Chicken Tractor Plans

Choosing the right plan

Chicken tractor plans will seem easy when you use the right plan. The chicken tractor (called a chicken ark in the UK) is one of the simplest structures for housing chickens.

It is a portable, small roofed unit that you move around your yard. It has two main purposes, to shelter chickens and to provide an instant clean-up for your yard.

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When you move the chicken tractor around, the chickens will cultivate the ground by scratching, eating bugs, fertilizing the soil and eating down the grass. This simple structure is quick to build and easy to keep clean. Chicken farmers who want to keep 1-2 chickens will find a chicken tractor plan ideal.

With any building plans, there are a few critical things to keep in mind before you begin.

How many chickens do you plan to keep?

This is an important question to answer because the plan you choose needs to accommodate the chickens comfortably.

Don’t overcrowd the chickens or you will find production goes down. You may even face worse problems such as health problems.

The last thing you want is an over-crowded tractor where the chickens aren’t even producing eggs. Find a plan that gives you specific dimensions and diagrams to follow. You will be glad that you have planned for enough space, and won’t have to rebuild portions as you go along.

How much upkeep will you do?

Keeping the chicken tractor clean is an important part of taking care of chickens. You need to ask yourself how often you want to be cleaning and changing bedding to be sure you pick the right chicken tractor plan.

The size of the structure often determines how much upkeep you need to do, so choose carefully. A benefit of the chicken tractor over another style of chicken coop is that it’s low maintenance. So you will be doing less cleaning to begin with, and when you pick the right plan, you will be assured of the tasks staying manageable.

Best materials to use

Next, look at the materials list you will need. There are great resources for building materials and equipment for the chicken tractor that can be found. Try to find chicken tractor plans that discuss a range of materials and sources to pinpoint the best plan.

A few insider resources are recycled material yards, farm sales, construction areas and garage sales. Materials are your highest project cost so having good resources is important.

Another thing to consider is quality and longevity of the materials. You don’t want to spend an entire weekend building the chicken tractor only to find the materials won’t hold up to weather or they are too flimsy.

Will the chicken tractor be portable?

Finally, ask yourself whether you want to transport the chicken tractor. The design is meant to be lightweight and portable. Many people are opting for this design who will only keep 1-2 chickens as pets.

Another benefit to the chicken tractor is that you can move it to shady areas easily, or to an area to clean it out.

Make sure you keep these tips in mind when thinking about starting with chicken tractor plans. You can find great resources for building plans and maintenance schedules that make the project easy and fun. You could be having your own fresh eggs in no time with a simple structure for your hens like the chicken tractor!

 These are the plans I settled on:

They really worked for me and I got the chicken coop I wanted within my budget and my Building a Chicken Coop.

The ultimate guide to planning and building your own coop in your backyard. In includes drafts of plans, dimensions, materials lists and sources to everything you need to build a sustainable chicken coop.