A New Roost

We haven't given a report on the chicks that are in the chicken tractor lately.  These are the birds that we hatched out in our incubator at the end of August.  They are growing nicely and just yesterday we heard the first awkward crowing coming from the tractor.  It is funny listening to young roosters learning to crow for the first time.  It is not the familiar 'cock-a-doodle-doo' that you are used to hearing.

As the birds grow they've outgrown their roost.  If you look in the picture below, you can see that there is a 2 x 4 support that runs down the middle of the tractor.  When the birds were smaller, they could all fit on the board that acted as a roost and they would all line up on it and sleep for the night. Now only about half of them fit and the rest pile up in a corner to sleep.  That's not a good thing. We've lost birds before because the suffocate each other when they pile up like that.

The existing roost

This particular morning I decided that I had to do something about that. In years past, I would purchase a 2 x 4 and rip it in half to make two 2 x 2's that I would fasten along the side braces to serve as roosts.  I have found that it is unnecessary to spend any money at all on chicken roosts.  All you really need to do is go out in the woods and cut some straight small trees that are about 2 1/2 inches in diameter.  Appropriately, I found a couple 'chicken trees' (Chinese tallow trees) that would fit perfectly, so I chopped them with my axe.

Above you can see the small trees I'm using.  I have them leaning inside the tractor.  I grabbed some nails, my cordless drill and bit and a hammer and climbed inside the tractor.  The first thing I noticed is that the birds seem to be mostly hens.  That is odd and a welcome sight since we're looking for more egg-layers.  Usually the percentage of hens/roosters is about 50-50%.  We'll allow the roosters to grow for a while longer before we butcher them and use them to make gumbo.  As far as the hens, well keep them to increase our egg production.

After measuring the width of the tractor and chopping the trees with my axe to fit, I drilled a couple of hole on the ends, inserted the nails and hammered them down.  This fastened down the new roosts on each side of the sloping braces.

Anchoring the roost

And here we have it: two new roosts in addition to the one existing roost.  Now we have capacity for all the birds to roost.  They were a little nervous with me being inside the tractor working, but as soon as I got out, they moved about curiously, checking out the new accessory.

New roosts

Later that evening I walked out to the chicken tractor and every single bird was roosting and not piling up on one another in the corner.  This was a quick project that the chickens appreciated.  It won't be long, though, before we move these chickens into another tractor and move the chicks that are in a brooder in the garage into this one. This time, though, we'll be ready for roosts for the new birds from Day 1.