Chicken Tractor

[lnsoaps]

We are building our chicken tractor for 11 comets. I would love to see pictures of yours for inspiration. How do you protect the bottom from predators? Any special things we should know? We are wrapping it with the hardwire not chicken wire.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hey, fancy seeing you over here. Welcome to this forum too. That happens a lot.

For inspiration you might look through this. It's under the "Articles"tab at the top of this page, then under chicken coops.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/categories/tractor-coops.17/

I like aprons for dig protection but those can make it hard to move the tractor or may get damaged by dragging. I didn't use anything when I had my tractor and got lucky. I'd think you could hinge them so you could raise them when you moved the tractor but they would be heavy. I'd consider making them with male-female connections so you could lift them off and set them in place after the move.

When I made mine I made it in two sections so it would be lighter to move it by hand. Kind of a pain in the butt but that allowed me to make it a lot bigger. To tie the two together I used a bolt with a nut to hold it in place on one piece and a screw-eye on the other with a washer and butterfly nut to make it easy to secure them. Maybe something like that on the aprons.

The idea of an apron is that you lay 12" to 18" of wire flat on the ground outside the tractor. In a coop run you attach that wire to the bottom of the run or bend the wire to make it stick out. The critter goes up to the fence, starts digging and doesn't know to back up when it hits the wire. With a tractor to make it removable I'd probably use a 2x2 or 2x4 on the side next to the tractor with the screw-eye so it's tight enough the critter can't get through any gaps.

Tractors are often used in good weather months when things are growing. Many people have a winter permanent coop set up. The chickens keep pooping so you have to move them in winter too, even if there is no grass. When that poop builds u you have to move them.

Good luck with it.

 

[lnsoaps]

Wow! You are a wealth of information! Thank you so much. We have a lot going on here in Jacksonville, NC. So while we have the time we are taking advantage of every moment we can catch up on some reading and videos of raising our comets and gardening. Happy weekend to ya!

 

[lnsoaps]

This is what we have so far. We're not done yet I'm waiting on dear hubby to recover from having a kidney removed. But the chicks are only a week old so we have some time.