Ultimate Chook Tractor

[ToyCollector]

Thought some of you would like to see my current project, a towable chook/chicken tractor for our farm, or to throw your ideas into the ring for how I could make it better as I go along.

The spec for the chook pen is that it can travel around on the farm, housing as many chooks as possible, but costing as little as possible. I started collecting parts for it ages ago, but I've really stepped up the work now that it's not so hot anymore. Since we have a tiny bub, only 6 weeks old, I may have to drop this for periods of time, so please forgive me if I don't post regularly or frequently.

I started off looking for a cheap cheap cheap 6'x4' trailer. I eventually got one on a well known internet auction site for around 100 Australian pesos. It wasn't in great shape, but it's for a chook pen.. and besides the whole pen could theoretically be slid straight onto a new trailer if needs be. So after stripping the trailer down and slapping on some zinc preps to hopefully limit some of the pretty severe rust (no pics for that, sorry but you didn't miss much but rust and dust and a flap wheel). I sat a piece of 90x45 3.6m long on the trailer and it stuck off each end around 500mm.. which I figure should be ok to support a pen out that far. I realised I'd have to extend the drawbar, so I picked up some 50mm SHS thats about 2mm wall thickness. The original drawbar was two pieces of c section welded together, and was much bigger in section than my planned extension, but I made up some shims and tapped them in, then welded the shims to the extension and the original drawbar (again, no pics because I'm not a very good welder).

Then I built a subfloor 3600x1390, and sat two pieces of yellow tongue flooring on it. This is about where the pictures come in.

Just the floor


Drawbar


First wall


Second wall


This is as far as I got today. The angle pieces are just tacked on for the moment to stop anything moving as I back it in and out of the shed. I'll start building the roof next.
The opening on the short wall is for the nest boxes, and on the tall wall is for the perches which will have an open mesh floor so the crap drops straight onto the paddocks.
Other ideas I have in mind include:
- Doors on the front and rear to make cleaning out easier.
- Guttering and a small rainwater tank, coupled with a float valve water trough for the birds.. so I don't have to check the water too often.
- On board storage of water and food
- Pivoting perches, so the girls can roost on a flat surface even if I park the trailer across a slope
- 12V solar panel/battery running a converted car window motor and timer switch to automatically open and close access to the outside world at dawn and dusk.

I'm not sure how much of that I'll be able to make happen, but it'll be fun trying.
Any other ideas? If anyone is thinking of a similar thing I can already give you one tip: build the wall panels on the ground then lift them into place on the trailer, I didn't think it'd be too hard to build it on the trailer, but because you cant trust the trailer bed to be level, you have the use the square for EVERYTHING which was pretty tedious!

 

[Brad_Blazer]

Nice work so far. Most of the chicken tractors I'm familiar with have a run exposed to the ground so the birds can forage.
http://roosterhillfarms.net/yahoo_s...retty_Girl_with_Henpens_087.114153002_std.jpg

 

[Gary Fowler]

Nice work so far. Most of the chicken tractors I'm familiar with have a run exposed to the ground so the birds can forage.
http://roosterhillfarms.net/yahoo_s...retty_Girl_with_Henpens_087.114153002_std.jpg

Same here. Purpose of the mobile chicken pen (at least here around me) is so that you can move the pen daily so the chickens can forage on grass and bugs found inside the pen. They usually have a small set of wheels on the rear end of the pen and handles or tow attachment(depending on the size) at the front. Most will have a small roosting house and maybe some laying boxes for the hens.

The other benefit of the open bottom is that the chicken manure will give a bit of fertilizer to the penned area, thus the need to constantly move it around so the chickens have fresh area daily and it doesn't kill off one area of grass.

 

[Looking4new]

I mounted my hen house on an old boat trailer I wasn't using for a boat any more. Just took the rollers off and laid plywood down, built the HH on the ground and then mounted it on the trailer. A board that is connected to the bottom of the run stops the chickens from escaping into the wild blue yonder.The run is connected to the trailer by two hooks and eyes. I have to separate them to move them, but such is life.

 

[muddstopper]

I have built several chicken tractors for my flock I tried using wheels but gave that up. I had axles mounted on hinges with a boat winch for lifting it off the ground, didnt like that either. The design I now use are coops mounted on skids. I attach a cable on one end and just hook the tractor to the cable and drag the pens. You only have to move the pen its own lenght to keep a fresh supply of grass. I have several rare breeds and I keep each breed in a seperate pen to prevent accidental cross breeding between the breeds. I move the pens a couple of times a wk to supply fresh grass and prevent a muddy mess. Entire coop is exposed to the ground with the house part raised up 2 ft over the ground. To move pens, you have to go slow, chickens are dumb animals and will just stand there while the pen slides over them, lost a few that way, but it doesnt take them long to figure out whats going on and they will just walk with the pen as it is slid across the ground.

 

[motownbrowne]

Toy collector, it looks like you're doing something similar to what we do. Ours is on a hay wagon though, which is nice, because it won't tip forward or backward if it's not hooked up to anything.

I'm assuming you'll be moving it to a new location often and letting the birds out to forage. You probably already know about portable electric net fencing, but if not check it out. We use premier one brand, but there are others. I like that system much better than the "chicken tractor" with the bottom open to the ground but not allowing birds to actually go outside.

One critique, though. You should consider a mesh floor. Heavy enough they can stand on it, but that will permit feces to fall through. You'll never have to clean it and you'll fertilize wherever you go. Then every day or two you move it forward one length.

 

[ToyCollector]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

No progress this week, because the first chance I got it rained (for only the second time in two months mind you). I'll try and get the roof frame and front and rear doors done this coming weekend.

Muddstopper: When I was dreaming up the idea, I rejected the idea of skids.. It probably would have been smarter for the long term, and if you're having a wire floor then it really would be great, but I getting two beams big enough to use as skids would have sent me broke. Timber prices in Aus are pretty crazy. I could always drop the pen onto skid at a later date if needs be.

Motownbrowne: I did consider a mesh floor, but as the trailer had a metal bed anyway. I couldn't be bothered with the work of taking the trailer bed off and redoing the frame so the suspension had something to sit on. The flooring is waterproof and hard as nails, so cleaning shouldn't be too hard, I'll just run a shovel over it, or in summer I might even clean it out with a pressure cleaner. The perches are going to hang off the side a bit, so I'll have mesh under the area that gets the most poo.

For everyone pointing out that I don't have any access to the ground for the chooks.. I plan to let them out each day, but we don't have a big fox or eagle problem here, so the should be safe without too much protection.

I've seen the electric net fence, and I might go that way, but we are also considering a livestock guardian dog. Anyone had any experience?

 

[ToyCollector]

Today I got the framing for the roof and the nest boxes completed.

Tomorrow I'll try and work on the perches.. but it's starting to get too big for the shed!