Our New Chick House

Rather than building a chick house from scratch this year, we decided to try something we had seen in a few other farming blogs. Reusing a TRAVEL TRAILER. We put the word out on Facebook that we were looking for a travel trailer that was cheap and didn't need to work for people. We were fortunate to have a few offers that fit the bill, so we picked one up from Wells. We brought the travel trailer home and then the work began.

We had picked out a spot in the yard where we wanted the trailer to be based and that had room on three sides to have different yards come out. For our meat birds this year we are using REDBROS and we wanted to make sure that they had enough yard space to simulate pasture and keep them safe from foxes and coyotes. So the trailer was put into place and adjusted so that it was level.

Here's what it looked like when we started:

The first step was to take everything out.  After everything came out we built up the floor so that it was all one level.



 
After that it was just a matter of getting the feeders and lights hooked up for the chicks. As a travel trailer is already had all the plug-ins so that made lighting easier. Had a great amount of windows and good venting with screens on a number of them.

So far the chicks are doing really well in their new house. We have held off putting in the door to their yard to minimize drafts while they are young. When they are old enough we will cut out the door openings to match up with the yards.

This was a great experience using a travel trailer as our chick coop. We can move it easily to wherever we want on the property. It was cheaper to buy an old trailer and renovate it then build a wood structure and the trailer came with all the windows and was weather-proof already.