The Best Chicken Hoop - An Overview

Moving Chicks From Brooder To Pasture - The Easy Way

Moving chicks from the brooder to your pasture can be a huge hassle!We used to spend back breaking ours catching, crating them, moving them to our field shelters, and then unloading them by hand from each crate. Inevitably there were some accidents and some losses along with an immense amount of stress and work for all involved. After watching a video online we attempted to herd them onto a stock trailer but found that coaxing them on was more time consuming and stressful than just catching them. They had no interest in walking up a ramp and the change in environment from inside the brooder to outside totally scared them. Also if it was hot at all the trailer would become an oven and the chicks would crowd and yea we only did that twice before we decided it was unworkable!I was still intrigued by the idea though as until they hit the ramp the chicks would herd easily with some large poly fiber political campaign signs (the losers signs are normally free for the taking).So I invented a 4'x8' platform with 2' side walls that could be removed and fork holds on top instead of at the bottom. We put a plywood floor in it and then through used wood chips on top so that it would not appear to be any different from the brooder floor. With fork holes on top we could set it through our brooder door (over the retaining board) and also through the 4' wide doors of our PT1000 hoops. The brooded birds could then be readily herded onto these platforms "chick movers" and then the chick mover could be set on a flat bed trailer to take multiple out to pasture. With six chick movers and a little practice 2-3 people can easily move 2200 chicks from the brooder to pasture in a few hours with minimal stress to chicks and helpers!

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How We Make Watering The Chickens Easy

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Why Lift Is So Important - Moving A Hoop With Feedlines

One essential feature of adding a feed line system to a hoop is lift! Without adding additional lift the additional weight of the feed reservoir on the front of your hoop with cause your runners on your hoop to dig into the ground and "plow" it up.  In extremely wet conditions you can actually sink the entire front of your hoop (that was a bad day on the farm). As we designed our automatic feed line systems, it became very clear very quickly that we needed additional lift so as to prevent our hoops from making a journey to the center of the earth haha.  Not only that, but we wanted this additional lift to work in all directions (not impeded moving the hoop from the rear or sharply side to side) and also not to endanger chickens on sharp turns. With those criteria the option of just putting additional runners under the bins went out the window. As those runners would make sharp turns much more difficult and if they were performed would also act like a scythe through a field of ripe chickens. Definitely not what we were looking for! So we settled on wheels. In order to allow freedom of movement they are all directional and in order to ensure smooth farm operations every morning they are "never flat" tires. Which is to say they don't take air so they never get flat.  With the adjustable mount we can get just the right amount of lift to allow our hoop and bins to move freely without "plowing", and our birds are not at risk of getting mowed down by extra skis.  Best of all it allows the hoops to be moved easily even when the bins are full! It took us a few iterations before we got it right but the 6.0 Bin + feed system is a game changer (the 3.0 system is what is on most of our farm and it revolutionized things!). 

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