Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil | 
|  | | | Title: | Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil | | Author: | Andy Lee
Pat Foreman | | Publisher: | Good Earth Publications | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | January, 1998 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0962464864 / 9780962464867 | | List Price: | $22.95 | | Amazon Price: | $22.95 | |
 This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $15.87. |
The HTML code below can be pasted onto your web-site, your MySpace page, or blog - or any number of similar places - to create a link to this page: If, instead of a text link, you'd like to create a link to this page which will display the book cover, if it's available, then the code below will do exactly that:
Check for the same book at these other US book sites:
• [ Abebooks ] • [ Alibris ] • [ Barnes & Noble ] • [ Half.com ] • [ Powells ] … or check UK bookstores
| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Book Description
A chicken tractor is a bottomless, portable pen that fits over your garden beds. Just set it wherever you need help in your garden. The chickens peck and scratch the soil to clean your beds, eat pest bugs and weed seeds. Best of all, they provide eggs and meat with that old-fashioned flavor. Chicken tractors have helped thousands of gardeners have better gardens and taken chickens out of factory farms and put them in the garden where they are your personal helpers.
| Other Items You May Enjoy:
Browse Books From These Related Subjects:
Customer Reviews:
• Very Good For The Suburban Gardener 06 May, 2004
I originally got some chickens because Martha Stewart said they love to eat crickets and here in the desert we have quite a problem with crickets. I found out that chickens are wonderful pets, not much trouble, very friendly and they have personalities. And they really eat bugs - best pest control you can have. I read this book on the concept of the chicken tractor and realized for the suburban gardener this is ideal. Hens eat bugs, grain, and vegetable scraps from the kitchen. Hens are great little composters, and they eat weed seeds and pests up to and including scorpions and baby mice and snakes. They don't need much except food and water, and protection from predators. We allow ours to roam a fenced in yard freely, and pen them up at night. This is a useful book if you just want a few hens and want to improve your soil (we don't move our hens around, once a year we take 4 inches off the soil in their yard and spread it around our trees and gardens.) The eggs are great - I like giving green eggs to little kids because they all have read Dr. Seuss. This book isn't for someone who is more interested in egg-laying or meat production on a large scale. And, by the way, we don't eat our hens. We are running a chicken retirement home - they don't lay eggs any more, but they still till, compost, eat weed seeds, and control pests.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A27RBT8ULV2N1F
• Some Good Ideas For The Beginner But Needs Some Major Improvement. 06 June, 2007
This book has some really good, practical ideas for the beginniner.
If you are into chicken production for meat there is a fair amount of information on that topic. If you are into chickens primarily for egg production (which is most of us) you'll need to figure out how to adapt the use for that purpose. This will involve implementing a nesting area and exterior access door into the design to collect the eggs. This is not a huge deal for the creative, mechanical types but might be an issue for some.
The book is extremely redundant and reads like a babbling person talking in circles. Cloudy, the information is sometimes conflicting and lacking in sufficient detail. The author would have done well to hire true professionals to organize/edit the content and draw the diagrams.
I have built and currently use 5 chicken tractors. The author suggests that you can build these things for less than the cost of lunch by using scrap materials. In my experience most folks would very hardpressed to find the materials needed for free. If you buy all of the materials needed they cost around $100 each.
Two people can build 2 of these in about 7 hours if they have only a smidgen of experience with tools/carpentry. Building one takes about 4-5 hours.
A few notes from my experiences working with chicken tractors:
1. I have used 3' tall chicken tractors for piglets (up to 4 months of age) with excellent results by wrapping the chicken tractor with a stronger gauge wire than typical chicken wire. The pigs root a large hole every day. When I move the "pig tractor" I rake their poop into the hole then rake the soil back into the hole covering the poop. This eliminates 95% of the odor and, of course, fertilizes my garden.
2. This method does not work well for waterfowl unless you have sandy or other soil that drains very quickly. On my farm in the NC mountains, confined ducks and geese immediately create a muddy mess unless there is a drainage system in place under the waterer. Drainage systems are not practical for chicken tractoring.
3. Chicken tractors work great for chickens, turkeys, and guineas. Birds raised in a chicken tractor will produce more eggs and be much more content living in this type of environment than those accustomed to ranging.
4. The author states that the chicken tractor protects poultry from predators. In reality this structure offers little protection from anything other than birds of prey and dogs. I have lost plenty of chicken tractored poultry to fox, oppossums and raccoons. Keep a baited live trap next to your birds or plan to camp out with them every night.
Hope this helps...
Good luck and good farming!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A25RQ9YICQKIYJ
• Poor Choice For Title 18 February, 2008
I liked the information related to chickens but the title should almost have been "Gardening With Chickens, How to use chickens to build up your garden soil."
I didn't like the whole how to compost part of the book I bought it looking for ideas and plans on how to build chicken tractors for both layers and fryers. What I found didn't have the plans I was looking for while the book has much good information it does not stay on topic as far I am concerned.
If the title had been different I would have given the book 4 or 5 stars.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2A22WAZ6MA188
• Best Option For Residential Chickens! 26 May, 2008
This book was my first real introduction to permiculture. It really helps the beginner get a taste of sustainable living and is a really great companion guide to gardening! I would encourage everyone to have a copy as this method can also be applied to goats, turkey, cows, ducks.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2WQ8I6WL78LQ5
|
