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Denise Freeman, head of marketing, Sto discusses how wsing External Wall Insulation Systems can address the big issue of inefficient housing stock.Read More

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Portable Chicken house for 130 Chickens

If you are wanting to get started in free range egg farming, or want something to can work with and improve your current farming operation with sheep, cattle or orchids, the Chicken Caravan 130 is a great way to get started into free range egg farming. The Chicken Caravan 130 is a movable chicken shed with rollaway nesting boxes, that houses 130 laying hens. It’s used by many farmers across Australia. It’s great because you can fit it into small pockets of pasture of your farm, and increase overall production from your farm.

We just have a standard jockey wheel like you find on most trailers, and it’s just a flip-up jockey wheel, so you can flip it up when you want to move the Caravan to a new location. We’ve got a catch under here where you just pull out, and they’re on lockable gas struts so we can lock it off at any level. Today there’s a little bit of wind around, so if you’d want to, you can lock it down to about there. It still gives the chickens plenty of access to go in and out, and then in a very hot, sunny day or perhaps if its wet, you get the opportunity to pull the doors right out like that, creating a lot of shade and a lot of shelter for the birds. It’s similar to the 450, we do have the same size rollers and also the same nesting boxes. They run across the Caravan just parallel with the axle rather than length ways, and they still have the rollaway nesting boxes, and also the nesting box gates. To collect the eggs, just pull this shelf down here, (we’ve got a nice big tray where you can put your plastic egg tray), and then just simply wind the eggs in.

And look at that: they come out nice and clean with the rollaway nesting boxes, and you can just put them in your trays: very easy! Just below the nesting boxes we have nine perches for them to sleep on at night. And then when they come into lay, they just hop up on the perches to the edge of the nesting boxes, and then hop in. And we use an Astro Turf matting same as the Chicken Caravan 450. Here at the back of the Chicken Caravan, here’s our back roller. It’s the same size roller as we use on the larger model, and its also got the same adjustment points, so if ever the belt is loose, you can just turn these nuts just half a turn (you’ve got two on each side), which will just pull that roller out a bit, putting a little bit more tension on the belt. We have a timer box here, with a 12 – volt battery at the back, and this wire going up here, it goes to a solar panel on the roof. Now the solar panel charges the battery, and it goes to the timer box and that’s to adjust the nesting box gates: to open and close them, so birds won’t sit in the nesting boxes at night.

Here at the back of the Chicken Caravan, we have another jockey wheel. This acts as a stabilizer, just so if you walk in the back of the Chicken Caravan, you’re not going to tip it up because it’s a smaller model. Also in a little bit of windy conditions it acts as an extra stabilizer. The reason we’ve used a jockey wheel and not a jack-stand solid leg is, if you do forget to wind it up and you start moving along, you will probably feel that hit, and it will just roll along rather than bending a leg and doing damage to the unit. One of the options for the Chicken Caravan 130 is a water trough and water tank that catches rain off the roof of the Chicken Caravan. We have a 130-litre water tank on the front, and that collects rainwater from the roof then goes down this pipe, and fills it up. It’s also got a standard garden hose connection: if you need to top up the water tank, just put an ordinary garden hose, and fill that up. You’ve got your chicken drinker there, and as you can see the chickens just flu up on this bar here or just the A – Frame to drink out of it. And you can also pull the drinker off and sit it on the ground. So you have it down there for the birds to get full access to that.