Tour Our Chicken Tractors
I had a question last week about our chicken tractor, so I thought I'd give a little tour of the 2 style of chicken tractors my husband designed and that we are using. This is a picture of one of our larger chicken tractors. It's made out of metal tubing, corrigated tin, plywood and chicken wire. This one is the one we usually use as a more perminant chicken housing. It turned out a bit heavy to move easily.
The back lifts up over the nesting boxes to make it easy to gather eggs. 
The food and water are suspended by wire attached to screws on the outside top of the tractor. This keeps the chicken feed & water much cleaner and makes it much easier to get them in and out. 
Our very low tech way to suspend the feed & water....wrap the wire attached to the feeder/water around a screw in the top of the tractor.
This is a photo of one of our smaller chicken tractors. After the chicks are too big for the brooder, they get moved into one of these tractors. These tractors are made out of plywood and have windows covered in hardware cloth wire (smaller openings than chicken wire). They also feature a self feeder and a light. The light is only used when it's still chilly outside. Right now, it's nice and warm, so we don't use the light.
This is a picture of the built on self feeder. We fill the feeder with feed and check it every couple of days. We just put a waterer inside the tractor and check it daily.
The lid is on top.
Well that's the tour of our chicken tractors! Marty is planning on building some larger ones that are not as heavy, so they will be easier to move. But for now, this is what we're using.
Glances of Our Homestead
Riley enjoying the homemade yogurt
Red Black-eyed Peas growing
Moon & Star Watermelons growing
Close up of Moon & Stars Watermelon plant
Chickens in the tractor
Around the Farm
these are our boars, Bucket and Packer. Bucket will be going into the freezer. We may be purchasing a sow this weekend, so packer will have a wife (GRIN!). We're wanting some piglets as soon as possible!! They are just too cute!
Colt & Riley with the pigs
this is Packer, both of the pigs are Blue Butt's
This is a picture of our chickens we bought in February. They are Cuckoo Marans and Barred Rocks. I'm not sure which is which, as they all look alike! Cuckoo Marans lay really dark brown eggs (many people compair them to chocolate colored) and Barred Rocks lay the normal brown eggs.
This is our wood burning hot water heater. Right now this is our only source of hot water. Marty plans on adding a solar hot water heater to this system so that durning the warmer months we can have hot water without burning wood. The wood system would be back up incase we need more hot water than what the solar heater will provide. It's so nice to have a handy husband! We haven't had to buy propane in nearly 2 years!
My giant rose bush all covered with roses
A close up of one of the roses
See how huge this rose bush is! When we first moved in, there was a yellow rose bush there, but it died out. The next year this rose bush popped up and every year it gets bigger!
This is the rose bush that grows against Marty's barn, it was there when we moved in and there's also a tree growing up next to this barn. It needs to be cut back to give the roses more room. These are much prettier roses than the other one. They are more of a hot pink/red color.
A closer picture of the roses on Marty's barn.
