AGRIVOLTAICS
Solar powered chicken coop harnesses renewable energy to support sustainable, free-range poultry farming in open landscapes.
Paul Greive, founder and farmer of Pasturebird.
Benefits of Solar Powered Coops Every type of chicken coop system has its pros and cons. A solar powered coop, however, comes with many benefits including improved animal welfare, regenerative land management and resilience for farms large and small.
Improved Animal Welfare In a traditional stationary poultry house, chickens live, eat, sleep and create waste all in the same place, all of the time. Greive explained that, from an animal welfare perspective, this can be managed, but it just doesn’ t compare to moving birds on fresh pasture every day.
“ Fresh pasture provides birds with all of the nutritious foods they’ re meant to eat,” he continued.“ They eat chicken feed, but they also love to forage and eat grass, bugs, seeds, worms, flowers and weeds.”
Greive also mentioned the benefits of slow coop movement to ensure the birds’ safety.
Each day, at the push of a button, the ARC moves 50 feet over a five-to-seven-minute period.
“ It moves really slow. So slow, you can barely see it moving,” he said.“ Manually moving a large chicken coop can easily cause some serious damage to the birds if they aren’ t alerted that the coop is getting ready
22 Winter 2024 www. chickenwhisperermagazine. com