chicken tractors and hay making

[jimmysisson]

Those pens have venting somewhere, right? Otherwise, pre-cooked chicken?
Real interested in how this works over the season.
Thanks

 

[Niji]

The sheet metal side of the pens are completely open to the chicken wire ends. So each is half open, half closed, with no real barrier between the two sides of the pen. They breeze between the two sides, as does the air flow.

I just checked, and they are up to 12 pens running in the field now.

 

[J35]

The sheet metal side of the pens are completely open to the chicken wire ends. So each is half open, half closed, with no real barrier between the two sides of the pen. They breeze between the two sides, as does the air flow.

I just checked, and they are up to 12 pens running in the field now.

I am curious to know how the bottom of the coops are constructed to maintain solid ground contact.

I have kept chickens in movable pens but I was always fighting gaps ,usually a high corner.

good luck

 

[barrybro]

A couple of pictures of my first venture into the pasture chickens.

Barry

 

[Niji]

Your construction looks more structurally sound than the ones in my hay field. Those look very well made. I'll have to shoot a few close ups and post them to compare.

We've had 6 inches of rain in the past week--better than drought, but not without its own difficulties! Travel in and out of a muddy hay field was not foremost in my mind when I made this arrangement, but in truth, so far those guys have been really good about not cutting ruts with their trucks. They've been doing a fair bit of walking in and out too, leaving stores of food and water near the pens when the ground has been dry. So far so good. They took out the second batch to butcher this morning, and they say they are very pleased. No trouble here with predators or disease so far, which it sounds like they had constant trouble with on another farm last year.

 

[barrybro]

I had the help of my FIL who is a cabinet maker by trade and he doesn't do
anything half way. Mine is probably half the size of the ones in your field (mine is 8x8, I am guessing the ones in your field are 10x12) and it weighs a good amount. If those were made the same way they would probably take a tractor to move.

 

[Niji]

So, here's the mid-season chicken tractor update....

The operation has gone really well as far as the chicken tenders (those who tend the chickens, not the chicken nugget variety) have managed. They have kept the field neat, and been there every day, twice a day to check on things. The chicken impact has been spread evenly across the field. Already in the wake of the pens, where they were more than a month ago, I can see the grass getting greener and heavy.

The worst problem has been the extremely wet weather early on. The chicken guys have to drive in and out to haul feed, water, and chickens. They replenish with new chicks and take out large birds for butchering on a weekly rotation now. The rains pushed back my 1st cutting 6 weeks. There is a photo here from yesterday--I think there are 18 pens going at the moment you can see there. They are getting moved from bottom left to top right in the picture.

There was water standing in part of this field, even 2 weeks after the bulk of the monsoon had quit. The grass was way tall for the guys and chicks to deal with, but I couldn't get it cut ahead of the pens for all the water. Had the season been normal, we would not have experienced this trouble, and I could have cut my first cutting well ahead of the pens.

Also, there were a couple of stuck vehicles and tire tracks, not what you like to see in your hayfield, but these guys couldn't have done much better at trying to be careful about getting to the pens. There just was no good way to deal with that much rain.

Now, I'm thinking it is still too nasty behind the pens to try for a second cutting. So, I think the truth is that to do this, you'd better get a 1st cutting before the chickens come, and forget about 2nd, or maybe even let them come in after 2nd, and give the winter for the post-chicken surface to weather to a safe hay making state. Of course, the chicken guys can't work to that schedule, they need to be running all season.

On the up side, I bet we'll see a dark green stripe wherever the pens have traveled next spring. I've got last year's soil samples to compare to post-chicken samples, so I'll share that data when it comes in.

So, it's not exactly a hay makers dream, but if you can do without part of your fields where this is going on for part of a season, it may be worth it in terms of fertilizer cost savings and soil building. I'll have to see how beneficial the benefits turn out to be.

 

[barrybro]

Thanks for the update. Keep them coming.

Barry

 

[funny farmer]

Those are a lot smaller then I first thought. I was picturing something with a fence around it so the birds can have someplace to run around outside. They have full sized chickens under there?

 

[Niji]

The birds range in size from little chicks to full size. They spread them around so there are fewer bigger chickens in a pen as they grow. It takes 9 weeks for them to get to butchering size.