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

This book presents the core concepts of the tractor method of raising chickens or other poultry. For Lee, chicken "tractors" are small moveable pens, used to confine chickens to a specific range. The pens are moved frequently, generally every day or every other day, so that the chickens always have fresh grass and bugs to peck at. The cages protect the birds from predators and provide shelter from the sun and rain. They also ensure that no plot of land receives too much manure or is grazed too heavily. (Lee points out that when chickens are raised in traditional chicken runs, their excrement can be so heavy that the nitrogen content can become so toxic that nothing will grow on the soil; as a result, the birds then don't have access to greens.) But the book isn't only about chickens--it presents an entire agricultural plan, in which the chickens are one part of the farm ecosystem, consuming greens, and providing fertilizer, which then becomes the input for organic garden plots. Lee also provides sample business plans for using poultry grown in tractors to provide a modest income that can cover meat costs for a family, pay property taxes, or even provide cash for general living expenses. The book includes a list of sources for further reading, a resource guide, and index. Lee includes plans for several chicken tractors of varying capacity in the book. I haven't been able to try them myself yet, but several neighbors have adopted the chicken tractor method of poultry raising, and they all endorse it unreservedly. They say it is much more humane and healthier for the chickens than cage methods. It is safer for the birds and easier for their caregivers than free range methods. It also makes more sense for soil fertility and requires less work tossing around chicken manure than one finds with the traditional chicken pen. If and when I get chickens, this is clearly the way to go. At the end of the book, Lee mentions that the tractor method would also work for other birds, such as turkeys or quails, but unfortunately, he does not provide suggested dimensions of tractors for these birds.