The Poultry Palace

I tend to repeat myself sometimes, but I follow blogs and I appreciate hearing things again and again.  It helps me to learn more and pick up new ideas.  Today, I'll be talking about our newly designed chicken tractor.  I've built other designs before.  You may remember our Ford Eggsplorer?  They were heavy and hard to pull.

After looking at different designs on the Internet, I tweaked the ideas and mixed the features I liked best into one prototype that a friend of mine and I built.  The photo below really doesn't do it justice as it is covered with tarps to protect the birds from some bad weather that was blowing through.  You can see it is on wheels that can be set and then retracted so that the chicken tractor sits on the ground.

It is built on a skeleton of 1/2" PVC pipe, strengthened by a 1 x 4 across the top and a 2 x 4 frame along the bottom.  It is encased in welded wire fencing and that gives it its strength and keeps predators out.  It has a door on one end and the waterer and lights hang down from the 1 x 4 on the ceiling.  That's another nice feature - you can stand up in the chicken tractor and walk.

This angle shows the reservoir (bucket) holding rain water that gravity feeds into a bell waterer in the tractor.  The tarps are ugly, but they (sometimes) protect the birds from wind and rain.  Sometimes, however, it acts as a sail that flips the tractor completely over.  When inclement weather approaches, I now stake the tractor down and put weights on the frame to hold it down.  It has worked so far.  We'll see about tonight!

Each day, sometimes several times a day, I pull the tractor to fresh grass so they can each clover and tender, young grasses.  There are ropes on either end that you use to pull the tractor by hand.  You have to be careful when you pull it not to run over the birds.  They aren't that smart and won't move fast enough and if you aren't paying attention, well, you have a dead bird.  I've accidentally killed more than my fair share over the years.

The chickens are very happy in this design and if I had to build another one, I'd build one just like it.  I would possibly try to think of a better idea for the tarps as the wind seems to tear them up.  If I was going to use it for laying hens, I'd design some lightweight nesting boxes.  This design is perfect just as it is for meat birds though.

One thing you have to watch out for is to make sure after moving it, that you lift the wheels to drop the tractor's base to the ground.  If the ground is uneven, you can have escapees. 

In the past, when it was time for butchering, you had to go load all the chickens up to bring them to where we set up our "slaughter house."  It was a pain.  No more!  Now, we simply pull the tractor right up to where we are going to be butchering.