Chickens, they say, are the most industrious of all birds. They are not content to while away the hours just pecking and clucking; they want to be put to work. For this reason, I built for our chickens a chicken tractor.

Unlike its human counterpart, a chicken tractor does not have an engine or even a cupholder. A chicken tractor is a portable chicken coop-like structure that allows the chickens to be transported to different locations around the yard, where they may then eat bugs, scratch at the dirt, and perform other chicken duties.

I began my tractor journey by designing the structure in Sketchup.

It’s essentially a box with a door at one end and a roof with a 5º slope (to match the main coop, of course).

Rather than butt-jointing and toe-screwing all of the boards like in the main coop (what is this, an anatomy lesson??), I decided to try using half-laps for all of the joints.

I found this to be time-consuming. I also found this to create a lot of sawdust.

I made one frame for each side of the tractor and then screwed them all together.

To increase the structure’s rigidity, I added some supports across the top (not shown) and some supports in the lower corners (shown below).

The door fit perfectly (of course) in the taller end.

For the handles and wheel, I took this broken wheelbarrow and chopped it up.

The axle is angled up at about 10º so that the bottom of the wheel just barely touches the ground when the tractor is stationary. Then, when I lift up the handles, the frame of the tractor will be off the ground, engaging the wheel.

I attached the roof panels (extras left over from building the coop), and hardware cloth over the side openings, and voila! A box with a wheel!

The chickens love it! They were all like “Cluck cluck cluck cluck!”

The single wheel idea, while ingenious, did not work out in practice. I had to lift the end of the tractor much higher than I wanted to in order to get clearance under the far end, so I added two wheels, taken from a bike that I’m sure my kids won’t miss probably. This raises the end of the coop up two inches off the ground, but it makes it much more maneuverable. If I ever put chicks in here, I’ll have to add some sort of skirt that prevents them from sneaking out.

Only one more touch was needed to turn this tractor into a home.

Now you might be saying, “Chris, did you build this entire project just so you’d have an excuse to use this chicken knob?” In response to your question, I have a lot of questions. Number one, how dare you.