About a month ago, we
put a couple of hens in our old chicken tractor for the
first time in years. I was looking forward to their
scratching and fertilizing powers in the garden (and to not having
those unruly hens flying fences), but I hadn’t realized how nice
it would feel to have a couple of “pet” chickens again.
There’s something
about a tractored chicken that just feels very different from our
pastured flock. Our two tractor hens quickly took to the
lifestyle and began looking forward to my approach every
day. In fact, when the nest box door popped open during a
move and they escaped, the hens were already so tame that
“catching” them was as simple as opening the big door, sprinkling
their breakfast on the ground inside, and then waiting for both
hens to hop back into their home.
I’ll probably get
sick of my tractored hens once winter really hits and tractoring
turns the ground to mud. But who knows? Maybe it’ll be
worthwhile to keep two hens in a tractor year round.
