Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
One of the things I love about being in a community of farmers is the opportunity for learning that comes when we all share our practices and pictures of our farms. Farm visits are the best for this, because every time I go see someone else’s operation I level up parts of my own skills and capability. Even without visiting, the sharing that happens on social media has changed my game so many times over the years.
We have a series of chicken tractors in operation, each a small, hooped structure about 8’x8’ in dimension. Each morning and afternoon at feeding time we pull the structures with a cable attached to two hooks, one on each side of the door. The movement means that the meat birds get access to fresh forage twice a day, moving them off of the areas that they have shit on and onto fresh space where they can hunt for bugs and eat the green grass and seed heads.
The chicken tractors are fairly heavy, small enough that we can still move them by hand, but this limitation means that the overall space within isn’t very big. Not too long ago we saw a post from the good folks at Shakefork farm of an old Costco carport frame converted into a 10’x20’ chicken tractor that they pull with their oxen. This got the wheels spinning, and this last week we set out to make our own version of a bigger chicken tractor.
Those carports are great while they last, and after the covering goes to shit I’ve found they repurpose nicely into small barn structures with the addition of some 4×4 posts for vertical strength and snow load capacity, with 1×6 runners onto which I attach corrugated roofing on the tops and frame in walls with 2×4 and cover with either heavy tarp or corrugated metal. I have two of those structures in use at my place and they work great as permanent storage barns.
Repurposing materials is key to any farming operation, otherwise your overhead costs and waste streams are too high to be economically feasible. Over the years we’ve become collectors of lumber, pipe, irrigation, fencing, wire and other materials which we try to store neatly in resource piles, but you know how that goes. Because the farm is always a shifting landscape, it’s amazing how much repurposing can happen and how useful a “junk” pile can be.
For the 10×20 carport conversion we built the frame, cut the legs down by 30” to shorten the height and lessen the wind impacts. We attached the feet on the bottom of the poles with lag bolts to 4x4s. We cut the 4×4’s on the 4 corners each on a 45 degree angle so the structure can slide backwards or forwards without binding up as easily. Our 4×4’s were only 10 feet long so we had to sister them up in the center, but we had them sitting in a resource pile so it was worth the effort. The corners have always been the weak points in our chicken tractors, so this time we went beefier. I had some angle plates that we nailed the corners together with, and we nailed 2×6 corner bracing on top of the 4x4s.
With the frame constructed we turned to the covering, cutting a piece of old dep tarp to length and attaching pieces of pvc at the bottom of the plastic on the lengthwise sides of the structure to serve as a rollup mechanism. A 50’x6’ piece of shade cloth went around the sides and back to provide ventilation and keep the birds in. We attached it on the bottom with wiggle wire and on the top with clips that slide over the pipe and get screwed on, with the rollup plastic underneath the shade cloth. We built a door from two old light dep golden arms, framed in with scavenged 2×4’s and covered with shade cloth.
All in all, the chicken tractor took a long afternoon and a bit of the next morning to complete. It was built entirely with materials we had in stock in various resource piles, and is by far the nicest version we have ever built. It will hold more than twice as many birds as previous versions, or fewer birds that can be moved less often. We’ll have to tow it, but the quad will be up for the job on flat ground and the side-by-side will tow it uphill or anywhere needed.
Overall, this is the tenth chicken tractor that has been built on our farm. Earlier iterations were smaller and designed to be as lightweight as possible because I was moving them on the steep slopes by my driveway, but what they made up for in ease of movement, they lacked in strength and size. With the move to the new ranch parcel two years ago, our paradigm shifted in favor of more durable structures that are heavier but can still be moved on the relative flat of the new pasture.
I’m enjoying looking back on the journey, seeing our increasing skills, knowledge and capability over time. I’m grateful for new information from other farms, glad to apply it in our own efforts, and also for the materials we’ve been given over the years. I’m hopeful that the new tractor will be comfortable for the birds, and that it will make our lives easier in the efforts of raising them. I’m glad we were able to repurpose so many materials, and we’re always on the lookout for used carport frames and other usable items. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!