stress on the roof we hang feeders and fans from the inside and the frame is really held up well i also made the end walls from hog panel just placing them against the front of the unit and tracing around the curve so i knew what size to cut them here is one hog panel segment in place as well as the back wall i welded the hog panels together but if i did this again i would just use the chain links bending them around the joints i just continued to add hog panel segments one in front of the other along the length of the frame at the bottom the half chain links are what secure the hog panels to the galvanized tubing because of the length of the unit at 18 feet and the width of a hog panel at 53 inches it worked out perfectly that four hog panels went end to end from one end of the frame to the other i only had a partial plan on how i was going to build this so here i'm working out a door using some three-quarter inch conduit just placed at the front where i want to have a door opening the door frame is made from the thin walled conduit and the actual door is just another piece of hog panel cut to fit inside that frame hinges are once again cut in half chain links this door system worked quite well so i made the same design for the roosting area this door is about 28 inches wide and probably five and a half feet tall although we mainly use a tarp now to cover the unit originally i designed it with coroplast panels so i had to figure out a way to hold them on the inside these metal tabs will hold a piece of trim that the coroplast will get inserted into and here are the metal tabs welded to the frame at about four feet apart from each other it's hard to see in this photo but this white piece of plastic has a slot and it's made to connect two pieces of panel together the 4x8 coralplash sheets fit nicely into the slot and that's what holds them to the frame here's one of the runners in the roost area that's going to hold the choroplast against the wall the roosting area is nine feet wide and six feet long with another runner at the top the coroplast just snaps into place it buckles outwards and presses up against the walls we do get a lot of wind out here so i also used wire to secure the coroplast panels to the hog panel here is the roost area door being tested the door frame is made from conduit and the hinges are made from cut in half chain links the conduit is really light and you can purchase it at any hardware store here is a close-up of the door hinge the door is also removable all you have to do is lift it off the pin standard door hinges would also work you could just weld them directly to the conduit the roosting door was designed with another trapdoor at the bottom we were thinking it would be easier to get the birds in at night but they got into their own routine and just started to go in when the sun went down here's the locking pin for the little trapdoor i use this same design on all of the doors it's just a bolt that goes through a slot and holds the door closed and the same basic deadbolt design on the main door when you have a welder you can make just about anything from scrap metal and that's great when you want it now and you want it cheap at this point the entire frame is completed i came up with the idea for the anti-digging flaps because i had some leftover hog panel and wanted to make the entire unit self-contained so that when i moved it all of the parts would move along with it having made all of the door hinges from cut up chain links i did the same thing for the side flaps so they're hinged right to the frame when they're lifted up they just lean right up against the side wall and stay there the chain link hinge system works so well i was able to put anti-dig flaps around the entire perimeter for the area in front of the wheel i hinged one section to the other so it unfolded almost like a box here's a shot from the inside of the roost area showing how the coroplast is locked into the rail at the top this held very well although i found that the wind could blow the panels out so i ended up adding wire as well thin fence wire was used to wire the panels at the back basically sewing it around the hog panel we did end up using a tarp as well we found that the white chloroplast did get degraded in the sun the completed roosting area is 54 square feet nine feet wide six feet long strangely enough some of the birds prefer to stay in the grazing area all night around the door around the door i made the walls out of thin wood paneling and they're fastened to the hog panel using some pipe strapping that i bent around as shown here here is the completed portapen poultry tractor i painted all the joints that were welded because the galvanizing was removed by the welding process these areas would rust so i repaint them every year with the marine grade paint another eye candy shot on a nice summer day showing the anti-digging flaps deployed after three years of using this we have never lost a chicken to a predator the total internal area is 162 square feet so if you go by three square feet per chicken you can easily have 54 birds in here when we had large turkeys we had 20 of them in here the roosting area worked out quite well and it was also good during the day when there was a fight and one of the birds needed a timeout the roosting area walls are actually optional if you just wanted to use a tarp around the entire frame you could just roll it up during the day and roll it down at night after a few months we stopped using the roosting door as well since the birds just put themselves to bed when the sun went down we actually started with turkeys so i made a very strong roost bar system out of two by fours it was a good thing that i made it like this because some of the turkeys grew to be 45 pounds i made the roost bars strong enough so that i could sit on them without them bending four large turkeys sitting across from each other on one single bar is 160 pounds the only downside to this roost bar system is that it doesn't move along with the tractor when it's in motion when we had chickens a year later i made lighter weight roost bars and they were attached right to the side walls so they moved along when we moved the unit we also had an extremely wet summer one year so we tarped the entire unit ropes are crisscrossed from one side to the other so you can roll up the tarp on either side this worked out really well and would be a good option if you didn't want to bother making a roost section that was separate from the rest of the unit i also made a set of removable feeders that hooked right to the hog panel so we could place them anywhere we wanted to on the inside yep those feeders are made from plastic eaves trough when the nearest hardware store is an hour away you use what you have on hand after a few months in the poultry tractor the turkeys really started to grow we moved the tractor to fresh grass once a day when it wasn't being used for poultry we found other uses for it like extending our growing season so here we made a wall from straw bales leaving just enough room to walk from one end to the other a sheet of plastic was placed over top and two two by fours were stapled to each end so it could be held down and then rolled up if required plastic worked like a greenhouse to collect the heat from the sun and the straw became a good insulator to trap all that heat this design was more of a cold frame than a greenhouse but you could use it to extend the growing season or actually start plants in the spring the port-a-pen frame cut back on a lot of the wind and stopped any small animals from getting in and digging up bulbs we actually found that this cold frame design worked quite well so i made a trapdoor system from thin plastic sheet and this was easier to lift and because it was two pieces you could lift one side and leave the other closed the trapdoor frames are just made from lengths of two by twos and the plastic sheet is stapled right to the wood depending on the type of plant you may want the heat but not too much sun so a shade cloth placed on the outside of the frame works really well so the porta pen now becomes part acclimation center part greenhouse and part cold frame and in the fall time when the plants are all done it makes a great place to store all those pots here's another shot of the cold frame with the doors held open you can also see that we put landscaping cloth underneath and this stops the weeds from growing up into the cold frame i had quite a few chain links left over from the project so i made a set of hooks to hold the doors open we get a lot of wind out here so it's good to have these doors secure when they're lifted the portapin works so well to acclimate plants that we really expanded on that in the spring it's easy to make shelves because you can just hang them right off the hog panel bars so we ran shelves at the back and on the sides for all the plants the shade cloth lets just enough wind through and that helps the stalks grow stronger when you're acclimating your plants for transferring to the garden these are various tomato plants and it looks like they were just about ready to move here are the 20 red ranger chickens we had in our tractor last year they go in at about four to five weeks this breed is slower growing than most chickens and they stay in the tractor for about six to eight weeks we added quite a few small accessories to the porta pen as well solar lights roll-up tarp fans as well as feeders and waterers last year we also took the roost door section out and just used the tarp after the chickens are about two months old we ended up moving the porta pen once every day and you can really see the area they were on because the grass is cut right down we could advance the portapin to about 10 different places in our yard before looping back around to the original place and by then the grass was all grown back in so that's the porta pen it's been a great success and it was really worth the effort of building it soon the snow will be melting around here again and the porta pen will be back on the move if you would like to build this project from our plan check out the link thanks for watching

Channel: Atomic Zombie Extreme Machines

Views: 2,473,531

Keywords: chicken tractor, poultry tractor, portable chicken pen, portable coop, chicken coop, movable coop

Id: a6GIX1BuhtM

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2022