A friend of ours delivered this chicken tractor today. It’s part of our mini co-op to raise these 8 little nuggets as a continuing experiment in homesteading and self-sufficiency.
The idea is that you move the chicken tractor to a new spot every 2-3 days so that they don’t completely destroy the land underneath them. If you leave them in place, they’ll eat every blade of grass and leave themselves with little more than a muddy pit. For instance, our 3 hens started out with a chicken run that looked like this:

But they soon devoured their salad bar and turned it into a patch of dirt:

With that in mind, the tractor was built with more lightweight materials and included a rope to pull the whole contraption.

Half of it is covered with a tarp to provide protection from the elements and I was able to hang their water from some of the conduit. Hopefully having it raised off the ground will keep it a little cleaner!
It uses the plastic conduit as ribs and has chicken wire stretched and stapled over that to provide protection from local predators (raccoons, possums, local cats/dogs, Bear Grylls, etc.).
The only thing I’m a little worried about is animals digging under the sides at night. I’ve seen evidence of that with our other chicken coop, but I flared out about a foot of chicken wire at the bottom of that one to make sure they couldn’t get in. I might need to do that to this one as well.
This is plenty of space for 8 meat birds. At approximately 30 square feet, that’s more than double what they actually need to stay relaxed.
And as an after-thought, I think I might be able to re-tool this slightly in the winter to make a hoop house and grow some lettuce or spinach while the snow falls…
Fascinating! Glad you created a blog!
And who knew you’d grow up to be a homesteader?! π
Love the banner picture!
Why called a tractor?
Typically they have wheels, which makes them more tractor-like. We opted for no wheels since it’s smaller than most.
…and we’re stronger than most π
Hehe. π Definitely stronger than most! π
Thanks for the answer.
All so interesting!
Do you not keep meat chickens over the winter?
We can, but these chickens will be done growing before the end of October. We could do some winter ones, but then we’d be relying on store-bought feed instead of greenery and bugs and the like. It would be a bit less efficient.
Plus, don’t you think it would be fun to see us trying to garden in the snow??