A chicken tractor is a movable pen that puts hens over a bed for a day or so at a time, where they eat insects, larvae and weed seed and scratch the soil, and it is used after harvest and before planting, never on a growing crop. Raw poultry manure can carry disease-causing bacteria and burns plants, so the pen is moved often and a waiting period is kept between manure and the harvest of food crops.
A chicken tractor is a light, floorless, movable pen that confines poultry to a patch of garden for pest and weed control and manuring.
What It Does
Chickens eat insects, grubs, slugs, weed seed and green growth, and scratch the top soil. In a bed that has just been harvested, they clear pupae and eggs in the surface, eat what is left of the crop, and leave manure. The carrier’s rule is to run the tractor after harvest and before planting. Do not use it on growing crops, because chickens will eat the plants.
Design
- Light enough to move by hand and wide enough to cover one bed, with a roof against sun and rain and a covered corner for roosting.
- Floorless, so birds reach the soil; but secured at the base against digging predators (Predator Protection).
- Water and feed carried in daily; shade in hot weather.
- Breed and number: Poultry Keeping covers the birds themselves.
How many birds per square metre, and for how long, cannot be taken from a table: it depends on breed, how much forage is there and how fast you want the soil cleared. Start with a few birds, watch how quickly the surface is scratched down and the vegetation eaten, and adjust. A pen left over one spot too long strips it bare and burns it with manure.
Method
Step 1: Choose the bed. One that has been harvested and is not due to be planted for several weeks.
Step 2: Place the pen and add birds. A few birds for a first trial.
Step 3: Move it every day or two, to the next strip. A moving pen spreads manure thinly; a stationary one concentrates it.
Step 4: Watch for bare, scorched or muddy ground and move sooner or reduce numbers.
Step 5: Record the date the bed was grazed. You need it for the manure interval below.
Manure Safety: Wait Before Harvest
Fresh poultry manure carries Salmonella and Campylobacter and has a very high nitrogen content. Under the US National Organic Program rule (7 CFR 205.203), raw manure must be applied at least 90 days before harvest of a crop whose edible part does not touch the soil, and at least 120 days before harvest of a crop whose edible part does touch the soil (recalled; check the current text). For a spring-planted leafy crop on a bed the hens occupied in autumn there is no problem; for a summer lettuce bed grazed in spring there is.
Keep chickens off beds that are about to carry lettuce, salad leaves, strawberries, root crops eaten raw or other produce eaten uncooked unless the full interval has passed.
Poultry and their manure can make people ill
Wash hands with soap after handling birds, eggs, pens or manure, keep children from putting hands in their mouths near the pen, and do not eat food grown in soil that took raw manure inside the interval above. Keep the pen away from wells and from the edge of drinking water. Wash eggs before storing them.
Worked Example: A Pen’s Move Schedule
A pen covers one bed section 1 m wide and 3 m long, which is 3 m². If it is moved to a fresh strip each day, a bed of 10 m × 1.2 m (12 m²) takes 12 ÷ 3 = 4 days to cover once. (The dimensions are chosen for the arithmetic; scale to your pen.)
Common Mistakes
- Using it on a crop. Hens eat seedlings and lettuce.
- Leaving the pen in place. The patch is stripped and scorched.
- Putting hens on a salad bed just before planting. The manure interval still applies.
- No shelter or water. Heat kills birds.
- No protection at night. Foxes and dogs take them (Predator Protection).
What’s Next
- Learn next: Duck Patrols for Slugs and Snails — for growing crops
- Combine with: Biological Controls — the wider strategy