Chicken Tractor
Posted by dave on 24 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Uncategorized, barnyard, food/health, green home, green work
While reading Michael Perry’s book Coop, it struck me that our goal to grow blueberry pies in our yard may require much more work than I’m willing to do for that far off benefit. No, I don’t think that genetic engineers can produce a bush that fruits whole wheat pie crusts sprinkled with sweetener and stuffed with blueberries. I prefer my ingredients from heritage versions of plants anyway. But the growing of blueberries appears to require not only clearing of our overgrown landscaping, but bed prep to boot.
I’m mostly fine with the clearing part other than the fact that it will leave far too little vegetation between myself and the road noise rising from pavement both near and not so far. The ash trees that shade the area are destined to fall prey to the emerald ash bore anyway, so they may as well become a source of firewood or full dimension lumber before infestation. That’s part of why the solar hot water panels to their North and West made sense in spite of what the solar site assessment showed. The question for me is, how can I avoid all of that bending and digging that creates good fertile ground. Thanks to recent wanderings across the pages of Mr. Perry’s most recent book, I’m reconsidering the use of chickens as weeders and tillers of soil in the form of a chicken tractor. I see a road trip to the Restore in my near future.
Now before you go and contact your animal rights persons to let them know I’ve gone bonkers, what Mr. Perry describes is a mobile cage in which young chickens do their natural foraging for worms, insects, and vegetation. Their scratching effectively tills the soil while they get a fresh plot of ground to feed from. The chickens fertilize the soil, doing what comes naturally following their consumption of worms, insects and vegetation. The entire prospect is a win-win. The tricky part is for the chickens to visit long enough to effectively do the garden prep. So, by building a chicken “tractor” cage that will keep them safe, and then sliding it along the ground into positions where garden beds are to be formed, one can avoid the tilling of soil “man”ually.
There is some risk here, since it involves the use of chickens. Somewhere, one has to come by a number of chickens for a long enough period of time to do the square footage required for the bed. Our customary dimensions are 5 feet wide so we can do most of the weeding and harvesting without trampling upon roots. But then again, there is the care of the chickens, and what you do with them once they have dug your blueberry beds…
One of the concurrent story lines in Coop involves the construction of a chicken coop during the acquisition of chicks and construction of the chicken tractor. I defer to our poultry expert, Kirk on the startup of urban chicken rearing. He’s on his second year. Send encouragement, and perhaps he’ll share some of his expertise. Now, what do they have at that Restore that could become a chicken tractor?



