Building the Chicken Tractor Taking the Chickens Out to Eat

In this video, I am working on the conversion of the chicken run into a chicken tractor. There are several reasons why I would like to do this. The chickens enjoy eating grass, bugs, and scratching through a fresh piece of yard now and then. Also, it will allow me to move the run to easily clean the area where they spend most of their time. I have been wanting to get this done for quite some time but have been busy with other things this summer.



I have been looking for some old piece of junk on the side of the road somewhere that had wheels on it I could scavenge but have thus far been unsuccessful. I was able to pick up a small set of wheels at Home Depot that will fit the burden but not really the bill. I paid much more than I wanted to but they are some pretty sturdy looking wheels that should last a long time.

The main thing that I needed to tackle with this project was to build a hitch for my garden tractor and to build a system for the wheels so I could move them into position when I am ready to move the run around the yard. I still have more work to do here (build a nesting box, food scraps trough, roosts, and portable watering system. These will be done as soon as time permits and I will get another video that should cap this project off.






This post was shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop

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Semi Automatic Chicken Feeder for Under 20

Here is the latest addition Todd made to our chicken coop.  The semi-automatic feeding system.  We had a difficult time trying to come up with a name for it because its not automatic, but it sure does make things easier for us.  Our chickens are the sweetest chickens in this whole world, but they can get a bit crazy when their food dish is empty.  No more walking in the coop and filling the tiny feeder that we had, and this one is much cleaner.

Here is where we fill it (the pipe comes out right by the nest boxes):

This video runs through the build process for this simple feeder design and also shows it in action. The feeder should hold enough food for 2-3 days and will cut down on the amount of time spent cleaning out and filling the smaller feeder. This is also much better than the feeders that sit on the ground as they get full of dirt quickly.  We made the mistake of thinking their dish was full of food on several occasions, but it was full of sand instead.

The 4" drainage piping used for this project is much cheaper than the 4" schedule 40 PVC. The fittings for the drainage pipe are also much cheaper keeping the cost of this project under $20.





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Suburban Chicken Coop Preventing Freezing Preparing For the Winter

In this video, I show some of the ways that we are keeping the chicken coop warm in the winter including keeping the watering system from freezing. We have had a few days in the 20s here in Michigan so I have had some time to test out the heating system that I have set up and it is working great so far! The watering system that I put together this summer has been working well and it has been so nice not to have to clean out the water!

 

To prevent freezing in the watering system I am using a product called heat tape or heat cable. You can find that product HERE.  All that is required is some electrical tape, duct or foil back tape, pipe insulation, and some zip ties. The installation is pretty straight forward for any piping system. You run the thermostatically controlled heat cable under the pipe you would like to keep from freezing and hold it in place with zip ties or electrical tape. Then wrap the pipe in insulation and cover with foil back or duct tape. The heat cable only turns on when the temp is below 40 degrees and then turns back off once the water is heated up enough. So far this seems to be working great!
 

We have also installed a heat lamp on the inside of the chicken coop to provide a little bit of heat for the chickens as well. They enjoy the light it provides and also some warmth! To control the temperature in the coop we are using a small thermostatically controls outlet. This product is available HERE. This little outlet turns the heat lamp on when the temps gets down to 35 degrees and then warms the coop up to 45 degrees and then shuts off.  We got this idea from someone who commented on one of our videos.  We really appreciate feedback like that!  This saves energy and allows it to automatically keep the temps above freezing inside the coop. I know that the chickens can probably do without the heat but they do seem to enjoy it!

 

 

Next year, I will run more permanent electrical wiring, light sockets, and installing an outlet for the heat cable, but for now I have a extension cord run to the coop from an outdoor outlet on our home. This will work for now but I plan on implementing a more permanent solution.


I hope this helps you with your own coop in some way!


SSL Family Dad

 

 

 

 

 

 

        
 

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Clean Simple Automatic Chicken Watering System

Tired of cleaning the chicken water dish?  In this video, I will show you the process I used to build our no-maintenance watering system and install it in our chicken coop.  This system was designed to tie into a future rain barrel system that I hope to setup soon.

To teach the chickens how to drink from it, I held each of their beaks up to the chicken nipple until the water dripped out.  It took a few tries for each bird over a period of a couple days, and only when I took away their plastic dish and they were thirsty enough, did they really catch on to the chicken nipples.  The chickens have been exclusively drinking from the nipples for about three days now.


I hope this helps inspire some ideas for your coop as well!

Thanks for watching,

Todd

 

 

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Winter Chicken Watering System No cleaning easy to fill cheap and efficient

Are you sick of cleaning out those traditional water dispensers? For years when I was a kid my least favorite part about having chickens was that I had to go out in the cold and clean out their water dispenser and even though we had it on a hot plate it seemed to freeze anyway. Check out this watering system from the SSLFamlyDad that addresses these issues and saves money on energy.


I have tried different things with other watering systems for the chickens and had mixed results. Although I am probably not done experimenting with different ideas, this is the latest:) This system is made of a small 2 gallon Coleman cooler and a few PVC fittings and small sections of pipe.
I started by removing the spigot that comes installed in the cooler. You can then use a 1/2" male and 1/2" female threaded PVC adapter to connect through where the spigot was. I would recommend using some silicone around the fittings to ensure a good seal.

On the inside of the cooler glue in a 1/2" street 90 and point it upward. This will allow some water to always stay in the bottom of the system so that the heater does not burn up. Next, on the outside or the cooler, you can attach any configuration of piping and the chicken nipples that you would like but I chose a basic spilt setup.

I attached a short piece of pipe to the outside 1/2" fitting and then a tee. One short piece of pipe on each side of the tee with a cap on one side and a 90 on the other. On the side with the 90 I ran that up to another 90 at the same height as I want the highest water level to be in the cooler. This will hopefully prevent overfilling from the outside. This section will be run out through the coop wall so that I can fill it from the outside.

For the chicken drippers you can size up a small bolt that matches the thread size of the drippers for pre-threading the holes. I used an 11/32" drill bit to drill one hole in each side of the pipe coming out of the tee on the bottom. You can then thread in the appropriate sized bolt and back out to create some threads to start the plastic drippers. Use some silicone or thread sealant and thread in the drippers, one on each side. I also wrapped the piping in 1/2 foam insulation and some electrical tape. 


The last things is to mount the 50 watt aquarium heater to the bottom using the included suction cup. I also put a dab of silicone on the suction cup to hold it down firmly to the bottom. I also cut a small notch in the lid threads on the cooler to feed out the cord for the heater as well.

You are now ready to install it in the coop. I made a small shelf for mine inside the coop for the winter but I am not sure if I will continue to keep the system inside the coop as it tends to make a mess. I will update on that later. I routed my fill pipe out the back wall of the coop and placed a small threaded fitting there so I can attach a homemade PVC funnel to it for filling. You could also omit this step and just open the lid and pour in some water that way as well.


Once you are all setup you can just plug in the aquarium heater to electric however you can (extension cord, hardwired electric box, etc). I also use what is called a thermostatic electric outlet in my setup. This outlet only powers on the heater when the temp reaches 32 degrees or below and stays on until it gets up to 44 and then shuts off. This prevents me from heating water when it is warm outside and thus saving on electric costs. I have used this same outlet for a heat lamp in the past and it works great.

Full Video Walkthrough here

All you need for this project below

2 Gallon cooler - http://amzn.to/1MsHgAY
5 Gallon cooler - http://amzn.to/1QyXBZ5
ThermoCube outlet - http://tinyurl.com/qz5aa9c
Chicken Drippers - http://amzn.to/1uQ8PIM

All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the Simple Suburban Living

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Chicken Coop Sliding Door

I have had  a few questions about the sliding door for the chicken coop and so I thought I would do a quick video since I have not really shown the details previously. The design I came up with for the door is very simple and easy to setup and can be done with scrap wood left over from building the coop.

For the door itself I used some poster board to free hand a egg shape that was of suitable size for the door. I then traced it into place on the chicken coop siding and used a jig saw to cut out the opening. Once we had your hole I screwed in 2 2X4s on each side of the framing for each side of the door on the inside of the coop.  This will act as the guide for the sliding door. These guides protrude about 1/2" out from the framing. I used some scraps of 1/2" OSB and nailed them to the front edge of the 2X4s to keep the door from being able to swing inward. I then cut a piece of left over OSB to fit in the track I had created and screwed in two eyelets tot eh top edge.

I am using some nylon rope I have lying around but you can use whatever you have available I tied off the rope through the eyelets in a triangle to leave one main rope centered on the door leading straight up from the center of the door. Directly above the door on the ceiling I screwed in another hook (better to use a full eye here)  this servers as the lift point for the door and routes the rope over to the side top edge of the coop. I drilled a hole through the siding between the framing and roof joists and routed the rope through. The outside of the coop has a small hook and the rope has a loop tied in it to hold the door open.


This setup has been working pretty well for the past year and a half but there are a few improvements I will probably make. I wish I would have used larger gauge hooks and eyes for this project since I have had a couple of the bend and pull out. Not a big deal but just something I had to fix. I would have left a larger gap on the tracking so that the door had more room for expansion and contraction depending on the humidity and temperature as sometimes it can get a little stuck in the summer months. I also would have left a gap at the bottom of the track so that any bedding or chicken mess could not get stuck in the track.

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Easy to Clean Suburban Chicken Coop FAQ

Over the past year I have received overwhelming support and feedback on my chicken coop design and construction. There have been so many wonderful comments and so many have copied this coop and made it one of their own. During this chicken coop building season (yes there is a season for these things) I have received quite a few questions on various aspects of the coop and so I thought it would be nice to run through and answer a few of the ones I hear most frequently.


Does the feed get stuck in the feeder? Does the feed spill on the ground? The feed has no trouble gravity feeding down the center pipe and into each trough on the sides. While the chickens eat they shake it a bit and the feed gently falls down where they can get to it with no trouble. Some feed does spill out, especial when the feeder is full. This has not been an issue as they scratch and peck and get at it off of the ground and also get some needed grit in the process.


Does a lot of water drip on the ground? In short, yes, however this has not really been an issue outside the coop as I have sand under it and it drains right away. Inside the coop I have a deflector that direct the extra drips into the cleanout pan and bedding.


What about ventilation? I have a small window above the nesting boxes that was not shown in the construction video. This provides good airflow in the summer. In the winter, we have the door open tot he coop all day and there are enough cracks and gaps in the siding to allow for decent air to get in.


Why dont you let them free range? We have tried letting them out in our yard a little at a time and they just do too much damage too quickly. They tear into the garden, scratch through the mulch around the trees, poop all over the grass, and eat anything we have growing in the garden. We designed the chicken tractor to move them around and let them scratch through the grass in a contained area. We also let them loose in the garden in fall when we are done growing.


How do you prevent freezing? This year we used heat tape and insulation to wrap the outside portion of the watering system. This was not sufficient to keep the inside portion thawed as well when we had sustained temps below 0 degrees. I will redesign and only heat the inside portion this year. video to follow.


What would you do differently? First I would make the cleanup tray access door about 2 inches larger to allow for a heaping pile of bedding to fit out on top of the tray when I pull it though (suggested by a subscriber, thanks!). I would also have used larger door latches instead of those cheap bolt locks on the chicken run door. Lastly, I would have raised the nesting boxes up about 4 inches from the main coop floor.


Is the cleanout tray needed and worth it? This is completely up to you. I personally love it and I think it makes it so easy to just pull it out on the wheel barrow and take it back to dump it. You can just leave it out and pull up the wheel barrow next tot he coop and sweep the bedding out. Either way it is still super easy to clean.


I hope that helps answer some of the common questions. If you have any comments or questions I did not answer please let me know!

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Chicken Coop Vacation Watering System

Okay, so you have your own backyard chickens and are enjoying some fgresh eggs daily. But what do you do when you want to leave for a vacation? How can you keep them fed and with fresh water? These are some common questions that I get when discussing the suburban chicken coop.

The system I am using here starts with the Poultry Nipples or Chicken Nipples I used in the original chicken watering system. If you havent seen the video or read the article check it out here - https://youtu.be/L1HeDlewEBc.

We were planning a 5-6 day vacation and our current watering system (the temporary smaller one in the chicken tractor) would not hold enough water for that amount of time. Many times people have suggested that I hook a hose up to this watering system to keep it supplied with water at all times. The only issue with that is that when there is any water pressure on the chicken nipples they tend to drip and also spray out small bursts of water when the chickens peck at them. For that reason I do not recommend this as a long terms solution but for our 5-6 day vacation this will work out perfectly.

I took a trip up to Ace Hardware to grab a few fittings to connect a garden hose up to our 2" PVC pipe system. I started with a cleanup adapter so that I could screw on and off this hose attachment, 2" PVC threaded adapter, reducing bushing to 3/4" or 1/2" and the hardest part to find - a pipe thread to hose thread adapter.

Assembly only took a few minutes and I was ready to hook up the hose and see what the result would be. I just turned the hose on slightly to reduce the amount of water pressure as much as possible. As I suspected the poultry nipples did drip slowly and constantly. I added some river rock under the watering system to prevent a mud puddle (which the chickens love to drink from for some reason). And watched it for a day before we left. It worked perfectly! Chickens had a constant supply of fresh water and the river rocks allowed the dripping system to drain and not create any mess.

This is a perfect way to keep your chickens or other small animals with a fresh supply of water for a short period of time. I have plans to incorporate a float supply system when I redesign the main watering contraption so stay tuned for more on that later.

You can purchase the Chicken Nipples here - http://amzn.to/1uQ8PIM

Pipe thread-Hose thread adapter - http://amzn.to/1KHNRnw


All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the Simple Suburban Living General Store


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Music - "Water in the Creek" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/WaterintheCreek

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Chicken Tractor Construction of the Original Lawn Mower 2

Check out this video for part two of the chicken tractor construction. We are added a nesting box, back panel for the detachable part of the coop, and a watering system for the chickens while there are cruising around the yard. In the first part of the chicken tractor construction I added the wheel system that lifts the coop up a few inches to be moved and then allows for it to rest flat on the ground once out in place in the yard.


The wheel system was the trickiest to engineer but the nesting box, back panel, and watering system took the longest to build. I had over 60 minutes of video that I tried to condense into this 12 minute clip!  Now the chickens have water and a place to lay some eggs while out and about the yard.


The idea of this and any chicken tractor is really two things. First, we want to let the chickens have some new ground to scratch through for worms, grass, bugs, and just some new scenery. Secondly, I wanted to be able to easily move the run away from the coop for an easy once per year cleaning of the chicken area. This way I can roll it out and while the chickens are in heaven scratching away on some new ground I can quickly cleanup and add some fresh dirt/sand to the run and then push it back. So far I think that this chicken tractor has met both of those goals and it makes the chickens lives a little better and mine as well!






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What To Do With a Picked on Chicken

What do you do when one of your chickens starts to get picked on? In every flock of chickens there is a pecking order and sometimes the weaker smaller birds will start to get bullied, mean old chickens. We have not had any issues with this until just recently when we started noticing a lot of feathers scattered around the run and coop.

I started to investigate a few days ago and witnessed one of the larger chickens chasing the smallest one around and literally pull its feathers right out! Not just one at a time but bunches at once. I hoped that it would just lay low and heal up and all would be well in the SSL flock. I could not have been more wrong, by the next day there were more feathers and more bald spots on the hen.

I was starting to get concerned especially since it is winter here in Michigan and temps were dropping into the teens at night. Each day I would check on the hen and see that it had bunkered down in one of the nesting boxes; basically hiding from the rest of the chickens. I tried to feed it some scraps of food and gave it water.

Last night I went out to put the chickens in for the night and I opened the box to check on it and noticed blood all over the tail and wings. It was time to do something to help this little egg producer.

After some research and based off of what I have seen once the flock draws blood they will not stop until the hen is dead. There is something about the look or smell of blood to them that makes it irresistible and they will actually eat the chicken alive basically. Now, I know what some of your are thinking, take it to get slaughtered or put it out of its misery. Well, no, not going to happen here. Number one I live with 4 girls in this house and if I wanted to continue to sleep inside I dont think that is an option. Number 2, the meat is no good at this age and this chicken still has a year or two of egg production left so I want to save our investment. And, oh yeah, I dont like to see the little runt chicken suffering!

At this point the only thing you can do is separate the chicken from the flock in some way. In our case, the easiest thing to do is to bring it inside our basement or garage and let it heal up. I had and old dog crate that will work just perfectly. Since our garage is a mess right now the basement seems like the logical choice.

Is it weird that I now have a pet chicken in the house? The answer is, yes! But, it is nice to be able to go down and collect an egg without having to go out in the cold so there is that to think about. Maybe I should move the coop inside too! Dont tell my wife that I said that or seriously, it will happen.

I will give an update on this little hen down the road after a full recovery. My only further concern is will it happen again? I may have to separate the bullying chickens for awhile when I reintroduce this one but either way I will take you along and let you know how it turns out. Good luck to all you chicken owners out there and as always let me know if I can help anyone out there in anyway. Have a good one!

Check out the full video here

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Is the Easy To Clean Suburban Chicken Coop Really Easy to Clean

Check out this video to see how easy to clean the Easy-to-Clean Chicken coop really is! When I first had the idea (well my wife had the idea), about owning chickens one of the first concerns I had was about cleaning up the mess. I remembered days of my youth when we had to shovel out the chicken coop, what a mess! Dusty, dirty, smelly, hard work shoveling manure, shavings, and pure filth! I wanted to design a coop that made this job easy and I think that I have attained that goal, what do you think?


The cleanup tray is the heart of the idea with this coop. All of the chicken manure and bedding can be swept into the tray from the nesting boxes and around the edges of the coop in a matter of a few minutes. The tray is then pulled out and taken back to the compost pile to be quickly cleaned up while adding some needed nitrogen to the this falls pile of leaves. The tray can then be returned to the coop and new shavings added, and that is it!


If you have watched some of my other videos you may have noticed that I like to reuse all of our paper products that we use in our home. I use cardboard for landscaping, paper for compost, newspaper for the worm bin, paper towel rolls for trees, and everything else goes into making compressed briquettes for burning in the wood burner.  I am also saving some of the paper shredding that is safe for compost for use as bedding in the coop. It is not that the pine shavings are very expensive but just another way to reuse things that we would normally ship off to recycle, and dont get me started on recycling paper! I will just say this, it is not really good for the environment.

 

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