You haven't had your daily dose of "cute".
I visit the Murray McMurray Hatchery website fairly often, subscribe to both their catalog mailings and their email newsletters and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
I couldn't decide which video to use f/ this post, so I picked one w/ the most "unusual" looking chicks. Hey, it was either chicks or their latest video, the EZ Plucker.
I visit the Murray McMurray Hatchery website fairly often, subscribe to both their catalog mailings and their email newsletters and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
I couldn't decide which video to use f/ this post, so I picked one w/ the most "unusual" looking chicks. Hey, it was either chicks or their latest video, the EZ Plucker.
5 comments:
noooo, not the Ez-plucker!
Love their catalog, love reading about all the breeds.
There are quite a few vids on YT showing how to build your own chicken plucker. If I raised meat chickens on a shoestring, I guess I'd try to build one, but the EZ Plucker looks like it would prob. last longer and would pay for itself over a few years. I'm sure I'd rather have a drum plucker than a table type.(saw one of the latter on Dirty Jobs once and Mike Rowe was having some problems w/ it)
I have been listening to online radio before and have another tab open looking at the deals/assortments the site has and started wondering "what is that sound?" in the background. I scroll down to see that it's an auto-start chick vid.
Still gonna have to draw up and show you the chicken tractor I designed.
Funny thing: last night I was reading a pro- deep litter post, explaining how to do it and first thing this morning, a post hit my reader explaining why it's not a good idea for the avg. chicken enthusiast. There's sure a lot of difference of opinion about all sorts of things in chicken forums, but they're mostly polite and reasonable discussions.
I would love to see the Chicken Tractor! I hit the forums sometimes just to see what others are doing/saying about raising chickens. We use wood pellet deep litter in our little house. the only think I have an issue with is how dusty it can get as it breaks down. We have a "cute" house, I should take a picture sometime.
After seeing all types of tractors, I came up w/ my own design. The good thing is you can make them nearly as big (long) as you wanted.
I've had the idea for a long time, even since working next door to a fiberglass tank company. They built saltwater tanks for various oil field applications, along w/ septic tanks, all sorts of uses. Some of their tanks were two-piece, w/ flanges, bolted together w/ a gasket between the sides and bottom.
You'd use "half of the tank" for one tractor; think of it as a semi-circle, looking at it tilted over on its side. You'd need the tank to be a ten-foot diameter one or a bit bigger- the radius would be half that, five foot. Screw the flanges into 2x6's, which would give you nearly five and a half foot head clearance in the middle, going in to gather eggs. Of course, a little wider diameter tank would give you more headroom and if you added a floor, it would give you another half-inch or so. You'd need to put some flooring studs ever foot and a half or so if you wanted to plywood the floor. I'd cover the wood floor w/ cheap kitchen linoleum.
One wall would be fiberglass, the "bottom" of the tank and all you'd have to do is frame in the one end, making a door or better yet, buying a cheap storm door and putting that in. That way, you could have some ventilation and if you had predators that might chew through the screen (that's when I'd def. add a floor) you could bolt on an easy-to-make guard out of some of the expanded metal, that's fairly cheap, too.
Not to get too wordy about it, you could also buy tarps the same length (height, actually)of the tank you used, as well as wide enough to nearly cover the entire thing. During the summer you could use a cut-off steel fence post (x2) for anchors and hook the grommets into eye bolts you screwed/bolted into the ends of the tractor/tank half. During the winter, you could put it around the tractor/tank half for added insulation.
I've got other ideas for predator deterrents to put all around the tractor (if you went sans flooring), made of nothing more than a strip of wood w/ nails that go down into the ground and nails sticking up at an angle to discourage something digging in. Like I said, not to get wordy about it, but when you wanted to move the unit, just pull them up, hook your garden tractor onto it and scoot it away about two lengths or so. I've done some estimation on the weight and it shouldn't be more than a couple hundred lbs. (more if you put in a floor, but still not so much it couldn't be easily moved)
I've thought about wheels on it, too, but I don't think it'd be necessary, but if you did want them, it would add to the cost and necessitate a floor.
Expensive? Yeah, a little bit, but no more than building one completely out of wood, prob. a little cheaper. Making them for sale would mean you'd need to buy bulk on the plywood, framing material, 2x6's, storm doors, etc. If I did build them to sell, I'd go ahead and install one of those automatic, solar powered doors, what the heck.
I think the best thing about it, where it would be better than a large wooden structure, would be that being round/a semi-circle, is that it would be streamlined and would be much less apt to being blown over.
A funny thing is that a long time ago I was thinking of building a coop in my back yard, but didn't want to build nests that would be hard to clean. I've got an idea for a better wood nesting box, too (another time) but when I was considering getting chickens, I figured five gallon plastic buckets would work well. Of course, you've prob. seen those that are on the market, extremely easy to remove, dump the nesting material and wash out w/ a water hose. I should have patented my idea!
Rereading that: the tarps during the summer would be for shade f/ the chickens. You could also place a feeder under them in case it rained, keep the food dry.
The 2x6's would be the skids of the tractor. I'd cut them a little longer than needed, prob. six in. to a foot, bevel the ends (like a ski so it wouldn't dig into the earth when moving) put another piece of lumber across them f/ the step. Screw in some eyebolts into the end, get some cable (or rope) and tie between them, give you something to tie onto w/ your garden tractor when moving.
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