I live right in the middle of one of the largest populations of Amish, and not city slicker Amish either. The Amish here are mostly farmers with a few operating businesses like small grocery stores, sawmills, bakeries even one of the largest produce auction houses in the Midwest.

While I have no intentions of giving up my electricity or internet I find the Amish very fascinating. They are living Jefferson’s dream of every citizen being a small independent farmer, and with very little technological advancement from Jefferson’s era. Amish in Missouri rarely work outside their community and the majority are self employed agricultural entrepreneurs. It is much easier to work with Amish as they are familiar with hard work and are usually open to earning some extra money. Although they will often be leery of someone who isn’t of their faith they do rely on business with the general population.

The average Amish family in my area is composed of an extended family on a small farm. They always have a large garden and almost every family has several milk cows as well as every other small farm livestock. While not Organic farmers they are more so than the average commercial farm. I farm 60 years behind the average American farmer, the Amish farm 60 years behind me with a few exceptions on technology. All Amish in this area are off grid, and most of their stores are also off grid as well. The Amish rely on real horsepower and Diesel engine power units for running the stationary belt driven threshers and sawmills.

I chose my location because of the many advantages like the rural nature (low pop), good growing season, cheaper good farm land and a good state. The Amish are an additional plus as I can get raw milk for $2.25 a gallon, small watermelons for $1, my cattle butchered for $0.25 a lb packaged weight, my logs sawed for $.15 a board foot and many more advantages. A good percentage of our food comes from the local Amish, and I see my local area having a much better chance of making it through any problems.

I think the Amish provide good stability for the area and are a great source for building materials and food. When you go through Amish country almost every farm has signs at their mailbox of what they have for sale, which of course changes with the season. They don’t sell in the cities directly very often (It is often a good trip under horsepower). Most of the Amish stores are in the country on gravel roads, with the exception of a few touristy type stores.

I think many people who dream of a homesteader lifestyle could learn a lot from the Amish. While not completely isolated from the outside world the Amish are very independent. They have private schools under their control, freedom from many of the more onerous taxes like land and social security. They instead provide for their retirement, insurance and schooling through the community. I am jealous of those freedoms and sense of community.

Amish also have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit. The average Amish family in Missouri runs their own business and they are not raised and trained to go into employment for someone else. That is something the average American has unfortunately lost.

Since our flock is a mix of heritage breeds we frequently have a hen go broody. I initially encouraged broodiness but the hens that went broody didn’t stay dedicated to family life and abandoned their eggs before it was time. So I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and incubated the eggs myself for years.

When we moved to the sawmill we had a hen disappear. I figured she was snagged by a stray dog or some other predator. Weeks passed and I forgot all about the missing hen. One day while going out for chores I noticed the triumphant return of the hen who had successfully hatched out some chicks somewhere in the bush. That was impressive, and it energized me to give broody hens another try.

Last year we had four hens go broody at the same time. Two successfully hatched out some chicks, one gave up and the last hen who didn’t successfully hatch any herself claimed any errant chick the two successful mothers let out of their sight. It was a shared job of mothering between those three hens.

With our poor luck on hatching goose eggs we have decided to give broody hens a try for that job next year. In order to encourage broodiness in our hens we have allowed seven hens to sit on clutches of eggs so far this year. With the increased amount of poultry wondering the farm we have bought some leg bands and will be banding many of our birds for identification. Successful broody hens get a special pink leg band to identify their mothering abilities, and to give their genetics increased importance when we hatch eggs ourselves.

We have also bought eight Silky chicks in the hopes that they will live up to their reputation as great mothers. We have not had Silky chickens before as personally I considered them ugly and not very utilitarian, but I try to keep an open mind and will overlook the poor appearance (My Opinion) if they can become our natural incubators.

Here is my view on the advantages and disadvantages of broody hens. I will also give ways I have found to overcome some of these obstacles.

Disadvantages:

1. Broody hens will stop laying eggs while they concentrate on their mothering duties. So if your ultimate goal is egg production you may be further ahead to incubate the eggs yourself. This is the very reason many breeds of chickens have had broodiness bred out, it isn’t a desirable trait for a commercial chicken.
2. Using Broody hens will give you fewer eggs and fewer chicks vs an incubator. If your goal is as many chicks as possible an incubator will give you more chicks by far in the long haul.
3. Some hens are not good mothers and chick losses can often be high, although that hasn’t been the case in our experience. We have very few losses, but I have heard of hens leading their chicks into bad situations or just not mothering them at all, or even worse killing the chicks. Many hens give up on a clutch of eggs early.
4. Chicks from broody hens are not as tame as chicks you have taken care of. Our first group of chicks from the chicken who laid them in the bush were wild. Even after being caught as teenagers and locked in a chicken tractor they never were as tame as our other chickens. Knowing this was a possibility we removed the next group of chicks that were hatched from their mothers when they were fully feathered, but not  too old. We placed them in with the rabbits, which for some reason tames them. We are not sure of the reason, but it does work. Our theories are that having another species in close contact makes them less wild, or that maybe the smaller cage gives them nowhere to go when we feed and water them, and having that close contact tames them.

Advantages

1. The hen takes over care of the chicks for the most part. It is nice setting back and letting a hen do all the work. I am not sure what the hens feed the chicks, but we don’t provide any starter and the chicks grow faster than incubated chicks.
2. Hens are often more successful at hatching eggs, and the chicks seem more robust and get a head start with a doting hen. It is amazing that a hen can take such good care of a chick outside. With no heat lamps or other artificial aids the mother hen does an awesome job.
3. The chicks are usually accepted into the flock if they are born there. Broody hens are encouraged in the Ultimate Chicken tractor where they have their choice of eight nest boxes. When the chicks hatch the rest of the flock seems to accept them. This is amazing considering what happens to any other chicken that you try to introduce into the flock. In our books this is a big plus, although it may not always work.
4. Broody hens can be used to hatch more valuable eggs. That is one of our goals. From turkey eggs to goose eggs our hens are going to have some strange looking chicks.
5. Chicks will learn from their mother and grow up to become a more rounded chicken.

Encouraging Broodiness

There are several ways to encourage broodiness. Having a good nesting area with enough room from other chickens is essential. If there isn’t enough nest boxes, or if there are crowded conditions you probably will not have much luck.

Gatherings of eggs also encourage broodiness. To encourage our hens to become broody I designated two of the nest boxes to be egg collectors. The hens see the eggs and it encourages them to sit on them. I have used rubber eggs to do the job of the real eggs that way I don’t lose the eggs if nobody decides to sit on them. This has worked very well this year.

A clutch of eggs just waiting to be incubated encourages broodiness more than anything I have tried. I prefer to use fake eggs to get the ball rolling, once I have a dedicated hen incubator I can remove the fake eggs and replace them with real eggs, but be ready to get pecked. Many people use golf balls, I tried that but my chickens were not fooled. Many hobby stores carry realistic fake eggs and that is the route I went. Some of these fake eggs are so well done I have to double check when gathering eggs at times.

Having the nest in a good location is also essential. You don’t want the hen to be disturbed to much, or have to defend against other critters or chickens. Having enough nest boxes to allow your other chickens to lay while giving the broody hen her needed space keeps everything going smoothly.

While the mother hen usually does well, mother doesn’t always know best. I have had many mother hens stay outside in the rain with her chicks. Most of the time they make it, but sometimes you don’t have that luck. Chicks can also make some poor choices, and often end up away from their mother and that isn’t a safe condition. It is a good idea to keep a close eye on the chicken family to keep everything going smoothly.

Other things to keep an eye on are other farm animals. My turkeys while free ranging with the chickens decided to switch houses and went from their chicken tractor to a tractor that had chicks. I didn’t think anything of it and locked the tractors for the night. The turkeys killed all the chicks. Guineas are another concern when chicks are present. Guineas seem to have a Napoleon complex going and will attack chicks for no reason. Other chickens may occasionally peck a chick to keep it in line or show dominance, but if they are part of the same flock I have never had a chicken kill a chick. That doesn’t seem to work with turkeys or guineas.

My Muscovy ducks however have not caused a problem and I had a banty chicken and a Muscovy duck incubate side by side. The chicken was incubating duck eggs along with the duck, when they hatched they shared mothering duties and I introduced some incubator hatched chicks during the process.

I have had mixed results introducing incubator hatched chicks to broody mother hens. The best strategy I have found is to introduce chicks several hours after sunset to a hen who has eggs hatching and only introduce younger chicks so they are close to the same size as the just hatched chicks. It seems to be up to the mother, as some hens will mother anything, others will kill anything that isn’t the chicks they hatched. As long as it hatches under the hen it seems to be accepted, even if it is a different breed.

Resources

I have been very happy with the simple plastic leg bands I bought from a seller on Ebay. They come in several colors and it is the best way to mark a chicken I have found. The bands are split in the middle so they can be attached to an older bird. I use to know every bird, a few I still know by sight, but when you get a couple hundred birds you need a way to identify them. You can get 100 bands for $9.79 including shipping. I bought mine from seller yaowenjie112269123.

 

Why do I have a website? That is the question I will answer in this post. While this will not be the most interesting post I want those who read my blog and visit my website to know the mission.

The main purpose of my website is to share ideas about small scale farming and what has worked for me. It is a place to relay my experiences and projects. In so doing I hope to encourage those of like minds and to share some good ideas. I want to show ways of thinking outside the box and being more self sufficient. I figure we will have a better world with more people running and living on small farms.

I also want to show off the interesting places in my home state of Missouri. If I attract people of like minds to my state it will only help to improve it. Missouri has a lot to offer those wanting to live a freer life, and engage in small farming and homesteading.

In the future it will give me a place to sell and advertise products from my farm. While I have yet to sell anything directly from my website, I also don’t have much for sell here either. It is hard to determine if this site drives some sells at my Ebay store or not. Either way it doesn’t matter as I don’t expect this site to pay for itself anytime soon.

There you go, the mission and goals of my website and its future aims. This website is solely funded from my own pocket and has no affiliate links or sponsors. It isn’t like it is a fancy site, it’s purpose it to get information out about real possibilities. In the future I plan to add links to other sites with good information and similar missions.

I have been fascinated by living fences my entire life. Growing up in southern Missouri and Kansas there were plenty of Osage Orange or as we called them Hedge apple trees. I am sure many of these were descendants of former working hedge fences, but I didn’t know of one purpose built living fence, although I knew of a couple fence lines that were such a tangle they almost acted like one.

I was planning on building a living fence along the road at the sawmill. One of the problems we have with that property are the power lines running along the road and on the west fence line. Our new property however is wide open with nothing that needs to be worked around.

I was going to order my trees from the Missouri Department of Conservation, but they had a bad season and didn’t have enough trees for my project. After an exhaustive search on the internet the best deal I could find was Musser Forest. For future work on our living fence we will be starting our own trees, but I wanted a jump start, as the fence takes long enough to become established anyway.

Our first part of the living fence will be built along our western property boundary. We planted 330′ starting at the corner of our property. This area has the worst fence on the place and is also in the open where the trees will be able to establish themselves.

Before I began work on the fence I had to make sure it was okay with my neighbor, as I wanted the fence right on the boundary along the current fence line. I am sure he thought I was some weird hippy but he gave me the go ahead. I assured him that if the fence didn’t work I would remove it to make way for a conventional fence, as I need a working fence.

I removed what was left of the old fence, rolling the old barbed wire up for possible future re-use. The fence was slightly overgrown and the brush was cleared with a chainsaw and the old fence posts were pulled out by the backhoe to be next years firewood.

Along this stretch of fence there were two trees that were left standing. One was a locust that will work just fine for part of the fence, the next was a big oak. A tree that old has nothing to fear from me.

After the grunt work was done we brought in the tractors to till up the ground. There were plenty of roots, so the job was far from perfect, but a better starting point none the less.

We spaced the trees about 14″ apart working from the south end to the north. We hand planted every tree. It took several days worth of work but we hopefully have a good start to our living fence. Through the summer we will be putting down cardboard and topping it with compost to keep down the competition.

The plan for my fence is very similar to the plan out lined in an article by mother earth news about living fences awhile back. Although I cannot find anyone who has actually done as the article suggests.

Link To Mother Earth News Living Fence Article

After an exhaustive search of the web I cannot find anyone with a purpose built osage orange living fence. Most information on hedge rows and fencing is from the UK where most of those fences are located. Those fences usually are a mix of tree species and very few are using the perfect tree for the job in the US, the Osage Orange.

When the hedge row is established I will be planting other species in front, but being able to hold my cattle in is job one. A few of the species of trees and shrubs I am considering planting in addition to regular fruit trees are:

Hedge Apple
Washington Hawthorne
wild plum
hazelnut
crab apple
Locust

Siberian Pea Shrub

Farm Updates:

I finished harvesting the last of the Cereal Rye yesterday. As expected the field at the farm had a very good yield.

And the BIG news is we have our first register-able heifer calf. She is a cutie from our #2 Dexter. This makes Arod officially a Bull.

Website Updates

Books Added to the Free Books Page:

Army Welding Manual
Basic Book of Organic Gardening
Foxfire 4
A Technical Study of the Growth of White Leghorn Chickens
Breeding Rearing and Fattening all kinds of Poultry 1819
Care and Incubation of Hatching Eggs
Commercial Poultry Raising
Common Sense on Poultry Raising
Constructing a Plywood Incubator
Controlling Newcastle Disease in Village Chickens
Duckweed
Egg Quality
Economic Aspects of Retailing Chicken Meat
Housing for Layer Production
Incubating and Hatching Eggs
Progressive Poultry Raising
Raising Chicks Artificially
Science Applied to Poultry Raising
Succesful Poultry Raising
Sustainable Chicken Production
The Chicken Broiler Industry
The Chicken Business in California
The Kellerstrass Way of Raising Chickens
The Minorca Fowl

The Structure of the Fowl
The Sussex Fowl

 

This post is several months behind.

My wife came across some Coturnix quail chicks while at Rutledge Flea Market. Just four chicks but enough to give quail a try. We have since hatched 24 quail from eggs given to us by our neighbor.

With all these quail we needed a good home for them. With the abundance of white oak that we get for free from a local stave mill I decided to build it from wood. White oak is very weather resistant and much stronger than pine. It is also much heavier which isn’t a downside when your building a small tractor.

Getting the angles right was the hardest part of the construction job on the quail tractor. I am happy with the results, although for me wood is much more work than PVC, although free is a good motivator for me.

The quail tractor is 6’+ long and a little over 2′ wide. The frame is of Missouri white oak. I divided the cage into two equal sides to house my breeding stock. Each side has 1 1/2″ PVC water and feed silos. The feed tubes/silos hold 1lb of feed. The water tubes/silos hold 1/2 gallon.

I used 45 degree angles and end caps for the bottom of the feed tubes. A 90 degree elbow will not allow the feed to continue down the tube. I cut the top allowing the birds to have access to the feed. I then used a piece of poly to make a roof over the end of the tube to prevent it from getting wet.

Keeping quail is a lot different than chickens. Free ranging quail just doesn’t work. Quail are also much smaller and the chicks can fit through 1″ chicken wire. Quail are active at night, and they can fly better than the average chicken.

Using some of the differences to our advantage I installed a walkway solar light in front of

the coop on the quail tractor. The light comes on automatically of an evening and has a small solar panel on top to recharge its batteries during the daylight. These cost $1 at many different stores in my area. Some of the stores that have them for $1 are Walmart, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Menards.

The quail being active at night wait around this hanging walkway light when it lights up. Bugs attracted by the light are eaten by the quail. What a great way to get some range food in the diet of a city slicker bird. While I have not tested this my bet is the quails diet is supplemented enough by the bugs they could survive just fine on a lower protein ration.

Another possibility is running the quail tractor through the garden. It would work like a debugging tractor attracting bugs from the garden to their demise. The tractor is narrow enough to fit between rows, so if I have a bug problem this year I will give it a try.

The light is already a proven concept and I have watched my quail eating the bugs attracted by the light. The solar walkway light is an easy way of supplying a light with no maintenance or cords. I highly recommend you try it if you have quail.

My Youtube Video of the Quail Tractor

Farm Updates

My rye field is doing very well. It is about 6′ tall and dense. I am looking forward to harvesting it. I wish my spelt field was doing half as well.

 

After experiencing record sales the Poultry division on Lewis Family Farm has been slated for expansion. We are adding more birds, more breeds and more chicken tractors. We will be establishing new breeding populations of Guineas, Midget White Turkeys, Barred Rock chickens, Rhode Island Red chickens, Silky chickens, Araucana chickens, Coturnix Quail, and Embden Geese. These are in addition to our established flocks of Buff Opringtons, mixed breed chickens and Muscovy Ducks.

We purchased a bred pair of Embden Geese with eight eggs for $35 at the last Rutledge. While we found some geese cheaper at Rutledge we didn’t find any healthier or better looking so we went with quality. Being a currently laying mated pair we figured we couldn’t go wrong. Our goose has laid an egg every two days without fail. We plan on incubating the eggs she lays until the end of May, at which time we will let her have a clutch of her own.

With the addition of geese comes the need for a new style of tractor. We are considering building a goose house on wheels with a 50′ plastic net fence that can be setup if we want to keep them in a certain area.

We have also bought a pair of Midget White turkey hens with more on the way. We have raised turkeys in the past and really enjoyed them, and the midget whites come in a more compact size that is more adaptable to chicken tractors. We hope to build a flock of 20 Midget White Turkeys.

Yet another addition is three pearl guineas and one white guinea. We have also had guineas in the past. Guineas are hot commodities in Missouri and sell well. They are also a unique bird and can be pretty entertaining. We plan on building a larger flock of guineas as well, and will be buying guinea eggs in a couple weeks.

As part of this expansion we recently took a trip to Des Moines to pickup a new incubator. We have been making it by with an odd assortment of Styrofoam and nicer plastic incubators, but it was time for an upgrade. The new incubator used to be a medical culture incubator and is the size of a small fridge. At 350 lbs it is a heavy weight crafted from steel, stainless steel and copper. I wouldn’t have been able to afford this incubator new, but for $43 off Ebay it was a steal and worth the long trip.

The new incubator can hold six automatic egg turners for a 246 chicken egg capacity. With six turners there is still room for a hatching tray on the bottom. I may eventually build a custom rack, as there is plenty of room around the automatic egg turners. With a custom rack the capacity would easily top 500 eggs.

The new incubator is completelly digital. It has temperature control within 1/10 a degree Celsius and digital humidity control within 1%. Just dial in the rate you want. It has an on board 3 liter water tank and alarms for Co2, low temp, high temp, humidity, and low water that can be set to your desired ranges. It also has CO2 control which is worthless for our uses. It even has a heated door. Did I mention it is stack able?

Since we don’t have the current breeding flocks to fill the incubator we are buying and trading eggs. We have ten different chicken breeds, 13 goose eggs with more added every other day and we are buying Midget White, Blue Slate, Spanish Black, Sweet Grass, Nargasset and some mixed turkey eggs. We buy the mixed turkey eggs for $10 a dozen and the others are $1 an egg. A turkey poult costs $7 or more in our area, so hatching is a more affordable option, even if we only have limited success.

Update PS

We have hatched our first goose:

We have also hatched our first Coturnix quail although we are not sure which one was the first.

I think the majority of the traffic to my website has been from my Youtube video of my Ultimate PVC Chicken Tractor. I will answer many of the most common questions and concerns I receive about this chicken tractor.

Question #1:Won’t snakes, weasels, Badgers, Raccoons, and other chicken eating critters get in under the back where the wheels are?

Answer: Snakes yes, everything else probably not. There are not any weasels in my area, badgers are rare. The worst threats in my area in order of danger are Dogs, Foxes, Raccoons, Possums and Hawks. The gap on the back of the coop by the tires is about 1-2″ if you are parked on concrete or another hard surface. I don’t park on concrete, I park my tractor in the grass and the tractor will usually settle to the ground, leaving a very small gap if any.

The chicken wire I use to cover the Ultimate PVC Chicken Tractor has 1″ holes. A small snake could go through that gap as easily as the back. I also think the fear of snakes is extremely overrated, in fact the average snake in the US is more likely to be eaten by a chicken than for that snake to eat a chicken. I have seen chickens eat snakes, but not the other way around. I have kept chickens almost my entire life, and I have never lost a chicken to a snake. If I were dealing with Anacondas I may worry, but of course they are to large to get into the tractor anyway. Worst case in my area is a snake eating some eggs.

The only chickens that are in danger of being eaten by snakes in my area are chicks. It is possible that a snake will eat a chick, but I have not had it happen, there are much worse predators in my area to worry about, like the neighbors chihuahua.

Question #2: Don’t critters dig under the chicken tractor and eat all your chickens?

Answer: No, while it is possible I have never had it happen. I have seen holes dug on the edges of the tractor, but nothing has ever dug enough to get into the tractor. This is my experience, and every place is unique, but I don’t see the average predator spending the time required to dig under the tractor to get to the chickens. There are usually easier meals.

If you have very sandy easy to dig soil, and a determined predator it could happen. To work around this problem if it exists in your area use insulators made for fence Posts and screw them to the edges of your tractor and run wire around the tractor. Hook it up to a nice hot fencer, if the predator is determined enough to get through that be glad he decided on a chicken dinner and is leaving you alone.

Due to the design of the Ultimate,  the tractor can be electrified to stop 99% of predators. The chicken wire is screwed to the edge of the PVC pipe frame and doesn’t touch the ground. Run jump wires from the main chicken wire to the doors, and a wire around back and you have a electrified fortress.

Of course the best method of predator control is a good dog. We depend on our dog to stop predator attacks before they start, and he does a great job.

Question #3: How easy is it to move?

That really depends on who is doing the moving. At 5′ wide and over 14′ long the Ultimate PVC Chicken tractor is a yacht. I didn’t call it the Ultimate because it was an economy model. I am not sure of the weight, but it is heavy. Unless I am going over extremely rough ground I have no problems moving the Ultimate. I am also I very big guy, my wife is much smaller, and my wife can also move the tractor. My wife has requested my assistance when crossing rough ground a few times though.

If you are a smaller individual you might down size the Ultimate or consider a different style like the Original PVC Chicken tractor or the Style II Ultimate (Coming Soon).

Question #4: What do you do in winter?

Answer: While the automatic waterer will freeze and not work, nothing else changes. I keep the chickens in the Ultimate all year. When temperatures stay under freezing I switch to watering in rubber bowls on the fenced in feeding area. I don’t heat my coop, in my area(northern Missouri) it isn’t needed, and is actually a bad idea in my opinion.

Question #5: What happens in high winds?

Answer: Nothing, unless we are talking tornadic activity high winds are not a problem. I have had very windy conditions and none of my PVC chicken tractors have ever had a problem. The run is covered in chicken wire, so wind goes right through. The tractor is not so light that it can blow over. If I ever got winds strong enough to blow the chicken tractors over I have worse problems at that point.

My wooden rabbit hutch on the other hand does catch wind and has blown over twice.

Question #6: Do you have plans to build the Ultimate PVC Chicken Tractor?

Answer: No, sorry I don’t. I do have a rough list of materials as well as general design practices on the Chicken Page of my website. When I built the Ultimate it was from a design in my head. I never wrote down a plan or diagram. We have kept chickens for years in similar PVC tractors and we kept track of needed improvements. When I built the Ultimate I wanted it to be the Cadillac of my fleet, and every good idea within reason was incorporated.

In the future I will build another Ultimate and keep track of materials and have plans on building it. I need some free time before that will happen though.

Question #7: Why don’t you cover the feed shelf area to protect it from rain?

Answer: If it rains on feed I have in the bowls I just dump the feed on the ground and let the chickens clean in up. The chickens don’t care if their feed is wet. I also don’t feed crumbles or for that matter I don’t feed commercial feed if I can help it. My chickens free range for the majority of their feed, so I don’t have feed in the bowls very often. For those who keep chickens in the tractor all the time and use chicken feed a roof above the feed area is easy to incorporate in the design. As I have already stated though, chickens don’t mind wet food.

Question #8: What improvements would you make to the Ultimate?

Overall I am very happy with the design of the Ultimate. Here are a few things I have or may change.

Chicken Safety push bar. Something to push your chickens forward while moving the coop is a good idea. I had a chicken get its foot caught under the PVC frame while moving the chicken tractor and it ended up with a broken leg. I use a piece of 1/2″ PVC in front of the coop to prevent this.

The unfenced shelf on the second side door was removed and deemed unneeded.

I wish I had a better material than plywood siding to make the doors to the coop. I have had some warping with the wood siding. Some type of plastic would be superior although more costly.

I had a suggestion on my Youtube video to add a tank to collect rain water off the roof. While I initially dismissed the idea, after thinking about it I may incorporate it into a chicken tractor at some time.

Some Farm Updates

Due to time constraints and trying to put together legible posts my website is always running months behind what is actually happening on the ground at my farm. So here are some quick updates on things that have happened this spring.

 The bees I rescued from the fallen tree have absconded. I did however successfully install my package of bees into a custom Tanzanian top bar hive I built.

We have bought a large incubator and have 10 breeds of chicken, 6 breeds of Turkey, 3 types of quail and geese eggs cooking.

We have added a trio of Midget white Turkeys and will be building a small flock of 20 or so this summer.

We added a pair of Embden Geese.

We added five guineas four quail and three more Muscovy ducks.

I planted an acre of Reid’s Field corn.

I let the cattle graze down one of my fields of Cereal Rye which I will then disc under and plant in Smoke Signals popcorn.

We have planted 150′ of Osage Orange for our living fence project. We hope to get 500′ planted this spring.

We stocked the large pond with Grass Carp and the small pond with Minnows.

I have built many different styles of PVC chicken tractors. I am all for improving existing designs as well as making new innovations. If you are building a custom tractor out of PVC or even other materials I am going to share design ideas that are worth incorporating into your model.

Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. If I find a better way of doing something I incorporate it as soon as possible. Nobody should be offended by someone copying their ideas, they should be flattered. I have copied many ideas and came up with a few myself. Often I will think of something myself only to find someone else is already doing it. If I had knowledge of those ideas in advance I could have saved a step or two.

Here are my hints and suggestions in no particular order:

#1: Top rib for the hoops. I have seen tractors built without this, and it makes them weak and liable to collapse. There are different ways of doing this. I use crosses and glue everything together. Another way is to use a pipe or a board under the hoops and secure them with zip ties or wire

#2: Raised Shelf Feed Area. Even if you don’t fence off your feed area for whatever reason a raised shelf is worth having. Being portable is the best part of a chicken tractor and anything that aids that mobility is a plus. Running over feed bowls or having to dig them out of the back of the coop is no fun, with a raised shelf the feed bowls move with the tractor.

#3: Fenced feed area. This is one of the best designs to improve the cleanliness of your feed area. With a fenced feeding area chickens can only get their heads to the feed. Cleaning crap from the feed bowls is no fun, so prevent it from happening in the first place.

#4: Chicken Nipple Waterers. This is the best invention in chicken care in decades. This is by far the best method to water your chickens. Chicken nipple waterers keep your water clean, reduce labor and if used in combination with a automatic watering system will reduce labor even further.

#5: Door Supports: Using poly, wood or similar materials to support all one way hinged doors to prevent them from swinging to far in the wrong way. This will strengthen the door and door frame as well as the entire chicken tractor.

#6: No Back Nest Boxes. Nest boxes that have a door as their back side make cleaning easier. Just open the door and throw out the bedding. Using buckets is an easy way to accomplish this design feature, but it is just as easily incorporated into wood nesting boxes.

#7: Wheels. Wheels make everything move easier. While they are not needed on very small tractors like the PVC Row Crop Cultivator, anything larger will benefit.

#8: Roosts. Roosts make chickens happier, and makes free ranging easier. If your chickens like their home they will gladly return to it each evening. Making a tall roosting area in your tractor will make your chickens happier, and your life easier.

#9: No Floors. Chicken tractors are great because they get new grass carpets frequently. Don’t mess up a beautiful thing by putting a floor there to catch detritus. Floors are no guarantee of safety, and there are plenty of ways to insure the security of your chickens.

#10: Safety Push Bar. Something to push your chickens forward while moving the coop is a good idea. I had a chicken get its foot caught under the PVC frame while moving the chicken tractor and it ended up with a broken leg. I use a piece of 1/2″ PVC in front of the coop to prevent this.

While everyone’s needs are different I think most people who keep chickens could benefit by some of these ideas, so use what you like and if you have a good idea send it my way or put it in the comments below.

Due to my close surveillance of the local Craigslists I happened upon an ad for free used vegetable fryer oil. The small restaurant owner had 120 gallons of oil that was supposed to be collected by another individual. For whatever reason the previous used oil collector failed in his mission and the oil had accumulated.

Having stockpiled a nice collection of VW 1.6 diesel cars as well as other diesels the opportunity for a source of fuel was well worth it. Our new tractor was also diesel, and I had bought a LUV diesel pickup last month as a tranny donor for my Isuzu diesel powered Mazda B2200.

I figured worst case scenario I can burn the oil in a used oil burner in the shop. If that was the only way to use the oil it would still be worth collecting, so I rigged up a barrel with an improvised funnel to drop off and prepared to retrieve some oil.

While I am not setup to process the oil currently it was a great opportunity I didn’t want to pass up. The owner of the restaurant stated he accumulates about 20-30 gallons a month. While not enough to become independent of oil, it will be a nice source of fuel for the farm.

I will be working on adding SVO capability to my diesel Ford 861 tractor. It will be nice having almost free fuel while using the 861 this summer. My current plan is to build a side tank for the 861 using coolant to bring the cleaned and filtered oil up to temperature before switching from diesel fuel to vegetable oil.

I will also need to get my shop up and going so I can drop a 1.6 VW diesel in an extended cab Mazda B2200. We have chosen the Mazda B2200 as the smallest truck we can take family road trips in comfortably, my VW Rabbit truck was just to small for a family. My 86 B2000 is not an extended cab, so we are currently using a gas extended cab B2200 as our small gopher truck.

I brought the oil home in the former oil collectors barrels, but had to return them when I removed the oil. I filtered the oil through a screen and have it stored in 55 gallon drums. I will work on getting filters and the tools needed to prepare this oil for use as a fuel. Another project, but deemed worthy of making room for.

Changes to the Website

I will be adding another list to the home page. The Experiment list. These will be current questions I am attempting to answer on my small farm. I am sure others have wondered about many of these questions, and some are related mostly to the way I intend to farm. I will be trying to answer them. My current list is:

Does washing eggs have an Effect on hatch rate?

How many feet of ground can the PVC Chicken Tractor keep cleared?

Breeding the spotted eggs of the Welsummer chicken into our flock.

Constructing a working Living Fence.

I will also be changing the name of the Chicken Page to Chicken & Poultry. While the main focus will be on chickens I have always kept other poultry from guineas, turkeys, ducks, quail, pigeons and geese.

Books added to the free book page:

Ten Acres Enough
Dairy farming
Progressive Farming

We kept several chicks last year to grow out and test the market for laying hens this spring. By keeping chicks through the winter they were ready to start laying this spring. We also plan on testing the market for chicks as well. We had good luck last fall, selling all 50+ chicks we hatched for selling.

The first test was to sell 12 laying hens at $9. These hens were a mix, but several looked mostly pure Buff Orpington (5), New Hampshire Red (5) and Rhode Island Red (2). The Buffs and Rhode Island Reds sold first, then the New Hampshire Reds. I listed these chickens on the closest Craigslist, all sold within a day of listing. It seems there is a pretty good market, at least for laying hens.

While we had very good results with the laying hens, there has been no sales for chicks posted on Craigslist at $1.50 a head. We had good luck during the fall, but terrible luck this spring. I think the difference is the competition from farm stores like Orschelns and Tractor supply. Both have chicks for sale at this time, although their price is $4. Another possibility is that since our chicks are not pure, they don’t sell as well.

The next market test we conducted was a local small animal auction in Keytesville. We took two Buff hens and 10 chicks. The auction is nice because there is no hassle of pickup or delivery. You can even drop off the animals you want to auction the day before the sale. They mailed us a check and we received it 5 days after the sale. Our hens sold for $10 each and the chicks sold for $2.25 each. We also sold a small homemade transport cage for $2.50 and a rough pet carrier for $4. So our total sales were $49 minus the 20% commission of $9.80, for a total of $39.20.

We were happy with the sale prices except for the homemade cage. We will plan on selling chicks all year, and will raise 100-200 laying hens for sale in 2015. We think getting our chickens into the auction earlier will improve the sale price. Ours were some of the last to get auctioned on a very busy and long day.

I think this is a viable option to raising pastured poultry for consumption. The heritage breeds we keep are much tougher and easier to raise than Cornish Crosses. We can also hatch the chickens ourselves instead of buying replacement stock. It is also much easier to sell a whole bird than to slaughter and sell a prepared chicken to eat. While we eat plenty of chickens ourselves, we currently don’t plan on going into sales of prepared chickens for others.

Now the one remaining question for us is what our local market can handle. In our area there are at least three small animal auction houses and several swaps. We will see how the larger amount goes next year, and will adjust for the future. If our area can handle the numbers we would like to build up to selling 300+ laying hens and a couple hundred chicks. We will be adding incubator capacity through the summer and we will sell chicks all summer this year as well.

We will need a new structure to house the chickens through winter, and I am currently contemplating a giant chicken tractor that will be moved through my fields in the winter.

As a side note if you ever need to transport chicks in cold weather and need to keep them warm, use a hand warmer. It worked great and it kept our chicks warm while waiting to be auctioned.