Prairie Schooner Chickens

When Alice and I moved into our new solar-powered home in the spring of 2000 we knew we were going to have to do something different with the chickens. Brooding with electric heat lamps saw not an option. Turning electricity into heat is very inefficient and would deplete our power reserves. What to do?

I had been smitten with Timothy Shell’s PVC hoop house for his laying flock and asked Tim if he didn’t think it could be converted for broilers. Ever the optimist, he gave me his thoughts and sent some detailed plans and photos. Adding side flaps, interior doors, and a propane-burning hover to Tim’s layer design appeared to be an easy conversion to an effective brooder and shelter for broilers.

We figured dimensions for side flaps and canvas doors and hired a tarp shop to sew all the pieces for us. Building the PVC raft and hoop house was quite easy and took about a day. Installing and tuning the tarp was pretty simple also. The moment of truth arrived with 500 little peepers.

In they went into the hoop house. Since the hoop house looks a bit like the prairie schooners the pioneers used to get to these parts and these pasture-raised chicks are about as close as it gets to the native prairie chicken, we like the name Prairie Schooner Chickens. The schooner would be their home for their entire lives.

We bedded the grass floor heavily with shavings to keep the chicks off the moist spring ground. Some grasses poked through giving the brooder a very pleasant touch of green. The chicks became familiar with the plant world from the beginning.

Within a couple of days the chicks were sneaking out the corners and seams and poking around on the pasture surrounding the schooner. In that first batch I was diligent about shooing them back in and stuffing the cracks with burlap sacks. In later batches I only worried about it if it was very cold or near nightfall. I did make sure they learned to be inside the four “walls” of the brooder at night.

The propane ran out on day three, so I figured it was time for the chicks to heat their own space. Five hundred chicks can create a lot of heat. The brooder worked beautifully the first time with one minor flaw. Rain and dew ran in through the Velcro on the sides where the side flaps attached, soaking the bedding on the edges where the chicks preferred to hang out. The chicks were very fond of drinking that water but we put an end to that for the next batch. A tight-seamed flap sewn over the Velcro strip on the hoop house now keeps the rain and dew away from the Velcro.

As the chicks got older and hardened to the weather, we opened slits in the doors, propped up the doors, moved the doors toward the ends of the schooner, and eventually removed the doors and the eastern side flaps. (Most of our sever weather comes from the west). Since the side flaps only extend over 20 of the 40 foot length of the schooner, even with a flap attached for weather protection the chicks can still go in and out on that side.

An electric netting designed for poultry surrounds the perimeter of the schooner giving a nice 8 – 10 foot border. The chicks can easily run through the 2 inch squares of the netting until they’re about 2 weeks old. That’s not a problem because it’s the things that eat chickens – which is almost everything – that we want to keep out, and the electric net is awesome at that.

After several weeks we use another netting to make a three-sided paddock extending from the schooner. The perimeter fence is lifted with fence posts to allow the chicks to pass under. Our daily chores are to drag their feed and water out onto fresh pasture until we reach the end of the paddock. It usually takes a week before it’s time to make another paddock.

Then we shoo the flock back into the schooner area, lower the perimeter fence, take up two sides of the paddock fence and make a new paddock. It’s very fast. We place their feed and water at the entrance and they’re off and running again.

Speaking of running…we were astounded to see these notoriously lazy birds gallop to and from their feed troughs. What a riot! It’s more like a speed waddle, actually, but they also flap and try to fly as they go. Usually they charge and retreat in great waves.

Another behavior we hadn’t seen before is cock-fighting with the chicks actually getting several feet off the ground.

Besides the running/flying and cock-fighting, the major differences for the chicks were:
more space to hang out in
never running out of feed or water
being on pasture at an earlier age
having a familiar place that was home for the duration of their lives
having a large paddock to graze
no extra handling and crating between brooder and outside pens
having control of their daily schedule

For us the advantages were even greater:
no need to pull eight pens through a pasture
no need to fill 5-gallon water buckets
never running out of pasture
no need to shut chickens in at night or let them out in the morning
freedom to leave the farm for 24 hours if desired
no extra handling and crating between brooder and outside pens
extremely easy crating and loading for processing

In fact, the prairie schooner model practically operates on its own. We found we could spend nights away from the farm if we wanted to. No neighbors required!
These are the questions usually asked about the prairie schooner:

“Doesn’t their feed get wet and rot?”

Yes, feed gets wet but the chicks actually prefer it to the dry mix! (Well, which would you prefer, oats or oat meal? Flour or pancakes?) After a rainy spell, we pull the feeders deeper into the paddock (as we do every day) and tilt the feeder to slide the older feed down to the "schooner" end of the feeder, topping the rest up with new. Without a rain the chicks go for the fresher feed, but after a rain they prefer the wet.

“What about overhead predators?”

Hawks and owls are best stopped with protector animals like a guard dog or guard geese! Our Amish friend, Freeman Miller, clips the wings of a couple of geese, keeps them with his chicks and has no aerial problems. I’ve heard the same with guard dogs. Another product for night protection has red lights that ward off the owls.

“What about manure build-up under the schooner?”

The schooner is a fifteen-foot wide sled that is moved between batches. Because it has no floor the manure goes directly to the ground and the shavings that cover the ground. Because we don’t want the chickens resting in their own feces nor do we want to loose the valuable nutrients in their manure, we follow the rule of adding carbonaceous material (wood chips or saw dust, not straw) whenever the bedding began to smell and we are starting to loose nitrogen. This builds up the bedding to the point we have to carefully lift the schooner out before moving it. (Do not use straw - it doesn’t absorb and makes extraction very difficult). Of course the grass underneath is killed. We simply spread the bedding over the pasture after harvest (it could easily be collected) and in two or three years – and forever after that – the former schooner site is the richest, most lush pasture on the farm.

“What about bad weather?”

Our schooner weathered better than our pens, some of which had leaky roofs and blown away lids in a storm. Both models need to be anchored to the earth in high winds and that is easier with one hoop house than five or six pens. Our schooner has withstood two winds recorded at 70 and 80 mph nearby. The west side (windward) of the schooner was stove in by the 70 mph wind and we replaced Tim’s original ¾” shoulder braces with 1”. For security, we weigh each end down with heavy rocks and railroad ties as well as anchoring it with tee posts driven in on angles at the four corners. Ice and snow build up can cause damage in the winter so we recommend either propping up the centerline from within or diligently removing the frozen moisture before it accumulates.

Besides a great pastured chicken shelter in the spring and fall, we found the schooner to be a perfect shade-mobile for our sheep flock in the heat of the summer. I’m certain a creative mind could find uses for the remaining months as well.

Alice couldn’t move some of our heavier pens and we were burning out on the chores. The schooner model kept us in the business and made it much easier and simpler. Abandoning pastured poultry was not an option because they were so important to our meat business. Our pastured poultry enterprise had twice the return (60%) as beef, lamb and pork and was our most demanded meat. Most of our beef, pork and lamb customers were poultry customers first. The importance of chicken as the front door to our farm produce cannot be overstated. The prairie schooner allowed us to continue to raise the high quality birds our customers expected.

A Daily Shifting Schooner?

Finally, some last thoughts on a portable schooner, that is one moved daily. I really like this idea but haven't solved the problem of moving chicks 80' every day. The schooner would still have to be 15 x 40 because 500 chicks pack the house when they are big.

The chicks were hard to move 12' sometimes but I've not discounted the notion. It would trade the daily moving chore for the periodic bedding chore plus keep the land in production and unscarred.

I think a slow, self-move to get to water and feed is possible but the schooner still must be moved and cannot have any chicks within it during transport. Any ideas?

Following this post will be one detailing schooner construction.