With the help of my father, the first chicken tractor has been constructed and put to use. Frankly, my Dad is to thank for the majority of the construction; he built the major components in a modular fashion and then hauled them to my farm for assembly. A friend from our old neighborhood had 6 hens that had begun to eat eggs, so she gave them to us and there you have it.
Not counting the hours spent at my Dad’s house, assembling the walls and door, bending the conduit for the rafters, and tacking the hardware cloth to the framing, it took 4 hours to put together in my driveway. We are using a modified version of the Suscovich style chicken tractor. Ours has some additional structural support that does not add too much weight, as well as hardware cloth covering the entire structure. After 6 days being moved daily throughout my garden space, we have lost none to predators although the predators are certainly out there as proven by my game camera.
Picking up the chickens was an ordeal since, against my better judgement and Tanya’s advice, I sold my pickup truck and bought a Corolla. I was spending too much in gas (90-mile one-way commute) plus the truck was beginning to show its age mechanically. That being said, I really need to get another truck. We picked up the hens in Tanya’s van using a large dog crate (the wire frame style with a plastic tray for a floor). I expected this to be sufficient for the 1-hour ride back to the farm without damaging the carpet in the van, but I was incorrect. Fortunately for us, our friend loaned us a tarp to place under the dog crate and boy was it needed. Within five minutes of pulling out of their driveway the chickens had pooped all over the crate and the smell was horrendous. We had both sunroofs open, all of the windows down, and were mouth-breathing but it wasn’t enough. The tarp protected the carpet so at least once we got to the farm cleanup was easy, but we let the van air out for a few hours anyway.
The test chickens are all hens and are actively laying eggs, which was not the original intent for these chicken tractors so I had to add in some nest boxes with the hope that they would lay the eggs in the boxes for easy collection. The chickens have other plans though. They use the nesting boxes as roosts and lay their eggs on the ground. Not a big deal I guess but I will have to build them a proper roost to see if that will fix the issue. So far, they have not eaten any of their eggs.
