Chickens are not only egg-laying machines. They’re also poop machines. But why waste your time cleaning when you can just let them fertilize your backyard in a chicken tractor? Make one out of almost anything, including your old couch. Here is your ultimate DIY list of 35 chicken tractor plans.
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1. Something New, Something Old Chicken Tractor
For less than $200, you can get brand new timber and hardware from Lowes. Make a coop frame with untreated beams, then side them with cedar panels. Then top it off with recycled roofing materials from a salvage yard or discards from your renovation.
Click here to access the free plan.
2. Bantam House
Make a charming tiny house on wheels for your bantams using leftover timber and roof shingles. Add some touches of love with heart cutouts and paint details. With a door side panel, you don’t have to go through an Alice in Wonderland moment every time you need to clean the coop.
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3. Barn Tractor
Make your standard birds feel at home (wherever you park them) with an 80 sq. ft. barn tractor. Long studdings and single slabs of plywood make this chicken tractor sturdy. At the same time, the hardware cloth and heavy-duty latches are there for better security.
Traditional chicken wire isn’t sufficient to keep predators out of the coop completely.
But what makes this tractor special is the classic red and white color finish with the barnyard details.
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4. Broiler Home
Don’t throw out those old bicycles just yet. Their wheels will save you a ton of effort moving your DIY chicken tractor. Use light (yet tough) materials for the frame to make this coop super mobile!
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5. Chicken Menagerie
Start with the usual framings with added reinforcement. You want something that will STAY beautiful. Then side it the normal way with plywood.
Paint the entire thing white and add some corner details to the door. Cover the run and windows with hardware cloth. Oh, and put on the wheels and handles too. Presto, a chic shack for your chooks. (Say that 10x fast!)
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6. Chicken Tractor Plans with Bottom Run
Start by building a frame that looks like a bunk bed. Where you would set the mattress is the entire sleeping space of your chickens.
After you put up the perches and the plywood sidings, it’ll look more like a chicken tractor than a bunk bed. The bump-out nesting box and wheels definitely seal the deal for this large chicken tractor plan.
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7. Shaded Chicken Tractor
It looks like your average elevated coop with an attached run, but it has an extra solid base for the runners. The unique thing about this is it doesn’t have a roof over it. What you’ll get is a sunshade cloth that you can roll up and down.
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8. Chicken Tractor with Roost Bar
Build a chicken coop for just under $50 and get a big roosting bar that holds enough space for up to 6 large chickens or ten bantams. Plus, you don’t have to worry about cutting angles during construction.
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9. Chicken Wire Hoop
You don’t need a wood frame for this chicken coop. Use strong cattle panels and follow the arc-shaped chicken tractor plan. Cattle panels are basically bigger, tougher versions of hardware cloth.
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10. Colorful A-frame
A-frame chicken tractor plans with half a loft are pretty easy to make. You can open up one or both loft panels for easy cleaning and egg collecting.
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11. Decorative Hoop Coop
Add a detachable lofted nesting box so your hens can eat and drink under a covered area. Make sure you make both levels easy to access for upkeep.
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12. Chicksaw
Take a page from the 1800s and make a chicken flock version of the rickshaw. It’s basically a human-drawn carriage, but this time it’s for chickens. The downside? It’s one of the few chicken tractors on our list without coop flooring and wood sidings.
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13. Eclectically Geodesic
Open igloo with the dome shape, a.k.a the Geodesic tractor. Chicken wire encloses the whole dome. It’s a bit hard to construct, but there is a pattern that makes it easier.
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14. Hen Hideout
Use pipes and plywood to make an intricate frame for your chicken tractor coop. There’s an option to make a fully enclosed and secure hideout for your hens with bolts and latches for each entrance.
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15. Hoop coop with some style
Let’s mix things up with a stylish and predator-proof hoop coop tractor design. You’ll need a standard cattle panel frame with a wooden base. Add more elements like the door, roost, nesting boxes, and wire mesh flooring, and you’re done.
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16. Simple and Short by Joel Salatin
The chicken tractor plans that farming guru Joel Salatin drew up have the bare minimum height for your flock to roam. It’s big but easy to move around.
It saves you on materials and effort since this plan is easy to follow. But keep in mind that this is for free-range flocks destined to be culled for meat.
Click here to access the free plan.
17. Lane Brooder
Here’s a wheel placement option for your tractor. It looks like a wheelbarrow but better! Plus, a slanted outline looks cool. Paint it red, and it makes your tractor look like it’s ready for the racetrack!
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18. Home on the Pasture
This design is a super-sized A-frame chicken tractor plan. Of course, you need more bracing than the average A-frame and a buddy or two to help. But this project turns out super awesome! Plus, you can fit at least two dozen birds inside with roosts and nesting boxes.
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19. Featherweight for the feathered flock
Gather a few beams and boards with the usual joineries. Oh, and some chipboard roofing and shingles for style. This design has two nesting boxes on either side of the top half with roosts in between.
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20. Little Egg Factory
This chicken tractor has handles on one end and wheels on the other. That way, you only need one person to move it around. It’s a versatile tractor that has an entire upper loft. It’s a great little coop for laying hens or raising chicks.
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21. Meaties Tractor
Chicken tractors are great for raising meat birds. The controlled free-range set-up lets the birds eat fresh greens and bugs. This diet and all that scratching around combine to make their meat extra tasty (1).
Making a chicken coop with a run extension into a tractor is a big project. But it saves you the trouble of having to move your birds back into the coop every night after they’re done grazing.
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22. Easy A-Frame
The half and half is one of the easiest A-frame chicken tractor plans to make. It’s a combination of wooden panel sidings for the shaded part and good old hardware cloth on the other. That’s pretty much it—no need for roosts and nesting boxes.
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23. Raise your roof
Everyone loves anything that is multi-purpose. So why not design chicken tractor plans that are big enough to fit over garden beds for the chickens to fertilize (2).
“Poultry manure is a useful source of nitrogen, the main nutrient that plants need for green leafy growth. It also contains smaller amounts of other important nutrients.”
You get free fertilizer, and your chickens get to eat tasty bugs. Plus, with the prop up roof, cleaning becomes so easy.
Click here to access the free plan.
24. Save your wallet with a pallet
Pallets are one of the most versatile materials ever. They’re already framed, so you spend less time hammering. Just saw the whole pallets in half, connect them to form a pen, and add a tarp for shade. You’re done. How easy was that? Keen to reuse pallets? Here’s our ultimate list of pallet chicken coop ideas.
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25. Easy with plywood
Another easy and cheap material you can use is plywood. You’ll use it for the frame, sidings, and even the door panel. Tires add the finishing touches to this chicken tractor. The best part? You can build it in under 2 hours!
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26. Portable PVC run
If you’re worried about weight, use PVC pipes. They’re easy to assemble with a few tools. Plus you can make any shape you want. You can build a standard rectangular tractor with an arched shade. Cover the arc with a tarp, and you’re all set.
Click here to access the free plan.
27. CompletePVC Chicken Tractor
It’s an open square pen with PVC framing and roosts. The coop area has proper roofing and uses grizzly board sidings and plastic buckets for nesting boxes.
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28. Reclaimed Coop
You can make any chicken coop into a tractor. To save money, you can use reclaimed wood. Just make sure you have the patience to pull them apart and put them together.
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29. Stylish Shed
No more trail of smooshed grass with this design. Add chicken wire flooring so that poop just falls through. Nothing says “Sorry for your trouble, grass” better than a dose of fertilizer.
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30. Stress-Free Mobile Coop
You gotta shell out $10 for these chicken tractor plans. But you also get a bunch of freebies and hacks for pasture-raising chickens. The tractor itself is a mix of wood and steel framing, chicken wire, and a tarp.
31. The A-Frame Roadhouse
This next chicken tractor is another A-frame favorite, but it’s far from basic. It has a spacious coop with a bump-out nesting box. Which, by the way, you can pop out to access the coop. The tractor also has a 40 sq. ft. run.
Click here to access the free plan.
32. Tractor Chicken Tractor
Make any type of chicken coop into a tractor. But for this one, you’re going to need a tractor… to move your tractor. It can house 12 or more chickens and comes with insulation and an automatic chicken door.
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33. Traditional Red Chicken Tractor
Nothing too crazy here, just a one-level chicken coop with an attached run. There are no nesting boxes, only roosts, and you don’t need to hinge roost because the coop is self-cleaning.
Click here to access the free plan.
34. Upcycled Couch
Don’t throw that old couch away, no matter how much your wife begs you to. This time you’ll actually have a good reason to keep it around. It makes a unique chicken tractor.
Check here to access the free plan.
35. Wood Cut Out Hoop Style
This design is a mix of different ideas from the list. It’s got the classic wooden base, with an electrical PVC hoop design wrapped in welded wire. Simple, right? What makes this stand out is the wooden cut-out door.
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FAQs
How big a chicken tractor should depend on how many chickens will be inside. Allot between 2-4 sq. ft. of run space per chicken. Bigger birds and laying hens naturally need more space than, say, broilers or chicks. For a flock of 6 large birds, pick chicken tractors with at least 24 sq. ft of space.
The cost of building a chicken tractor depends on the materials and type of chicken tractor. You can spend as little as $50 for a simple chicken tractor using mostly recycled materials. However, some chicken tractors with extra features like a bigger space and run can cost more.
How often you should move your tractor depends on how many chickens you have. But they should ideally have a fresh patch of grass every day. If you have a small flock of 3 hens, you can move them every other day or every two days. Consider chicken tractor designs that are lightweight and come with an easy-to-move wheel system.
References
- Raising Meat Birds In A Tractor. Retrieved from: https://blog.meyerhatchery.com/2018/01/raising-meat-birds-in-a-tractor/
- Chicken manure. Retrieved from: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=297
