Moving chickens daily gives them a fresh supply of natural food available. The chickens can peck at new vegetation and bugs every time you move them. It keeps the chicken cleaner, cuts down on the smell, eliminates the need for bedding, and fertilizes the soil.
Building a chicken tractor doesn’t have to be expensive. Look for a sale on standard supplies and choose a notable plan, like the John Suscovich Design.
Why Chicken Tractors Are a Must
When raising chickens, it’s important to understand that chickens bred for meat production differ significantly from your typical egg-laying hens. You can’t free-range most meat chicken breeds because they won’t outrun predators.
In a coop or chicken run, meat chickens tend to stay stationary. The enclosure becomes challenging to keep clean, and starts to stink really bad.
Keeping meat chickens in a chicken tractor encourages the birds to move and peck, providing more exercise as they quickly put on muscle.
Meat chicken breeds grow quickly. If you raise them in a traditional coop, they will just sit by the feeder and eat and eat, which can sometimes lead to heart attacks.
Raising meat chickens in a chicken tractor allows the chickens to be healthy and happy. And happy meat is delicious meat!
Why Do They Call It a Chicken Tractor?
You will notice that raising chickens help with controlling bugs and fertilizing the soil. They will even “till” up your ground just like a regular tractor, hence the name, chicken tractor.
What Is the Best Chicken Tractor?
There are many chicken tractor designs you can research. In my opinion, the best chicken tractor design on the internet is the John Suscovich Mobile Chicken Tractor. We chose this plan for several reasons.
Dimensions
This chicken tractor has plenty of head space measuring six feet tall. A lightweight door allows me to walk right in. The height makes it easy to get into the chicken coop to feed and water the chickens.
The floor dimensions measure 6’x10′, giving the chickens 60 square feet of grass. This size is perfect for a small flock of 30 birds or less. In general, meat chickens need two square feet of space per bird.
Common Materials
John Suscovich DIY chicken tractor plans use easily accessible materials. It uses some treated lumber, electrical conduit, chicken wire, wire mesh and other materials you may already have on hand or are easy to buy at your local hardware store.
I did have to order a white tarp from Amazon to cover the chicken tractor. We secured the tarp with zip ties.
Convenient Design
When it is all said and done, the chicken tractor is reasonably light and easy to move. At first, the treated wood was still wet, making it slightly heavy. But, using dry wood will help to keep it lightweight.
This chicken mobile home design offers excellent ventilation and shade, yet it’s lightweight and easy to access. Whatever design you choose, make sure it’s one you can move and access your chickens easily.
Affordable
The John Suscovich Chicken Tractor plans cost $13.99 on Amazon, and the supplies cost between $300 to $400, depending on what you may already have laying around.
Anchor Your Chicken Tractor
Since this chicken tractor uses a tarp for the roof, it needs an anchoring system. If you live in a windy environment, the wind will pick it up and send it flying. We used cinder blocks as weights.
Tie a rope to one cinder block and thread the rope over the top, the middle section of the chicken tractor. Loop the rope through a second cinderblock placed on the opposite side of the tractor. Secure it with a metal clip, so it is easy to unhook and move.
Choosing Your Location
Choose a large, flat, grassy location to house your chicken tractor. The flat land will allow you to move your tractor with ease. Since you will carry it daily, this is important.
If the ground is uneven or has a lot of hills or holes, it could leave spaces under the frame of the chicken tractor for predators to enter.
Keep the chicken tractor near a source of water and electricity. This access will allow you to set up a heat lamp if needed, and it will enable you to maintain fresh water for your chickens.
Meat chickens scratch the ground, loosening the topsoil, pulling up unwanted weeds, and adding rich phosphorus and nitrogen to the soil. You may want to place your chicken tractor in an area you plan to use as garden space or otherwise would till.
Transferring the Birds to the Chicken Tractor
It is wise to wait until the meat birds are three weeks old before transferring them to a chicken tractor. The chickens should be in a brooder box with a heat lamp for the first three weeks. We use large galvanized water troughs to house the chicks.
You can also weigh your birds before transferring them. We moved our meat chickens at 17 days old, weighing 1.43 pounds or .65 kilograms.
Meat chickens are very different from regular laying hens. They have thick legs and grow muscle very quickly. Their legs are susceptible to injury since their bone structure struggles to keep up with the muscle weight as they grow and develop.
With that in mind, when you move your meat chickens to the chicken tractor, set them down gently. We use Great Grandpa Babe’s old wooden chicken crate to transport the chickens from the brooder boxes to the chicken tractor.
Equipment Needed
- Feed – You will need a feeder and a waterer. We purchased a long, trough-style feeder for turkeys stretching 48 inches long. A long rotating PVC pipe sits on top of the feeder keeping the chickens from roosting on it. Keeping the chickens off the feeder helps keep the food clean.
- Water – We chose a 2-gallon waterer with extendable legs that you can raise to three inches tall. It has a nice deep rim to keep the chickens from kicking up as much grass and dirt into it.
- Heat Lamp – The meat chicken breeds don’t grow many feathers. The energy goes into growing large muscles instead of a thick layer of feathers. If you raise chickens in cold temperatures or the chicks are younger than three weeks old, you will also need a heat lamp and a 250-watt bulb.
- Supplements – Supplements are optional to promote healthy growth.
- Nesting Box & Roosting Bars – Meat chickens do not need a nesting box or roosting bars.
Caring for Meat Chickens
- Move the tractor daily. Take out the feeder, waterer, and anything else inside the tractor. Either pull your chicken tractor by hand or tow it with a barn tractor or other equipment. Move it slowly and gently. It is best to have a second person in the back coaxing the chickens forward to reduce injury to your chickens. This is an excellent job for the kids!
- Once the tractor is in its new location, refill the waterer and the feeder with fresh food and water. Use quality feed specially formulated for meat chickens.
- You can add apple cider vinegar or vitamins to the chicken’s water, especially at first, to promote healthy growth.
- Check the food and water twice daily. Some recommend taking the feed out at night once the chickens reach three or four weeks old to keep them from over-eating.
- Keep a heat lamp on at night if the weather is cold or if they are younger than three weeks old.
- Make sure you keep moving the chickens so that they are on clean ground and wash the feeder and waterer occasionally.
- Broiler or fryer chicken breeds are ready to butcher between 7 and 9 weeks of age or when they reach 3 to 5 pounds, depending on the breed. Cornish cross chickens are typically ready to butcher after six weeks.
