Author: Anna & Mark

Wheel lift for a chicken tractor

June 10, 2011 Chicken tractor 3 Comments
Chicken tractor wheel lift

Wheels down to move tractorDuncan’s heated chicken waterer was exciting, but I have to admit that I found his chicken tractor wheel lift system even more inspiring. Although we’ve since changed over to pastures, we spent the first four years of our chicken-keeping career dragging tractors around the yard.  At first, Mark mounted wheels on some of the tractors, but the wheels tended to raise that end off the ground and let chickens sneak out, so I eventually had him delete Wheels up when tractor is at restthem.  Not so with Duncan’s wheels!  He writes:

The wheel lift system is my invention. I worked it out so the chicken tractor is balanced with very little effort needed to lift the end to move it. The location near the center also prevents the operator from lifting it high enough on either end for a hen to escape. (if the wheels Chicken tractorare near the end the operator could lift high enough for the birds to fly the coop! LOL!) It’s also very easy to lift or drop by even a small child.
The tractor sits 3″ off the ground when raised on fat 10″ wheels and is very easy to roll around (even uphill) and on soft ground. It would be easy to make these in such a way that the assembly could be bolted on to a chicken tractor with a Lag bolt into say a 4×4 or whatever was strong enough to support the force placed on it. In other words they could be built and installed on various configurations of chicken tractors after market.

 

Duncan’s stunning diagrams and photos tell the whole story much better than I could.  Aren’t you chicken tractor folks itching to try it out?

Wheel diagram
 

Chicken ramps

June 6, 2011 Posts No Comments
Chicken on a ramp

Many of you probably
have small
ramps leading up into your chicken coop like we do, but can
chickens learn to utilize larger ramps?  Diane wrote in with this
photo of a ramp she used to give her chickens access to a 1/3 of an
acre of forest on the other side of their fence.  She wrote:


Chicken ramp“The ramp is 8 feet long on both
sides, and three feet high in the middle…it’s a pretty gentle
slope….  I coaxed them over the ramp (or physically walked them
up the ramp) this AM and then watched as they foraged like crazy. 
An hour or so later, I noticed my Barred Rock wanted back into her
enclosure, so I went into the woods and gathered them all up and
returned them…no easy task!

“My question is this…if they have never used a ramp before, and the
ramp is not attached to the coop, will they learn to use the ramp to
gain access to the extended foraging area, or will I need to make a
door as you suggest and leave it open for them to come and go through?”



While I think that in
Diane’s case, a pophole is
an easier solution, I was intrigued by the idea of large chicken ramps
because I have a dream of creating a ramp in our chickens’ forest
pasture that goes up
six or seven feet, then across the driveway along
an elevated walkway, only to spit the chickens out in a new pasture on
the far side.  So I suggested that Diane try leaving a trail of
treats up the ramp, spaced about three or four inches apart, to tempt
the chickens to cross by themselves in hopes that they could learn to
walk across the fence.  She replied to my suggestion eight hours
later by saying:


“We
have two who learned to use the
ramp by only going over it once!  I think they remember what’s on
the other side, and if it’s an easy trip, they’ll be inclined to make
it.

“By the way, I think the two hens that crossed the ramp again, after
the first time over, WERE following the trail of treats I had left for
them!”



So, it sounds like a
ramp might be a possibility if you need to move
your chickens between non-contiguous pastures.


Our chicken waterer keeps the flock hydrated
during their busy days on pasture.

What is a good hatch rate

June 3, 2011 Posts No Comments

Chicken hatchingYou might assume (like I did)
that if you put ten eggs in your incubator, you’ll end up with ten
chicks, but there’s a lot that can go wrong before your chicks
hatch.  Assuming you do everything right, what kind of hatch rate
is a backyard hobbyist looking at?



Browsing through chicken
books from the early 1900s, I came across hatch rates from a time when
incubators were still in their infancy.  During this period, many
of the small and
mid-size chicken farms were still raised new chicks each year using
broody hens, which gave them hatch rates of 45% to 65%.  Larger
farms (and those raising the new, unbroody varieties) were moving over
to artificial incubation and netted 30% to 79% living chicks, with the
average hovering around 50%.



For information on
modern incubation technology, I turned to random accounts on the
internet.  (I know, not very scientific, but if you look at enough
of them….)  When hatching homegrown eggs that haven’t sat around
very long, it sounds like you might manage to get 75% to 80% (sometimes
hatching all of your eggs but sometimes having runs where you hatch far
fewer.)  For shipped eggs, 50% hatch seems to be about average.



I’ve had a steep
learning curve during my first two hatches.  My first hatch had
major problems with temperature and humidity
control and I also
used less viable eggs from old hens, so I ended up with only 17% living
chicks.  For my second hatch, I improved on the environmental
conditions but still used old eggs in half of the incubator, comparing
them to mail order eggs from prime breeding stock.  My
hatch rates there were 25% and 58%, respectively.  I had
hoped to improve my hatch rate yet again for my third incubator run by
using only squeaky clean eggs, but it sounds like since my
eggs will be all mail ordered, I should probably expect
around a 50% hatch.  I’ll let you know how it goes in the middle
of June.


Be
sure to have a POOP-free chicken
waterer on hand to get your chicks off to a healthy start.