I need a portable perch - not as easy as it sounds?

Chickens like need perches.

Chickens like need perches that are stable, an appropriate height, reasonable dimensions, and enough space for the flock.

Humans have their own likes and needs, and *I* needed Hubby's group of 7 layers that were part of a flock that malfunctioned after being harassed by an owl, out of my mini-hoop, so my mother duck could use it with her ducklings.

The only port left is a portable shelter in dire need of major renos, that wasn't intended for chickens and had no perch. So I needed a light weight, stable, portable perch.

Off to the bamboo graveyard:



Next up, fake a plan:



The first problem: I need 5 hands. Hubby's car ramps helped me out.

The Right leg in the picture is bolted to the scrap of pallet wood with 2 bolts. The Left leg is only bolted with one, allowing it to pivot closed if I need to move the perch through the narrow shelter Human Door.



The second problem: We have a pretty good selection of stainless 1/4 20 hardware, but we didn't have long enough bolts to stabilize the largest diameter of bamboo that I choose for the "perch" part of the project. However, I was quite sure we'd bought some threaded rod. This was the only part of the project Hubby had to help me with. He'd buried his little cut-off saw inaccessible to me, and all his grinders are too large for my small hands to use safely, so he had to cut me two pieces of threaded rod.
However, I needed to use Nylock nuts so nothing would come loose. If you've ever tried putting Nylocks on both ends of a piece of threaded rod, you probably would prefer not to have to try that again. Luckily, the bin had lots of regular nuts as well, so I used two as "jam" nuts while I installed the first Nylock.



Here's the threaded rod attaching the perch to the stationary leg.



However, this is still not a stable structure. What little stability is there is dependent on the bolts, not good design. So the next step was to install cedar lath cross braces. Yeah for triangles!



Of course, the most important step of a project like this is the testing stage:



The birds like it. It's just short enough that I can move it to the "front" of the shelter, move the nest box and water bucket to under it, pull the shelter forward most of a move, move the perch etc onto the fresh grass, move the shelter the rest of the way, then put everything where it belongs while the chickens search the fresh ground for bugs and the best grass/forb to munch. This is still more work than I'd prefer. If the shelter was in better shape, theoretically, the nest box can be hung on chains and I do have some pop-bottle style waterers but they will add weight to a shelter that's already on the heavy side for me to move, and which could end up causing damage.

Working with bamboo is tricky. I don't have tools for easily clamping a round object to a flat one, let alone 2 round objects to each other. However, I grow my own bamboo, and it's very light weight for its strength. Every time I build with it, I learn more about how to do so effectively.

I'm calling this one a win!

I agree that is a winner!  Especially because the chickens like it.

Now I have a problem!

The first one was so successful, I need a second one.

I started a thread about Advanced Chicken Wrangling . Those chicks are 4 weeks old now. They've outgrown their cardboard box and bamboo jungle gym I built them. Now a nice Egg Customer of ours, offered to come and replace the door on the coop run so I can actually get them outside. He did an awesome job and I just had too many other crises to deal with that one myself.

While he was building the new door, I did some run housekeeping and added an entire garbage can of chipped and shredded tree bits for them to spread out and hunt through. I then excavated my "flat rock pile" and managed to load four in the trailer to reinforce one half the west edge of the run - more edges will need that treatment, but at least I got the process started, and #2 Son helped unload the 4 rocks and got them into the run as they were too heavy for me to get that far.

That's when I realized, what these chicks and mom are *really* going to need soon is a perch. At least now I already know about how to build it, and that it will work, so now I just have to duplicate it!

Great idea!

When I had chickens we had built a coop out of pallets. To make it easier to clean we lined the walls with washable wallboard and I put cheap Dollar Store peel and stick vinyl tile on the floor. Then I made a perch out of 2x4's in a configuration with two perching rails. I made the height the minimum for perching so there was less incidence of bumble foot from jumping down from great heights and the small Bantams could hop up easily.  I put the perches flat so that there was a wide space for them to really cover their feet well in the winter to avoid frostbitten toes. It was built like a stand, so it was very easy at cleaning time to just pull it out, rake out the wood shavings, wash down the walls and floors, put it back in, fresh shavings and DONE. Got it down to being able to clean the coop in less than an hour. And the chickens were very happy with it!

Connie Zoeller wrote:... It was built like a stand, so it was very easy at cleaning time to just pull it out, rake out the wood shavings, wash down the walls and floors, put it back in, fresh shavings and DONE...

Yes! I'm a firm believer in being able to mover everything out of a coop for easy cleaning.

Sun-sterilization of perches can help if you have a mite problem show up, which can happen from wild birds. That's easy to do if the infrastructure is easy to move!

Nice looking coop!

When we needed to replace the perches in our chicken coop, I took the lazy option and repurposed a children's climbing frame.

Yours took much more thought, hard work and ingenuity.

I raise my hat to you!

I wish I had seen this thread earlier.  Great ideas.  We just sacrificed a bunch of old saw horses to the chickens.  Somehow we got more chooks than perch space this year.  I think we didn't calculate the larger breed's needs.

In the yard, we took two shipping palettes (the long ones) and nailed them together.  They sit on the rungs and use it for shelter against the sky monsters.  But not sure how portable that would be.