Building the Chicken Tractor, Part I

As noted in the post on brooding chicks, I have them now in a small chicken tractor.  I wanted them to be mobile and on grass so that they could supplement their feed, fertilize the yard, and help me avoid having to muck out the coop.  I'm avoiding shoveling chicken manure, but the tradeoff is that they need more maintenance on a daily basis.

I used the design from Justin Rhodes at Abundant Permaculture, but I made a number of modifications (one of which is critical to address a security vulnerability and will be addressed in Part III).  The basic tractor design is roughly four feet wide, eight feet long, and two feet high.  It has a number of perches and two nest boxes made out of milk crates.  The front sides are half-inch hardware cloth mesh, and the back sides are galvanized roofing panels.  The original plan calls for six feet of the roof to be roofing panels and the other two feet to be mesh.  The original design has eye bolts for attaching a rope at either end to pull the tractor across the grass--no wheels (PVC skids on the bottom are suggested to help it move better).

My major modifications were:

1) I changed the frame base from 2x2 to 2x4, to give it increased mass (probably not needed) and increased rigidity (maybe needed, maybe not). The bigger base frame also enabled me to attach wheels (below).  I also downsized the vertical supports to 21 1/2" to keep the overall height about the same.

2) I added five-inch lawnmower wheels and extra supports for the eye bolts. This was accomplished through short 2x4 pieces attached to the outsides of the 2x4 frame at each end (this made the tractor wider than four feet at the ends, but it would still fit in a full-size pickup truck bed because the midpoint of the tractor--what would be between the wheel wells--is still four feet).  This makes the tractor one-way only; it can no longer be pulled in either direction.  If two-way movement is needed, with a little bit of additional modification it could be made to accept wheels at either end (or even both ends simultaneously). More details on this in a subsequent post.

3) I put galvanized roof panels along the entire top--no mesh at all.  This simplified the cutting process; I only made one long cut in one roofing panel to cover the entire top.  It also provides more shelter from the sun and rain.  The mesh on the front four feet of the tractor provides plenty of scenery for the birds, and they can get direct sun for part of the day if they want it.  The sun shines directly into the tractor in either the morning or afternoon, depending on which direction the tractor is facing.

The picture at the right shows the frame when it was largely complete, before adding the wheel blocks (those came last).  I also later added horizontal supports at the top (to hang a feeder from at the front and also to provide additional structural support).

If you look at the plans, you'll see that my setup is reversed in some respects--my door will be on the left in the picture; the plans call for it to be on the right...that wasn't necessarily by design--I reversed the diagonal supports that run along the sides by mistake--but I adapted as I went along.  Either way works.

You'll also note something from the picture that might not be immediately apparent at the outset when you're looking at the cut list: all of the 24" (or 21 1/2") pieces have to be more or less exactly the same length.  If they aren't, they can't firmly attach to the top and bottom of the frame.

I have problems with precision--partly because of my tools.  I can usually get within 1/8", but if I have to be exact, I'm probably not going to get it right.  So I had to shim a couple of my vertical supports before screwing them down.  Two were off by about 1/4"; I cut plugs for them and glued them in before driving the screws (one is the vertical post at the center front of the picture above).  Ditto the perches--I had to shim one.  Fortunately, with all of the cuts, I had as much leftover 2x2 small pieces as I needed for any shimming needs.

It definitely helps to have multiple people for some steps, particularly when attaching the vertical pieces to the bottom rail and when attaching the top to the frame with hinges (which is one of the last  steps).

More in Part II.

Spiders

Apparently I have a lot of funnel-web spiders.  These are not the monsters that live in Australia and can kill people.  The ones I have are mostly tiny.  In the garage I have some bigger ones, but the spiders who make webs out in the grass are so small that they usually go unnoticed, unless the dew highights their webs.  Then it becomes apparent that there are a lot of them.

I or the dog probably blunder through several per day, and mowing must wreak wholesale destruction on them.

Speaking of spiders, I'm growing Jerusalem artichokes again this year, again in pots.  And again, as was true previously, I have lynx spiders on them...is there some affinity that lynx spiders have for Jerusalem artichokes? 

Last, I found this in the chicken tractor:

While I'm usually a live-and-let-live person, I draw the line at poisonous spiders in close proximity to the livestock. Yes, they are non-aggressive and primarily interested in insects--which you can see a few carcasses of at the lower edge of the picture--but the chickens are also prone to try to grab anything that moves.  It was also a concern that the web was just above areas I access to service the chickens; running into the web head-first is what made me notice it. So I removed her and her next-generation egg sac.

Widows are supposedly common in Georgia, but I don't see them very often.  One year at my old house I had several, which probably means a female had come in and hatched a brood.  Otherwise, I see one every couple of years.  The other poisonous species, brown recluse, has apparently only been documented in relatively few counties, mostly in the northwest part of the state.

Harvesting the Kieffer Pears

It's not much of a harvest this year.  But one of my pear trees bloomed, and I was surprised to see that some fruit actually developed.  I've mentioned before that there was an old Kieffer tree at my new house.  The tree did produce some pears, but also had a huge poison ivy vine thoroughly embedded in it, and I cut it down.

Now I have planted two more.  They have virtues--although they aren't the first choice for fresh eating, they do can well and make nice preserves.  They also dehydrate well.  Prime time for Kieffers in north Georgia seems to be late August / early September.  I may have been jumping the gun a little bit, but I went ahead and pulled mine just after mid-August.

I haven't actually cut into them yet, so don't know if I have curculio issues--they got no Surround or other preventive treatment, and I also did not do anything for fire blight.  I had some of that on both apple and pear trees.  It was very minor on this Kieffer.  That is one of the virtues of the Kieffer pear; it is not particularly susceptible to fire blight.

I didn't get much off the tree this year. I will probably just dehydrate them...or I may re-assess and make some preserves.

Mushrooms

I have some interesting mushrooms at the front of the driveway.  This has been a pretty soggy August (over seven inches of rain so far), and that has inspired some mushrooms to sprout.  It usually happens sometime during the summer in this general location.

The orange ones are pretty colorful.

Like most mushrooms, they don't last long, just a few days before the color fades and they release their spores.  The orange ones have been expanding in recent years.  There used to be just one spot where they popped up; now they are in a few places.  The front of the driveway is dirt, gravel, and clay, but there's a lot of pine straw, as you can see; there are several very large old pine trees there that shed liberally.  It is pretty shaded for all but a couple of hours each day, so if any area is damp, that one will be.

They first emerge looking like this:

But then soon expand. The next day, the above mushrooms looked like this.

When a rain hits, they start to dissolve away.

The above pictures are from the original area where they appeared.
 
I also have some puffballs:

And these look different...though I don't know enough about mushrooms to say:

Up closer to the house, there's this specimen:

It looks a mushroom that has mold growing on it--but all of the examples look the same, so maybe it's what this particular type looks like normally.  There is a brain mushroom, aka false morel; this isn't that. That being said, it looks like a brain to me.  It's a little longer-lasting than the red ones above.


I have zero interest in trying to determine if these are edible. For example, the orange ones might  be Russula emetica, a species that likes to hang out with pine trees, or it might not--Wikipedia notes there are "over 100 red-capped Russula species worldwide." Wiki further notes that R. emetica is toxic; it can be made edible through pickling or boiling, but consumption isn't recommended.  No worries here. Wild mushrooms are not an area I ever plan to explore.  But they're interesting nonetheless.

Muscadines and Figs

For the first time, I'm getting some muscadines.  I've planted six vines (two had to be replanted when the first died).  They have been in the ground for almost three years now, but this will be the first year I'll get more than one or two grapes per plant.  The biggest crop this year is on my Ison vine, and it is the one that is ripening first:

It's only going to be big compared to previous years.  The Ison looks like it has a couple of pounds' worth on it.  The Late Fry has maybe one pound; some of the others have a couple of grapes as in previous years.

I've also picked some figs.  I have yet to get a single fig off of a plant installed by me--actually, I have yet to have one planted by me live very long, a story for another day--but there's an old fig tree planted by the previous owner that I'm getting some off of this year.  There were two originally, but ambrosia beetles attacked one and I took it out.  The other one has probably been producing every year, but I haven't gotten many off of it--as I'm learning, the ripe ones are quickly attacked by wasps, ants, and June bugs.

The harvest from the fig tree is likewise pretty modest--there are many more that are too high for me to reach or that have ripened and been turned into bug food--but it's nice to have some (I got more than the picture shows; that's just one days' worth).  I'm going to guess it's a Celeste fig, but that's only a guess.

I also have apples and pears pending...

Brooding Chicks

I finally pulled the trigger on chickens.  They are available in feed stores and Tractor Supply in the spring (and sometimes other times), but the assortment is variable, changing day to day.  This spring, Tractor Supply had straight run Lavender Orpingtons one day; the next day it was Rhode Island Red pullets.  So I ordered online.

They arrived May 4.  I intended to get two males and six females, all Barred Rock.  I wanted about one male, four females going forward, and ordered extra to cover for losses.  I think I actually got Barred Rock pullets and Cuckoo Maran cockerels; two immediately looked different and had different leg banding.

One of the suspected Others is sort of at the lower edge of the group in this picture.  The males had a lot more yellow on them initially.

The overly-yellow individual also distinguished himself starting on about Day 2--it became pretty clear he was the dominant one in the group.  They all clustered under the heat plate (which worked very well; my house was cold in early May) and surged out as a group periodically to drink and eat. The yellow-ish one would lead the group out from under the plate most of the time.

As those who have raised chickens know, the cute puffball stage only lasts about a week.  They soon began adding a few feathers.

And within a couple of weeks they started to look pretty ragged.

I kept them inside for about five weeks.  After that time they were getting crowded in the stock tank and were trying to fly around, which wasn't working well: I built a screened cover for the top (much needed). Also much needed was the domed cover for the warming plate; if I hadn't had it the top would've been a bit soiled.  Actually, more than a bit.

I had also heard that brooding chicks caused a lot of dust.  For the first week, there was no problem.  Then, as the pictures show, their feet started to grow, outpacing their bodies.  They also started to scratch enthusiastically.  That kicked up dust.  It soon became epic, Dust-Bowl-like dust.

As the top picture shows, I gave them some chick grit. They may not have needed it with the starter crumbels, but they were very interested in it and ate a lot.  They soon started to try to stand in the little container and kick it out; I would find a lot in the bottom when I swapped out the shavings.

By early June they were largely feathered; it was largely warm, and they largely needed to be out in the yard.  So they went.  Despite my fears of neonatal death, all survived the first few weeks.

They're now basically full-grown; the above picture is from late July--they were about 12 weeks old.  They may still add some size but are pretty huge now.  The breed difference is apparent in the picture:  one of the males is on the left.

I have them in a mobile coop, AKA chicken tractor.  So far I haven't used them for any clearing/tilling duties, but that will be coming soon.  I didn't put my garden in this year because in the March/April time frame I was building the tractor on weekends.  It didn't take as much time as that suggests, but I needed help for some things and mostly only worked on it on Saturday afternoons.  At any rate, I'm going to let them clear, till, and fertilize my garden space for next spring.  They should enjoy that.

Poor Judgement by a Toad

I have toads in my yard near my back door.  I actually ran over one with the truck when backing out a few months ago, but otherwise I see them frequently when walking the dog early in the morning.  After a recent heavy rain, I saw the picture below in the suddenly-full plant saucers.

Apparently the toad was ready to lay eggs and the full saucers looked like a reasonable body of water to do so in.  There really isn't any other water nearby.  However, my plant saucers are in no way viable nurseries for tadpoles.  Alas.

In the absence of any still bodies of water--I actually don't know where the nearest one is--any toads that wander into my back yard have few options for spawning.