Starting Fresh

[They Call Me Pete]

With the purchase of a farm I'm thinking of running our new flock in a tractor setup in the summer and a regular coop in the winter. Anyone else do this ? Guess I could also just park tractor near barn and plugin for water heater/light

 

[azygous]

How many in your new flock? What's your climate like? What reasons do you have for selecting the tractor style coop and run? Will the chickens be confined to the tractor or will you be free-ranging? What percentage of the time will they be free-ranging?

You need to let us into your thinking a bit more if we're going to give you useful input.

 

[NotAFarm]

Pete,
Congrats on the farm! My BYC name is the product of my DH telling me that our 4+ acres is "Not a farm" when I wanted various animals!

When I first got chickens (2007) I had four Easter Egger pullets that I kept in the mobile coop that we built (It had a plywood w/rolled asphalt roofing at creation but now has a metal roof). It is approx. 4 x 8 and has a 3/4 plywood floor up top:

The end on the right side is a removable, framed hardware cloth screen. I stapled a shower curtain (cut to hang just below the top floor) at the top and could drop it to keep rain out and roll it up when it was nice. I used two metal clamps to hold it when rolled-up.
On the other side, there is a second door on the far left. Inside I put a plastic, three sided storage basket for a nest box.
Inside the door you see is an eye screw in the top roofing brace to hold a hanging feeder. The waterer went inside the lower/outside door (in the pic at the back far right side). You can see a white dish there. I removed the water each night before moving the coop and replaced it in the morning.
You can see there is a ramp. It is raised by a chain on the opposite side. I let them out during the day and they went up into the coop at night. I moved the coop every day. During the winter, I could roll it through the doors of our barn/shed where I had the big 4x6 stall mats on the floor. You can see the end of an orange cord by the right vent. It was to plug into an extension cord inside the barn. On the inside of the coop is a ceramic light socket that I had a small bulb in for light when they didn't get to be rolled outside because of bad weather. I would shovel outside the doors and roll the coop out when possible. I don't use a heater, even now that I have the end of the barn converted into my coop, but do keep a heated dog dish for water when temperatures require it.
I hope this gives you some ideas!

 

[They Call Me Pete]

How many in your new flock? What's your climate like? What reasons do you have for selecting the tractor style coop and run? Will the chickens be confined to the tractor or will you be free-ranging? What percentage of the time will they be free-ranging?

You need to let us into your thinking a bit more if we're going to give you useful input.

My plan is to run 12 chickens in a tractor in our horse pasture for bug/fly control. I've been looking at the portable electric fence but sounds like grass might interfere with it. I'm in New England and we can get a fare amount of snow so thats why was thinking of not doing tractor in winter. Our last chicken pretty much hung out in the coop when we had a lot of snow