design plans for a chicken tractor for maine summer and winter

[mareview farm]

I need exact construction plans to build a chicken tractor/hen house suitable for climate in Maine housing about 4 chickens

 

[outlawfarmer]

Good luck, unless you pay 19.99 online then you may be stuck. I looked at 1,000's of tractor pics and winged it. You can see many at http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html I will tell you I am in NH and went with an A Frame design that has a 7' long x 5' wide foot print. It stand about 5' total. The top half is where they live and is 7' long and 3' wide and 3' tall. I have plenty of room for my 6 hens. In winter I may put clear plastic panels over 75% of the bottom run area.

 

[patandchickens]

Be aware that unless you are right, right on the coast (thus milder winter temperatures), a tiny coop or tractor is really not great for overwintering chickens in that sort of climate. It can be DONE, sorta kinda, but something larger would be really a whole lot better for the chickens and easier for you to manage. Either a larger permanent coop, or summering them in a tractor then moving them into larger permanent winter quarters.

You are not going to find lots of free totally-detailed-and-correctly-specified plans for tractors, and the ones you DO find are often not really very good designs from a functional point of view. However if you browse the coop design pages here on BYC you will find that quite a lot of people have done very detailed pages on their coops/tractors -- often including huge numbers of photos, and some measurements, from which the rest of the measurements can be extrapolated -- which is a perfectly good substitute for blueprints and worth taking a look at

Good luck, have fun,

Pat