The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Wheelchair chicken tractor update

Chicken tractor

Even though we knew it would slightly overload the new chicken tractor with docking run, we put all nine coop hens inside so we wouldn't have more than two chicken areas to monitor each day. That was a bit rough on the flock since the skies opened up and proceeded to pour for the next several days, but the girls seem to have stayed pretty dry while coming out to graze between showers.

The roll-out nest box, to our surprise, has been the least successful part of the undertaking. Without straw or a nest egg in the box, most of the hens have been ignoring the structure and laying on the ground instead. Mark's thinking of glueing a golf ball inside in hopes we can talk the hens into utilizing the roll-out option. In the meantime, we've been gathering muddy eggs out of the yard.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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In the tractor I have, I put some pine shavings in the nest box and plotzed a fake ceramic egg (which was one of a bunch I had for making pysanky - yeah, I know, not "traditional") and they always lay there except when I forget to open the coop up after cleaning it. Then they lay on the ground and I have to do contortions to get the eggs.
Comment by Nayan Tue Apr 25 08:44:32 2017
We'd love to see a picture of your chicken tractor if you'd like to share?
Comment by mark Wed Apr 26 15:18:34 2017





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