Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil (Paperback)

by Andy W Lee (Author), Patricia L Foreman (Author) "This whole thing with chicken tractors started back in 1990 when we were starting up the Intervale Community (CSA) Farm in Burlington, Vermont..." (more)
Key Phrases: North Carolina, American Livestock Breeds, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A chicken tractor is a bottomless, portable pen that fits over your garden beds. Just set it wherever you need help in your garden. The chickens peck and scratch the soil to clean your beds, eat pest bugs and weed seeds. Best of all, they provide eggs and meat with that old-fashioned flavor. Chicken tractors have helped thousands of gardeners have better gardens and taken chickens out of factory farms and put them in the garden where they are your personal helpers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Good Earth Publications, LLC; Revised edition (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962464864
• ISBN-13: 978-0962464867
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #167,521 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good ideas, some flaws, April 9, 2001

By	"amrdmr" (Arlington, WA USA) - See all my reviews

I will add my voice to the other reviewers because there seems to be a wide swing in opinion and maybe my thoughts will help others to decide whether or not to get this book. First of all, I know absolutely nothing about chicken-raising...starting from "scratch", as it were. I think the most serious flaw in "Chicken Tractor" is that the author barely mentions how to set up for laying hens and concentrates mainly on raising broilers and fryers; yet he always refers to slaughtering the chickens as "processing", a euphemism that is confusing at best. He refers to "processing plants", i.e. places that you take your live chickens and return to pick up "dressed", frozen chickens, but says that using this method is costly. He mentions home-slaughtering with the briefest of references to machines with horrifying names like "killing cone, thermostatically-controlled scalding vat and table-top plucking machine", but only says the machines are expensive and then leaves the reader totally in the dark (perhaps mercifully). I agree with the other reviewers that the author rambles and repeats himself endlessly, although when I realized that he would present the same information twice in a row, I just skipped the second go-round. I also agree that the cartoons are not very helpful in figuring out how you actually go about building the items needed. His instructions on building the chicken tractor could be followed, with some difficulty. But anyone trying to figure out how to build the perches and egg-laying boxes would have an almost impossible time trying to find that in this book. Also, he does a lot of cost calculations that date the book and are only minimally helpful. You will have no idea how to raise chicks or how to determine which rooster will be less noisy from reading this book. I gleaned only a fuzzy idea of how to protect my flock from predators or dogs.

The book's strengths lie in the explanation (albeit stated MANY times over) of the bio-ecological circle (he calls it "stacking) a small farmer strives for between the chicken manure enriching the soil, the soil producing more vegetables, scraps of which in turn feed the chickens, and so on. Another strength of the book is the list of suppliers and resources. The list of chicken breeds is quite long, but would have benefitted by adding more information about each variety. Bottomline, I think the book has some worthwhile information, but I definitely agree with the other reviewers who say that you will need other books in order to understand how to optimally raise chickens on a small farm. It might be better to start with another book.

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It does work!, July 22, 2000

By A Customer

I bought the Chicken Tractor book two years ago. After reading the book, I built my first chicken tractor using available materials and soon had chickens installed and laying eggs. I soon made more chicken tractors with improvements to the first design and filled them with chickens. It didn't take long for me eggs coming out my ears. I also enjoyed some fine pasture raised broilers. My first chicken tractors were made from wood, but now I am making them from PVC pipe with plastic roof panels as they are lighter and easier to pull.

I am getting ready to start a goat tractor and a turkey tractor. And I am really looking forward to a home raised turkey for Thanksgiving.

The book gave me the ideas and I was able to implement them with no trouble. It was also helpful with places to order chickens, chicken raising equipment, and full of great information on rare breeds of chickens. While it is written in a simple style and does go over the material a couple times....I realize that people who have never raised chickens before need that kind of help. Even though I have had chickens for 25 years, I still learned some things. I was using the traditional chicken house design and the chicken tractors are so much better and much more useful.

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Clever idea better executed elsewhere, March 9, 1999

By A Customer

In this book, Andy Lee demonstrates that a market gardener can raise chickens. Sadly, his chicken tractor design (Chapter 3) is both too heavy and too fragile for use in even such a mild climate as western Oregon. It is also too tall to step into, but too short to walk into. No animal pen should be so difficult to work in.

A better chicken tractor design can be found in Joel Salatin's _Pastured Poultry Profits_ or by searching the Web.

A better book on raising chickens is Gail Damerow's _A Guide to Raising Chickens_, which I consider the best book for a novice to chickens.