When thinking about a coop for our chickens to live in, we wanted something practical, non-permanent, and space-efficient. We were only planning to have 3 or 4 chickens so we didn’t want to build anything too big or expensive, but we needed to protect them from neighbours’ cats and keep them comfortable.
Looking around the net, the ‘chicken ark’ (or ‘chicken tractor’) concept seemed to best meet all our needs.
To get some idea of the number of variations on the basic chicken tractor, check out this chicken tractor gallery.
I found oodles of resources for building chicken arks – some of the better ones were these:
- Catawba Coops – urban coops for urbane chickens (lots of great photos, plus you can buy downloadable chicken ark plans)
- Building A Chicken Coop (downloadable chicken coop plans to buy)
- chicken ark plan
- ark construction photos
- the Cadillac poultry ark
- the ALS chook shed album
- BackyardChickens.com tractor photos
- Turn Old Pallets Into A Chicken Tractor (includes video)
There are commercial options, too, if you aren’t that handy or don’t have the spare time to build one yourself:
- McCallum Made Chicken Tractors – one of the best in Australia
- Forsham Cottage Arks – UK (see also this demo video)
Of course, none of these were exactly what we wanted 
. There were lots of good ideas, though, and we got a good sense of the features we wanted in our own ark. After a few nights spent researching and sketching, measuring and planning, we came up with our final design.
Stay tuned for a follow-up post later in the week…
Oh, and don’t forget – if you are looking for chickens to buy, have a look at my Where To Buy Chickens page.
Related posts
Wednesday, 19. November 2008
Nice work Darren! Lucky chooks to have such a great home! Sustainable Illawarra is running a workshop on backyard chook keeping this weekend- do you mind if we print off the photo you posted as an example of a chicken tractor?
Have you managed to find a supplier for Australorps yet?
Cheers,
Ally and Rich
http://www.happyearth.com.au
Wednesday, 19. November 2008
That picture isn’t my chicken tractor, it came from Wikipedia. It’s licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0, though, so you can use it as long as you give credit to the creator, Steven Walling (see the hover-text on the photo for how I attributed it).
I’ll email you a couple of photos of our tractor tomorrow that you can use as well. It’s useful to see a variety of different styles. I’m hoping to draw up my plans and post them here sometime soon.
Wednesday, 19. November 2008
Oh, and no, I haven’t got the Australorp yet. I’ve found a few places to get them, but none that are close-by that have them right now.
Tuesday, 13. January 2009
Thanks for the links! I’m going to pass them on to my husband, who is planning our chicken tractor at the moment.
Tuesday, 13. January 2009
Thanks Schelle. I’m going to subscribe to your blog feed and keep checking for your tractor!
I like your blog, by the way. Your profile is very similar to me – right down to being a Leo! I noticed you had some photos from 7 Mile Beach – do you live nearby? I’m in Kiama.
Friday, 11. December 2009
This is my first time on your blog and I enjoyed reading your good article.