The Advantages of a Chicken Ark

In today’s green society, many people have decided to begin using their large back yards to cultivate their own organic food sources by planting gardens or raising chickens. This is an excellent idea if you have the space. There is certainly nothing like harvesting your own vegetables for dinner or knowing absolutely that your eggs are fresh and that they come from healthy happy birds.

Once you’ve made the decision to raise hens in your yard, one of the first things you will need to decide is how you will house them. If you are planning on raising a large number of chickens, then a more permanent hen house may be your best bet for housing. These can be built to specifications that will allow for automatic watering and feeding as well as other conveniences while containing more birds.

However, if you don’t intend to have an over abundance of hens, then the chicken ark or chicken tractor might be a much better fit for your needs. A chicken ark is a portable enclosure that sits on the ground, using the ground as the natural floor of the pen. These usually have a nesting area built into their structure and often have wheels at one end and handles at the other so that they can be moved about the yard easily.

Click Here for information on how to build a Chicken Ark!

The advantage of using the natural ground as the floor of the enclosure is that the chickens will be able to forage for weeds, insects and worms in the ground as they would do naturally. This supplements their diets and lowers the feed costs that you will have for them. Also, using the ground as the floor eliminates the need for cleaning as long as you move the location of the chicken ark from time to time to different places in the yard. As the pen is moved to a new place, the droppings in the previous location will disappear without any added work on your part.

This is one of the reasons that chicken arks are such an ecologically sound choice. As the birds work the ground beneath the pen, depleting the natural resources there, they also fertilize the ground so that when the pen is moved to a new location, the last location will be ready to begin regenerating. It creates a perfect balance that benefits the owner and the chickens while keeping the whole yard in working order. Cycling the location of the ark throughout your land space is easy and efficient, taking care of many bird keeping concerns all at once.

What more could you ask for? A self cleaning, safe, and nutritive environment seems to cover all the bases required to make a pleasant home for your chickens. Providing them with an enclosure that keeps them safe from predators and yet allows them to be in the fresh air and forage for their own bits of food as they are keen to do is the best way to raise happy and healthy chickens.

If you’re ready to build a chicken ark or chicken cooop, check out these complete design plans.