Free truck cap = Easy Chicken tractor?

[sixlittlechicks09]

Hey everyone! So keeping in style with my "Do it on the free" chickens, I recently found a post on craigslist from a guy about a half hour from me with a broken aluminum truck cap. The windows are busted out of it but everything else is fine. SO! My "bright" idea is pop all the windows out, cover them with chicken wire and VIOLA! I have a movable chicken tractor that protects from wind/rain/sun/predators and since it's aluminum it's LIGHT too! I don't actually need a chicken tractor, as my lovely hens have a nice coop and run, but since they demolish the grass in there and my backyard is a 15 acre field of buckwheat and clover, I thought it'd be nice to pop a few of them in the tractor during the day and move it around my backyard, so they get some excitement/varied diet/chance at more protein from bugs they find. I also thought it might be a good idea to have in case I get an injured hen, as it could easily be used as an isolation pen. Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Absolutely! I don't have one, but I've seen a few pics here of people using truck toppers. Boy, I'll bet your birds would LOVE the access to the buckwheat and clover. The trick will be finding wheels and figuring a way to attach whatever you find. Hopefully people that have a truck topper tractor will post pics of theirs.

 

[sixlittlechicks09]

Woo!

I wish some people would post pictures, I need ideas on how to transform this beast!

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Hi sixlittlechicks09, do you have a pic of it?

 

[frankenchick]

We have a topper that we call the Sunroom (as in "the chickens didn't want to walk through the snow, so I carried them to the sunroom"). I let plants grow up around it in the summer to provide shade, and in the winter I clear away the snow so sun comes in through the windows. I really like the tractor idea.

 

[sixlittlechicks09]

Quote:
Not yet, I haven't picked it up yet. Tomorrow hopefully!

 

[bargain]

I use a truck top as one of our tractors...It's great! Best of wishes. Nancy

 

[sixlittlechicks09]

Quote:
Woo! Does anyone have any ideas/tips for adding wheels?

 

[halcyon]

I made a coop from the camper shell from my long-bed pick-up - I cannot get the photo to post on BYC, but it's on www.mcclellanvilleartscouncil.com if anyone wants to see it.
A friend helped me make the frame out of treated lumber and then another friend and I cut old wood and nailed it together for the coop - we re-worked a bookcase I found thrown out for the nest boxes and covered the top with chicken wire and then put on the camper top - it's not very wide, but has a long roost and a thick layer of sawdust on the floor. We made it in May and the girls and Alexander seem to like it. The new chicks needed the old coop, so I had to make another one. Total cost (not counting the shell which I'd had for years) was about $50.