I’m in charge of a bunch of events for the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance throughout the year. Most of these events involve having a sizable booth that we need to fill and a table and handouts just don’t bring the people in. That’s where chickens come in! Bring some livestock (or animals in general) and the people flock to you. The Maker Faire (photo above) was the event debut for three of our hens – Big Red, David Bowie Chicken and Lefty. Their housing was just a pet pen with a tarp and hay on the ground and netting over the top. The number one question we got from most people was whether that was what we always kept them in. So we came up with a brilliant idea for events.
The collapsible chicken tractor! It folds up nice and flat for easy transport and storage. It comes apart and goes up really quickly with just a few bolts.This is perfect for events but then I was thinking about what a great idea it is to have a temporary chicken tractor that is easy to put away when not in use in the garden. We have a primary coop that our chickens live in but I’ve been wanting a tractor to use on the fallow beds. At the same time I didn’t want to have to try and store a tractor when we didn’t need it. This is the perfect solution for that.
It’s not quite done yet and since ours is mostly for show it’s not predator proof (hoping to upgrade it eventually so it is) but soon I’ll be posting the instructions on how to make your own that is predator proof.
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What a great idea to make it collapsible! I need one I can rotate around my 4 x 8 raised garden beds, so the chickens can mow down the cover crops before I turn them into the soil.
Brilliant!
This is a great design, maybe I can get Greg to make one for our raised beds!
Cute! This reminds me of an old 19th Century article I saw a couple of years ago about a commercially designed folding coop, that had a rat trap built into the rear wall panel. That was more for pastured poultry applications, where you’re moving hens from field to field. But pretty clever for the day. This makes me wish we’d built our ‘hospital pen’ tractor to collapse. I get tired of dragging it around the farm, and then trying to hide it when it’s not in use!