Investigation into a year round complimentary broiler and vegetable farm enterprise using mobile high tunnels

Problem/Solution

Berry Goods Farm is a small farm that needs to make efficient use of all of its resources. A dual production system that utilizes the same equipment over two operations can share the cost of that equipment over two different income sources, creating a more cost effective use of that equipment. The 'coop house' would replace idle Salatin pens in the winter with a vegetable season extender and idle cold frames in the summer with broiler and turkey production space. This design seeks to achieve several things at once - to be heavy enough that it won't blow over in Indiana winds and yet light enough that a female farmer is able to move the pen herself each day as the chickens and turkeys travel across the pasture. These houses are also taller than Salatin pens, so a person can walk into the house to work rather than having to bend down and reach into a shorter pen or crawl through a low tunnel.

By raising the broilers in enclosed pens, we are able to control where their manure is placed during the season. We can use the houses between rows of berries and also in the crop rotation of vegetables, fertilizing the soil a year before that pasture area gets turned under to plant a cover crop. Utilizing a cover crop between the chickens and the vegetables makes the best use of the nutrients left behind by the chicken manure and reduces the chance of possible contamination of the vegetable crop with manure residues, keeping us in line with GAPs. We'll use a soil test before each vegetable planting to measure the nutrients our chickens and cover crops are providing.

These pens would double the number of meat chickens and turkeys that we raise the next two years and increase our off season salad mix production, while keeping the same number of egg layers. We also have the flexibility with these houses to change what we raise in them from year to year based on anticipated demand for any of the products we grow in them.

For this project, we are planning to build eight 'coop houses' for our farm. In the summer, two of them will be used to house batches of broilers, two to raise our replacement laying hens for the year and four to raise turkeys. In mid-fall, we'll move the pens over rows of August planted vegetables. The pens are designed to open up on one end so that they can make an approximately 30 foot by 6 foot hoop house, 6 feet tall. With eight pens, we'd have four of these houses for vegetable production, giving us about 120 feet by 6 feet of beds for vegetable growing in the winter. We plan to use remote temperature monitors for this project so that we can record both summer and winter temperatures in the houses.

The 'coop houses' are designed using a "Quick hoops" low tunnel bender with electrical conduit on a wooden base frame. Each frame has one end that opens completely and will fit end to end with a second house, creating an unbroken 30' long, 6' wide high tunnel. In the summer, the ends are closed in order to contain poultry and you have two 6'x10'x6' chicken tractors. The added frame on the bottom serves as a screen when crops are ventilated and is left uncovered as needed when poultry is present to allow for more air flow. Shade cloth can be added to this structure in the summer in order to keep livestock cooler.