Now this is a cool concept! We would love to have chickens at some point, mostly for egg production but perhaps we might one day get tough enough to butcher the birds ourselves. But when you have your birds totally free range, there’s the issue of finding the eggs, catching the birds and predators having their way with your flock. But an idea that came up on a homesteading forum I subscribe to suggested building a “chicken tractor” which I think is brilliant.

I’ve borrowed this photo from the following website which goes into further into the process of building a tractor for your own birds although you will be hard pressed to find any actual plans online. I’m pretty sure most could just find a chicken coop to build and then mount the wheels and some handles on it so it can be moved.

Why move it? So that the chickens have fresh grass and bugs to peck at after they have decimated the patch of ground the tractor stands over each day. And of course, if you keep the birds confined in a space like this you don’t have to worry about them flying into a neighbor’s yard or eating things that they aren’t supposed to, like your garden!

Although we don’t have space for chickens right now, at some stage we hope to find a piece of land close to us where we can have birds, maybe a goat or sheep, fruit trees and even a little farming land for wheat, sugar beets and more. But until then, I’ll just have to live vicariously through others who build these great little contraptions!