Project Summary
Investigator: Connie Lemley
Project Advisor: Thomas Reynolds , RAMC Director

Chickens engage in many potentially useful behaviors such as scratching, eating plants, seeds, and insects, and producing eggs, meat, heat, manure and CO2.  If chickens are in the right place at the right time then these behaviors can promote the cycling of nutrients and organic matter in the gardens while reducing the need for human maintenance of the agroecosystem.   A chicken tractor is a moveable chicken house that facilitates such placement. The integration of livestock into the agroecosystem also increases economic and ecological diversity.  The farmer is able to include perennial cover crops in the crop rotation while producing another product for market. 

The chicken tractor described in this project was designed in Fall 2002 as a part of Design Graphics and Problem Solving, a course in the MS3 program at Slippery Rock University.  It will be constructed during March 2003, and six laying hens will move in in late March.  These chickens will live and work at the Center through the end of the Fall 2003 semester when they will be slaughtered or given away.  During this time, the chickens will rotate through the gardens and the orchard preparing beds, controlling insects, and trimming grass while producing eggs for market.

The Macoskey Center garden staff will have primary responsibility for the construction and maintenance of the chicken tractor.  The daily maintenance of the chicken tractor includes daily watering, feeding, and egg collection, letting the chickens out in the morning and locking them up at night, and moving of the chicken tractor as needed.  This project will also require access to RAMC garden space, water, tools, power from the solar tool kit for the electric fence, and space to store the tractor when not in use.

This project will give Macoskey Center staff an opportunity to experience caring for chickens while learning how animal husbandry fits into the human and other natural systems at the Center.  It will provide an object of discussion and interest for visitors, especially children, to the Center, and can be used as a demonstration for classes within the agroecology track of the MS3 program.  Our experiences with the tractor will be shared with the wider community through an article in the Alternator and a presentation at the seminar series in the fall.

BUDGET:

Garden Cart . . . . . . . . . .$99 (new from Harbor Freight Tools)

Bamboo . . . . . . . . . . . . .$90  (Gardener’s Supply Company)

Chicken Wire . . . . . . . . .$12      (50’ of wire mesh with 2” holes from Slippery Rock Agway)

Twine and fasteners . . . $20.00 (unspecified as yet - Slippery Rock Hardware)

Chickens . . . . . . . . . . . . $30

Chicken Feed . . . . . . . . $60 (@ 7.50/50 lb bag of unmedicated feed from Agway)               

Waterer, Feeder, etc . . .$20 (Agway)

Electric Fence . . . . . . . .$150

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . $481

Schematic Design

The concept was developed with an understanding of the variety of uses for chickens in the garden landscape during different seasons as well as the different locations they could be used on site.  Portability of the system was determined to be advantageous, and a concept of adapting a typical garden cart was proposed.