Moving House
All our hen houses are mobile and the idea of this is to be able to move them between flocks so the new flock has a completely fresh field with new grass and vegetation to range out on.
Fresh Fields and Healthy Flocks
It also means we can clean up the manure from under the shed and re-seed certain areas. The field then has a break from chickens so there is no danger of carrying any harmful bugs across to the next flock.
This sounds easy, but the sheds are very big lumps of metal and although they’re designed to be dragged along on skids, it requires an awful lot of horse (tractor) power and often some extra bits of kit and head scratching.
Through the years we have had various disasters resulting in bent and broken kit but we have refined our system and, now, moving usually goes OK. The weather in the winter does not always play ball so we try and organise as many moves as possible for the drier months and give ourselves as much time as possible.
This in turn compromises how many hens we can have at any one time on the farm as we can’t “turn” the sheds around so they are ready for a new flock as quickly as we would like!
