What is a Chicken Tractor?
Free-ranging chickens can be incredibly destructive to vegetable and flower gardens. If you want chickens to do their rototilling without ruining your flowers, fruits and veggies, you’ll need to wrangle them. That’s why building a chicken tractor is on my list of things to do this spring.A chicken tractor is a portable pen without a bottom that you can move around to different spots in your yard. It permits a few hens to feed on plants, bugs and worms in any given area.The Chicken City Web site, http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html, has photos of 140 different backyard chicken tractors, submitted by chicken tractor owners from around the world. Most of the chicken tractors posted on this Web site seem like they could be replicated with recycled materials, such as scrap wood, chicken wire, corrugated roofing and small wheels.These contraptions can be moved around each day, so the enclosed chickens can graze on fresh greens and hunt bugs. In return, the birds rototill
A chicken tractor is a bottomless pen which is designed to confine poultry to a specific area where they can roam to their content. The “tractor” is a reference to the fact that many chicken tractors are built with wheels so that they can be towed behind a tractor or truck, which can be useful when moving a large chicken tractor across a long distance. There are all sorts of reasons for people who keep chickens to build chicken tractors, ranging from organic pest control to keeping the chickens out of trouble with the neighbors. In addition to being used with chickens, of course, a chicken tractor can also be used with ducks, geese, and other fowl. The idea is that the bottomless design allows the animals to dig for grubs and weeds, dustbathe, and engage in other natural behavior, while the pen keeps the animals limited to a certain region. A chicken tractor also typically includes space for the birds to roost and nest, making it sort of like a mobile home for poultry. For gardeners, a
A chicken tractor is a portable part-time or full-time shelter for chickens, which provides them with continual fresh forage space (during the growing season) and provides their caretaker with the ability to control and focus their foraging and distribution of their manure. Chicken tractors come in all shapes and sizes and work in a variety of different situations. Most chicken tractors are homemade and the key ingredients are nothing more than creativity and resourcefulness. In its essence, a chicken tractor is a great way to nourish happy healthy chickens, in a manner which is easy to manage and will provide maximum benefit to you. Chickens can be a simple and easy addition to anyone’s garden or farm. They require minimal care and provide a number of benefits. Chickens can provide humans with food in the form of eggs and meat, fertilizer in the form of their manure, light cultivation through their persistent scratching of the ground, weed and insect control through their foraging eff
A chicken tractor is a portable hutch that you can easily move about in the garden. If you make it the width of the space between rows, you can start at one end of the row and move along to the end as the chickens do their job. Chickens are very efficient at digging up plants and catching bugs but if you let them loose in the garden they will eat everything, weeds and tomatoes. Construct your chicken tractor from 2″ x 2″ lumber and chicken wire. It should not be more than three or four feet long and about three feet high. Do not put mesh on the bottom of the tractor, the chickens need to be able to get to the soil. You can make your tractor fancy by including a door in the side to get the chickens in and out easier but this is not really necessary. Do take the time to make it sturdy, however, so that the chickens are securely confined. An old piece of canvas or burlap can be tacked over the top to give the chickens shade. Always provide a pan of water for the chickens. This can be loos
A Chicken Tractor is essentially a mobile chook pen with an open floor, allowing your chooks the ability to scratch, dig up seeds, eat weeds and leave behind their natural fertilizer. Once this has been done sufficiently in one space, you can move the pen to another patch, providing fresh grass for the chickens and leaving behind a weed-free, fertilized patch in which you can plant your veggies. The chicken tractor is also suitable for a night-time lock up pen for free range chickens. UNIQUE PATENTED DESIGN – VERY EASY TO MOVE McCALLUM MADE Chicken Tractors are quality pens that are unique in that they are very easy to move. Our unique patented design involves two wheels on an over-centre arrangement and the back lifts up with the aid of a small trolley jack. This allows you to raise the chicken tractor 80mm off the ground temporarily for transport purposes, keeping your chickens inside when you move it. Once transported it then lowers to sit flush with the ground. This design is uniqu
