One observation I’ve made
about our new DIY
chicken carrier is that
they seemed more calm compared to transporting
chickens in a cage made entirely of wire mesh.
I suspect the partial
darkness inside the trunk had a calming effect.
Total time on the project was
less than a half hour and that includes hunting down the metal trunk
amongst our barn clutter.
If you decide to bring
home some new hens,
you’ll need to figure out a cage to transport them in. Our recent
visit to the local animal
swap turned up a
slew of options, and I thought you might like a photo tour to get your
creative juices flowing.
A lot of the chickens
were being moved around in storebought wire crates. The homemade
version shown in the first photo looked like it might be a cheaper
alternative, and Mark built our
chicken carrier for
the price of a couple of screws. In a pinch, you can also just
poke a few air holes in a cardboard box and cram your chickens inside.
Old-fashioned methods of
transporting chickens include tying their legs
together and/or cramming them in a gunny sack. Those techniques
probably work, but are questionably humane.
The main factors to
consider when moving chickens are their comfort and your comfort.
In respect to the latter, many people choose to haul poultry in the bed
of a pickup truck. However, I try to focus more on the comfort of
the chicken, so I keep the flock inside the vehicle, laying down
newspapers if necessary to keep manure from ruining upholstry.
I’ve also noticed that a
mostly enclosed space keeps the traveling poultry calmer than an open
cage. Do be sure to include vents to keep your chickens from
suffocating, though.
No matter how you
transport them, being moved around is traumatic for hens. They
often stop laying for a week or more after changing location,
especially if you carry them long distances.
The hour’s drive from
the animal swap to our house (and the bouncing ride back to our core
homestead in the golf cart) didn’t seem to phase our Rhode Island Reds,
though. They’ve been averaging two eggs a day between the three
of them ever since they moved in. And, yes, those eggs did turn
bright orange within a week of having access to fine pasture.
Mark was surprised at how
easily I gave in and let him order a kit for a dome-like
chicken coop.
What he didn’t know is that I was envisioning filling in all those
triangles with wattle and daub.
Wattle and daub is of
those ancient building techniques that is completely green — you can
often make structures out of all on-farm materials, and when their life
ends, they can just rot down in the compost pile. Specifically,
wattle and daub fills the walls between structural timbers with a woven
mesh of flexible branches (like a basket) plastered with mud, then
often covers that with a coat of limewash.
Although wattle and daub
walls won’t last forever, if you provide a large roof overhang and some
sort of foundation to keep them dry, they can go a good distance.
We even have an intern at the moment to make all
the labor realistic. The primary trouble is…we don’t have clay.
You’d think we do, from the
wet mess we slog through during the winter, but our soil is actually
primarily silt, which doesn’t do the same job. Quality daub is
made by mixing 70% clay with 30% sand, then adding the same amount (by
weight) of chopped straw. The straw may be left out in cold and
wet climates, but clay is an integral component no matter where you
are. A jar
test is a simple way to determine the composition of your soil, and
in our case, even the “clay” deposit down by the creek turns out to be
mostly silt.
Mark wants to go
entirely traditional and just coat the walls of the new coop with metal
siding, but I haven’t given up quite yet. I’ve got a couple of
other places I want to test for clay, and I suspect there are also some
other green building techniques that would work well with
triangles. Ideas?