a chicken tractor?

[michiganmom]

Could some one please tell me what a chicken tractor is.
Thank You

[ozarksnick]

A chicken tractor is a moveable pen/coop for chickens. It allows you to move them to fresh grass allowing them to forage for food. But it keeps them confined and protected from predators.

Also, if you leave the pen in one place for a longer period of time they will completely till up the soil for you leaving you with a nice garden bed that's also been pre-fertilized.

I just recently constructed one for my 10 birds.

Here is a page with tons of photos of different designs:
http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html

[michiganmom]

Too Cool, i love it. This will be a good project for us in the spring. IThank you so much but my boys wont because they will be the ones building it LOL.

[michiganmom]

I have 11 bantams and love them. Their little brown eggs are rich and they are great little mother hens too. I was letting them run around the farm yard in the day and locking them up at night but the hens started hiding their eggs to hatch and they like to got on the front porch too much so i will for sure be having a chicken tractor this coming year.

[otterbob]

I have 11 bantams and love them. Their little brown eggs are rich and they are great little mother hens too. I was letting them run around the farm yard in the day and locking them up at night but the hens started hiding their eggs to hatch and they like to got on the front porch too much so i will for sure be having a chicken tractor this coming year.

If you do not let them roam until 2:00 Pm or so, it will stop 99% of the laying in other places, and still give your hens time to "free feed" all evening.
I had that problem until I learned this.
This also allows you to notice which hens "go broody" and put a stop to it, if you want eggs.

I rarely allow any of my hens to be broody.

Broody is fine if you do not care how many eggs you get or hens caring for extra chicks when they should be laying.

If you do not use an incubator and want extra chicks, do this, when a hen goes broody move her to another pen, if she stays broody then take her eggs away from her and give her about a dozen fresh from the other hens to hatch, that way you have a more diversified gene pool from one hatch.

Otter Bob

PS: If a chicken tractor is left in one place the Chickens WILL NOT TILL the soil, they will COMPACT it ! but they will remove ALL green vegetable Mater {Except Horehound ??? }