Building a Chicken Tractor
August 8th, 2013 · No Comments · Posted in farming
A sturdy coop to move around our pastures
Our Freedom Ranger broiler chicks are three weeks old and outgrowing the brooder in the basement. Time to move them outside, so I’m building them this “tractor” they can live in for the next month or so until it’s time for them to get the knife.
The concept of a chicken tractor is to move the birds daily around our pastures so they can eat fresh grass and bugs every day and in turn deposit some valuable fertilizer to feed the soil. Heck, I might just keep them on the lawn around the house. It could sure use some feeding.
Unlike the coop on wheels we built for our laying hen, this tractor gets dragged around using a hand truck or dolly. To withstand the daily movement, I’ve constructed it rather heavily using two-by-six-inch, pressure-treated lumber for the frame around the base, attaching them with long lag bolts to pieces of four-by-four-inch posts. Since the coop will be in constant contact with the ground, I used pressure treated, exterior-grade plywood for the side walls. They’re braced with ordinary two-by-fours.
I cut large openings in the plywood and covered them with wire hardware cloth to give the chicks plenty of air circulation. I left the ends completely open, covered with hardware cloth, for the same reason. These chicks won’t be able to complain they don’t have a view as we move them around.
All we need now is a roof on this thing and we’ll be ready to go.
For projects like this I often treat myself to a new tool. In this case, it was a pneumatic stapler from Home Depot to attache all that hardware cloth. The job sure went faster without having to pound staples by hand.
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