The Chicken Tractor

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Last month’s entry about feeding the chickens only told half the story. Although feeding them spent beer grain is a great way to supply the chickens with carbs while taking the grain out of the waste stream, chickens need a balanced diet. Store bought grain is often enriched with other nutrients needed for strong shell growth and general health. But as I said, I’m trying to reduce my cost while keeping the chickens natural and healthy. The obvious answer to this conundrum is to allow the chickens to roam free in my yard, eating bugs and weeds to get those nutrients. But this ain’t the country. It’s a small backyard in Kensington. And as anyone who has ever kept chickens knows, when unleashed in the garden, they can be one of the most destructive creatures imaginable. I learned this the hard way after I unwittingly let them roam when we first got them, and they decimated my strawberries. But the part of my yard I have fenced in near the coop has been picked down to a barren dirt lot by them. So to get them into new pastures without losing my precious berries, here’s my solution.

That there is my very own chicken tractor. When I tell people I have one, they picture this huge piece of machinery that can fit a whole flock of chickens. But when dealing in such a small space, I had to scale down. And as luck would have it in my urban environment, someone discarded a shopping cart out front of my gate the other day. That’s the joys of farming in the city. One man’s trash is another man’s farming implement. It was easy to make the tractor. I pried off the bottom rack of the shopping car and strung chicken wire around all of the sides. to close in the chicken. I then left the top part open so I can use the stacking mechanism of the cart as a little door.

When ever the lawn needs a little mowing and the chickens need to eat, I put them in through the door and then wheel them around the yard, letting them feed while not allowing them to destroy too much on one patch. And as I said, since it’s small, I can wheel it up and down the garden bed rows to eat the weeds that are sometimes hard to get to with a weed whacker. This way, my chickens can graze, my crops are safe, and I’m much more sane and well fed. Oh, how I love the symbiotic relationship of the city farm.

-Nic