We looked at many designs for pastured poultry pens and finally settled on a hoop type structure made from a wooden frame and livestock panels.  We liked these best because it gives the person room to enter the pen and move around a bit.  We also felt that it gave the chickens more room and better air flow.  It was a balancing act to make the pen large enough to give the chickens space, but light enough so that we could move it each day.  Tim built a pen on wheels to make it easier for me to move.  We put the 185 Golden Ranger chicks in one pen when they were 4 weeks old.  By the end of that week, they had already outgrown it!  These birds grow fast!!

Good thing my parents were visiting and looking for ways to help.  My dad copied Tim's design and built two more pasture pens while he was here.  He said the building was simple and that the design was very easy to put together.  It's a wooden frame with wheels on one side.  Then 2 livestock panels are bent over the frame and attached with fence staples.  The back of the pen is another livestock panel and the front is a wooden frame for a door.  Chicken wire is then wrapped around the entire outside of the structure (except the door) for added protection.  We put 3 tarps over each pen with cable ties.  The bottom of the tarps are secured with bungie cords so that we can undo them and roll them up on a hot day.  Inside we hung a chain from the livestock panel to hang a feeder. 

We now have 3 pens - one has 200 future layers, which are small and fit just fine, and the other two have about 90 broilers in each.  These chickens fit fine in the pens because they only sleep in there and when they sleep they all huddle together anyway so they take up less than half of the floor space.  We lock the door at night to keep them all safe, but in the morning, we open the door and they range within an electrified net.  The broilers were able to fit through the netting for the first few days, but they grow so quickly that now they are too big for that.  I think it's a great home for them and I love to see them laying in the tall green grass or taking a dust bath in the sun.  During the mid-day heat they are usually inside the house in the shade, but otherwise they spend their time roaming around and running between the feeder and waterer.  The Golden Rangers are beautiful birds and we are even beginning to hear what sounds like the first crows from the roosters! 

The portable electric netting is large enough that we only have to move it about once a week.  The portable pen is moved within the netting every day.  It's amazing how the ground gets caked with manure inside the pen within just one day, so we move it daily to a fresh spot within the net.  We are very happy to see that the grass behind the current area has grown back quickly and is the darkest shade of green!  This fertilizer will certainly help to improve the pastures.

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