Response to little chicken tractor

My husband built a chicken tractor more like Ft. Knox. It's 8' square, 3'tall and contains the equivalent of 4 full sheets of plywood, plus the framing, wire on 2 sides and nest boxes. I moved it last summer while I was just raising 40 Australorp chicks (butchered 22 roosters and still have 17 hens and their rooster) on lengths of PVC pipe set under parallel sides. Fortunately, our yard is flat enough that it didn't need brakes nor did I need to make anything but right angles with my turns. I just put the PVC under the other 2 sides and rolled away. For the winter, I had a hoophouse set up and placed the chicken tractor in the garden and the hoophouse over it. It gave the chickens a 12' x 24' dry area to exercise and let me tend them out of the weather. Are they doing wonders for the soil in that spot! As far as varmints, we have 2 Great Pyrenees that keep chicken theives and deer out of the yard and garden and another with the goats and sheep. They are worth their weight in gold but any good well trained and carefully selected dog should be able to do the same job.

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