Mobile Coop Using an Old Utility Trailer

Hey Permies!

Spring is coming and I'm building a new coop for my free range broilers.

Why a mobile coop?
- I use leased land and if I have to change sites I'd like to bring along my equipment (lesson learned the hard way)
- Lazy factor - Not having to muck out a coop
- Being able to move the chickens to new areas

So I have no welding skills at this point and pretty basic carpentry skills. I decided to purchase an old 4x4 utility trailer to build my coop on.

So here is ground zero:



Features:
- A 31" x 46" frame
- Pneumatic Tires
- Front Tires can pivot
- Ball hitch
- Pretty Beefy Frame yet surprisingly light

What I'd like to build:

I would like to build a coop that I can pull around by hand and raise 75 broilers during Spring/Summer/Fall. The birds would only roost in the coop at night and roam free during the day.

Materials I have:

- So much misc. dimensional Lumber
- Automatic Solar Chicken Door
- My Fiancé's tools (Mwuahaha)
- Pallets
- Scraps of tin roofing

Would love help designing an awesome coop that can help me with my growing composting and market garden business :)

So this will have to house 75 broilers at night at what age? I'm trying to get a sense of how much square footage you will have to have.

4 weeks to 14 weeks

OK, I'm assuming also that you are raising a breed that's more active and athletic than a Cornish Cross or similar?
Even so, that suggests you'll need at least 1 square foot/bird for night accommodation? That may require *really* good air flow if it's hot, as the birds generate a lot of heat just breathing.
At one square ft/bird x 75 birds = 75 square feet. That's not allowing for feeders or water. Do you have a plan for some sort of feeder or waterers? Were they going to be only available during the day? We have found that during the heat of the summer, the birds eat/drink more at night than during the day, but Hubby does the commercial Cornish Cross.

If you go for 75 square feet, I think you'd need to rebuild the trailer wider and longer? That would be tricky at the front due to the steering, but maybe start widening it behind the front wheels with supports, add a bunch of length between the wheels and then actually widen the rear wheel position? If not, I'm concerned that what you put on top to get enough floor space will be unstable.

Do you actually need to transport the birds in the trailer? What if you use the trailer to hold and transport some sort of origami folding structure that will protect the birds at night, but the birds will actually be on the ground? Kind of like a tent trailer idea, but just the walls?

What sort of foot-print would be ideal in your opinion? The most efficient shapes to enclose (circumference vs area) are  squares or cylinders. A square 8 ft 8 inches would give you about the 75 square feet. That's more than two 4x8 sheets of plywood laying on to of the frame you posted.

A big part of the problem with meat birds is how fast they grow. They don't need any where near that space at 4 weeks. At 4 weeks the need more protection and warmth than when they're older also. Would some sort of modular arrangement work where you add extra modules as they grow?

Granted we're dealing with the Cornish Cross, but the one year when the usual portable shelter hubby used was down for repairs, I used 3 mini shelters, each 4'x8' for about 120 birds for night-time use. In fact we moved the largest 60 birds out of the brooder first into just one shelter. The rest out a week later into a second, and when they started getting crowded at night because they'd grown, we took the smallest from the "big boy" shelter and the largest from the "little guy shelter" and put them into the 3rd mini-shelter. I was really happy with the results myself. None of these shelters have floors and we moved them to fresh grass daily.

Hey Jay,

Yes, they will be Mistral Gris, not Cornish. They are a much more active bird. This will be there shelter at night. They will have other forms of shade/rain cover, feed stations, and water.

I was thinking about expanding 3 side leaving the side closest to the steering/pulling mechanism, however I measured and I could bring that side out a foot without hindering movement.  

I was thinking of having a staggered perch system inside to help create more resting space for as they get older.

For ventilation I was thinking the floor would be completely open (chicken wire and braces) with windows on the side near the top.

I like origami idea but I'm not sure if it's in my skill range.

Ashley, we have stopped using chicken wire in favor of hardware cloth, as we can't get a heavy enough gauge of chicken wire locally. The hardware cloth is a bit trickier to work with (*don't* assume that just because it "looks" square, that it is!), but it's much more resistant to vermin!

Are they reliable night perchers? We have found with our layers, they don't tend to be happy perching at night until they're close to 5 mnths old. They like the concept of perches and play around on them in the day, but if we check on them at bedtime, the use is not consistent. That said, our adult bird perches are about 3 inches wide, so maybe the younger birds just need something smaller. Our perches are removable, so maybe I should make up some narrower ones and next time we've got young birds, I'll start them out with that set?

That's what I love about discussions like this - it gets me thinking about ways I could be tweaking my own system!

Jay Angler wrote:So this will have to house 75 broilers at night at what age? I'm trying to get a sense of how much square footage you will have to have.

Perhaps you might consider reevaluating your flock size to match your coop dimensions. That frame doesnt look stout enough for that size flock imho. I could see that frame working for two dozen or so if your land is flat.

Hey guys just wanted to update you on my project.... it's 99% done! Just need to install the solar-power automatic door!

I present you... Coop Du Jour!










So a little back story on why I wanted a mobile coop. I'm raising meat birds as part of a CSA program and they are located on leased land. This year I'm on a new property. Unfortunately I made the mistake of having a stationary coop at my last location so I could not re-use the infrastructure I already created. I took this opportunity to not only improve the design so that it require minimal mucking out but also create a coop the could be moved on a flat bed to a new location if required. Not to mention it can now be used as a coop for pasture rotation of the chickens.

I branded this coop as part of the Brand a Physical Location - PEP BB. See my sign below:



Why do we need to name it? Well because the name is awesome but also there will be two coops on the land this year; a pasture poultry coop (not named yet) and Coop Du Jour that will remain in a single pasture this year. There will be 55 birds in Coop Du Jour and 15 birds in the pasture coop in rotation with cows.


Okay so to give credit where credit is due... I made the sign, I designed the coop (will post the my drawings), sourced the second hand trailer, but my fiancee 100% built the rest. Here is a video of him giving a tour of the coop:

When I rebuilt a hay wagon I bought a shed framing kit from northern tool:
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_572_572
It made it simple and sturdy to build a coop atop the wagon.

An update on Coop du Jour!



I just wanted to share some updates on on the pros and cons of Coop Du Jour that I have learned over 2 seasons now. I have added a solar automatic door since the last photos. The photo above shows some skirting made of coffee sacks that I have since removed

Pros:
- Has great ventilation.  It provides protection from the heat and poor weather. The 'windows' on the side are mostly left open unless the weather is particularly poor. I usually face the back end of the coop to the wind.
- I have again moved locations! So I was able to bring my coop along with me instead of starting from scratch.
- Once the birds are trained to go to bed inside, the solar automatic door has made it so I don't have to check on them every night and wake up at 5am to let them out.
- It's a nice 'transition" for the chicks to be inside for a day when moving out of the brooder. They are protected and get to know their new shelter.
- Less maintenance than a stationary coop
- Birds can hide from aerial predators under the coop
- Can be moved by one person by hand on flat ground
- Could be attached to a quad for easy moving
- Has been surprisingly good in high winds!
- Fits a poultry crate inside. When I'm prepping for slaughter (to move them to the slaughter site) I crate the birds in the dark to reduce stress. I can load the birds by lifting them off the perch into the crate.
- Easy to count your flock


Cons:
- The need to pump up the tires once in a while or else the coop get's hard to move... real hard to move!
- You need two people to push up a slope ( or burly folk)
- You need to load it on a flat bed to move long distances. I designed it to meet transportation requirements when sitting on my Dad's flat bed.  
- Still requires regular maintenance to make sure droppings don't accumulate in the mesh wire.
- Ramp can by slippery when wet. Fine for birds, not for humans with rain boots!
- Design is great for 5'2" me! 6'3" hubby can't spend much time hunched over in there.
- You need to spend time training the birds to go INSIDE the coop at night, not to let them perched underneath on the frame! Usually takes me 3 tries/nights to get the stragglers in and then they get it. But it's a pain to crawl under to get them. NOTE: Some of them got lazy/too hot/too much competition when they were older and started to perched under the coop again at night! I didn't notice and this is how I lost a bunch of my birds to a predator! (on my wedding day to boot!) It's good to check once in a while they are all snug in bed.

Things I've learned:

I will be replacing the chicken wire mesh on the bottom with a thicker gauge wire with 1" squares. You can use a broom to knock and droppings that are hung up on the wire but the chicken wire has some stretch to it, which makes this process a pain!

If they are inside the coop at night it is an awesome system to prevent predation in my area. If they start sleeping under the coop and you don't notice it means you feed the local fox real well!

Birds do well when moved to the coop at 4 weeks old. I raise Mistral Gris and Western Rustics

50 birds are the max. 60 birds they start getting stressed finding a perch in the evening and start sleeping under the coop again!

In the future:

I will be mounting a solar energizer to the side and using electric poultry netting next season. I will be using my sister's land and the netting is mostly to protect against her dog (the dog won't jump the fence but if there is a bird rustling in a bush next to her... it dead!). The coop and netting will be moved daily.

Creating a small covered area off the side that can fold down. An area to place feeder so it doesn't get wet!

Thank you so much for the update and analysis, Ashley! It's really useful for helping other people plan their own builds!

We used a little flatbed trailer we got from a neighbor. The boards had rotted off, so we used a welded wire fencing roll and double layered it for flooring- attached to the trailer frame.

This coop is for our layers so it has a roll-out nesting box and roosting sticks.

The roof is slanted one direction. We attached a gutter and a flexible downspout with a little charcoal filter to a rain barrel so our girls collect their own rain for drinking water, that way we don’t have to haul water to them (for most of the year).

We live in the southeast so there are large air vents at the top of the coop covered with hardware cloth mesh, so it doesn’t get too hot inside. Also used a reflective metal roofing.

More pictures and videos over on IG @grant_cloverblossomfarmstead

Ashley Cottonwood wrote:
Cons:
- The need to pump up the tires once in a while or else the coop get's hard to move... real hard to move!
- You need two people to push up a slope ( or burly folk)
- You need to load it on a flat bed to move long distances. I designed it to meet transportation requirements when sitting on my Dad's flat bed.  
- Still requires regular maintenance to make sure droppings don't accumulate in the mesh wire.
- Ramp can by slippery when wet. Fine for birds, not for humans with rain boots!
- Design is great for 5'2" me! 6'3" hubby can't spend much time hunched over in there.
- You need to spend time training the birds to go INSIDE the coop at night, not to let them perched underneath on the frame! Usually takes me 3 tries/nights to get the stragglers in and then they get it. But it's a pain to crawl under to get them. NOTE: Some of them got lazy/too hot/too much competition when they were older and started to perched under the coop again at night! I didn't notice and this is how I lost a bunch of my birds to a predator! (on my wedding day to boot!) It's good to check once in a while they are all snug in bed.

Things I've learned:

I will be replacing the chicken wire mesh on the bottom with a thicker gauge wire with 1" squares. You can use a broom to knock and droppings that are hung up on the wire but the chicken wire has some stretch to it, which makes this process a pain!

If they are inside the coop at night it is an awesome system to prevent predation in my area. If they start sleeping under the coop and you don't notice it means you feed the local fox real well!

Birds do well when moved to the coop at 4 weeks old. I raise Mistral Gris and Western Rustics

50 birds are the max. 60 birds they start getting stressed finding a perch in the evening and start sleeping under the coop again!

In the future:

I will be mounting a solar energizer to the side and using electric poultry netting next season. I will be using my sister's land and the netting is mostly to protect against her dog (the dog won't jump the fence but if there is a bird rustling in a bush next to her... it dead!). The coop and netting will be moved daily.

Creating a small covered area off the side that can fold down. An area to place feeder so it doesn't get wet!

Ashley, how is the mobile coop working for you now after a few years?

I built our first chicken coop as a 4x8 mobile cart. Its great for summer and for the aspect of not ruining a yard like a stationary coop. But i have learned that its far from ideal for winter. I also used 1/4” hardware cloth on the floor with the hopes of poop falling through. But by the time the hens were laying eggs i knew there was no chance of that working. I covered it with cardboard and bedding and its been like that since. You mentioned using 1” hardware cloth so poop can fall through but wouldn’t that also allow weasels in and be hard for the chickens to walk on?

Nice job Ashley and hubby. I second Grant's advice about on-board water and exterior nest boxes. The change to mine from what I have pictured is that I need to make it roll-way as per Grant's best nest variety or Ridgedale's home-built wood variety. Exterior storage for scratch grains, etc is nice, too. And four wheels, not two--be very thankful you have four! I gang mine to another small livestock trailer so need to move it with a vehicle anyway.

Separate Q: wondering if anyone has experimented with making or buying flat-free tires--especially 14" diameter or larger--for their mobile coop. I agree that the PITA /Ick factor in refilling tires under a coop is often significant.

Eric Donahue wrote:When I rebuilt a hay wagon I bought a shed framing kit from northern tool:
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_572_572
It made it simple and sturdy to build a coop atop the wagon.

How easy is it to move this setup?

My chiropractor has a coop on a hay wagon and he said him and his son can move it by hand. The hay wagon Im looking at is pretty old and rusty though and I’d hate to not be able to move it easily if I build a coop on top

1" chicken wire or harware cloth would still allow weasels to get in and they will wipe out a flock in  anight. I had one get in my duck pen and killed three of my big beautiful ducks and it was chicken wire. I am installing 1/4 inch hardware cloth and put a door on their hut for nightime so they are protected from the weasels and I had rats that also killed my chickens at one point killed over 200 of them with traps. Never had a rat in my life and before I realized what was happening was overrun with them and called exterminator and he said they would only deal with poioning them which I would not allow, because the dead rats would poison the wildlife and my other birds if they ate them. So where they are at night is solid cement floor and they are safe when they sleep. the ducks have a dirt floor and chicken wire walls  and a box they go into at night with a 1.4 inch hardware framed door locked at night. Hope this helps dont want you to lose what you worked so hard for.