Injured chicken + chicken tractor = ?

Posted: August 26, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Injured chicken + chicken tractor = ?

One of our Dominiques was getting her butt kicked – literally – by the rest of the chickens a couple of weeks ago. By the time we got to her she had a seriously bloody butt and no feathers left back there.


After separating her and her brood sister off in a temporary pen, I begin pondering solutions. What to do with an injured chicken when you are relying on a portable chicken tractor for the flock, rather than a stationary coop?


I was puzzled for a few days, almost ready to build a second much smaller chicken tractor (and effectively double my daily chicken chores), when I decided to instead try a simple modification to the existing 10′ square tractor.


Here’s a video of the modification (just a line of pipe + wire to separate off an 18″ sliver of the tractor) and the resulting standoff once we reintegrated the birds. Imagine the Gunsmoke theme, or perhaps when the Outsiders lined up against the rival gang. The chickens lined up along the new partition, flapping their wings, pecking at the wire, and giving each other the evil eye. It was hilarious. Well, “hilarious” in a chicken standoff kind of way.


I named the injured chicken Pony Boy. Stay golden, Pony Boy.

Chicken tractor :: learnings thus far

Posted: July 31, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Chicken tractor :: learnings thus far

Learnings after two months of use with our Salatin-inspired chicken tractor:

  • You can’t care too much about your lawn if you use a chicken tractor on it. Even with our portable dust bath box – which they seem to like quite a bit – you are going to get holes in your lawn. I’m currently going around once a week sprinkling seed and a bit of seed starter soil mix on those holes.
  • Giving a quick rinse to the ground that you just moved the coop from gives a big head start to the droppings dissolving into the ground. Important when you still have two little kids wanting to run and play on that lawn.
  • The hardware cloth skirt actually works to keep digging predators at bay. The PVC pipe on the outer edge allows it to float with the tractor when moving it, rather than getting bogged down. This would definitely *not* work with normal chicken wire (too flexible).
  • In this hot, hot summer I’m having to water this portion of our lawn to keep it alive so the chickens can eat on it. Normally I’d let it go brown. Adding the cost of our water and electricity (water pump) to this project is not exciting.
  • We’ve added a separate “chicken scraps” bowl to our kitchen counter that sits beside the “compost scraps” bowl. We’re diverting apple cores, bread crusts, etc to the chickens to supplement their feed.
  • We just planted comfrey, which performs several minor miracles, even though most folks think of it as a weed. We’re using it specifically to accelerate our compost piles and as a chicken feed. Hey, grow your own free chicken feed! Hat tip to the Deliberate Agrarian for the comfrey knowledge transfer.
  • Tying a rock to the edge of the tractor allows the chickens to peck on something hard, wearing down their always-growing beaks.
Changes for next version of chicken tractor (which I hope to not build for at least five years):
  1. Weld two sets of small metal tubes together for the trapdoor joints; the PVC ones already broke. Still OK, though, since zip ties hold the hinge in place.
  2. Two trap doors instead of one. When we place everything inside (2 nest buckets, 1 waterer, 1 feeder, 1 dust bath box), that one quadrant gets a bit hectic. Although it does allow the other three quadrants more open space for the chickens to scoot around in.
  3. Add a temporary divide wall to section off a portion of the coop when introducing (or reintegrating) new birds into the flock. I’ve currently got one of our Dominiques off by herself recovering from almost getting pecked to death by the others. I’m thinking of segmenting off a couple of feet down one side of the tractor just for her when reintegrating her.

Food quality and storage

Posted: July 23, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Food quality and storage

We’re continuing to see some mainstream attention on the lack of food quality in the US (evidence: Roger Ebert’s un-review of the new movie Food, Inc). Now to get the North American’s attention on the next step towards true sustainability: food security via local micro-farms, micro-ranchs, and our own yards.

Related food security note: We’ve got 12 months food about to go into storage. Not tasteless freeze dried stuff, but our normal, organically grown, regionally-grown foodstuffs sealed in metalized bags with oxygen absorbers, packed inside food-grade 5-gallon buckets. Vermin-proof, easy to store, and will last for years and years depending on the type of food. Check that item off the list. What list? The one in Joel Skousen’s compilation called “10 Packs for Survival“.

Also ordered a sweet new Family Grain Mill from Homestead Products for wheat, etc that works on either electricity or manual power. The money I spent on the bulk food + the mill came out to less than buying three months worth of that same food at our grocery store would have cost.

Favorite garden tools

Posted: July 18, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Favorite garden tools

My favorite garden tool is easily my hori hori garden knife that you see pictured here. When I first looked at these I thought they were a bit ridiculous. They look like a giant Rambo survival knife. Useful for those frequent cases of being attacked by rabid deer, but other than that…

It turns out to be that large because the hori hori functions just like a similarly sized hand spade. It also has a handy serrated edge for slashing through small weedy vines and a forked end that pops root weeds up instantly. I love this thing. Mine did not come with a sheath and no local shops had any standalone sheaths the right size, but I found one that fits online.

Be careful you don’t accidentally treat it like a hardened steel Rambo knife, though. I was slicing through some weedy vines on a rock wall with my first hori hori and accidentally smacked the rock pretty hard. The blade snapped right off of the handle.

Other favorites include the typical hardworking wheelbarrow. I’ve used this dumping style wheelbarrow in the past (still have it), but I’m currently happy with my extra large, lightweight, two-wheeled version.

Other frequently used items include my pitchfork to turn the compost bins weekly and zip ties to quickly secure everything, from bird netting on our cherry trees, to sunflowers falling over themselves with too-big blooms. Note to fellow fans of Square Foot Gardening, when Mel said you can use raised beds that are only 6″ deep, he was probably not thinking you are going to put 10′ sunflowers in those beds. Use a zip tie to attach them to a bamboo stake.

Yes, I know zip ties are a doomed products and a complete ecological waste since they are yet another plastic made of petroleum. When I run out of my current stock, I plan to exclusively use hemp twine.

Chicken breeds

Posted: July 16, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Chicken breeds

For those of you who asked, we selected our current chicken breeds (Speckled Sussex, Barred Rock, and Dominique) for quietness, egg productivity, cold hardiness, and being OK with confinement. These chickens will spend the entire winter outdoors in the tractor.

I’m not using artificial heat nor lights to increase egg production, so we’ll move from .85 eggs/day/chicken down to .25 eggs/day/chicken in the dark winter months. I know of several other chicken folks in our area who successfully overwinter their chickens outside with no loss of life. The chickens seem to become stronger and do fine.

Other breeds that passed the above four qualifications include: Americana, Plymouth Rock, Australorp, Faverolle, Red Star, Black Star, and Wyanlotte. However, I’ve read some conflicting chicken blogs that state Plymouth Rock and Wyanlotte do *not* like confinement. I suspect we can get around this since they get fresh grass and a new view daily.

We don’t have a rooster because I value quietness (as do my neighbors) and I don’t want fertilized eggs. We have enough local friends with roosters that we can replicate the flock fairly easily.

Chicken tractor 101

Posted: July 13, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Chicken tractor 101

You’ll see I’m pursuing several of my original seven projects in parallel. While I’ve been talking to water sub-contractors re: the cistern, we’ve added chickens to our lives.

For the first time, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time when I mow my lawn. As Joel Salatin explains, he’s become a grass farmer, which then takes care of all the grazing animals (and other aspects) on his farm.

We’ve got 15 egg laying chickens (aka “layers”) in a 10 foot square Salatin-inspired chicken tractor. I found four different styles of tractors locally and on the web, plus some additional research about the digging preferences of coyotes and raccoons, and did a mash-up to create our current tractor design.

The main addition I made to other designs was the hardware cloth skirt to thwart digging predators and the water ski style ropes on each side to easy portability. See additional photos of the tractor and the various components like a portable dust box to the right in the streaming photo collage.

The chicken tractor gets moved to fresh grass daily. It’s light enough that my thin but strong wife can drag it as well. I tried hard to design one made of something renewable like bamboo, but since it rests 100% of the time on the ground, I would have to drench the bamboo with toxic chemicals to ward off mildew and rot.

I ended up using the dreaded PVC, which is terrible for our environment and health when created and when it leaches into our food and water. Because we do not get extensive, intense sun, this PVC will remain stable for years. But I still hate using the damn stuff.

This tractor is clearly version 1.0. I’ve already got a list going of things I would change for the next one, including the addition of a second trap door. When we add three 5-gallon buckets for them to lay eggs in, that one area under the only trap door is going to get crowded. And we’ll see how this tarp design survives a few snowfalls this winter.

Why a chicken tractor rather than a coop?
  1. Fresh grass daily means healthy happy chickens = healthy eggs = healthy family.
  2. Moving the coop daily means no buildup of droppings, thus no smell nor diseases.
  3. My lawn is finally useful. 🙂

Victory Gardens 2009

Posted: July 8, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: , | Comments Off on Victory Gardens 2009

Victory Gardens were the rage during the last two World Wars. 2009 is seeing a resurgence of them for various reasons. [for those who asked, here’s a collection of more hip VG posters]

Why do I specifically garden vegetables and fruit, as well as raise backyard chickens for eggs/meat? For these specific aspects:
  1. almost zero carbon footprint,
  2. beyond organic nutritional value,
  3. life lessons it teaches my children,
  4. bonding it provides as a shared hobby with my wife,
  5. barter with other neighbors doing different crops/projects (e.g. honey, soaps, skim balms)
  6. and the food security it provides, should our local grocery store begin to experience food shortages or rapidly increasing prices due to fuel surcharges. In the mean time we simply save money and eat better.

Our upper gardens are all raised beds for vegetables. Lower gardens have raised vegetable beds cut into the hillside as well as a baker’s dozen of three year old fruit trees.


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