My little Garden

One of the reasons we wanted to move to the country was because we wanted space for a big garden.  Living in the HOA had been the biggest challenge for me, I was suppose to ask permission to plant things, come up with a detailed plan and submit it to the HOA Board for review and approval...did I?  No, I thought it was silly...I planted what I wanted to plant and got compliments on the yard on a regular basis.  Hardly anyone planted anything in there yards, there was very little landscaping in any of the backyards on the walking trail.  I got in trouble numerous times with the HOA, and, well I was tired of dealing with their rules.  We kept our property looking very good, but getting ticketed for having empty pots on the back porch really pissed me off!  They weren't really empty, they had perennials in them...and I had to move them, they were heavy.

I wanted to plant at least a few things the first spring we were in the country house.  We had been working a lot on the inside of the house so I knew that it would have to be kind of small scale the first year.  We had a number of cinder blocks from the rain barrels at the Dallas house, we used them to make a small raised bed.  I dug out the grass and we got some garden soil and compost and mixed it up.  We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, and peppers to start.

My little garden, freshly planted

I ended up using a variety of materials to try and keep the dogs out of it, they really liked to lay in the fresh dirt and dug a few things up.  I selected an area that got morning and some afternoon sun but not a lot of sun late in the afternoon.  It need up being a really good spot, the plants did really well.

A few weeks later

The plants were really doing well in the chosen spot...so well that it got crowded really quickly.  We did get a lot of tomatoes and several cantaloupe, enough cucumbers for salads...and a lot of watermelons on the vine.  I never grew watermelon, they started splitting before they got ripe.  I am going to try a different spot this year...far away from the tomatoes! 

Ready for the Chickens

After much research about chicken breeds and local availability, we chose Easter Eggers and Rhode Island Red Pullets to start our chicken adventure.  These breeds are both suppose to be egg-cellent egg layers, cold and heat hardy, friendly and will free range or stay in a coop without a problem.  We found a local source for the hens...took a large dog carrier and met the man selling the chickens at his roadside place about 13 miles from the house.  I was really worried about raising chickens in the beginning.  I still have a lot to learn.  One of those things was what a striaght-run of chickens is.  What Crosses are.  And how long does it take for a hen to mature enough to start laying eggs.  I still need to learn about illnesses and wound care.  But we have had the original chickens for almost 7 months and they are doing well.  In other words, I have not let any of them get eaten by the dogs, the hawks or snakes...and none of them have had any illnesses that I am aware of.  The blue legged chickens are the Easter Eggers, and the Rhode Island Reds have tannish legs.  But, after wanting 6 laying hens...we only got 4 and 2 Roosters.  So, when you get chickens, don't get straight-run if you want all hens...there is a good possibility you will get a few roosters in the mix.  I am OK with it now, but was upset when we got 2 out of the 6 in the beginning.  It is hard to tell until they mature if they are males or females.  But the boys are pretty good looking and having the 2 roosters I will eventually be able to have fertile eggs and raise baby chicks of my own.  

The Girls in their new home

Bailee is interested in what we put in there

Big Red checking out the coop area

Poofy Face

Learning to go down the ramp

Food in the feeder and checking out the run

Nest boxes are filling up quickly

Curious about the camera

Big Red and Red Racer

We are little, but we CAN get on the Roost in the Run

The Finished Monster

When I started the Chicken Tractor, I did everything by hand.  I was using a hand saw, a hammer and a tape measure.  The electric table saw and miter saw finally came out when my husband started helping, It made it a lot easier to cut plywood.  I just had a problem getting it out of our garage shed...going up and down stairs with equipment is a bit of a problem for me at this point, they are kinda of heavy and my knees were still bothering me from going up and down the ladder when we painted the inside of the house.  We did use a wireless hand drill and screws to put the chicken tractor together, it makes for a very sturdy structure.

I put the cage wire on with large fence staples by hand.  Later on we got out the compressor and my husband showed me how to use the stapler for that.  I put additional staples in with it...yeah, it was much faster, and yes...it takes less time.  So I started tacking down the wire with it and using the fence staples for extra strength.  My husband made the large four foot by four foot door on the front of the chicken tractor. I made a smaller door at the rear under the coop section while he was doing that...I had a different vision for the front door, but so as not to use as much wood, he made it differently.  I am glad it is larger now, the only problem I have with it, is that the ground is so uneven out here, the door is hard to open at times.  The door does make a good fence when open, I can use the door and put the additional run I made up to the open door to give the chickens 8 more feet of space to semi free range.  I can drag the run around the yard to green areas for them to clean up...they eat everything in an area, every weed, blade of grass, grub, grasshopper and whatever else there is.  It is great for clearing garden areas.

Chicken Tractor getting it's wheels

The run roost, it is a closet pole!

My husband made the front door

Plenty of venting for hot Texas Summers

Polycarbonate tinted roof on the run (leftovers from another project at the old house)

Sliding door for coop access to the chickens

The rear door to the run

Nest box access door

The ramp to the coop

Nest boxes before pine shavings

The Completed Chicken Tractor

Our dog Kensie is wondering what this is

Large access door for cleaning the coop

With the door open you can get to the whole coop inside

The Monster Chicken Tractor

Coop side view of nest box door open

Ready for Chickens!

My Crew, Bailee and Kensie

Nest Boxes, Roosts and Floors...Oh My!

It took longer than I planned to "create" a chicken tractor with a coop on it. Heck it is mostly framing and wire.  Who would have thought it would take ten days once we started on it.  Part of that was because I did not create a proper materials list.  I do suggest that you come up with a definite plan and create a detailed materials list if you ever decide to make a chicken tractor.  You can use pressure treated wood, don't let anyone tell you different, and I suggest that you do...chickens poop all over it, so it needs to be cleaned often, to keep chickens healthy. If you like to have an easier time of it, make sure you create it so that the poop will wash out a door or hatch of some sort.  I highly recommend using sheet vinyl on the floor of a raised coop...and running it up the wall a bit, 6 inches is probably good.  Make sure you use the best material for the job or you will be fixing it often.  If you don't use pressure treated wood, you may get mildew or mold...and that is not good for chickens.  Yes, I do speak from experience.  I wanted pressure treated plywood, but the people at the store must have pulled a fast one on my husband because I have black mold growing on the outside of the coop now and the plywood is de-lamenating on the ramp up into the coop...so I will have to fix that.

A chicken roost is suppose to be 2 feet off of the ground or floor...that is the recommended height.  It is also suppose to have two feet above the roost so that a chicken can flap their wings while on the roost.  So I calculated that the coop part had to be at least four feet tall.  Chickens sleep on roosts...at least mine do, so you have to keep that in mind when you place the roost, because everything under it will get pooped on.  You also have to take in consideration the weight of full grown chickens, when building a roost...lets say 8 pounds, that is very heavy for most chickens...but it is better to calculate on the heavy side.  Lets say you have a 48 inch roost, each chicken needs at least 8 inches of space to roost...they do bunch together.  So, you could have 6 chickens on a roost that is 4 feet long...so that is almost 50 pounds of weight on the roost at any one time.  I used a 2"x2" piece of green or pressure treated pine...it bows slightly now that my chickens are grown and I may need to put a support in the center of it...or switch to a 2"x4".  If you have never built a chicken coop, it is a learning process.  Oh, and don't use cedar wood on any parts that a chicken might chew on, the oils can make them sick.  I have also learned that cedar shavings are not to be used in the coop either...I had thought about it to keep insects down to a minimum, but again it will probably make them sick.  I use pine shavings in the coop and have put dry pine needles in the run at times, but mine has a wire floor...it helps when it rains and keeps the chickens dryer.

My husband went and bought additional wood for me several times, he brought back vinyl flooring for the coop floor.  It was peel and stick tiles and I do not recommend putting them on rough plywood, if you want to use peel and stick you need a smooth surface to have them adhere well.  We put the nest boxes on top and those are screwed into the wood, so they have not lifted from that area and I got the extra large kennel tray and put it on the bottom under the roost.  The vinyl on the side walls did come off, but I didn't bother trying to put them back on after the first few attempts. That is why I recommend using sheet vinyl, it can by glued down and the upper edges tacked down.

I have found out that hens like to lay eggs in the same nest boxes other chickens have lain eggs in.  But you need to provide at least 1 nest box for every 3 or 4 hens or they will lay wherever they want.  Since my coop is 4 feet wide we made 4 nest boxes by basically putting plywood dividers one foot apart in between 2"x2" strips on the outside wall and placing a 2"x4"  on edge in front of the nest boxes to keep the bedding inside.  We were building our chicken tractor for six hens...or so we thought.  We didn't even know what kind of chickens we would find in our area, at least, not yet.