Today, between Barclay’s crazy excitement over seeing the chicks, and wandering neighborhood cats making me nervous, I know I had to get the second chicken tractor finished! Dave came out in the afternoon and helped me finish putting it together. It’s not completely painted, but it’s secure. In the picture it’s the one in back. The other tractor has Little Red and her eggs.

By dark mom had still not taken the chicks back into the coop, and she seemed to be settling down for the night under the ramp. So I took a rubbermaid container of cedar chips and carefully reached under her and picked up each of the three chicks and carefully set them in it, then I picked her up, and she only grumped a little, and set her in it, and she snuggled right on top of the chicks. Then I was able to carry the container to the new chicken tractor and set her and her new family safely inside.

More of a relief for me than her, I’m sure! But now they’ll all be safe and they have food and water handy, and enough room for them to eat some grass and dig around for bugs.

Now that the chicken tractor has been sitting outside for a bit, the wood has gotten wet, and it weighs about a ton, at least that’s what it seemed like when I asked Dave to help me move it! The two of us together could barely scoot it more than a few feet before we decided someone was going to get hurt. But I really wanted to get it moved over by the chicken pen before the chicks hatch, because I plan on moving each mom and chicks into a tractor. Yes, that means I need to build another tractor, but this one only took me a day, and now I know what I’m doing, so how bad could it be?

So I went to the hardware store and bought a couple sturdy wheels – wish I could have found ones that were even wider for rolling over the mud and grass, but it turned out to be ok. The wheels were $6 each, the hardware for each wheel to mount it: spacers, washers, locknuts, and two huge bolts, added up to $9 per wheel! So $30 total. But it took all of five minutes to install, and then I grabbed the rope and the tractor pretty much followed me wherever I wanted to go – as long as I kept the front end up. Two more wheels on the front would really make it easy to move! But as it was I single handedly moved it about three hundred feet, from the front pasture all the way through the big pasture, into the backyard, and parked it next to the chicken pen. No problem.

After only one day of work I went out and found the girls had done a pretty decent job of clearing the ground the coop was sititng on! They pretty much had it tromped down to mud. They even found time to leave me a couple eggs. Good girls!

Seeing how well they had done I grabbed the ropes on the end of the box and dragged it to the next spot all by my little self. Keep working girls!

I was lucky to find most of the wood I needed in the storeroom at the store, stuff we had bought for building our displays and then not needed. Dave helped me build the frame, cover it with chicken wire (given to me by a friend), put on the cedar siding (leftover from a play a couple years ago), and by the time it got dark I only needed to finish the end door and it will be ready for chickens.

Before I gave up for the night I was sitting IN the tractor, stapling chicken wire down, when it started to rain. Mouse was supervising, so she climbed in there with me, and we sat under the shelter nice and dry, while the rain fell and the sun set behind spectacular purple clouds. It was very peaceful. She purred and I ruffled her fur and we enjoyed the end of a busy afternoon.