Country Mama: Chicken Tractor Update Part Two

outdoor paneling covering the nest box and roost pole

Since my last post about my chicken tractor being torn into by an animal, I have finally found the culprit. I still don't know what happened to my rooster but I'm still going with a broken neck judging by the looks of him. You will never believe it when I tell you. You are probably thinking a dog or a wild animal but if you are, you would be wrong. Nope, its none of those things. The culprit is my thousand pound horse who thinks chicken feed is horse feed. Yep I realized this a few nights ago. I laid some wood over the two wholes and attempted to use chicken feed to lure one of my roosters into the pen. This didn't work of course and I gave up trying to catch him but later that night I heard the tin on the pen being knocked around and the dogs started barking. I went outside and found my horse trying to get to the feed. After I run her off, I went to look at my pen and sure enough there was a new hole on the other end of the pen that looked suspiciously like the other two holes from before. Well now that I know the culprit is actually a horse and not a wild animal, I feel safe using my pen. I just needed to patch the holes. As I was walking around outside today, I remembered that I had a long narrow piece of dog wire laying around somewhere. It was just the right size in height to cover the whole lower front where the three holes were. So I stapled it on and trimmed off the excess. As I was doing this I decided there were a few more things I wanted to change. For example I decided the tin on the one side with the section totally and completely covered with wire wasn't necessary. So I removed it and over the nest box I screwed a piece of outdoor paneling. Then to keep it from getting wet at the top I put a piece of flashing or whatever it's called. It's the piece that you put at the upper most pitch of your tin roof. I call it flashing but that's probably not right. (Shrugs shoulders) it doesn't matter as long as its leak proof to keep the rain off of them. Now, one reason I wanted to remove the tin was to allow more sun light in. Chickens need plenty of sun and it just makes more sense to remove the tin as opposed to propping it up and worrying about the wind catching it. After all this could be how my rooster died. As I said it looked like his neck was broken and the tin which had been up earlier had been knocked down or blown down. The rooster was laying on that side with his head next to the tin. Its quite possible that when it fell he had his head out the wire and the tin hit him killing him. There was no sign of sickness, no bloody mess which is why I believe his neck was broke. If I am correct then by removing this tin I will be able to prevent this from happening again. However, I left the tin over the opening on the opposite side. It makes it easily accessible for me to get in and change the water, remove chickens or put them in. This piece can be faced North if the wind is too much, but for now it is facing west. The nest box wall is facing North, so there's no chance of wind getting to them from that direction either. They should be warm enough and out of the rain enough the way I did it. One of the things about my chicken tractor is that its a constant work in progress. I can change things as I determine they need to be changed. I love the idea of a chicken tractor, because you can easily move it, you can update it as you need to and you can free range without actually free ranging. I like my stationary pen. It's not that it's impossible to move. The pen itself pulls up from the ground and folds in half. It's the coop that's difficult to move. I've contemplated putting a wire bottom on it and adding wheels to it. The thing about the coop and pen is that it can easily be landscaped to be something beautiful. Mine may not be that pretty but there are some I've seen pictures of that are gorgeous. People plant pretty flowers around them, grow vines on them. You can do all kinds of things to make them beautiful, or you can have it be as ugly as sin. It's whatever your preference. If we move, like I'm hoping we can, we'll have more room to build pens and things. I would love to build three or four larger A frame chicken tractors, to separate the different colors of orpingtons, that I want. I would love to have a pen for my buffs, a pen for my blues, a pen for lavenders and so on and so forth. I might even like to have some silkies just because. Right now, the three colors I have mentioned are the ones I want, but I might like to start a blue/buff pen as well. Once I figure out what works with my chicken tractor, I will know exactly how to build my new pens if and when I get that opportunity. Another possibility for the current chicken tractor is that I could add onto the bottom. I have thought about this, recently as I know that my pen will need to grow eventually. Of course I can always just build a brand new one but it is possible to add on to the existing one.