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Ton Matton's Chicken Cabinet

"Free range furniture" that serves as three-chicken fresh egg station

By Rain Noe - April 3, 2015

in Furniture Design | Food

Dutch designer Ton Matton teaches at the Wendorf Academy, a design lab in the German countryside that creates "productive urban living concepts." As raising "backyard chickens" is notoriously difficult for non-farmers, Matton created the Chicken Cabinet in hopes of simplifying the process.

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The top half of the cabinet is the chicken-centric part. The top left compartment contains a sandbox with a pull-out drawer.

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The top center compartment is where the feed and water is stored, via the truncated pull-out drawer just beneath it; below that is a larger drawer to catch chicken droppings.

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At top right is the egg-laying compartment, kitted out with a curtain as chickens apparently prefer to lay eggs in the dark. Fresh eggs are captured on the full-depth drawer below, with another drawer beneath for sorting/storing eggs.

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The bottom half is meant to function as an actual cabinet, with storage drawers for feed, supplies, and the straw needed to freshen up the poop drawer.

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Matton's cabinet is designed for small-scale chicken raising. "According to European law," he writes, "three free range chickens are allowed in his cupboard. They have [room] to scratch, to eat and to lay an egg." And of course, they're not meant to live their entire lives in the cabinet; the idea is that they run around in the backyard, and at some point the owner pulls a Rocky and gathers them up to place into the cabinet.

I've got no idea if the design is practical, as backyard chicken farming falls outside of my milieu. But those curious about the topic may want to read this guy's story.

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Sam A

9 years ago

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When I read the headline I was imagining that there was a chicken door out the back to allow the hens to get in and out without human intervention. Having to "pull a rocky" every day is quite inefficient when chickens are pretty good at getting themselves in and out of a roost.

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John Kestner

9 years ago

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Cute, but I question the problem it solves. Raising backyard poultry is pretty easy. Give them some food, water and a place to roost at night, and they follow along. Now, if the problem was keeping poultry in an apartment, or making a tongue-in-cheek egg appliance, that makes more sense.

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