Chicken Tractor
Monday, May 4th, 2009
As long as we’ve lived in Corrales, NM I’ve been begging my wife, Jennifer, to buy a tractor. “What kind of farm doesn’t have a tractor?” I ask. Her response, logical as always, stops the discussion in its tracks, “We only have 1/2 acre, most of it house and out buildings. You couldn’t even find a place to turn a tractor around, let alone find a use for it.”
Now most blue-blooded American males would find a use for a tractor. I could drive it up down the drive way… I could plow our deep New Mexico snows… I could sit on it and turn it on once in awhile. Anyway, all of my wonderful ideas have gone for naught…
Except today. I now own a tractor - a chicken tractor. Yes, it doesn’t make a vrrrrrrmm noise and it doesn’t smell like grease. In fact, it doesn’t even have a seat. However, if I must say so myself, it is the best chicken tractor found on the internet today and I built it with my own two hands.
Chicken tractors, for the uninitiated, are all the craze for today’s cage-free, range-fed chickens and eggs. (people pay $4-5 a doz for the eggs) Anything that can get the poor darlings out into the open to scratch for grubs and eat au-natural. They do a great job on unwanted weeds and grasses as pictured above but they also tear havoc on a garden and lawn. The chicken tractor is the perfect size to be easily moved around yet provides the girls ample opportunity for grubbing, dust bathing, grass eating and pooping; by far their favorite activity.
Well, there you have it, Gary’s first tractor. (I wonder how many of these I will need to build before Jennifer gives in and let’s me buy one with a seat, big tires and a steering wheel?)