Simple Ideas To Make your Barn or Chicken Coop `Off Grid`
We have a rain tank on most structures. This provides water at many locations. This also provides water to where we need it, without running water lines hundreds of feet. A 12v battery powered pump & you’re up and running!
Provide water:
If you want to reduce labor intensive care of your chickens, or cattle, the easiest way to do that is to stop bringing water to them. Instead of limiting yourself to where you have a facet for watering them, or where you can run hoses…or worse…carry in buckets, make the chicken/barn/shed/shelter produce its own water!
This is as easy as adding a gutter (or a pipe cut in half), to collect the water that runs off the roof and having a catchment for it. This can be large, or small. Nearly every building on my homestead has some sort of water tank. This means I have water in many places. On my permanent layer house, I have a large 550 gallon tank. (This is when I had the normal amount of chickens) ((Too many to count)). Today we have 6. Six layers, and my 3 year old’s 2 pet bantam hens, so we use very little water.
On my smaller chicken tractors I have a 5 gallon bucket. I can easily swap a full bucket with an empty and stock up when it rains to keep me in water nearly the whole year… Except the time I forgot to turn off the water on our big 2,500 tank, and had to carry water for my cattle for a year. Amazing how you can have a years worth of water gone in about a hour of forgetting to turn off the water!
Who needs a tractor when you have a helper?!
In a wheelbarrow.
Ok, not a whole year, just the whole summer since we had 0 rainfall….it was terrible.
Provide Animal Safety and reduce work (on you):
It’s no fun to have to lock the chicken door at night, and open it at first light 365 days a year. It can really take the fun out of owning chickens. Sometimes it’s nice to sleep in. You aren’t going to enjoy keeping chickens if you have to do this every day. And maybe you can’t, because you know, work.
But it’s also no fun to go see your chickens one beautiful morning and find that something killed them during the night.
So what to do?
Solar chicken coop door! Solar Chicken Door! No more getting up early to let the chickens out of their house…or having to get home before dark to shut the door before a predator comes knocking. The solar powered doors charge themselves, and sense daylight to open, or can be set to a timed schedule to fit you.
Providing light:
Lighting is even easier! You can find a variety of solar lights just about anywhere. It requires no knowledge of electricity or carpentry skills. The systems have a small solar panel you mount off your coop or fence in a sunny location, and that’s it!
If you do not want to add lights, you can even skip this, but it is nice to have the option of light, or if you want to increase egg supply.
Plus they are just pretty!
So having an off grid water supply, light, and security are possible anywhere you, or your animals, are!
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