The chicken tractor

The fence around my veggies is tall enough to keep eight of ten hens out--of the other two, one is guaranteed to jump it if given the chance (I still haven't forgiven her for destroying my new leeks).  She's a small, lightweight chicken and very industrious with her scratching--and extremely tenacious about escaping:  she doesn't give up!  The other one is a different breed but the same build;  luckily she's a lot more lazy and less inclined to jump.

So to let all chickens have access to the delights of the non-veggie parts of the property, I needed a way to keep this extremely hardworking aka destructive hen confined to where I want her.  I don't want the flock to free range now--I want to concentrate their efforts on a smaller area at a time, as well as give them fresh ground every day.

So I made a very flimsy chicken tractor.  It's pretty much two pieces of chicken wire threaded together at the top, with some pieces of cane and willow wands for a little added stability, forming a long pyramid-shaped tunnel.  It's about five or six meters long, and maybe 75 cm wide by 75 cm high.  Big enough for two chickens to pass each other and light enough for me to move by myself--provided there are no chickens in it!

Our mother hen Cookie and her four chicks (almost completely feathered now) get the tractor from early morning until I get home from work at 2 pm.  They then get confined to their rabbit hutch and small patch of lawn, and the adult flock get to go in. 

I can attach the tractor to the chickies' little fence quite easily--they can come and go as they please.  To get the chickens in, I have to be a little more crafty:  I lure them in with their daily soaked corn ration.  They follow me out of their gate into the garden and I pour a little of the corn about a foot inside the tractor and it doesn't take long for them to work out how to get inside for their treat;  one or two sometimes need a little help.  This is also how I get them back to their yard when tractor time is done.

I don't put any of their regular layers pellets in the tractor:  just water.  I want them to eat the grass/weeds/bugs/etc (they're not starving:  they've all just stuffed their gullets with corn)!  There is also no shade or protection from the elements in the tractor.  If it's really raining I just don't bother but keep the chickens in their yard, where they shelter under the trees or in their house;  I've also delayed letting them out in hot sunshine until it cools down a bit.  But on the whole, I try to get them in the tractor at around 2 pm and back in their yard for at least 7 pm, or even later now that days are getting longer.

This isn't a permanent solution.  When we lose our escape artist (and she's getting on a bit), I'll go back to our regular rotation system--moving chickens weekly over four or five sections of the property.  But honestly, this isn't so hard either:  I would say it takes about 10 minutes a day, and I can fob off some of it on the husband or eight year old!