Chicken "tractor" helps with pasture renovations and bug control in a natural way

Our 2011 run of the chicken tractor began in Mid-May with 20 poultry birds and 4 turkeys. Currently, they are brooding under the covered chicken tractor until they get all their feathers, then they will be allowed to roam freely within the pasture area they are helping to renovate. They will control the bug population, scratch up moss, thatch, and the llama poop piles and leave behind a most excellent fertilizer.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• chicken
• tractor
• chicken tractor
• Paca Pride
• alpaca
• llama
• Rock Cornish
• turkey
• farm
• homestead
• yurt
• raising chickens

[Dabudsta]

@galex9070 Chickens will eat the grass too! I find that top on their plate is the clover, then the grasses and some other forbs. While brooding in the closed tractor, I move it at least once a day to once every 2-3 days based upon observing the ground it is on. I let them roam free when they get past brooding within a fenced pasture. To avoid losing the grass and the clover, it comes down to rotating and letting the pasture recover.

[galex9070]

I have chickens in a small pasture at my house. I found that they eat the grass and leave the weeds (hoary cress, morning glory, and other greens the chickens hate), so that I end up w/ a field of weeds instead of grass. I'm not using a chicken tractor, but rather just letting them roam around free.

How do you ensure that after they've worked an area, that you end up with grass growing there, instead of weeds?

[Dabudsta]

@galex9070 responded above...the only undesirable plants I pull by hand in my pastures are foxglove, buttercup, thistle, and bracken fern.

[fffarmboy]

Making my tractor at the mo.Yours looks ideal,well done with that  :o)