BEFORE | AFTER (Chicken Tractor)

4 chickens, 4, 1 to 2 dozen eggs a week. This all-in-one coop is all you need. No fence required. Nesting boxes, corrugated roof, wire mesh around. One thing this doesn't have is a floor. You know why it doesn't have a floor?

Poop falls down.

Oh, and we fertilize the ground. In this video, I'm going to show you how we use this to prepare our spring raised bed garden. You could use it in a front yard to establish an instant chicken garden, and I'm going to give you ideas for how you can build this yourself. Let's start with footage from us going through this process with the raised beds. Let's hope they're still on their perch. You want to catch chickens at night— it's early morning— while they're still on their perch. We need 2 more. I goofed that up. Let's just take them into a corner. Come back for those. I'm gonna get some hair lighter. Brand new chicken tractor, several modifications. An eye hook on the side that goes actually through an L-bracket plate. Same old door option. This is wider than the original design so that it can fit perfectly on the raised bed design. Well, let's hope, let's hope we made measurements all right. We've got my classic nest box. We don't need to do a swivel now because if you need to block them from getting in, all you do is that. Put a little hay in there. This is self-cleaning. We did put a closed wall on the access. But my coops, you don't have to go inside. You just pull this out and grab the end. And they manure there all day long, say, come down here, then you just move it forward one link. This is made of cedar, so it should be pretty light. Cedar doesn't rot, it's non-toxic. We put decking on the bottom so it slides super easy and it protects your wood from getting rotten. This is cover crop, this isn't grass. This is, this is actually the plan. We're going to cross our fingers that this fits.

I'm afraid it's too too wide.

So close. It looks like this tip should have been flush. I think it's going to fit, right? It's funny, you, you made this bigger, I made this smaller. That's what you did. Yeah, you built both systems, but you had the thought, I need to make these work together better. You made the beds to fit the tractor, right? The original tractor. I made the, the tractor fit the beds. I did that because these beds are nice 4x8. So they're encouraged to till. We want them to till up this cover crop. Yeah, it calls for 95, look for 96. That's inch off and let's see if it works. Cross our fingers this thing fits. Supposed to be flush with the tractor. It fits!

Let's go get the hens. How many chickens can you fit in this?

4 if you're not letting them out during the day. 12 if they are getting out. So we're going to max it out with before, get this kill job done in a week or two. Already going at it. They're like, hmm, I remember this green stuff. Lily, you want to go get some hay? That can mean they're about to lay eggs or have laid eggs and they're proud of it. There's 2 people in the nest, one wanting to be in there. There's 3 in the nest spot. Nobody's laying there yet. Somebody's probably about to lay right there. Breakfast being laid right outside my door. How'd they fare last night? They've already gotten so much work done. That one of these chickens—

Henry accidentally left the door open a little bit.

Okay, well, let's catch that chicken. One day. Look how they've decimated that. This doesn't have to be on a raised bed. You could put it in your yard and you could use it to create an instant chicken garden. Here's how to do it. This is an amazing chicken tractor, perfect size for a garden bed, 40 inches by 8 feet. It's not too wide to where you can't reach over. It's not too big to where you can't move it. We got a waterer, lift it off the ground. So they can till. We're gonna feed— Jonah fed it right on the ground so they'll be encouraged to till. All right, that's all we need.

They have to be friends.

Let them be here for 2 weeks. We're gonna need food scraps, we're gonna need rakes. Right where it's supposed to be. Let's see what you guys have done. Well, let's move you out and see what you've done. First step, move the chickens out. Look at the job they've done, guys. We're raking it to spread the manure out. See how there's a lot of manure right there? Get the fresh green grass. Already starting to till job. This is after, this is before. Let me just stir it up a little bit. Who wants to help broadfork? Let's start at the end. Okay, you jump on.

Whoa!

Since we have an acidic soil, we can just put a little bit of a little bit of lime, not much scraps. Why aren't we putting down food scraps? Food for the worms. Now we've actually harvested compost out of our compost corner up there in our yard. Chicken's on, on deep bedding, on wood chips, eventually turn it into compost. That took no time. 4 inches. Beauty's gone to get the measuring tape just to make sure we get this right. Just to prevent weeds from going up, we could totally put wood chips on top of this. Now you need 4 inches of mulch. Actually, our next step would be to wet this down, start the breaking down process. Here, do like— yeah, hold your thumb on it. Now wet down the paper. That will weigh it down, one, so we can get grass clippings on it, and two, it'll start the breaking down process. Look at what the chickens have done! They have not only tilled, but— holy chicken squat! Time to plant, Lily. Oh my word, mega, mega impressed. That's a bowl of goodness right there. Say you want to build this yourself. Well, we've perfected this over 8 years and we are coming out with a new book, Homestead Builds, where we will have these plans. But here are the basics of it. 8 feet long, measured to fit exactly on our raised bed. It's also a good length of a garden bed if you were to use it for that. Notice I covered it 3/4. It only needs to be 2 feet tall. I mean, chickens are only this tall. It does have the optional door. I put a feed pan upside down to keep this water clean while they till. They're prepping my cover crop. 3 perches, so 12 birds could fit comfortably in there. This is cedar wood, 2x4s ripped in half, so all these are 2x2s. We used half-inch wire mesh. Sturdy too, it's not the poultry wire stuff. You also want to make sure you have your lid clipped. We can open this. You don't have to get in there to clean up any poop though. Corrugated roof panels, white. You don't want your chickens to get too hot. We do have eye bolts at every corner so that we can hook our cable and pull this thing. This is a new design. A lot of people wanted the door to this. You don't have to have the door. These, these nest crates are on a brace. We've got a landing bar in there. This has become more simple. We used to have a swivel bar for their landing bar, just So hey, what if somebody's making a bad habit and they're perching in the nest at night and pooping? But then we realized somebody was like, hey, you know, you could just turn these sideways and you do that for a couple weeks and they're trained not to go in there. Not an extra thing on it, super easy to build. Plastic decking on the bottom to protect the wood, but also so it will skid nicely on your grass. I will say a note to the wood, this is cedar. Smells so good when it's brand new. Well, the kids had the idea to put some sheep on it first to speed up the process even more. Did you get any eggs? We did last night.

Did you get it No, because I just want it on camera.

Yeah, collecting eggs always works better with a camera.

This isn't a very sustainable system for just a person.

What do you mean?

Well, you can't feed sheep off of 7 raised beds.

No, but then you could put them around in the yard. Sheep would be great at the any homestead level.

Oh yeah, if you had over 1 acre.

One reason. Pick that up, Josiah. Cut it there. Do you want to zip tie it first or cut it first? Cut it, cut it, cut it, cut it here, Josiah. You got goggles ready, Jonah?

Uh, you should not be there if he's cutting like that. Build it in the yard and just stick it on there?

Well, it's just easier to build it right there. There's not room here. Lily, go get two little lambs. This is ready. We have this trellis here, so we kind of built it more for the other ones, but we don't have the trellis. There you go.

But will they eat the grass?

Oh yeah, we had those beds covered all winter. Permaculture says try and use plants and animals to do the work. So far, plant covered the soil. Now the animals will remove that cover crop. Also serves as food.

We're getting the teenager sheep.

Well, it's time to wean the little ones. Teenager Sheeps are weaned and they know how to eat grass. I think they're kind of big.

They've eaten grass before.

All right, can you carry one, Josiah, and I carry the other?

Yeah.

Yeah, you think so?

Yeah.

Is this a teenager, Lily?

Yeah.

I got this one. All we had to do is put up a little pig panel, got a little bucket of water. They got all their food for a while. May not be working. I don't think they are eating. Are they eating? I got to check the timeline. No, give them a few more hours. You guys got to eat. Wait for it. Nope. Please start eating. I guess if it doesn't work, we have the ever faithful chicken who will till no matter what. Going into the third day. How are you tireless workers doing? They're way more comfortable. Look at that black soil underneath that grass. Yeah, you are going to need a week or two, aren't you? It's amazing how little poor little chickens drink. Eggs yet? Not yet. Get out of there, this cat. No. No, you don't do that. No, no, that's our garden. This is probably a good deal. You guys got a chicken out this afternoon?

Yeah.

End of day 3. They've worn out and eaten probably what they're gonna eat, but now it's up to you guys to scratch it all in. There's a pretty heavy clump right there. The chickens have totally done their job, so we're gonna move them, and then maybe we'll move— I don't know if this is gonna work with the pergola. Maybe it will. Don't let them out, Lily. Can you spot him to not let them out? One of my favorite things right here. Chickens lived and worked in here all last year. It's the end of the winter, so they're going to be coming out soon. That's just some compost. We call this the compost corn machine. We have the chickens on deep bedding. It absorbs their manure, and then we come in and get the wood chips off the top. You see what we're revealing? Real good sign. Lots of worms.

After the chickens leave, they don't get everything.

Chickens next to your garden. We're pulling out these roots and they don't have to go to waste. All the yard waste, all the garden waste goes into the compost corner.

There you go.

What do you think we need, a load or two? One load maybe? We want a little layer of compost everywhere. Nice, that's a good sign, bro. I think these chickens must have been shy or something coming straight out of the greenhouse because they're already like a quarter of the way done with this job. You're almost done. I love your enthusiasm. I want to do it. I could just do it faster, but he is excited about it. You don't have to do this next step. You could plant your plants directly in this and go through the square foot gardening method if you have the time. 2 weeks-ish, those chickens would have stirred up the weed seeds, covering it with a silage tarp. This is a UV-treated silage tarp, blocks any sunlight from getting in there, and it will— those weeds have been stirred and they're going to want to grow. This will totally kill it. You know what many of you might be thinking? How much does that cost? That's a good question. Well, we just built that as we're working on this book. Let's get on the calculations in just one second, but first, what it's all about. Half a pack of bacon. This is my signature chicken and eggs. I've been perfecting that chicken tractor design for over 8 years. I've perfected about 24 different homestead builds. We get this frying up, that'll be our oil for our eggs to come later. Look at this abundance. I mean, look at this abundance. If that isn't enough, do we really— we have a whole basket here. It's springtime. We're gonna sear a lamb. My designs have been one of my most popular works, like the famous chick shaw. I've had plans available, but I thought, let's do it up really good. I got Chris Slattery from Polyface Designs. Ready for the eggs? There are the eggs. Coops are pretty essential to the homestead. Very essential. I don't think we need to add butter. That's why we do this. That's one reason we did it. Homesteadbuilds.com, get the exclusive updates on this project. Get the free Chickshaw 5.0 plan info on that down in the description. Go to homesteadbuilds.com. It looks like it's not sticking, or it's kind of not. I guess it would have been better to put a little bit of butter in there. You're right, I'm sorry. Let's try this. Do you want to try it? We eat it every morning. Bacon and eggs never gets old.

This morning we had with peppers and onions.

What about cheese? You could add cheese.

I did add cheese.

As for cost, well, first of all, look at this. Look at this. This is gonna be so legit. Look at this cut list. This is coming. This is— these are not done. It's coming very soon. And the digital version will have all the links to all this on Lowe's and Amazon. So you guys ready for this? Now it's It's more than when I first built this back in 2016. Let's say you don't have one 3-inch screw, because a lot of us, we had to buy like 300 screws. You don't need 300 screws. You're at $568.24, and that's having to ship some stuff. Amazon, let's just say you don't have a waterer, you need a crate, you need a hose. Say you don't have a scrap hose laying around. Guys, this is you not slapping together anything, which is probably going to be rare, but $132.81 is $132.81. So let's add those up. Boom! $701.05. Chances are you have something and you're going to get this under than $700. I've seen people build this out of scrap and build it for less than $100. So you can be creative. Now you'll have a base. Homesteadbuilds.com, do check it out. Do get it on this exclusive. Be the first to get this thing. It's an amazing build.