So, I’ve got chickens. I’ve raised egg laying chickens for more than a dozen years but I’m finding it to be a bit of a challenge here in suburbia. Mostly because the chickens are refusing to follow directions. See, we have little in the way of predators, so unlike some of you, I don’t need a coop as solid as Fort Knox.
I’ve been letting them roam free around here and they’re doing a fine job of keeping down the slugs (slug eggs? Like chicken caviar!) and bugs. But these chickens, they have a mind of their own. They’ve snubbed my suggested nesting boxes and made their own comfy spot to lay. They insist on scratching in my garden area, tilling up seedlings and making me crazy. And now they’re venturing into the neighbors’ yards.
I needed a way to contain them without building a big, expensive coop, something I could put together quickly and before my neighbors start giving me stink eye. I like the idea of a chicken tractor, so I can keep them contained and yet offer fresh grass. Necessity, meet invention:
Tacky? Absolutely! But it took me, alone, less than an hour to implement this plan.
This patio table has been sitting here, idle, for nearly a year because we have nowhere to put it (I’ve mentioned the steep aspect of our yard, yes?). With some chicken “wire” we had on hand and a few zip ties*, I managed to convert the underside of the table into a portable chicken pen. It’s a little smaller than I’d like for four chickens, but what I’ve found is that when chickens are restrained from roaming for several weeks, they’ll stick close to home for awhile once they’re allowed to free range. We’ll consider this their “retraining” phase, after which they’ll be allowed to free range as much as possible. This allows me to rein them in when they start getting too friendly with the neighbors.
*Zip ties and plastic chicken netting. I know. The netting we had on hand, so I felt like recycling it was a good option. I toyed with using string to tie on the netting, but knew it wouldn’t be nearly as strong or long lasting as the zip ties. I’ll placate myself with the fact that since I’m raising my own eggs, I won’t be using and throwing away an egg carton each week.
Love it! Needs must.
We’ve got a much more formal chicken tractor, but only keep our girls in it at night through to lunch time to contain their egg laying. From lunch until they decide to roost in the evening they are allowed to roam our now chicken fenced yard. They were happy to stay in our yard UNfenced, but Ed the Chicken Herding Cat decided it was too much fun to chase them out into the street. Naughty Ed.
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Once the girls understand that this is their new home, I hope to do the same – allow them to free range in the evenings.
I love this solution. I wish we could do something so simple, but the predator situation is dire around here. So, instead of chickens or ducks for the pond (that I’ve been begging for), we got some new fish for our pond. They don’t produce anything useful, but they make me happy.
Right now, they are living in a big stock pot in the kitchen until the pond water warms up a bit more.
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Roxanne, the fish in the stock pot gave me pause. At first read through, I thought you were cooking them!
Long ago and not so far away we lived in a neighborhood with one free ranging chicken. Not to say that she was ours…
You would be working in the yard and suddenly get that feeling that you were not alone, or you were being watched. Sure enough there she was. Dont know where she came from or where she went, but it was kind of fun.
Personally, I like them roaming, but my neighbor has a garden area and I’d feel horrible if they scratched up her veggies!
This is a great idea. We are just starting to plan for chickens, hoping to have a coup ready in May. We have 16 acres and predators are pretty commonplace. Our desire is to have about 20 chickens, plenty for ourselves and some for our neighbors. I am wondering how something like that would work for that many chickens.
You’d need a bigger area for 20 chickens, certainly. Do you have a trampoline? It wouldn’t be as easy to move, but: http://www.motherearthnews.com/multimedia/image-gallery.aspx?id=2147492280
Interesting concept. I too have a patio table (glass-topped) that I am not using. How do you get them in and out of the tractor and how easy is it to move?