How to use a chicken tractor

[This story first appeared in the Oct-Nov 2014 issue of Green Ideas magazine.]

I wish I could lay claim to this amazing system but I can’t, it is a permaculture idea – and it’s great for people who don’t have enough time to weed, fertilise, or manage pests.

Essentially a chicken tractor is a mobile chicken run that’s the same size as your vegetable garden beds. The chickens are placed on the garden beds inside their chicken tractor once you have harvested your vegetables.

I keep my chickens using this method so I can be a really lazy gardener. I like nothing better than sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea (or something stronger), gazing out the window to my garden where my girls are busy scratching, eating, fighting over tasty bugs and weeds and of course producing fertiliser packages for my soil.

Now you may be thinking that this sounds like boot camp for chickens but it’s not. The chooks get to move around on to fresh ground regularly, and enjoy lots of sunshine. They can sunbath, dustbathe and scratch. They enjoy lots of fresh greens and protein from all the insect eating. And for the cost and time of building a mobile run and spending 10 minutes moving it every three weeks, you can easily manage 10-15 beds which are totally maintained by the chickens.

This is how I do it...

• I plant my crops in the vegetable bed. The one tricky part is choosing plants which will all mature around the same time. The reason for this is you don’t want to be waiting for the final crop to be ready to harvest when everything else has finished and the chooks are clucking to get on to that space.
• I don’t weed or pull out anything gone to seed while my vegetables are growing, as this will provide food for the chickens while they are cleaning up this area. If there are any bare areas in the garden before the chickens move in I sow some quick-growing mustard seeds as a green manure crop/chicken food.
• Then I just move the chooks on to the space in their chicken tractor. This can be as easy as moving the run in the late afternoon so that any escapees are keen to get back to their safe perches before night falls. When the chickens first move on to the space I am sure they think it is like visiting the Garden of Eden. There are tall succulent weeds, and broccoli plants gone to seed. There are aphids and caterpillars to chomp and dry soil to dig. During the first week when there is so much greenery in the chicken tractor the chooks much prefer to eat this rather than their chicken pellets – so I am sure this works out cheaper in the long run. It is amazing how quickly the space goes from a green jungle to a clear space.
• All kitchen scraps, grass clippings, coffee grounds, dust from vacuum cleaner bags, ash from the fire, hedge trimmings, weeds and any other organic material can then be added to the vegetable bed while the chickens are tending the area. The chickens will eat what they like and scratch and mulch everything else whilst adding rich manure to it all. An armful of straw, thrown into the mix each week, will really get the chooks scratching and helps any composting smells disappear.
• I generally leave the chickens on each garden bed for at least three weeks, by which time the space has been transformed into beautiful rich organic material ready to plant the next crop straight into.
• At this point the chooks are moved to a new garden bed or on to the lawn until the next bed is ready. When the chickens have been moved I sprinkle some garden lime and irrigate with a sprinkler for about an hour, giving the area a really good soaking. This encourages all the worms to come up into the upper mulch level. I don’t care what people say, I am sure worms have brains as they move deep into the soil when the chickens are above them on the garden. To plant seedlings I just make a small hole in the mulch and plant directly.

With this system I only do the fun things such as seed raising, planting, watering and harvesting, and the chickens do everything else for me. The soil in my vegetable beds is rich, fertile, black, teeming with worms and sweet-smelling – and it grows anything.

So if you have chickens, or are planning on getting them I thoroughly recommend this method. It can also be scaled up or down very easily. If you only have a small garden, why not have a smaller run built to the same size as your garden beds and keep three ornamental bantams as your featured gardeners?