Cut Your Chicken Catch Time In Half!

written by

posted on

October 21, 2025

Over the last 8 years we have systematically implemented a variety of changes to our chicken catch protocol. Taken together they have dramatically reduced the unpleasantness of the job, the amount of extremely difficult physical labor and the total man hours involved (.48 minutes per bird to .21 minutes per bird).

I took a quick video to show how what it looks like. Check it out and see if you can cut your man hours to catch birds in half as well!

The changes can be broken down into a few key principles of our refined chicken catch program.

First - Never Lift a full chicken crate. - Yes as impossible as that seems. Here me out.

We created special steel pallets that hold 12 chicken crates (two stacks of six) and can be moved with skid/tractor forks. The pallet has a special groove for attaching a heavy duty ratchet strap so the crates (empty or full) do not tip off and a raised edge so they do not slide off. This eliminated moving the chicken crates by hand.

We use a skid/tractor to set the steel pallet of crates right next to the birds we will be catching (more on that in a second) and then slide off the empty crates in stacks leaving only the bottom one on the pallet. We open those crates and then leg catch 5 birds at a time and place them in the empty crate (on the pallet) after two trips the crate is full and a new empty one is placed on top.

Second - Catch in the open air.

A game changer for us was when we started moving the chicken houses off of the birds prior to catch. Its rather easy we simply pull them with someone inside keeping the birds from following. We surround the birds on three sides with portable migration fencing so they can't run away and then start setting the crate stacks right next to the birds on the open side of the fencing.

Now there are no feedlines or water lines in the way, no doorway posts to step over (or wait for other team members to get through. It is also way less dusty and much cooler. Oh and the distance we have to walk from picking up the birds to the empty crate pallet is only a few feet instead of half the length of a chicken coop.

Today a 5 man crew (one man is my 7&8 year old sons and another is a homeschool teen) catch 2100 birds from start to finish (including the tractor/skid loading on the trailer and strapping down. In an hour and a half.

Bird loading used to be dreaded - now its a quick streamlined part of farm operations.

Roosts and Nest Box Setup In The Best Chicken Hoop!

The Best Chicken Hoop works great for laying hens but we always get the question "How do you set up roosts and nesting boxes?"The answer is simple and there are actually several ways we have done it. None of which require setting up a grid of rails 1 ft off the ground like a high school football high knee experiment haha! The first setup and the one I prefer is to hang the nest boxes in the center of the hoop and then to use small sections of pipe or c channel to create a half " V" roost coming off of the side of the hoop. To hang the boxes, we make a wooden frame out of 2x4s (the picture shows metal which we have since replaced) and hang it with cable to each arch (which is easily able to support the weight). This frame makes mounting the boxes easy and allows the bottom of the frame to support the bottom of the box. As an added bonus with this system the hanging nest boxes in the center automatically level so if you are running on uneven ground (like us) you don't have to worry about your eggs bunching in the roll out boxes. This method is also very compatible with our 5.0 automated feed lines and is how we have all of our hen hoops set up. The second method is to hang the nest boxes down the side walls and put roost bars down the middle. This photo came courtesy of Jonathan Denlinger one of our hen production partners. He has nice level ground so uneven boxes aren't a concern and he chose a side mount (he attached 2x4s to the side posts to mount against). His roost bars, hung in the center, utilize a Christmas Tree pattern and are simply built out of 1.33" pipe. Both methods work well and it is just a matter of preference on layout setup. The major point is that neither setup requires putting up with knee knocker bars and roost bars attached to them that create a checkerboard pattern impossible to walk through. Don't torture yourself and your help that way! Keep it clean and open!

Cut Your Chicken Catch Time In Half!

More from the blog

Roosts and Nest Box Setup In The Best Chicken Hoop!

The Best Chicken Hoop - An Overview

Get Our Newsletter - The Pasture Tek Minute

Pasture Tek

Sister Companies