Baggywrinkle

Chicken tractors I can talk about.

We live on 4 1/2 acres of rocky forest land. One acre is
cleared and fenced. Another acre is overgrown pasture
with an old hog pen. The rest is evergreen forest.
We free range our 27 chickens (was 32 yesterday. I just finished culling five roosters) inside the fenced acre.

I rarely need to mow since we started the chooks. They stomp down the ferns, eat the flowers, steal our strawberries, and look in the window mooching for bread. Two or three times a summer I will scythe the grass inside the fence. I have not used my tractor to mow in two years now.

We did this project on the cheap. Their housing is a hoop house made from a cattle panel mounted in a wood frame and covered with tarps. It is not ideal, but it has worked through two winters now. Their hoop house is surrounded by a Kiwi style electric net. This was the result of hard lessons learned. Our barn has an enclosure
that is eight foot high wire topped with barbed wire. Our first flock lived in there. It worked for about 5 months until a raccoon figured out how to get in. He killed a chicken each night until we moved them.

It was with great delight that I heard the raccoons, possums, coyotes, cougars, and the occasional rabbit
scream when they tested the electric net in the night.
Now the local predators have been trained and they leave it alone. The chickens in their exposed hoop house
sleep in peace. I don't have to sleep with one ear open
or creep out in the dark with the shotgun any more.

We just did cheap and cheerful shelter for our chooks. Total cost was seven hundred dollars. One hundred for the hoop house and six hundred for the net and it's solar powered charger (run by a car battery it will shock the snot out of you!) I thought about overwintering them in a straw bale house in our garden
but safety from predators is paramount if you want to keep them alive. The net is positioned in a clear area away from all trees. I have read of raccoons being smart enough to climb a tree outside an electric fence then transition to a tree inside a fence to do his dirty work.

I would love to move them out of the fence area and away from our strawberries and the house. The pasture is too overgrown for that. It is a job for goats or heavy
equipment, not chooks. It should also be properly fenced to keep the predators out and the chooks in so they aren't eating the neighbor's strawberries.

Our hoophouse is a "garden tractor". It is light enough to
be easily moved. Indeed it needs to be anchored with concrete blocks. The first year it took flight during one of our winter hurricanes with some chooks inside. I found it upside down outside the net with two very upset hens inside. They were unhurt, but they demanded crash helmets and hazardous duty pay to continue in my employment. Indeed it was written into their union contract when it came up for renewal!

The original design lined the cattle panel with chicken wire, had a wooden frame on both ends with a door for access. It also had a wire apron at the base to prevent predator digging and provisions for an electric wire around the base to discourage predators. The ideal environment for this tractor is a fairly flat open paddock with close cut grass. It is the only design that is tall enough for a person to enter and stand almost upright and it is large enough to raise fifty meat birds if it is moved to fresh grass every day.

Our cheap and cheerful design has been sleeping quarters only. The hens lay everywhere in the yard except where we want them to. Every day is an easter egg hunt and they are very good at hiding them. The ideal egg mobile would be a trailer that had living quarters with laying boxes inside that could be moved about the paddock and closed securely up at night. This avoids the traditional chore of cleaning up after them

Predators are the chief issue. One dog loose in your paddock will kill an entire flock just for the joy of it. I chased a beautiful husky out when the gate was left open. My alpha rooster challenged him giving the others time to run for their lives. He escaped with his life loosing only his tail plummage. It gave me time to get outside with the rifle and encourage him to leave. No, I did not shoot him. He just thought he was shot and left at high speed with his tail tucked. Had I seen dead chooks it would have been another story.

We keep Buff Orpingtons because they are winter hardy, are very good mothers, are fabulous meat birds,
and they are reasonably people friendly - with the exception of El Bastardo who lived for the day he could spur me to death. May he rest in peace.


Cattle Panel hoop house
http://www.plamondon.com/hoop-coop.html