Poor Man's attempt at a chicken tractor.

Or perhaps, a man's poor attempt would be better.
After much procrastination, I am publishing my recent project for the Missouri Rev, and all the world to ridicule!

Since I have been forced to put up these photos I might as well share the story of just how this contraption came to be.

If you have read the previous post about my new bath-tub brooder chicks , then it will be obvious what motivated the need to get my new little chicks out of my wife's birthing tub!

Unfortunately, the Lord has chosen to keep me humbled by literally breaking my back about a year ago, which means that I have no job and no income for the purchase of material to build a 'real' chicken tractor like the one's all over the Web! Hence the need for my innovation.

A fellow that I know, had recently contracted to clean up an old nursery business that is now closed down. He told me that there were lots of pallets and old 4X4's at the site which needed removing. This fellow said that I could have the material if I would pick up the pallets and dig the 8 foot 4X's out of the ground. Voila! Prayer answered!

My strapping 14 yr. old and 12 yr. old quickly 'volunteered' to help old Dad gather the material! So with shovel and sweat, we soon hauled a goodly supply of new, (to us), construction material back to the junk pile that my wife allows me ;) to keep in the back yard!

This 'tractor' was the first of a few projects that I had dreamed up for my little homestead. It was a crude endeavor but if you tune in later this week, you will be quite amazed at what some old pallets, and a gracious God, can do when you have needs.

So without further excuse....I mean ado, here is my infamous chicken tractor done Poor Man style!


This is an overall shot showing the open front 'coop' along with a run made from my rabbit cage wire roll. The wire will be used to build more cages after it is done working for us here. The run design was from my 14 year old. He used some pallet wood and some old lumber salvaged from an old headboard we threw out last year. There wasn't enough wood to box the thing out properly so it was a little wiggly, but it did fine work for the time it was used.

Next, is a pic of 'siding' we used to attach to the 4X4 pole frame. We tore these pallets all apart and reused the decent pieces to make a building. As you can see, the wood was a little rough and we couldn't drive new nails without splitting it to pieces, so we had to pull the old nails and beat them straight before nailing them back in the old holes. This worked pretty good since we didn't have any new nails anyway! We did find an old box of screws that I had though, so we used some of them where needed for extra security.
Everyone knows that chickens need to roost, so we cut out a few stair runners, and measured some limbs from our yard! Don't listen to folks who say that chickens can't roost on round limbs, or pipes. They have done so since creation, and do just fine.
The runners split in a couple places because the wood was so brittle, but we just pieced it together on the wall and ran some screws in to hold it together.

This was the tricky part! We had to figure a way to keep the run fairly secure to the box so chickens didn't escape, yet it had to come apart for moving around the yard because there wasn't enough quality wood to build a movable, sturdy frame that could be permanently attached to the coop. What we decided on was to jigsaw the pieces so they would interlock without having any metal latch. The idea came from some old Amish furniture that I had seen where they used the wood to bind some bunk beds together without fasteners. It worked great as it had the added benefit of giving a little needed stability to the run by forcing the sides to stand up straight. You can also see how we used the wood to sandwich the wire for attaching the support legs. We just used small chock blocks of wood on the outside and nailed through them, past the wire, and into the wood leg. This kept the 'legs' attached to the sides pretty good.

Here is how the poor man was able to , in clear conscience, use the term 'tractor' when describing this little experiment!

While it was not easy, it did work. We were able to carefully slide the contraption to a new patch of grass when needed. There were a few escapes during moving due to the run separating from the coop, but nothing major. We still have the same amount of chickens we started with!

The chicks are now in the big chicken yard and this coop has been converted to a nice dog house for our new American Bulldog puppies that are waiting to be sold. The run wire has been modified to give the pups a yard while allowing the mother to jump in and out to feed them.

In all, I am very pleased with my chicken tractor. Yes, I can proudly call it a chicken tractor! Though I am sure we will not be featured in Mother Earth News anytime soon, I am very satisfied that we did our best to be good stewards over the little flock that God has given us! And that, is my chief goal as an agrarian, and as a Christian.

Hope you enjoy the laughs, and do stay tuned for the next project. I think you will like it.