My wife and I live on the farm once owned by her great aunt and uncle. Although the farm is a fraction of what it used to be, it has become one of our greatest small pleasures in life. We live simply. There is no waste at the kitchen table. Leftovers become chicken food and chicken food becomes eggs which ends up back on the kitchen table. In addition, our land is naturally kept clear of bugs and ticks without the use of pesticides. For us, there is no other way of life.
This has become my motivation to meld monolithic dome technology with chicken coop technology. There are several issues that need to be addressed on a small farm. The first is that it is difficult to get free-range chickens to lay eggs year round. The reason is simple: a chicken that expends its energy keeping warm does not have the energy to produce eggs. This is where concrete domes have its advantages. Concrete holds temperature at night, even without expending energy keeping the building warm. Concrete is a natural thermal battary. Surrounded by concrete is like being underground without all the disadvantages. Even larger farms should appreciate this factor: no money expended to heat and cool means more profits.
For my wife and I, we really do not wish to make farming our primary means of income, but we do want to offset some of our food costs. Even more importantly, we want to put food on our table that is healthy. Like most people, we at one time believed the addage, "Well it must be ok to eat otherwise the government would not allow it." Now we are just not sure. Our food is stuffed with additives, chemicals, and harmones that increase productivity for the chicken farmer, but may not be safe for the consumer. Can we trust our own government to rule on the side of safety?
I keep hearing those commercials that inform us that the chances of a child being born with autism is about one in a hundred and fifty. The commercial then tells us to know the signs when it should it should be telling us the potential causes. This condition was not nearly as frequent in our grandparent's day. There is something about our modern way of life that is contributing to this condition. Call me paranoid, but I think there is a connection. While the greatest correlation is connecting autism with vaccinations, I believe that all these unnatural additives are causing problems in ways we cannot possibly imagine.
This is why I have designed a dome-shaped chicken coop. Actually, to be more accurate, it is an egg-shaped chicken coop. Not only does the shape give the coop an eye-appealing architecture, but also it lowers the cost of the foundation.
In addition, knowing that small farmers don't have a lot of time, I have designed it to be as maintenance free as possible. I am giving it the ability to clean itself during a heavy rainstorm (more frequently with a garden hose, if necessary) and the ability to send a natural fertilizer to a garden.
I intend on building one as soon as my funds and land become available. I am placing this on my web site now so that anyone who is as fond of this idea as I am will have to wait until I get around to building my own. I believe that I will be able to build these for under 6.5k, labor and materials included, and I imagine each one will accommodate fifty birds easily.
"wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. ... the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson from his first inaugural address.