
I'LL BEGIN by stating that I don't understand the expression "The best-laid plans of mice and men." I fathom completely that the best-laid plans of men - myself in particular - oft go astray, but the mice seem to do alright.
They plan to eat a hole in the feed sack so the contents will fall out for them to make off with, and that plan goes swimmingly. They plan to avoid any store-bought or homemade traps, and they come off like some cross between Einstein and Houdini. In this article, I'll share with you my experience planning and building a chicken tractor: what I wanted to do, how I did it and what I learned.
PLAN PARAMETERS
My mobile pen parameters build a low-cost, high-mobility, low-maintenance chicken tractor that allowed me to use chicken litter and chicken behavior to fertilize my pasture. Rotational grazing livestock followed by chickens makes sense to me. The idea is that chickens spread the livestock manure by their natural scratching and add their own litter to the soil. So, I wanted to be able to move my chickens around 20 acres of pasture.
My design needed the ability to let the chicken litter from daily activities and roosting to amend my soil under the tractor. Low maintenance dictated a plan where I didn't have to shovel the tractor out every few days. Low maintenance also meant not having to provide water and food or open and close chicken doors multiple times each day.
Finally, my farm is an absolute hobby farm rather than a quasi- or full-blown commercial operation; therefore, my budget needed to be low enough that egg sales could pretend to offset the cost.
I started with a condemned car hauler trailer that a friend gave me. This was a flat 16-footlong trailer with two axles and a wood floor. It had a ball hitch that would permit me to pull it around the fields easily with my actual tractor.
ãã®èšäºã¯ Hobby Farms ã® March - April 2023 çã«æ²èŒãããŠããŸãã
7 æ¥éã® Magzter GOLD ç¡æãã©ã€ã¢ã«ãéå§ããŠãäœåãã®å³éžããããã¬ãã¢ã ã¹ããŒãªãŒã9,000 以äžã®éèªãæ°èã«ã¢ã¯ã»ã¹ããŠãã ããã
ãã§ã«è³Œèªè ã§ã ?  ãµã€ã³ã€ã³
ãã®èšäºã¯ Hobby Farms ã® March - April 2023 çã«æ²èŒãããŠããŸãã
7 æ¥éã® Magzter GOLD ç¡æãã©ã€ã¢ã«ãéå§ããŠãäœåãã®å³éžããããã¬ãã¢ã ã¹ããŒãªãŒã9,000 以äžã®éèªãæ°èã«ã¢ã¯ã»ã¹ããŠãã ããã
ãã§ã«è³Œèªè ã§ã? ãµã€ã³ã€ã³

Making Bucks from Clucks
These five reasons might be why you're losing money on your chickens.

Soil Testing
Whether you are new to farming altogether or you are leasing your farmland to a producer who is unfamiliar with the practice, becoming knowledgeable about the acts of soil testing and them applying recommended soil amendments based on soil test results provides tremendous advantages to the soil, plants, and your pocketbook.

Small-But-Mighty Hot Peppers
You donât have to have a lot of garden space or an especially long growing season to succeed with hot peppers.

French Intensive Gardening
This permaculture system relies on soil improvement, raised beds, close spacing, companion planting, succession planting and crop rotation. Oui, oui!

FORAGE FOR FOWL
Consider these three cool-season forages as you plant your pasture with free-range poultry in mind.

Cut-And-Come Lettuce
Maximize your profits while minimizing time to grow and seed costs with this easy cut-and-come approach to growing lettuce salad mix.

Laying AN EGG
Maintaining correct male-to-female ratios and keeping flocks of younger breeding fowl will help ensure higher fertility and hatching rates.

20 COOP CONSIDERATIONS
Keep these 20 things in mind when designing a home for your chickens.

Get LOW in Spring
There comes a time when we all just want to start planting in our gardens again, and a low tunnel provides an earlier-is-better option.

Seed-Starting Soil Temps
Don't miss out on growing time by focusing only on the air temperature.