Put Your Birds To Work For You-Why We Raise Chickens In a "Chicken Tractor" Part 1.

Ten years ago, when we first considered what we would raise we had to ask the question, “What animal would be fairly easy and low maintenance to raise? Of course, the chicken was the first farm livestock we thought of, and was recommended by those we looked to for guidance in our homesteading journey. So the chicken it was.

The next question was about housing. We hadn't begun construction on our home yet, but we wanted to get started with the chickens. The whole thing is really comical and rather long, so I will spare the details, but I decided to look into the most cost effective way to house our future flock. The chicken tractor idea was what surfaced the most often and seemed reasonably simple to construct. We had very little money at that time, and cost always seemed to be the driving force behind any homestead decision we made. Thus, the journey began with the Chicken Tractor.

Rather than bore you to death with the rest of the story, I will skip ahead to today, and attempt to answer the often asked question, “why do you grow birds in a movable pen, wouldn't it be easier to just let them out to free-range?” Well, the answer is different, in my opinion, depending on what the job of the bird is. Frankly, chickens have a two fold job on a farm. I know this may sound silly, but ask yourself what is the job description of your livestock? This question can, and should be, applied to all forms of livestock on your homestead. I learned this principle from a grass farming expert, named Jim Gerrish, a few years ago, and when I applied the “job description” principle to our farm, it really opened up a whole new world. A new world in which I had a new perspective on livestock and farming practices that are “outside the box”.

The job description of the chickens on our farm for the broilers is to eat bugs and grass, fertilize the pasture and get fat. That's it really. It is much the same for the layers except that they lay eggs and are free range instead of tractored. But, this article is about the tractor, so we will concentrate on that.

There are many reasons that we raise birds in chicken tractors. The main benefit is that the birds are more protected from predators. Free ranging birds are more susceptible to airborne predators, during the day, and they are locked up at night. The tractor allows the chickens all the sunlight they can stand along with fresh air. Commodity growers, or mass producers, that raise their birds in large, confinement houses, packed wall to wall with chickens for several weeks, don't allow for much sun or fresh air. After a short time, these birds create what is called fecal dust. Just by virtue of their movement, they kick up dust that is laced with all their waste. The birds breathe this which, in turn, saps their bodies of essential vitamin A. Thus, in a few days, the health of the bird is in question.

This point leads to another reason that we raise chickens in a chicken tractor. Vitamin D comes from the sun. With plenty of sunlight, the birds can receive all the vitamin D they can handle. This, obviously, gets passed on to the consumer. Through the grass, (which I will go into more detail, shortly), they also receive very important trace minerals that are essential, not only to the bird, but to us, the consumer. However, it must be stated that from years of mining the soil in this country, many trace minerals simply are not available in the soil any longer. This is why we use Fertrell products with our feed rations. (For more information on Fertrell, you may contact us at sppowers@iglide.net). Yet, the big key, the most significant reason to use a chicken tractor, is the grass.