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Aloha
I'm curious to know what chicken coops, houses, tractors, etc other punawebbers are using to shelter their foul.
Do you let them free range?
Do you give them a covered area?
Are they locked up?
What do you give them to nest in?
Please share any chicken related info and discussion. Especially anything puna specific to sheltering chickens
Mahalo
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On Orchidland Dr past the mailboxes there seems to be chicken related activity with a lot of little A frame shaped shelters. Are those nesting places for free range chickens? Do you know the place I am describing Jim?
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Fighting chickens. Those A frames are something to look out for on Google earth when shopping for land...
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For real? They are out there in front of God and everybody. I had no clue.
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I've seen those before Susan, but not the specific one you mention on orchidland drive.
I've also heard those are for raising cocks to fight.
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This is what I came up with. It's sense had wheels added to the back to legs so I can move it around the yard. I use the produce boxes found at Cost U Less (they have a wax type covering so last a little longer) with some bedding for lay boxes. Since there is very little soil where I'm at (39th and Laniuma) I use 1 gallon planting pots (the cheap black ones) with cement and either a wood stick or inexpensive fence pole. I then set out a 3' fence line around the area I want the chickens to fertilize. I clip the wings of the chickens plus keep a feeder and water in the enclosure so they have little desire to leave. Let them stay in an area for 3 or 4 months and then move to a fresh area (plant the area they left).
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I like that Daniel. I wanted to do a paddock system and I wanted to try chicken tractors so trying it your way sounds like a good method for using the chickens to help fertilize the area to fence in paddocks.
It seemed like doing either tractors or paddocks would be to expensive but I spend a bit of time in Home Depot myself and from those pictures you linked it looks like a reasonable cost
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Yes, less than $200 s all new lumber and is standing up well to the weather (exposed to rain/sun/rain/sun/rain/sun/rain - and that's just the AM in Orchidland, has to go through the PM too
).
The only thing I would do different is instead of plywood as the floor on the inside use heavy guage wire fencing. My first group of chickens all sat on the roost in the front, but this latest batch is roosting inside as well and making a mess. It's easy to move around by one person and the roost seems to centralize the fertilizer to that area (so you can move the tractor around your area a few times in that 3-4 month period.
Oh I looked at those pictures again (I made this last year). I've replaced the 1x2 roost runners with 2x4. 1x2's didn't stand up to overfed chickens bouncing on them or using the roost as a handle to move it around.
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Wow, this looks awesome! Great design.
