Chicken Tractor

We have always free-ranged our chickens in the day and then shut them up in a coop at night. But this system is no longer working for us. There were two major problems: predators and eggs.

Although the dogs do a pretty good job of keeping the coyotes away, they do allow a neighbor's dog (male) to come up here whenever he pleases. And he has a nasty little chicken-eating habit. We have lost too many chickens to this damned dog, and we had to decide whether to kill him or change our system.

It's the other problem that probably went a long way towards saving the dog's life. Free ranch chickens like to lay eggs where they please, and they are often difficult to find. Furthermore, whenever a hen decided to set on a nest outside, a predator would come up at night and grab her.

So we have now switched to a chicken tractor. We made a hen house on wheels and a pen that we can easily disassemble and move. We move the pen once a week. This way they get to graze on grass and bugs without ever overgrazing the land. So far we like it and the chickens seem very content. More photos

Where the chicken pen was is overgrazed, from having to keep them inside for too long (after each time we lost a chicken). We have made rock terraces throughout the area, to try and help limit the runoff when it rains. Once the rains start we will plant the area with some ground cover, preferably a clover or some other nitrogen fixer. Next year, we will plant trees in the terraces. For now however, it will be used as our biochar area, where we cut wood and chop the small branches for biochar material.