Читать книгу Hobby Farm Animals - Chris McLaughlin - Страница 53

Chicken tractors are lightweight, bottomless shelter pens designed to move wherever grass control and soil fertility are required. They appeal to small-scale raisers, and maintaining a chicken tractor in your garden not only enriches your soil but also allows your birds to supplement their diets with yummy greenery and crunchy bugs, worms, and grubs. There’s a place for a chicken tractor (or two) on most every hobby farm!

Chicken tractors are engineered to move around your yard or farm, usually by hand, to areas in need of enrichment. Size can range from 3 × 5 × 2 feet tall for three or four chickens to a whopping 8 × 12 × 3 feet tall. Usually, the sides are crafted of wood-framed wire mesh, and a hinged roof protects inhabitants from the elements and allows easy operator entry. If you build compact tractors to fit the width of spaces between your garden rows, the chickens will neatly weed and fertilize your garden without filling up on produce while they do it (provide water and feed inside the tractor, and move the unit once or twice a day). Larger chicken tractors can be set atop spots needing more thorough cultivation over longer periods of time. Chickens are day laborers; remove them from the tractor at night.