Happy Urban Dirt

If you keep laying hens in a stationary hen house, you lose their amazing talent for building soil. Separate chicken droppings by placing your flock in mobile shelters, otherwise known as chicken tractors! These tractors spread manure for the chickens to till, which helps keep the grass tiny and the soil well.

Below is an excerpt Petite-Scale Poultry Flock: Revised Edition By Harvey Ussery. It has been adapted for employ on the Internet.

Photos courtesy of Harvey Ussery unless otherwise noted. Featured image courtesy of Deborah Moore.

Chicken tractors: designing your own mobile chicken coop

If you run the flock during the day or employ a short-lived fence anchored to the house to rotate the flock to fresh plots, the birds always return to the same shelter at night. However, if you graze them further, you will need some sort of mobile shelter to move them to a up-to-date area and provide them with shelter at night or during rain. I’ve seen hundreds of mobile Coopers and no two are the same.

The design you come up with will depend on the size of your herd, how you intend to employ their services, leftover materials from other projects asking to be used, the nature of your climate and ground – perhaps how fickle you are feeling.

Pasture pens and pasture shelters

Micro-herds in a lawn or pasture are often circumscribed to shelter only, which is often moved to fresh grass. However, the larger the flock, the more protected feeding space you will want to provide for the birds. As discussed in the previous section, I employ electric mesh fences to provide my birds with a enormous area to roam outside of their shelter.

However, if you don’t employ mains electricity, you can provide a pasture pen with a set of lightweight wooden frame panels with shrink wire that can be easily connected with screws and wing nuts and just as easily removed for relocation. Whether or not you need to attach a frame to the top of your playpen will depend on the aerial predation where you are.

Compromises: size, weight and stability

The heavier the shelter, the more challenging and possibly more unsafe it is to move. On the other hand, the lighter it is, the more likely it is to be blown into a neighboring county by gusty winds.

Shape also plays a role in stability in higher winds: I’ve found that boxer-style shelters with a higher profile catch the wind, while rim shapes or A-frames tend to keep my feet on the ground. (The classic 10-by-12-foot Polyface model is actually rectangular in shape, but is only 24 inches towering and is stable even in high winds.) The selection of materials has the greatest impact on the weight of the shelter.

A final option to reduce weight is to employ chicken wire instead of solid material whenever possible, in accordance with the need to protect parts of the shelter from rain, sun and acute, chilly winds.

Chicken tractor wheels

I prefer wheels for all of my larger shelters. Instead of installing the axles across the width of the carport, I permanently install half-inch bolts into the bottom rail at each corner using nuts, flat washers, and lock washers. If the ground is nice and level, an 8-inch wheel will be fine for you. I found that with the 8-inch wheel, the lower rear rail of the carport was hanging on clumps of grass. The extra ground clearance with the 10-inch wheel makes moving around the pasture much easier.

If the wheels are to be permanently installed, bicycle wheels – or other enormous recyclable wheels, such as the front wheels of an aged tractor – make it easier to move over uneven terrain.

Does your shelter need a floor?

The idea behind using a mobile shelter is to give residents access to fresh grass, so it usually makes sense for the shelter to have no floor. However, certain management choices may make a floor advisable. For example, juvenile birds are easier to carry without risk of injury from the rear lower rail (see below) if they are on the floor. If you are installing a floor in your shelter, I recommend using wire or plastic mesh, as feces accumulate on the solid floor, requiring constant cleaning from tight spaces.

Predators

Defensive wiring deters predators.

If the shelter is located around the perimeter of the electrical grid, you won’t have to worry about predators digging. However, if there are enormous owls in your area, close your shelter at night—night owls hunt on the wing, but also land and walk around in search of prey.

If the shelter is not enclosed by electrical grids, remember that raccoons and dogs can tear a hole in the chicken wire – in the case of 2-inch mesh, a raccoon may feed on its prey by tearing it right through the wire. If you are designing for such hazards, employ half-inch hardware cloth securely attached to the frame instead.

Predator digging foil using a wire mesh floor (welded 2-by-4 wire allows both access to the grass and protection from digging predators) – or by laying 18-inch chicken wire panels on a airy wood frame flat on the ground, completely around shelter.

The best option of all is to connect wires to the defense: Run single-core electrical wire around the entire shelter, separating it from the sides with plastic or porcelain insulators, one at nose level and preferably the other about 12 inches up. To charge such a petite section of the cable, an inexpensive charger powered by a 9 V battery is enough.

Chicken tractor nests

If the shelter will accommodate laying hens, nest boxes should be added, which can be mounted above ground level on existing framing. A hinged door – which protects the nest from rain but allows access from the outside – is a better option than crawling into the shelter to collect the eggs. If your hens tend to roost and poop in the nest, it would be nice to have an additional hinged cover that can be folded back into place at night.

Hinged access from the outside makes it basic for Annecy and Camille to collect eggs from my newest A-frame shelter.

Even a shelter ponderous enough to withstand normal winds can topple over when a gale blows. When weather forecasts predict winds well above normal, I temporarily “nail” my shelters with an earth anchor – basically an auger screw on the end of a steel rod with an eye hook on the top end.

Securing your shelter

Another way to temporarily secure the shelter is to hang several 5-gallon buckets from the inside frame and fill them with water – more than 80 pounds – using a garden hose. When it’s time to move the shelter, simply empty the buckets.

Remember that your chickens need to dust bathe. Since they do not have this opportunity if they are constantly on fresh grass, provide them with a dust box on the deck or place it in the pasture when there is no possibility of rain.

Most shelters are designed to be used only during the warmer seasons. If you intend to keep your birds in a shelter also in winter, you need to make at least the part where they sleep much tighter, protecting them from winter winds, snow and rain.

Wooden chicken tractors

I’m more comfortable working with wood, so all of my sheds have wood frames, with one exception – a hoop structure supported by half-inch solid fiberglass rods as purlins and arches, anchored to a wood foundation frame. I do not employ pressure treated wood in areas away from food production. To prevent rotting, I coat all frame parts that come into direct contact with the subfloor with a non-toxic sealantrenewed periodically as needed.

Using a wood that is very rot resistant – eastern red cedar in my area – would be a better option if you can get it. It can be designed so that the bottom rails – the parts most susceptible to rot – can be replaced without dismantling the entire shelter. Or mount the frame on plastic rails.

In winter, when a wooden shelter is not in employ, it should always be placed on blocks.

Plastic

Beginners often think of a lightweight, 1-inch plastic pipe or similar for framing a shelter. I’ve never seen one that would inspire much confidence – such plastic is quite exquisite and decomposes under the influence of sunlight. Heavier plastic pipe (such as Schedule 40 PVC) is a different matter – I have corresponded with many livestock farmers who have used it to build shelters that are both strong enough and basic to move. I have never used plastic pipes myself.

Metal

The electric cable is airy and basic to shape. You may see references to its employ in building mobile shelters, but most of the reports I’ve read about it have been negative. Both angles and rebar—concrete reinforcing bars made of cushioned iron—create solid frames for those with welding skills and equipment.

Chicken tractor covers

8 by 8 A-shaped portable shelter covered with 24-millimeter-thick woven polyethylene. He was ten years aged when this photo was taken, but he is still doing well.

Hefty duty canvas tarps are strong and weather resistant and are a better choice than plastic tarps. However, there is one plastic roofing option worth considering: 24 mil woven polyethylene – an extremely tough, strong plastic sheet interwoven with fiber mesh. I have used metal roofing as a solid covering in many of my sheds. Aluminum roofing is lighter but more exorbitant; steel, heavier but cheaper.

Fasteners

I strongly advise against assembling the mobile shelter with nails, which will loosen over time when you tug on the frame; employ screws instead. I prefer self-drilling types, such as coarse-thread deck screws, which do not require pilot holes (like conventional wood screws), which saves time. (I drill a pilot hole for the deck screw going into the last 3 inches of the frame piece to prevent cracking.)

Phillips head deck screws are available in galvanized or coated versions. The best screws of all are the star head stainless steel decking screws. While much more exorbitant than alternatives, their faster, slip-free drilling and rust resistance are crucial factors for shelters that require a lot of screws and are exposed to long-term weather conditions.

Moving the shelter

Twisted wire or cable, run through a piece of scrap garden hose, provides a convenient handle for carrying the shelter.

When moving a floorless shelter containing juvenile or unwary birds, pay attention to the rear edge of the lower frame. Typically, chooks run away when fresh grass is exposed, but those hanging around behind can get a leg caught between the ground and the moving rail. Actual injuries are uncommon if you pull slowly and stop and release the unfortunate bird at the first cry of distress.

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