Living in a tractor?

[EasterEggDrew]

We’re nearing the end of year 2 with our small flock, and they’ve been doing great, thanks to the start-up and coop building advice we received here at backyardchickens.com. However, we have found our chickens really love free ranging, and while I can tolerate the mess the’re making of our flower beds, we just managed to lose one to a red tail hawk. We want to avoid a repeat of that, as much as possible, and that renewed our discussion of building a chicken tractor.

I’ve also been contemplating building a garage where our permanent coop now stands, which would mean building a new coop, as the old one is on a stone foundation and cannot be moved without complete tear-down and re-assembly. This, coupled with thoughts that moving them from coop to tractor every morning and evening is not going to be practical when we don’t get home from work before dark for half of the year, has me wondering if I should just plan to have them LIVE in the tractor. I mean, build it large enough and strong enough that they can just live in it, and ditch the fixed coop altogether.

I can imagine several pros and cons of going this route, but would like to hear from folks who’ve tried something like this.

 

[sab]

I’ll give this a go since our girls started out in a tractor and was in one for well over a year. I still use the tractors as grow out pins for young girls. You can see my tractor sitting inside the chicken run now via cameras (link in my signature below). I have 8 Juvies in there now although it’s raining today and they may be “upstairs” in the roost area.

I’d say it depends on how many and your weather. Mine housed 3 hens and a Pekin Duck. We had a hard snowy winter. I think the girls were missable. I know I was. Had to carry water and food through that snow and not being able to move them due to so much snow they weren’t in the cleanest living conditions. Duck didn’t help. I was never so glad to have a coop with a human side where I store feed and put rain barrels to have water in the winter. Carrying that gets old. Getting on my hands and knees to position the feeders so they’d stay dry was no fun. My experience was not pleasant. I’m sure in a milder climate it could be great!

 

[rosemarythyme]

Have you checked out @squadleader 's tractor? - https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-flying-fortress-chicken-tractor.1213066/ Might be much larger than what you have planned, but I think it's a great example of a tractor that serves as a full time coop and run.