RE: Chicken Tractor For The Homestead
We started out with a Salatin tractor but made lots of adaptations to it. The top that opened was a bi-fold door, so would stay open safely. We'd heard them referred to as "Easy Bake " ovens, so we vented the diagonal opposite corner. We put wheels on levers on the back to make moving it easier. This allowed the frame to sit on the ground when not being moved. We used diagonal bracing vs horizontal to avoid bird injury. We rounded the corners to avoid piling suffocation. We lost 7 birds one night to a thunderstorm, as they had settled down under the top that opened which had hardware cloth on it. So we kept a tarp rolled up and would spread it at night if there was a chance of rain. We used hardward cloth vs chickenwire as we have a LOT of raccoons here.
But in the end, it was too hard for us older folk to use, and we've since taken it apart and reused what we could to make a hoophouse coop. Much easier on old bones.
Good to know. The internet is way too positive about chicken tractors. It's good but not a miracle.
Thanks for the great response. I chose to go an easy route to see if I liked the tractors. If I did I planned to build a more efficient one. I disliked it almost from the start but stuck with it for a while. Finally as I stated it became too much work to deal with. I'm glad they are gone.
Thank you for your detailed response. You put in a lot more effort up front than I did, but we seem to have come to the same conclusion. Great idea, not so much in the actual execution.