Saucy Pet

Posts Tagged ‘chicken ark’

Chicken arks provide new ground for you chickens every time you move them – so do you still need to add grit to their feed? Will they need supplements as well?

These are some of the top questions about chicken arks. Chicken arks are simple triangular shapes that have a covered roosting space and nesting box at one end attached to a wire-covered run. This gives the hens an integral run and the ark is portable, so your chickens are protected from predators and they get new ground every day – a sort of enclosed free-range arrangement.

So the answer to the question is that if your chickens are on new ground every single day, the ground has plenty of plant life for them to forage on and gives them access to gritty or stony soil, this may be fine – and all your chickens will need is some additional calcium to ensure you get good strong eggshells.

Grit is an important element in their diet, as chickens need grit to grind up their food. Chickens, like many birds, swallow their food whole. The grubs and insects, weeds and grass that they eat pass quickly into the crop an then on to a stomach that has digestive enzymes that start to break the food down. The next organ is the gizzard which is tough and muscular. What happens is that the bits of grit and small stones that chickens scratch up help grind the food up in the gizzard.

It’s easy enough to collect some additonal tny stones and put them in the run, if the ground looks too smooth. They love grit, so will eagerly snap it up. They should be tiny stones and hard gritty soil – and they’ll enjoy some more sandy soil to have dust baths in.

For a small number of hens a chicken ark can be a good solution and easily built from plans. If you move the ark every day, your chickens will not scratch the ground clean. You can let your chickens clear patches of ground completely, or you can let them fertilize areas by movng them on quickly!

Clear chicken ark plans and one free day is all you need for happy hens, protected but ranging free.

Chickens live in flocks as they are social animals. They naturally like to roam free, too. So keeping pet chickens in a confined space is far from ideal. Pet chickens can have new ground to scratch with a chicken ark type hen house.
Chicken arks give hens access to new grazing, as they are moved frequently, allowing the hens to peck and gaze grubs and grass. Your garden is protected from scavenging chickens, and they are protected from over-enthusiatic children.
You children will soon become adept at picking the hens up and will be able to explain to their friends how to approach them. A chicken ark lets children look at the chickens closely, but keeps the hens enclosed.
Pet chickens have a routine, so children will develop an understanding of what is needed and when. Collecting eggs from the nesting part of the chicken ark is an enjoyable activity, but children will also enjoy the responsibility of feeding and may even help with cleaning.
If handled gently, most chicken breeds are perfectly safe to handle. The best plan if you start with laying chickens, is to let them out of the ark for a few hours a day and get used to children, and get the children used to them.
If you start with chicks, children can get familiar with them as they grow, and can handle them if they are well supervised, from a relatively early age.
If you want just a few pet chickens, chicken arks work well as they are small and easy to manage. Children will learn how to treat each bird, and notice the difference in their habits and personalities.

Layers when they first begin laying may start to eat the eggs. You may be able to retrain them, but some chickens can be hard to cure.

When an egg has been dropped or trodden on, a chicken may eat it. Hens forage, so are always interested in something new. Sometimes they’ll eat the shell, other times they’ll leave it. But once they’ve tasted an egg, it can be hard habit to break.

Preventative measures.

Make sure your nest boxes in your chicken ark or hen house have a lip on the bottom of the front so it’s hard to kick eggs out accidentally. Your nestboxes should have enough room for the chicken to step around without damaging the eggs.

Thick bedding in the nestboxes will cushio the eggs.

If shells are thin, eggs are more easily broken. Adequate oyster shell will help develop harder and thicker shells.

If the chickens can roam free so they have more interest, or you have a chicken ark you can move around, they will have more interest and are less likely to get bored.

Ideas for solutions when your chickens are already eating eggs

Collect often. The longer an egg sits, the more likely it will get eaten.
Your hens may all lay at the same time, so collect the eggs as soon as they’ve finished. If they lay throughout the day, check more frequently during the day for a while.

This may break the cycle and you can also keep them in a chicken ark.

Other solutions

You could try putting golf balls in the nesting boxes. The theory is that a few pecks on a hard ball will discourage them, so they’ll lose interest and leave the eggs alone.

Wooden eggs look more like the real think, so make work too.

Another thing to try is to remove an egg and heavily coat it with petroleum jelly and then replace it. When the hen pecks at it, she gets a beak full of goop.

Boredom can be as much a cause of egg pecking as it is of pecking other chickens. Letting them free range or putting them in a chicken ark can work

You may be able to identify one chicken who is the culprit and separate her before she teaches the others.

This is where a chicken ark can be useful, so you can house her separately for a while. She will have interest from being moved around regularly, and if you collect the eggs frequently as well, you may break her of the habit.

Free range, that was the idea when I bought my first chickens. So much of the appeal of chickens is watching them wander around, pecking and scratching. It didn’t work out quite like that. They started free ranging over to the neighbor’s yard, even getting on their bird table where they enjoyed the plump sunflower seeds.

A good solution was a moveable chicken coop. There would be new ground for them every day, but I wouldn’t have to rescue them from the neighbors’. While I was outside I could let them out for a bit. This was the ideal – a freestanding chicken ark that gave the hens shelter at night and alowed them freedom to graze a new part of the yard every time I moved it.

Trouble was, all the lovely chicken arks I came across were very costly. The shipping on them added even more. So I researched plans for chicken arks. They needed to be simple (I’m no carpenter) and with clear instructions. Happily I found some great chicken ark plans, which also had good instructions and sets of plans for more ambitious hen houses I can move on to, when my brood expands.

There are cutting plans and construction diagrams taking me through the process, and an added bonus of loads of useful chicken keeping information. All we need for plans and keeping chickens is in this one book.

Now I have a handsome chicken ark with handles at each end so I can move it around. The girls are very happy. The roosting area and nest box ae covered to provide shelter, and the run is open so the chickens can peck around. I can put the chicken ark anywhere in my yard that I want cleared, and the neighbor’s bird table is back attracting wild birds, not backyard hens.

Now I’m planning to add to the flock. Should it be the simple hen house next, or shall I go the whole way and build the ultimate chicken coop, with a ridged roof and nestboxes down each side and a large run? It does look splendid, and I feel confident that with the chicken ark plans, I could make it quite easily.

Where chicken predators are common, a chicken ark allows them to have new grazing, but keeps them safe as well.

The chicken ark is designed to be moved around, giving chickens new ground to forage and browse on, but as the run is enclosed, it keeps them safe. The roosting and nesting area is integral to the chicken ark so they have a sheltered area for night time. If any predator has a go at getting into the run, it can’t reach the chickens.

Your chickens should be fine when you’re available, just put them in the run if you pop out.

The roosting space is in the pointed part of the ark, in the bigger, taller types, with the open run below. This provides an enclosed run that is also shaded from the sun and provides some shelter in wet weather.

The simple chicken ark has encloded roosting at nesting at one end, then a triangular section run at the other end. This chicken ark design means the run is open to the elements – so the chickens get sun wind and rain, just like the free range outdoors. Your eggs will have all the nutritional value of free range eggs, and your chickens will be safe.

Arks must be moved frquently – often every day.

They can be sited on any sort of ground where chickens can hunt for grubs and bugs or eat the grass or weeds.their diet will consist of a wide varity of foods, so the eggs will have more flavor.

Chicken can be used to hlep clear rougher areas, they will happily remove dead and flopping growth in the fall and can of course, be used to give your lawn some extra fertilizer. The droppings provide instant fertilizer, but won’t build up as you’ll be moving the ark regularly.

The ‘run at the side’ type of chicken ark tends to be lighter and so easier to move, with the roosting part at ground level. Easy to build, this is a very good design if you are new to keeping chickens.

Building your own chicken ark should result in an attractive, well-designed hen house, which will last for years, give you and your hens a lot of pleasure – and save you a considerable amount.

Keeping chickens is quite straightforward and they are entertaining creatures. They are rewarding to keep as they’ll entertain you with their clucking around, re-arranging the flooring material in their run and taking dustbaths. In the middle of winter there is less light, so you will get few eggs, otherwise you should get eggs every day. For about 24 eggs a week, 4 chickens will be fine.

Chickens prefer somewhere dry to sleep and nestboxes mean you will generally find the eggs, as they can lay in out of the way corners if you’re ot careful. Moveable chicken arks and simple hen houses are straightforward to build from plans. Chickens can be quite self sufficient if left to roam around, finding worms, grubs and insects and eating grass and weeds. Chickens that feed naturally produce eggs with lovely deep yellow yolks.

Apart form a little corn as a treat, the essential food is layers pellets, possibly with some additinal grit to ensure the eggshells form properly. Kitchen scraps can be used too.

Chickens are very interesting animals, and particularly enjoy taking a bath in dry soil or sand, fluffing up their feathers and wriggling around to help get rid of mites and clean their feathers. If it’s sunny, you’ll often find them lying on their sides with wings oustretched to catch the warmth.

If you have three birds, two may pick on the third as they establish a pecking order, so four is often a better number.

Housing chickens is quite straightforward, a large rabbit hutch will take one or two, but it should be raised off the ground – they can manage a small ladder, to keep it dry. You can make chicken arks (the triangular section chicken coops that you move around) very easily. This clear book with three sets of chicken coop plans also has comprehensive information on keeping cickens. It also has plans for a larger hen house and run – and if you’re really serious a large chicken coop for around 15 birds.

Chickens will lay until they are aged four or five chickens but can live to a ripe old age of 15. You can train chickens to recognize a routine like feeding times, and when you put them in their coop for the night, you may find they are there before you.

Chickens will peck and scratch freely if you let them out, so you might decide to keep them in a run at least part of the day, so your plants don’t get too badly nibbled. The chicken ark is a triangular shaped chicken coop (sometimes known as a chicken tractor), which you move around, giving the hens fresh ground.

Chickens need daylight to produce eggs, so you will need to make sure they are let out into their run early in the morning.

Mary Marshall