Build dad a hoop coop over the last two days ... Been getting sick of looking at his chicken setups and all the kills he's had lately due to something just chewing busting though the cheap china wire his come with ,so.. little under 8' long 6.5' wide . Four wheels so you can push it without much difficulty cage wire the first 24" up on the sides, and I guess it's good stuff because the last tractor I made him has had zero issues past it just being so small... Think this is the last one I build for a while though .. I'm a little burnt on critter enclosures... Might build one more just to have in reserve at my place though

Animals don’t just crawl under the bottom board?

It's a jack up deal. When you get it to where you want you just un pin the levers and it drops the whole deal back down. Now if you where talking about animals running under....well honestly that's just never been an issue for as long as I can remember, even when we had a old school pen never hand coon or the like digging under to get in

The lever deal makes a lot of sense, here the weasels would just run under it, skunks are also tough on them.

Wolfie, you sure do stay busy. You going to add a roll up top for shade if the chickens need some? Emagine what you could be building if you were retired. LOL

I like that idea Wolfie.

I think I will do something similar this spring for our butcher chickens.

I would tarp half of it for shade.

Well done. Love the lever wheels.

O yeah we usually tarp the back half of these and leave the other open. But after putting like $350 in for materials I told Dad he could hand the tarp , though we did put a really small one on for the night

Not not gonna lie was waiting for you to say something about using angle iron

Well it's been populated and apparently there enjoying it alot more then there last enclosure

I would tarp the entire thing for shade and to keep the cold rain out


lost a bunch of meat birds which I understand are dumber than layers , but they all went to sleep with a bunch of them in the exposed wire only part of the chicken tractor , bout 02:00 in comes a nasty storm

temp dropped , soaking wet birds and well lost some

Yeah I told Dad to get a bigger tarp but her keep forgetting, told him n Ed sto be at least half the tractor and need some come down to the best if possible ...now is he gonna listen....idk

If your dad has outside dogs. They should keep predators from digging under, unless they are the predators. The predators just need to be slowed down enough for the dogs to work.

A lot of businesses give away huge crates made of 2" by 4"s and 2" by 6"s. They are a good source for free lumber. One place near Wooster, Ohio has some listed on Facebook Marketplace near constantly.





I've seen over a dozen places giving away huge crates in the last year or so. Some will deliver for free, if you take lots of them. Most say they will load the crates for you.

There's usually loads of smaller plywood crates for free.

I see angle iron crates for free pretty often too.

I imagine you could build loads of cool stuff with full, 40' trailer loads of wood crates, like in the picture.

Keith

dang that would be nice,