Build an Affordable, Portable and Predator-Proof Chicken Coop

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A portable coop allows you to move your chickens to new “pasture” daily. Compared with industrial eggs, eggs from hens allowed to feed on pasture contain four times more vitamin D, three times more vitamin E and seven times more beta carotene. ILLUSTRATION: KEITH WARD

One of the biggest challenges in keeping chickens is figuring out how to build a chicken coop and pen that will allow your birds to forage while also keeping them safe from predators. Letting the birds roam and consume a diverse diet results in eggs and meat with terrific flavor and nutrition. The downside of allowing chickens to free-range is that predators will almost always discover your flock and kill some birds. Sometimes you may lose just one bird; other times you’ll experience heavy losses in just one attack. Even in urban areas, foxes, raccoons and hawks can kill your chickens, and roaming dogs can be a problem in urban and rural areas.

Portable chicken coops (also called “pasture pens”) are a good solution, especially if you keep only a few hens. You can keep your birds inside a movable chicken coop that has an open bottom so the birds can feed on grass and insects. Each day, move the pen onto a fresh section of your lawn, garden or pasture. When you’re working outdoors and your presence will deter predators, you can let your birds out of the coop to range. They will naturally return to the coop at dusk to roost, or, if you need to get them inside before dusk, you can easily train them to run into the coop by giving them treats.

For several years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been working to develop inexpensive chicken coop plans for folks who want to keep just a few hens or raise a few meat birds. Our goal has been a small, secure, low-cost, DIY, portable chicken coop for use in gardens and backyards. We wanted a coop that would allow the birds to forage on pasture or fertilize garden beds while still keeping them safe from predators. The lightweight, inexpensive, wire-mesh pens we wrote about in the 2007 Portable Chicken Mini-Coop Plan were working well until we discovered a large dog could smash an unreinforced wire unit and kill the hens inside. These ultra-lightweight pens still work great inside a fenced garden or yard where dogs can’t get to them, but for a coop to use in unfenced areas, we’ve developed the improved design shown above, which features a steel frame to support the wire mesh. The coop is still portable, but the frame makes it much more predator-proof. We’re calling it MOTHER’s Mighty Chicken-Mobile, and it’s intended to house three to four hens. Nighttime shelter inside the coop can be a lightweight plastic storage tub, a doghouse or a “room” made from corrugated plastic. (To see an animation of how the coop comes together, view the video at left in the “Related Content” box. To view the video in full screen, click on the second icon from the right at the bottom of the video box.)