Spent the last two days adapting, improvising, and overcoming (in a heated garage with some power tools).
Issue: The current chicken coop is a static structure located feet from the barn. The chickens obliterate anything approaching the color red or green within a day of it sprouting. They have a fondness for pooping in the barn and laying eggs anywhere where more than four leaves have gathered. This is not ideal.
Discussion: Things that are less than awesome about the current chicken situation include: mucking out of the static chicken coop. With so many awesome places to lay eggs in the barn, it could be years before we discover all the places that they have. The coop's current position allows them access to eat any cash crops they can get to which is all but one of our fields.
Recommendation: A way to FOCUS the power and energy of the chicken into an area that suited both them and us would be ideal.
I present to you, the C-331 ChickenShack:
Given a set of pallet forks for the tractor, and a solar charged electric poultry netting rig, this setup allows us to move the flock around the farm to focus their chicken-powers in areas that suit both them and us. In the Spring the C-331 will follow the cattle around and partake in the goodness that pastures exploding into life will produce. In the Summer, the C-331 can be placed into areas where early crops had grown and already been harvested where the chickens can clean any beds of bugs that might have popped up. In the fall and early winter the C-331 can be placed into the orchard and harvest fields to clear it of fallen fruit and seed heads. In the winter, we'll move them back into their 'winter lodging' seen here (the one on the left):
Here's a pic of the inside:
It's still a prototype so there's a bunch of tweaks to be made but I think it's a step in the right direction and the chickens already seem to like it. Keep an eye out for future updates on how we tweak the system and the results for better or for worse.
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