chicken tractor...the photos! :)

i meant to post these last week, but we were having some gorgeous spring weather (high in the 60s!...lovin' it!) and we were all spengin as much time as possible outdorrs!

of course, now we are back to flurries :(


at any rate here are photos of our chicken tractor...




aydin busy sawing...


the humble beginnings...





a peak inside the hen house & nesting boxes , before adding the door & final wall...

helpers!...:)

a side/rear view...the access door for cleaning our their hen house, and the bit hanging off the end is the their nesting boxes...

a peak inside the nesting boxes...this all got painted. typically you need 1 nesting box/4 hens & this tractor will home to 6 of our hens, so we enlarged the box & added a divider.

we'll be using attaching old lawnmower wheels to allow for easy transport...

the sliding hen house door (closed)...

and open...

almost done!

i feel so self-sufficient! i built it nearly all on my own (as in no help from lance aka hubby). of course, i did have help from a couple little elves...:)

aydin was my right hand man for the measuring & building...he especially loved to sawing!



ehren was my painting buddy...and orin, well, he was busy frolicking. :)



we were planning on adding the chicken wire & hardware cloth today, but man...it is too cold!



wednesday & thursday are supposed to be nice though, so we'll see...

*this tractor is based off of these plans. they are amazingly detailed! however, after cutting all the wood, we realized that all of the measurements were wrong! so, we ended up winging it...i also modified the plans a bit. i did not want to deal with freezing hoses/a self-feeder. so we took those bits out. i also added the large access door on the right, for easy cleaning & a sliding door verses the spring door in the original plans. all in all, we are extremely please. but we still need to build one more for our other 6 hens... i like this design a lot, but i am going to see if there is another one out there that strikes my fancy...:)

happy homesteading! :)