have been enjoying having my chickens run free during the day. Sadly the hawks have also enjoyed having my chickens run free during the day.
I love and respect hawks, love that they nest in my trees and have for as long as I have lived there. I wish the lazy bums would get back to eating rodents and leave my flightless birds alone.
So now I am making chicken tractors.
A lot of people new to chickens read these posts, so I will explain chicken tractors despite asking this question of people who know them well. Chicken tractors are mobile chicken coops. Nice for gardening as chickens will in a fairly short time over graze and area, eat all the seeds, sprouts, weeds, plants, bugs, you name it, and leave the spot quite fertile. A week or so in one spot, and you move the tractor. Now you have a nice plot to garden, and the chickens are working on the next spot for you.
This works well on flat surfaces, level gardens and the like, but can be more complex for rougher terrain.
Part of the issue is that it needs to be large to have lots of floor space for chickens. You want at least 2 square feet per chicken, probably 3 to 4. The smaller the tractor, the less efficient for space. A 4 square foot cage uses 24 square feet of wire, but if you keep the height the same, a 16 square foot cage uses 64 square feet of wire. The smaller cage uses 6 square feet of wire for 1 square foot of floor space. The larger cage uses only 4 square feet of wire per foot of floor space. 48 square feet is probably typical for a chicken tractor, if there is a typical tractor. This would be good for 12 chickens probably, no more than 24 in an chicken housing shortage.
While it is more efficient use of chicken netting to make a larger cage, when you make it bigger, you make it harder to move. It also needs more structure. When you add the roosting, egg laying, supplemental feeding and watering systems, you add weight and structures. A pin that holds more birds is more efficient for the materials you use to make these structures. So creating the ideal system is a challenge. There are a lot of trade offs. Additionally it is nice to make the thing a bit pretty or you just have a chicken wire cage with pinned birds in it.
With a pleasing form, a cage can instead be a grace to the yard, and make the whole thing a bit more entertaining. Does anyone have a relatively inexpensive to make chicken tractor design that they like a lot? My preference would be a tractor that could, with the water and feed removed, be picked up and moved by two people comfortably. Lighter would be better.
Bob
Is there a perfect chicken tractor?
There is a book by Judy Pangman that gives plans for several small holding chicken/poultry tractors. Maybe you can adapt one?
Here is a link to it: http://www.tower.com/chicken-coops-judy-pangman-paperback/wapi/100387617