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Two hens I raised since they were a few weeks old have no begun laying, despite the fact that they went through a molt, short winter days and they weren't even given any special calcium supplement as I didn't really expect anything out of them this year.

The eggs were high quality and tasty. I'm giving them oyster shell now but otherwise not changing anything. The chicken tractor seems to have done its job, protecting them from predators, providing a suitable nesting site and allowing the birds to forage plants and bugs and rocks and things.

I caught the rooster doing his job yesterday while I was letting the chickens wander around in front of the house. I am now debating whether or not I'll try to hatch out some eggs this winter or just eat the eggs till the weather turns warm and the hens have a better chance of hatching the clutch on their own. Either way I need to get the ducks out of my nursery before that happens, they've grown extremely fast but still don't have all their feathers in yet despite the fact that they're almost too big for their enclosure.

I need to build the Mk. 3 version of my chicken tractor, it will be a live bait mosquito trap in addition to its regular duties. Actually I'll need a whole fleet of such tractors as I intend to raise 1,000lbs of chicken this coming year. I'll post pics/plans when I perfect the design.

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Nothing beats home grown eggs..I used to raise free range chickens but got tired of chasing them off the porch,the car & everything else...I might just start again.

One question: What is a chicken tractor?I look forward to your pictures.

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A chicken tractor is the most brilliant idea to ever happen to keeping chickens as livestock and pretty much renders all other methods obsolete except where some sort of coop is necessary to protect the chickens from extreme cold. If somebody else hadn't thought of it first I would have invented it myself and then been quite smug about the whole thing!

The concept is extremely simple, a bottomless, moveable enclosure that protects the chickens from predators, keeps them where you want them and still gives them access to all the resources a free range chicken might have.

My chicken tractor is fitted with a hanging feeder and waterer, which only needs refilling every couple days because they are able to forage quite a bit on their own. I relocate the chicken tractor every few days so the chickens never have to wallow in their own poop, they never need any special bedding, they don't kill the grass and they fertilize the ground wherever I park the tractor.

I build mine with a PVC frame because it's cheap, durable, light, rotproof and easy to clean. If you need more weight to resist larger predators you can install fills and drains and fill the PVC with water to make it impossibly heavy once it's in place, then when you drain the water you can use it to water in the manure, irrigate crops or whatever other useful purpose you can think of.

They work great. We have alligators, bobcats, wolves, coyotes, loose dogs, raccoons, possums, hawks, you name it and my chickies are all safe and sound. I could never free range them here, at least not without standing guard the whole time.

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Sounds great Rev.......but this thread is useless without pics ! :D

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I know this is gonna sound stupid as I am not a farmer. Does moving the coop not stress the hens? I would think they would fly all over the place inside the coop. Must not be a problem though if you are getting eggs huh?

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Chicken tractor link:

http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfanta...20Tractors.htm

http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfanta...s/image002.jpg

I'd like to try something like this. I'm not certain what I would do in the winter though. :eek:

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Andy, pics will be forthcoming, probably around the end of the week. After I finish a few administrative tasks here I'll be heading to the feed store to look at some hardware cloth I'm hoping will be fine enough to exclude mosquitos. Of course there's actually two types of mosquitos to worry about here in FL, those which are so small they fly through the screen and those which are so large they just open the door and walk in.

Waylon, moving the tractor doesn't bother my chickens one bit. Even my rooster who was already a year old and accustomed to sleeping under the stars adjusted perfectly fine. I'll often even move it while the birds are still inside, they know the drill so they just shuffle along. Chickens are kind of homebodies, though. I keep them tractored on about a quarter acre near the house I have designated as a vegetable garden this spring. Since I'll soon be ramping up capacity I'll be stationing other chickens in other tractors on different plots I'm planning to cultivate, but they'll never really leave their little area so they'll always be in familiar surroundings.

Winter is the catch in some locations. It doesn't get too cold down here and my chickens have handled being outside in the 40's with no problem. Apparently chickens can take temperatures considerably lower than that without much trouble, but I hear frozen combs become an issue at some point. Right now they have a very rudimentary chicken house to keep the draft out that doubles as the nesting box, all I did was cut a chicken-sized door in a 45 gallon plastic storage bin and turn it upside down. This keeps the draft out and lets the birds make the most of their body heat. Mk. 3 will have better lodgings complete with perches for roosting, but if it gets much colder where you are you'd probably need a heated coop.

If I had to make such a coop I think I'd build it along the lines of what I've done for the inside enclosure I am raising chicks and ducklings in. Basically I'd give the coop a wire mesh bottom with perches and situate that probably a foot or so over a removable tray with sand or other litter in it. That way when the chickens poop it falls through the wire onto the litter which can be scooped or changed easily for hygeine, otherwise the volume of poop a bird produces quickly excedes the limits of what I'm willing to clean up. The basic structure would keep out drafts and provide insulation. I'd then install a ceramic heater w/ thermostat or else some pipes to circulate the warm drafts from a chimney through the coop before venting the smoke outside, if you follow what I mean.

The chickens reproduce and grow quickly so you don't have to keep very many through the winter if you don't want to, just a small breeding group of a rooster and a few hens could make enough babies in the warm months to feed you and your family.

In addition to frozen combs, a large comb such as on my Rhode Island Red rooster, attracts mosquitos because it's full of blood and consequently very warm. If cold or mosquitos are issues where you are you might consider a pea combed variety of bird. I'm planning on breeding my own special type of chicken because I always want to be different.

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It is called a tractor because if you leave it in one spot long enough they get all bugs and weeds and fertilize and turn the bare clean soil. You can cover it with mulch and plant it not that much later as great garden soil with most chores done by the chickens.

They naturally get less forage from ground they are digging out the last bugs and grass runners from, so if you use it to prepare garden soil you need more feed.

My alternate way is cross fenced garden patches and hens part of the day picking and turning and pooping on bare soon to be gardened areas, part of the day in greener pastures.

That takes quite a bit of fence per garden bed and hen, but it is a very simple symbiotic set up. They have a fixed house, a run that opens into 4 beds and an orchard area by separate gates. So they also clean out grass and bugs and such under the fruit trees, and fertilize. And they keep the soil loose and fluffy. Chickens scratch around a lot.

Congrats, Rev! Those eggs will spoil you for those nasty tired things in stores. :ARMS1:

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Given the results I've gotten with my other birds, I've added two more Rhode Island Red chicks today, they were sold as female but too young for me to tell. Honestly I wouldn't mind another rooster or two as roosters are hard to come by in my area for some reason. I have a sinking suspicion these RIR's are actually the lighter colored production breed which would be a bit of disapointment as I have the most tame and friendly year old classic RIR rooster. I was kind of planning on breeding them into something new anyway, though.

Construction of chicken tractor Mk. 3 begins tomorrow.

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Here are some sources of inspiration for my mosquito trap/chicken tractor.

and a link

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an22703738