August 22, 2012
Buckingham Chicken Tractor
A "chicken tractor" is a portable, bottomless chicken cage that allows the farmer to move the chickens around a garden or pasture, giving the chickens access to fresh greenery and insects while the chickens give the soil fertilizer and earth tilling footwork. It can be a simple poultry mesh box to hold roasters (for meat chickens, eaten young) or a more elaborate coop containing roosts and nest boxes for housing egg-layers. My plan was for the latter, as I am yet to commit to the work of poultry processing, and wish to host a few hens to benefit my garden while converting proteins in the garden that I don't wish to eat – such as weeds, weed seeds, insects, and snails (I did try homegrown escargot) – into proteins I like to eat: eggs.
I sketched out my design using Illustrator, and calculated material needs. The plan was designed around a few limitations: 1) I wanted it to fit in my existing garden planter box, 2) I didn't want to cut or patch together the metal roofing, so sized the design to utilize two sheets of pre-cut roofing (scavenged from a previous chicken shed), 3) I wanted it to be light enough to move, and 4) I wanted it to be big enough to fit at least two or three adult hens comfortably.
We cut all the 2x2 frame wood at once, keeping them labeled with sticky notes, and painted them; first with primer, then with low luster exterior paint in a "Buckingham Gardens" green. The woman at the paint counter in the local hardware store asked, while adding the color, "are you watching the Olympics?" I hadn't been (and still have not) so it took me a moment to make the connection from her question to the paint color. I find it appropriate that the chicken palace be named in honor of the 2012 Summer Olympics, as building it encompassed all my free time during the London games.
Eleanor was taken at night, from her bamboo jungle roost at her downtown Santa Rosa home, where she was living a free, although lonely, re-wilded life – at risk of being eaten by raccoons, hawks, and neighbor dogs (as all her sisters had been) – and relocated to Buckingham.
A peek in the nest box the next afternoon....
Tags
chicken (1), chicken-tractor (1), coop (1), crafts (21), degree (16), eggs (3), farm (12), garden (21), sustainable (5), wood-working (4)
Arianna Helen