Friday, January 23, 2015

Incubating chicken eggs and brooding chicks

We just hatched 24 chicks in our incubator!  They are so cute when they first hatch.

Here's some photos of our latest hatch and a few posts explaining how and why we hatch chicks:
  • Incubating chicken eggs - there are lots of factors that affect hatch rate, here's how to get the best results from your incubator


chicken tractor ebook: hatching chicks









Taz demonstrates the dog-proof brooder box


Have you hatched or raised chicks?  Any tips to share?

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Chicken tractor ebook - coming soon

We have been keeping chickens in homemade chicken tractors for nearly ten years. I have written a few blog posts about chicken tractors, and they are some of my most popular blog posts, so it is clearly a topic that many people want to know more about. I am currently writing an eBook to explain more about how you can design, construct and use a chicken tractor to suit your needs. 

I haven't included any particular designs because I don’t believe that there is a one-size-fits-all solution. The best chicken tractor for your needs is going to depend on your property, your climate and the type and number of chickens that you want to keep. I hope that I will cover most of the aspects that you need to consider so that you can design, construct and use a chicken tractor that is most suited to your individual requirements.



I don't know why my chicken tractor posts have been so popular! I'm sure plenty of others have written about them too. When I realised that the first post had a lot of page views, I wrote some more posts to explain the concept in more detail, I was also asked to do a guest post on chicken tractors, which helped me to answer even more questions about chicken tractors. And one more post with step by step instructions showing how we build a chicken tractor. We are really happy with the chicken tractors we made, we now have four big ones and two small ones. The best part is that we never have to clean out a chicken pen, we just move the tractor to fresh ground and we have seen a huge improvement in the pasture that the tractors have moved over. We let the chickens free-range from the tractors, but if we need to keep them locked up for some reason, we can just move them more frequently. The tractors are predator proof, and if we notice any evidence of digging around them, we just move them over (we don't have anything that can dig under in a night).

Catch up on my chicken tractor posts here:

Mobile chicken tractors vs fixed pen Mar 14, 2011

How to build a chicken tractor May 14, 2012

How to use a chicken tractor May 7, 2012

Chicken tractor guest post May 29, 2013


And check back soon to buy your copy of the full ebook!

Tell me, do you use chicken tractors too?  What do you want to know about them?