Collection: Mobile chicken coops

A mobile chicken coop is a coop built to be moved — usually on wheels — so your hens get a fresh patch of grass instead of wearing one square of yard down to bare dirt. They run from a 43-inch two-wheeler for 2–4 hens to a 153-inch coop-and-run for 6–10.

Every product page carries the same eight-field Mobility Spec: wheels, handle, assembled weight, lift weight at the handle, ground clearance, floor, terrain, one-person move. Where a manufacturer doesn't publish a number, the field reads "not published". Nothing here is estimated from a photograph.

What counts as a mobile chicken coop?

Movable, moveable, mobile, portable, rolling, on wheels, chicken tractor — keepers use all of them for roughly the same idea, and so do we, with one exception we'll come to below.

The idea underneath the vocabulary is simple. A static coop concentrates droppings and scratching in one place. Within a few weeks that place is bare, then muddy, then somewhere you'd rather not walk.

A coop that rolls spreads the same flock's impact across the whole yard: fresh grass for them, manure spread thin instead of piled deep, and no bald square to look at from the kitchen window.

The four things that decide whether a coop really moves

What makes a coop genuinely movable is not the word on the box. It's four things:

• Wheel diameter. Big wheels ride over tussocks; small ones dig in.
• Where the handle sits. A handle at one end gives you leverage; side handles mean lifting.
• What the coop weighs. Weight is the number almost nobody publishes, which is exactly why we leave the field blank instead of filling it in.
• Whether the floor is open to the grass. That one decides what the coop is actually for, and it is the whole of the next section.

Chicken tractors — and which of ours actually qualify

Here's the exception. A chicken tractor is a mobile coop with no floor. The birds stand on the grass, scratch it, manure it, and move on when you move the frame.

That open floor is the whole point: it is what makes a tractor a pasture tool rather than a shed with wheels bolted to it. A wheeled coop with a solid floor is a coop on wheels — a perfectly good thing to own, and not the same product.

So which of these are true chicken tractors? We list them all as coops on wheels, because each one has a tray or a solid panel under the roosting area rather than an open floor.

In practice that is the easier arrangement for most backyards — the cleaning happens at the tray instead of on your lawn, which matters a lot more in February than it does in June. If an open floor is what you specifically want, message us and we will point you at the closest thing in the range.

For the full explanation of what a tractor does to a pasture and why the floor matters, read what is a chicken tractor.

Compare the coops that move

Capacity figures in that table are the manufacturers' ratings.

On several product pages we also show the square-foot arithmetic underneath, and where it comes out lower we give you our number too. The PawHut 96.5" is the clearest case, where the published run area works out at two to three birds. Both figures are on the page so you can decide.

Start with your flock size

• 2–4 hens — start with the portable chicken coops; they're the ones a single person moves.
• 4–6 hens — the middle of this page is where you'll land.
• 6–10 hens — go to the large chicken coops, or the coops with runs if the flock won't be free-ranging.

The Mobility Spec — eight fields, every product page

Nobody else in this category publishes these, so we built the block ourselves and put it above the general spec table on every one:

1. Wheels — count, diameter, material
2. Handle — tow bar, lift handles, side rails, none
3. Assembled weight
4. Lift weight at the handle — what you actually pick up, which is not the same number
5. Ground clearance
6. Floor — open to grass, part-open, or solid
7. Terrain — what surface it was rated on
8. One-person move — yes or two people, and on what surface

Where one of these isn't printed on a coop's page, ask us — we'll confirm it before you order rather than have you guess from a photograph.

Common questions

How often should you move a mobile chicken coop?

Move it when the grass under it stops springing back. For most backyard flocks in growing season that's every two to four days, and longer in winter when the birds eat less grass and the ground is slower to recover.

The honest test is visual: if you can see the outline of last week's coop in bare earth, you left it too long.

How many hens fit in a mobile chicken coop?

The common rules of thumb are 4 sq ft of coop and 8–10 sq ft of run per standard hen. Bantams need less, heavy breeds more.

Our coops carry manufacturer figures from 2 hens up to 10. Where the manufacturer publishes internal square footage we show that arithmetic on the product page, so you can check the claim rather than take it.

Can one person move a chicken coop on wheels?

Often, yes. It depends on the weight, the wheel diameter and where the handle sits.

As a general rule two large wheels with a long handle at one end is the easiest layout to move solo, and four small swivel castors is the hardest on grass. Tell us your yard and who will be moving it, and we will tell you which one is the one-person option.

Do mobile coops work on uneven ground or a slope?

They work best on mown, reasonably level lawn. Small wheels bog down in soft ground, and long frames rack on a slope, which is when doors and latches stop lining up.

If your yard is genuinely rough, buy the shortest coop with the biggest wheels rather than the longest one with the best photos.

New to the idea? Why move your chicken coop covers what rotation actually does to a backyard, and what it doesn't.