A chicken tractor made from a metal gazebo. It's not completed in this picture on the left. It is the first
chicken tractor I've seen that is made out of a broken tent gazebo.
You know those? See picture on the right. I had two
different neighbors give me their broken ones. They let them blow
over in the wind and so all the corner connections broke. So I tried
repurposing
the panels as a chicken
tractor!
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Here's
the metal "gazebo parts" coop, almost done! The roof was made with
two
panels of plastic corrugated roofing as found at Home Depot.
Since the gaps in the metal gazebo panels were a tad too large for containing
chickens, I zip-tied plastic netting over it. I had to use
100 zip ties. The plastic hardware netting can be found in a roll
at Home Depot, too. You can see a few of the 4 week old chickens
in there. This is a double decker coop. The upstairs floor
is just a board. I can slide the board out easily and scrape off
the poop whenver I want. I have six standard-sized chickens in here.
This is fairly crowded, but should be okay as long as I don't let the chickens
stand in mud (put down wood shavings or straw, etc. to absorb standing
water). This coop really needs wheels because it is too heavy
to just drag around the yard. There in no bottom to this pen,
as is the case with all chicken
tractors. . . . Soon after, I gave away this coop and three hens!
Now I am building another little coop for two new pullets. Someone
help me! : P
I got to work on adding wood to the outside
of the metal "old tent gazebo panels" chicken coop. Now the top part
has an enclosed house part. This is where the adult hens will
lay their eggs. Right now, however, I made it into a brooder!
It's fairly wind proof, and it's rain proof, so I hung a heat lamp in there,
added a feeded and a waterer, and there are six 3-week-old chicks living
in there. I blocked off the door into the run part so the chicks
will have to stay in the brooder part for now. That got them
out of the house where the smell was starting to be a bit of a bother.
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At a thrift store I found some roller
blades for a couple bucks. They didn't work out for my son, so instead
of throwing them away, I cut them apart and screwed the wheels to the bottom
of the new chicken pen. You can see a close-up in the picture on
the left. You can see through to the wheels on the other side.
In the picture on the right, you can see the roller blade wheels peeking
out on the bottom corner. Update: Roller blade wheels do
not work well on grass! :) Learned that lesson! Great on concrete, though!
Here are a couple of coops I built around
2010. Both were made with construction site scraps.
They were building a house right across the street from me so there were
a lot of scraps to be had, and I couldn't help myself; I had to build
more chicken coops. :) Both were roofed
with vinyl house siding scraps. Both were what I would call "banty
huts." They weren't that big but could house about three bantams.
Which they did! I have since sold or given these two away.
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Here's another
chicken
tractor I built. They are fun to build. You
know when kids are little and the boys play with cars and the girls play
doll-house? Building chicken pens and tractors reminds me of building
a doll-house for little pets. I probably would enjoy building
play-houses for my two kids, too. I have more tools than when I was
little, like a cordless drill, a pneumatic stapler, and a Sawz-All.
But Norm Abrams, that carpentry whiz on 'New Yankee Workshop'...He'd hate
my style. I don't make plans, I just start building.
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This is one of my
chicken coops. Nice set-up. But...I took it all down!
What gives? I tend to change things in my environment a lot.
When I do, I'm always reminded of a Peanuts cartoon I saw when I was a
kid. Linus was making tiny snowmen with great care, and then immediately
kicking them over with force. Over and over he did this. When
asked why, he replied, "I'm torn between the desire to create and the
desire to destroy." .... I took off the door
(always the most annoying part of those cheapo metal sheds) and built a
wooden door on it. Then on one side, I built a run, and on the other
side, I stuck a used dog kennel. The fun part was cutting holes
in the two sides of the shed so that the chickens could go all the way
thru to each run. I made little portals. It was kind of like a HabiTrail
for chickens.
My son modeling how
to open an external egg collection door of a recent chicken house
I built and played around with. These pictures can be a quick tutorial
on how to turn a chain link dog kennel into a chicken house!
I bought this used 6' x 6' x 4' tall chain link dog kennel for $30.
One predator problem solved: A kennel is automatically dog-proof.
Dogs can't get in. But raccoons still can reach through chain-link,
and they will. So you need to make at least three sides solid
somehow. Don't use plywood; it would be too heavy.
I go to Lowe's or
Home Depot and get paneling from their seconds bin or "cull cart."
Paneling cuts easily with a utility knife. Paint the paneling to
make it last longer in the weather. Drill holes along edges.
Use wire to attach paneling to chain link. Now raccoons can't reach
through. . . . . . . . . You can make your converted dog kennel chicken
house as simple or as fancy as you want. Here I tried to make an
external egg collection door.
The plastic bins
inside are dishwashing bins, and they are sitting in a long wire shelf
that I scrounged. They are wired (I'm very fond of wire) to the inside
of the chain link kennel about two feet off the ground. I then bent
the chain link so my hand could fit through if I were holding an egg. .
. .
Note: This
type of hen house is not insulated. It would not be good for very
cold climates. It rarely gets below freezing in Portland, Oregon
so I can get away with uninsulated coops. (But when it got down to
16 degrees recently, I hung a heat lamp over the chicken's perch until
the temps got back up into the 30's.) In other states, it can get
regularly get below freezing and even into the negative temps. Even
if chickens survive such temps, they will not be comfortable and can suffer
frostbite of the comb and wattles.
Chickens are descended
from sub-tropical jungle fowl; a warm climate pheasant. I would recommend
that chicken-keepers in colder climates have a well insulated chicken house
or tractor, and then the ability to hang a heat lamp if the temp
gets really cold.)
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Two other chicken
tractors I built. I used my new pneumatic stapler! It's
very fast and fun. Both tractors are made from scrap wood and stuff
I had around so I painted it all with some stain I had which makes things
look more cohesive. What's a chicken tractor? It's city folk's
ticket to keeping chickens! Click
here to find out more!
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Info about
raccoons: I learned about raccoons via my very first chicken pen and
my very first batch of chickens. My "pen" was made out of all
chicken wire. (Not the coop pictured above.) So there
were no solid corners, and raccoons just reached right through the wire
and grabbed the chickens. The raccoons were smart; there were about
five of them and one got on each corner so no matter where the chickens
ran, they got nabbed. If the chickens would have stood in the middle,
nothing would have happened. But chickens aren't too smart and will
run up against the sides and/or into the corners. The solution
is simple; always have a solid-sided corner, preferably two, for the
chickens to run to.
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At our old house,
I was going crazy with scrap wood and my new cordless drill (love that
thing). I couldn't stop making chicken
tractors and pens! Some of them turned out pretty funky looking,
like the one above left. The top was made of tarp that I then
painted. What?? I wouldn't do that now; it looked a tad too
trashy. The picture at right is a brooder
with
a dozen chicks. Note the Rubbermaid container, the newspaper,
the light fixture hanging over it for heat, and the waterer and feeder
that you can pick up inexpensively at a feed store.
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A row of chicken
tractors I built. It looked like "chicken shanty town." I built
all of these when my first child was about 7 months old. I
got some sort of weird energy at that point in my life and just kept
building pens. Maternal instinct gone awry?
:)
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I think this was
my very first chicken
tractor. It was a long rectangle. It housed four bantams.
Two golden Sebrights, one black Silkie cockerel, and one red Frizzle.
Note the Rubbermaid container as a hen house. They'd hop into it
at night and be safe from grabbing raccoon hands. This, however,
is not an optimal chicken
tractor design.
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This particular
set-up was just metal stakes in the ground with nylon poultry netting strung
around them. It had no top on it. Not predator proof,
although I suppose the chickens could run into that triangle coop at the
end. This arrangement didn't last long. At this point I had
about 23 chickens, mostly youngsters. I had a wide assortment of
bantams. So pretty! But I also had a hawk that would try to
nab the bantams. Yes, I was in the city but had a lot of
predator problems! Raccoons, dogs, hawks...
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Chickens eating
apples that fell from tree. At right is a triangular coop thingy.
At
night I was sure to shut the triangle door so dogs couldn't get the chickens
at night. However, it's a pain to have to shut your chickens
in every night and let them out every morning. It's much easier
and safer to have some kind of set-up where they can put themselves to
bed in some safe place. And that's a proper chicken
tractor!
It was sure wet
and messy this day! A picture of the dog kennel, with a dog house
inside for a hen house. Looking back, I can see I was quite paranoid,
because although the chickens were in a dog kennel (no dogs or raccoons
could get in), I still shut them in their house at night so nothing could
get them. They walked up the ramp themselves at nightfall and I shut
the door.
A nicer picture
of the dog kennel coop, with its "petting zoo" straw. Quiz:
What's wrong with the kennel coop in the above picture? That's right;
four open sides. No solid corner for the chickens to run
to when raccoons come prowling.
Watching chickens
is very peaceful. They are not like people; they are very simplistic.
While watching them, some of your human tensions and complexities tend
to melt away. :) Also, I keep going back to chickens as pets
because once you get used to turning your kitchen left-overs into eggs,
it seems odd to go back to buying eggs and throwing food away. The
picture at right shows two more chicken tractors I made.
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