In a State of Disrepair

The two eyesores you see below are the two chicken tractors that are in the pasture. They are both in a state of disrepair.  I was talking to Tricia trying to figure out when I built them.  Tricia keeps detailed records and was able to tell me that the "Ford Eggsplorer" (the laying hen tractor) was built in July 2010.  The other, for the meat birds, was built in December 2010.

Although the frame was built with treated lumber, time has not been kind to the rolling wrecks. They've been patched with chicken wire and pieces of tin, some of the wheels are flat.  The tractor in the foreground is one that I built for the laying hens and has nesting boxes that you can check from the outside and pick eggs by lifting a hinged door.  The one in the background is one I built for the meat birds. They were roughly modeled from Joel Salatin's chicken tractor plans, but with a higher roof to account for Louisiana's hot summers.

But as you can see below, pieces are just falling off of the tractors.  The hinged door to the nesting boxes I talked about in the paragraph lies in the grass beneath the dilapidated structure.  It is embarrassing to have this in the pasture.  They are effectively condemned.

Chickens that used to take shelter and find refuge in the chicken tractors now steer clear of the tractors afraid, no doubt, that they are not structurally sound.  Instead they now roost in a hen house that was given to me that you can see in the background to the right of the big red barn.  Although them roosting each night in the hen house gives me access to large quantities of chicken poop that I compost and put into the garden soil, I really don't want them in there, except to lay eggs in the nesting boxes.

I really want them roosting in the chicken tractors out on the pasture where I can push the tractors to a new location on the pasture each day, thus fertilizing the grass to grow lush grass for the cows to eat.  But these tractors are beyond economic repair and I'll be dismantling them.  I need to build new ones and I have scoured the Internet looking for a new design that meets a few specifications.

First, it must be economical to build.  Second, it must be durable.  Next, and most importantly, it must be lighter.  Me and my bride aren't getting any younger and pushing those behemoths across the pasture is enough to give us hernias.  I finally found a plan that I want to use.  I'll make some adaptations, of course, but we're going to build a prototype and if it works, we'll make a second one. Check in on us in the next week or so as we chronicle the construction of the new, improved chicken tractor!