Plans for Salatin style dolly?

[randyandmegs]

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That is an awesome setup. My nest pen I build this winter will be made with wheels like that.

 

[patimekiller]

Under coop and run design there is a thread patimekillers grazing pen with more pics. ( I think that's what I titled it as)

 

[bigredfeather]

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I would think the handle is bent the wrong way on an appliance dolly. It wouldn't lay flat and it would drag the ground making it harder to move. If only the verticle members are running on the ground, it should glide right along. I could be wrong.

My 2 sons and I have used a small dolly purchased from Home Depot to get from 50 to up to 400 (moss and lichen covered ) pound boulders dug out halfway out of the ground from the Sierra Nevada Mountains up,down, sideways and along the rocky ground, load them into a 3/4 ton pickup using 2-2 x 6's as a ramp and then position them for retaining walls up to 3 1/2' high x 47' long along 2 sides of the house. As well as along the 120 foot driveway and beside it and the creekside and landscaping around/ next to 72 Redwood trees on my 2 acres of grounds around our house. Took about 10 months, 117 trips and aproximately 100 tons in all. We also used it to move and position 48 - 8' high x 12' wide all steel side panels and 48- 26" x 30 foot steel roof panels , each by 20-70 feet, to build my Mare Motel barn. So I would hazard to guess that lifting one end of a chicken tractor by 2 inches and moving it about 8 to 10 feet that one would work for a chicken tractor as well.

Well Bossroo, with a little modification, I guess you where partially right. I doubt this is what you where thinking, but I can see how one would work with a little modification. I think you would have to put some sort of catch on the inside to keep the dolly connected to the tractor. I guess if it where on that angle, the lift part of the dolly would be on a angle holding tight to the tractor. I bet I'm going to regret revealing you could use a regular dolly. Whoever thought of this is pretty clever.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

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I see not much has changed!.....

 

[bigredfeather]

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I see not much has changed!.....

LOL. You have to love it!

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Lol...

 

[Buster52]

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I see not much has changed!.....

 

[HeatherFeather]

I hope I don' t have more challenges than I anticipated. I plan on using a regular dolly too, on the back, and I pull from the front. I figured I would have to make a catch for it on the inside.

I intend to use my 7 year old to scoot the chickens forward as we walk. I read about someone attaching brooms to the end to make a sound that would spook the birds away from the end with the wheels, and act as a sort of 'chicken catcher' as well.

The farmer down the road from me uses wheels on arms like patimekillers does. I'm too cheap to spend on that many wheels and don't want to maintain that many wheels. Plus her wheels are smaller than what I need, she has a smoother pasture than I do.

cperdue's pen looks nice and easy to move. Wouldn't last a night around here with all the bears though!!!

Bossroo, if you're anywhere in the USA, then I have a much harsher climate and a MUCH more severe predator pressure than you do, I'm in north Ontario. The few farmers that there are around here chicken tractor and free range. Dogs help. So does barbed wire and jingle bells. A few stock get lost to the wilds from time to time....

Perhaps if you turned your birds out, you could fert the pasture as you go, and use the chickens to remediate it much faster than moving waste from the barn.

If the soil is currently so poor that nothing grows, you could use the chickens in place, to work their dung into it. You could throw some whole grains (scratch) down in front of the tractor and throw some water on it a few days before moving the tractor to that spot. The chickens would eat the newly sprouted grain, plus whatever you feed them. Leave the tractor there longer than usual, and allow the chickens to scratch up the soil and work their wastes right into it. Everytime you throw down more scratch for them they'll dig it up.

Keep at this system, and then seed it with grass in the fall. Surely you'll be able to lay down a decent forage mix for your equines in the fall, perhaps a few easy grasses mixed with trefoil. (fescue, rye?) After a few seasons of this you'd probaby be able to put down some better equine grasses like timothy and orchard grass. And your family will be eating better meat, which will cost you less to raise, and be less work what with moving all that manure and cleaning out the barn.

 

[Bossroo]

Heather Feather...After raising chickens for 6 decades and on this ranch for 15 years, I pretty well know what works and what does not. What works for you in your part of the world , just doen't here on my 20 acres. You have bears, while I have never seen or even heard of one around here. Cougar... YES, killed one of my yearling fillies 4 years ago. There are NO rattlesnakes here while just 10 miles to the East of our place in the foothills there are quite a few. We only get about 6.5" of rain a year. Here in the high desert climate and soils... IF one is able to get irrigation water one can grow just about anything year round and lots of it. I am not so lucky. I breed/ raise horses, (currently 33 horses+ outside mares/ foals for breeding) which means I have lots of foals. Colts are very curious and have hooves. Therefore a chicken and a chciken tractor are a toy and won't last a week as they paw at it untill it is destroyed. There are way too many coyotes, fox and redtailed hawks etc. around here to make free ranging an option. Noone keeps any chickens within 10 miles radious of my place. Only several long ago abandoned chicken coops/ pens. We have NO rain from late April/ first week of May to late Nov. /early Dec. . Temps go from average of 95* to 105*during the day and drops down to the low 80's at night, last year 's summer the temps were 115*-117* for 2+ weeks and droped down to 99* at night then 102*-105* and down to 90* at night for the next 6 weeks straight so the ground is like asphalt. Chickens just don't scratch anything up to any significance. Trefoil does not grow here ( not enough moisture and too hot) burr clover does grow here, but the horses won't eat it. I disc the pastures every fall after first rain and plant endophite free fescue or I would be beseaged with my mares aborting their foals. I have also planted oats, wheat and barley and most years there is just not enough rain for them to survive. After the first rain, they sprout, then if it dosn't rain again within the week , they grow only about 2" tall then die out. Same goes for timothy, too dry and too hot . Orchard grass will grow here but it grows in clumps and it is very hard to walk on ( like walking on a newly plowed field with large clods). So my pastures are fescue, fox tail, native grasses, burmuda, fillaree and burr clover. They grow ankle to mid calf high before they all die and turn brown by mid May. Since I don't have any irrigation water available at all, I have to rely on the big sprinkler in the sky. Dry land forage for everyone it is. So, I buy over 100 tons of alfalfa hay and 40 tons of grain to feed the horses year round. I have much better harvest of chicken meat and much more of it, when I raise them inside the barn. I also get much better chicken manure fertilizer + horse manure fertilizer from my barn when I spread it out on the pastures with my wheelbarrow. So, to obey the laws of Mother Nature... adapt and evolve , move on, or die... I adapt !