Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Chicken Tractors!

Ok well it has taken me awhile to get around to writing this post and I am sorry about that  but here it finally is! I know a lot of you have been asking what in the world is a chicken tractor so here it is. We made it out of recycled metal roofing, 2X4s, hog wire, and chicken wire.


Now it may not be the most beautiful thing in the world but we will work on that when we have more time….. I am thinking hot pink maybe? :@) It would have to be a secret mission thought to get hot pink paint past my husband but I will work on it. LOL!


Here is the door that you have to go through to get into the chicken trailers.


Joshua feeding the chickens a cricket, Poor cricket but happy chickens.

In this insanely HOT weather the chickens run out of water quite a bit and we def do not want that so my husband made this very interesting 5 gallon chicken waterer out of a 5 gallon bucket and an oil pan (new oil pan of course). You fill up the 5 gallon bucket with water and then put the oil pan on top and flip it over as fast as possible and it creates a suction that lets just enough water out without overflowing. I know awesome right!!!

They are happy as can be.


 The chickens have been in their chicken tractors for almost 2 weeks now! They LOVE it! They especially love it at night when the light is on and bugs are flying everywhere, They go CRAZY! We have hit a few bumps in the road (well more like other larger animals that keep attacking the chicken trailers) so we are gradually making them better and better and hopefully won't lose to many more chickens. The first attack was on there first day in them and the dogs decided to break in and play with them. They grabbed them one by one and took them to the porch to play with them. We lost about 20 chickens that night. *stupid dogs* After we dealt with the dogs the next thing that attacked was what we think is a raccoon (well our good friend tonia clued us in to this) all of the sudden we had chickens with NO WINGS! Now when you know they had wings when you went to bed but not when you got up in the morning it is pretty confusing. I never knew that a raccoon will reach through the chicken wire and eat the chickens piece by piece
This here is exactly how the chickens get eaten piece by piece, They huddle together against the sides and wont move for hardly anything!! Its like there in a trance or something when there going to sleep.

2 comments:

  1. I had chicks in a cage one time and all I had left was the feet to some of the chicks?!.... Couldnt figure it out thought coon till we caught a cat sitting on top of the cage reaching in... But coons can wreak all sorts of havoc on a chicken flock!

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    1. We are finding this out LOL! I hope its not the cats but it very well could be. The lights being put on the outside def helped I think to. We haven't had any more attacks since then and we put a baby moniter out there to.

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