Are Portable Chicken Tractors Superior to Hen Houses?
You have chosen to keep chickens to provide freshly grown eggs for the family. If you would like to raise poultry productively you should construct some poultry housing. But what variety of housing will ideally suit you? Previous to buying lumber, chicken wire, and nails to manufacture your chicken coops or chicken arks, you should educate yourself on the differences between them. Both types of poultry housing have distinct advantages, but it's likely that only one type will ideally work in your particular situation. You certainly don't want to erect a hen house and then learn later that you should have constructed a chicken ark. The terms chicken coop, chicken ark, and hen house are used by lots of backyard chicken farmers to describe the same thing. Even though hen houses and chicken coops are indistinguishable, a chicken ark, additionally known as a chicken tractor, is a variety of housing different from the others. Chicken coops are built and placed in a stationary (permanent) location. Once they are constructed, they will forever remain in the same place. A chicken ark, on the other hand, is a portable hen house. It can be moved to another place in the backyard at any time.The Benefits for building a Chicken ArkBecause chicken arks are smaller in size they can be quite economical and simple to construct. You can completely make a chicken tractor in a solitary day for very little expense. However, the main benefit is that it's portable. With portability come a great number of advantages. Seeing as arks utilize the ground as their flooring your flock of chickens can hunt and peck for a portion of their own diet. This will provide them with delicious and nutritious live food that they just can't get in a pre-bought feed, helping them to stay happier and healthier. It can also drop your feed expenditures. When the current area has been picked clean of plants, grasses, and insects, it's a simple task to transfer the ark to a brand new area possessing new succulent plants, grasses, and insect life. Cleaning up is also effortless because there isn't any cleanup. When you drag the housing to a different spot nature will clean up the old spot for you.The Benefits of manufacturing Hen Houses If you are raising a dozen or more pullets you will most likely want to manufacture hen houses. These can be larger houses than arks and are able to maintain many more hens. If you would like to turn out a large amount of eggs a hen house will allow you to do so.If constructed correctly you will be able to do away with a large amount of extra work on your part. Positioning it next to a water faucet will allow you to add an automated watering system, eliminating the job of giving them fresh water each day. With an ark, the water fountain will ideally be changed each day. The poultry feeders can be much bigger, so you can often go days or weeks without any need to add feed. Nesting boxes can be positioned to allow trouble-free gathering of eggs. It's even feasible to erect poultry housing that will allow you to collect eggs from the outside of the coop. Moreover, you will not need to transport it to new locations as you will with an ark. An ark will utilize the ground as the flooring, you must move the poultry feeders and water fountains independently from the poultry housing itself. It's not hard to do, but it's something that does not need to be performed with permanent houses. You may possibly think that cleanup would be a huge chore with a bigger poultry house, but building a chicken coop a foot or two off the ground, using chicken wire as the flooring, will remove the necessity of cleanup. All of the chicken droppings will fall below the house, so the inner area will stay clean.Both chicken coops and chicken arks have own unique advantages and disadvantages. An ark will be less costly and less time-consuming to erect, supply real living food to the hens, and eliminate cleanup. A bigger hen house will allow the hens extra space, save you time with watering and feeding, and if constructed appropriately, eliminate the job of cleaning.
Source...