pros and cons of feeder

[florida lee]

Finished my chix tractor.....however it got out of hand.... got too big, got too heavy. So I had to take the saw to it and cut off about a third of the upper house, left the lower run the same size. the top house is 5' x 6', lower run is 5' x 9'.
So now the interior floor space is smaller than planned. I did away with the floor POP door, and moved the door to the end of the coup. I still feel that the floor space is still not enough.
I need PROS and CONS of the feeder and waterer being moved to the outside of the coup and placed in the lower run. That means that overnight they will not have access to water.
I have 8 chicks now, 2 @ 4 days and 6 @ 9 days old. They won't be in this tractor for a while yet. I have made an outdoor brooder so that in a couple more weeks they can be moved from the cardboard box in my shop. They will be flying out of it soon.
I'm worried now that the tractor will not be big enough for 8 hens and I may have to build another tractor (my wife will not be happy about that,,,this one already cost a lot more that budgeted). I originally had only planned for 6 hens but then I had to make a trip to the feed store and ,well ,they happened to have a few Silver Laced Wyandottes.......dang.
I need suggestions to make more floor space, oh yea, I could possibly move the nesting boxes (3) to the outside wall. That way they would not be covering floor space. But thats major rework.

Thanks

 

[patandchickens]

As you are in Florida, the only two pros/cons to concern yourself with (IMHO) are a) if the feeder is outside, you can encourage a rodent problem, unless you put it away every evening and replace every morning; and b) if the waterer is outside you are committing yourself to trotting your butt out there EVERY day AT DAYBREAK and opening the popdoor, even if it was a late night and you would rather sleep in

(Note that you may well be able to sneak a small popbottle-style wall-mount waterer into a corner of the house portion, though, for if you DO sometimes want to sleep in just a little...

)

I'd say if you made a tractor that is 5x9 footprint with a 5x6 'upstairs' house and can actually MOVE the dang thing, then even if it is not as big as you'd initially planned, you're doing quite well

I agree it is a bit tight for 8 hens -- your total square footage, indoors+out, is like 75 sq ft, which is just shy of 10 sq ft *total* per hen if you have eight -- but you can try it, see how it works, it is not totally-unreasonably tiny or anything.

Another option might be to build a lightweight day-tractor type pen (perhaps cheapie-quickie hoop house style, if daytime predators are not a big concern) and "dock" that to this tractor so they have access to more grass. It owuld be a *bit* more to build, and more nuisance to move, but would avoid having to split your flock.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[florida lee]

Patandchickens,,,

thanks for the reply. No, daytime predators are not a problem here ( we have all of them but not during the day)... I have 4 dogs (Great Danes) that roam the yard all day (penned at night). Going out to let the chickens out is not a problem because we have to let the dogs out anyway. Putting a small water bottle in a corner would not be a problem..easy enough.

I can pull the chicken tractor myself until it hits sand then dead stop. So think I will put on a small hitch and hook to my garden tractor to pull. Currently the wheels (4) are too small, so changing the rear wheels to a higher wheel, not needed for front as the garden tractor will take care of that, but will install a skid on each side to even out the chix tractor. Will most likely put drop down sides to cover the space between the lower rail and the ground because of the higher wheels. I don't know how big a space a chicken can crawl thru. This is my first venture with chickens.

I'm still concerned about the space for 8 hens. I have a door at each end of the lower "run", so I could make a separate day run and just butt it up against the door and they can have additional space during the day. That would be a lot cheaper than another tractor and splitting th flock.