Chicken Tractors are a great way to provide your flock with fresh grass, while keeping them safe from predators in a coop. This DIY chicken tractor is easy and inexpensive to build while also providing head room for you to walk in for feeding and care.
Raising Chickens
If you are considering producing your own food at home, chickens are a great way to start. They’re low maintenance and don’t require as much space as larger livestock. They’re also great for providing your family with fresh eggs, or you can raise them for meat.
Raising chickens for meat can be done a variety of different ways. Personally, I wanted my chickens to have access to fresh grass. Chickens don’t convert feed like cows do. The fatty acids they eat remain the same in their body. So, that means if a chicken is eating a food high in omega-3 fatty acids, that will also be transferred to you when you eat the chicken. Basically, it’s just a healthier meat.
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Chicken Tractors
Chickens are also prey animals, and have a lot of natural predators. Raising a free range chicken on pasture is going to have a lot of loss. It’s very sad and disappointing when you have to share your birds with the neighboring coyotes.
Chicken tractors help to solve that problem. They can be moved around to fresh grass regularly, while still keeping the birds safe inside. A lot of chicken breeds that are raised for meat, are also vulnerable in the elements. The tractor provides a space to protect them from the weather.
The design of this tractor was fairly simple. We used cattle panels, a wood frame, poultry netting, and an old billboard to construct the tractor. It took us a weekend of working as a family to finish it completely.
This is a great resource for chicken tractor ideas.
This design is great because it has head room to walk in. You can easily catch the birds when you need to, as well as easier access to food and water.
Chicken Tractor Supplies
This chicken tractor costs less than $300 ( at the time it was built), and is a fairly simple design. The tractor is 12 foot long and 7 foot wide.
We used:
- 3-4×16″ cattle panels
- 2-2x6x12′ boards at the base
- 2-2x6x8′ boards for the base (remove 1 foot to make it 7 foot across)
- 6- 2x4x8′ boards for the bracing of the frame and the doors.
- Poultry netting over the cattle panels. Hardware cloth would have been a much better choice. It’s stronger and provides better protection.
- A tarp for coverage
-Start by building a rectangle base. You could cut the cattle panels in half making them 8 foot, but we liked the height of the tractor.
-Attach the cattle panel to the INSIDE of the base. You can see in the above picture we made the mistake of attaching the panels to the outside of the frame. It works, but it would have been easier to bend, as well as required less securing if we attached the panels to the inside.
-Brace the frame with the 2x4s and build out the door frame.
-Cut the panels to fit the front and back of the tractor. We did not take the front panels all the way to the top of the tractor and used poultry netting instead.
-Build a door to your desired height.
-Last, cover the tractor with a heavy duty tarp to protect the flock from the elements.
You could also attach wheels to aid with moving the tractor around. My husband and boys move it with a hand truck without any problems.
FAQs
Is the chicken tractor hard to move?
It can’t be moved easily with one person. That is a drawback to this design. However, the height and size allows for raising other livestock in the tractor, so the heavier frame is worth it. We’ve raised pigs, and turkeys in our tractors.
Is that a billboard on the tractor?
You can usually acquired old billboards for free if you call the owners. They are great to use for a tractor because they are thick vinyl.
How many chickens will the tractor hold?
This tractor will hold fifty Cornish Cross broilers. It could house even more of a smaller breed.
How often do you move the tractor?
The tractor should be moved to fresh grass daily to prevent the chickens from remaining in their waste, and to supply them with fresh pasture.
More from the Farm
DIY Chicken Coop
Raising Baby Chicks For Beginners
I hope this gave you some fresh ideas for a chicken tractor. Thanks for visiting my little farm!
Rhonda Cotter says
Enjoyed your post. Edwin and I have chickens. We have had for several years. We did harvest 5 roosters this summer. They are going to be in stew. They were mean to my hens. They were supposed to be pulluits. Came from Tractor supply in Roanoke. So to you it wasn’t back plucking a chicken. We did it away from the others and it truly wasn’t bad. Enjoy all your post. You have a beautiful family. Love Edwin and Rhonda
ts from Tractor Supply
casey_jennings says
Thank you for your kind words! Not much to do with those roosters other than the stew pot.