Chicken tractor
The chicken tractor ( Engl. Chicken Tractor ) is a mobile chicken coop, which it the chickens allowed to pick on green areas and to scratch, and is added regularly. A uniform German term has not yet emerged for it.
Chicken tractors are occasionally used in the commercial free-range farming of chickens or in land management that follows the principle of permaculture . They are not a new development in commercial husbandry, but they are more frequently used for appropriate chicken rearing because the demand for eggs and meat from this area has increased.
In the past few years the mobile chicken coops have been further developed and complex mobile housing systems have emerged .
With the increasing number of chickens in backyards and in private gardens as part of urban horticulture , chicken tractors have also found widespread use in the private sector.
Construction principle
A chicken tractor must always be mobile and give the chickens kept in it the opportunity to scratch and peck on the ground. This corresponds to their natural behavior, which they cannot or only to a very limited extent live out in industrial mass farming. The chicken tractor always has a stable in which the chickens can rest during the night and which, if laying hens are kept that way, also has laying nests.
The chicken tractor has to be moved regularly in both commercial and private keeping, which reduces the nutrient input into the soil and its wear and tear as well as the accumulation of pathogens. These stalls are equipped in a similar way to conventional floor and aviary housing.
In commercial farming, chicken tractors are often so large that they have to be moved with agricultural machinery. This is unusual in private households; here the chicken tractor is moved manually. For this, the construction must be as light as possible. Typical shapes for a chicken tractor are therefore a light, A-shaped frame, which is covered with wire, and a chicken house with wheels.
Chicken Tractor and Permaculture
In the cultivation or rearing of food, permaculture relies on natural cycles without the use of agricultural equipment. The chicken tractor is used to make the soil receptive to sowing . Depending on the size of the chicken tractor and the number of chickens kept, the chicken tractor is placed on the designated bed area for one to several weeks. The chickens peck away all the green plants and most of the seeds in the soil and also scratch through the soil.
Chicken tractor and backyard farming
Chicken tractors have become very popular in recent years in the private hobby chicken rearing industry, where only a very small number of chickens are kept.
Private chicken rearing was common in many households until after the Second World War . Chickens were kept for both their eggs and their meat. The permanent henhouses used for this are, because the chickens very quickly eat all the green, trample the ground and overfertilize with their faeces , often a dusty and unpleasant smelling affair that is tedious to clean. In addition, such a stable with the leftover food also attracts mice and rats . In the 1950s, grocery supermarkets became popular , selling eggs and chicken at prices that could hardly be undercut. The private keeping of chickens seemed less and less compatible with life in the suburbs and fell into disuse.
In recent years, however, it has become a trend again, especially in the Anglo-Saxon region, to keep your own chickens as a hobby and thus contribute to your own care; economic factors usually do not play a role. The journalist Susan Orlean dates the trend towards owning chickens to the year 1982. That year the American TV cook and lifestyle author Martha Stewart published her first book Entertaining , which she shows with her small group of Araucanas and Cochins , two Domestic chicken breeds that become very tame. Also in her other books and especially in her lifestyle magazine, photos of her chickens kept appearing. Orlean proves in her article that the decision to keep your own chickens now provokes just as little astonished comments as the decision to grow your own tomatoes.
However, very few households live under conditions to be able to keep their chickens free-range. The traditional chicken coop does not fit the desire to come as close as possible to free-range farming. The Chicken Tractor is the best alternative and can also be used in a well-tended suburban garden. There are numerous building instructions for chicken tractors on the Internet that are suitable for private households who do not want to keep more than a handful of chickens. A start-up company of four design students from London's Royal College of Art developed an easy-to-clean hard plastic chicken coop that offered space for four chickens, and sold more than 1,000 in its first year, despite a price of almost EUR 400. In the US there are even companies that rent out a chicken tractor and chickens so that private individuals can try this form of husbandry for themselves.
Wandering chickens
In Upper Austria, a large mobile hen house for "wandering chickens" is offered and sold, the shelters regularly change locations so that the meadow is not over-acidified. The free-range eggs are not allowed to call themselves “organic”, but the image of the happy wandering chicken is well received by consumers and the general public.
literature
- Andy Lee, Pat Foreman, Patricia Foreman: Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil . Good Earth Publications, 2004, ISBN 0-9624648-6-4 .
- Jody, ed. Padgham: Raising Poultry on Pasture: Ten Years of Success . American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, 2006, ISBN 978-0-9721770-4-7 .
- Judy Pangman: Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock . Storey Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1-58017-627-5 .
Web links
- Susan Orlean: The It-Bird: The Return of the back-yard chicken , The New Yorker, September 28, 2009
- Poultry in permaculture
Single receipts
- ↑ a b c d e Susan Orlean: The It-Bird: The Return of the back-yard chicken , The New Yorker, September 28, 2009, accessed July 19, 2015
- ↑ Permaculture: Mobile Chicken Tractor , accessed July 15, 2015
- ↑ Rent the Chicken lets you testrun raising backyard Chickens , accessed July 19, 2015
- ↑ Ten to 15 are to be added this year to the ten existing wanderer chicken stalls, some of which are at Wallner's and some of farmers in Moosdorf ( Memento from July 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) WirtschaftsBlatt.at