Of the million broiler pens designs out there- we submit one more.After tearing up the lawn and installing a garden, and letting the two laying hens we brought from Bend free range in the backyard, we were the talk of the neighborhood once again as we built the movable coop in the front yard then carried it to the backyard to fill with the chicks. Those are the same chicks we have been brooding on the back deck. The grapevine is a buzzing.The pen is light, easy to move, and has a built in water reservoir that holds more than two gallons. After hours of searching, more ideas sketched and tossed, the J-man came up with this design that took about two hours to construct once all the pieces and parts were collected. The design is elegant and simple.
The walls are high as the original design was for turkeys. The horizontal supports are 1 1/2″ PVC with slip-T’s and vertical PVC’s of the same diameter for added stability. The reservoir is made of a 3″ PVC which is designed as a 10′ cross member. It is also slightly elevated providing a slant to the tarp that shades the chicks and will shed any rain or sprinkler moisture. The walls are plastic chicken netting that is lashed to the PVC pipes with Zipties at the top and bottom and vertical stays.It measures 10’X12′ and houses 70+ three-week-old chicks. Tomorrow we plan to box the chicks, trailer the coop and set it up once more on a friends pasture in Bend. The chicks are almost fully feathered and eagerly scratch through pulled weeds and grass clippings that we’ve added to the pen. They are going to love the pasture.The girls wanted to name all the chicks when we pulled them from the shipping box, but to remind them of the chicks’ purpose, we limited them to only chicken dish names. So there’s Fricassee, Wednesday Night, Thursday Night, Soup, Fajita, Fried, Hot Wings, and Honey Wings, and Buffalo Wings among the feathered masses.
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