A friend was cleaning up and asked me to tow an old trailer full of rubbish and leave it at the tip. It hadn't moved in a decade and the tyres were flat. Pumped up they looked good for the windy 35km trip to the tip. Once I had sorted what was really rubbish and what might be useful the trailer still looked good. So I took the trailer home to become a new mobile home for some of our chooks.
The angle-grinder cut out the steel bottom and this was replaced with steel mesh so the chook shit would fall through and fertilise the ground. Then I built a chook house on the top fully equipped with bi-level perches, nesting box accessed from outside, sliding lockable door for chook entry set in a larger hinged door for human entry and a ladder to assist the tired hen to get home.
Surrounded by a 100m roll out electric chook netting fence, powered by a solar energizer, it is so far fox and dog-proof and contains the chooks (provided one wing is clipped).
We target the chooks in places where the larger animals have been. The chooks clean up the shit and they get rid of the worms. Once the chook tractor has moved on the animals can move back. The chooks get fresh pasture and fresh bugs as well as their layer mix and we get lots of eggs and clean paddocks.
In the photo you can also see another of our tractors - the pig tractor. Not all tractors need diesel!
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