Tiny caravan maker ruffles a few feathers

It isn’t just families and couples who are getting into the RV lifestyle - egg-laying fowls are feathering their nests with the free-range nomadic life in the latest Chicken Caravan 10 mobile coop.

The unique concept was laid out by Chicken Caravan founder Daniel O’Brian, who needed movable sheds for his new organic free range egg operation in 2010. Daniel built half a dozen Chicken Caravans for his own farming operation, then other farmers asked if he was going to start selling them.

Not surprisingly the Chicken Caravan made a flap at its debut at the Richmond Farming Small Areas Expo in 2011, and by the time the Chicken Caravan 10 arrived on the market in 2021, the Chicken Caravan range included everything from a small hand-pulled caravan to a large trailer capable of housing up to 600 hens.

As you can see in the video below, the Chicken Caravan 10 is the most RV-like model of the brood, looking very much like a teardrop-style camper, only smaller. And just for chickens.

The Chicken Caravan 10 is smaller than it looks with enough 'berths' for up to 10 Isa Brown hens. It can be moved by hand to greener pastures with a hidden tow handle or attached to the tow ball on a ride-on lawn mover.

In case you were wondering it's not road-legal, so don't plan on towing the fowls to freedom. You could certainly squeeze it down some bushy tracks though, at 93cm long, 89cm wide, 16.8cm high and weighing just 109kg.

The Chicken Caravan 10 comes with a built-in feeder and drinkers and, like any good off-grid van, is solar-powered and also includes a fully automated electronic control centre so it will open up to let the hens out in the morning and lock them away at night.

Other neat champing (chicken camping) features include auto lights and auto rollaway nesting boxes so the eggs are always clean. There's even a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan that cuts in when the chooks are sweating it out in the summer heat.

What must be the cheapest caravan in Australia, the patent pending Chicken Caravan 10 is available online for $3450 tow-away on private property (plus paddock and poultry costs), with either blue, orange, pink or green side flashes.