COMMERCIAL
Chicken Tractor

We include several design factors to help make cleaner hens and eggs, including...

• The rollaway nests move the eggs away from the hens as soon as they are laid.
• The floor is a mesh that allows the manure and dirt to drop through.  This keeps the house and hens cleaner.
• There is a 2" gap between the flooring and the actual nests.  This prevents manure and dirt from building up at the nests or inside the nests.

Chicken houses are primarily used for giving shelter to chickens that are being raised for meat or eggs. 

Chickens are normally given feed and water in the chicken house as well as a roosting area and egg box (if the farmer is raising laying hens). 

The primary reason to build a chicken house a few feet off the ground is for better air circulation. When a chicken house is raised above the ground it also prevents a buildup of droppings, dust mites and more.

There is no definitive answer for which chicken house is the best. 

The mobile chicken house is considered one of the best chicken houses because it allows farmers to raise chicken and eggs at scale while remaining efficient and profitable and maintaining the highest quality eggs and meat. 

"Commercial" simply means that a farmer is raising chickens with an intent to make a profit (in contrast to someone raising chickens as a hobby or for their family). 

With that in mind, any number of chickens in a house can make it a commercial chicken house. However, most farmers that are raising chickens on a large scale for a living have at least 300 chickens in a commercial chicken house. 

Absolutely! In fact, that's the point! 

Chicken tractors are just a moveable coop that chickens live in part of full time. 

A chicken tractor is a moveable chicken coop. Rather than having your chickens cooped up in one place every day for weeks, you can move them from spot to spot in your field or pasture. 

There are many reasons a chicken tractor is useful. Some of the main benefits of a chicken tractor are: 

1. Managing your land with poultry helps regenerate the soil and make your property healthier
2. Chicken droppings fertilize the soil, rather than being a nuisance like they are in a stationary coop
3. Chickens are healthier and produce better meat and eggs

Chicken tractors vary greatly in size so the cost also varies. 

A backyard chicken tractor may cost between $200-500 while a commercial chicken tractor for hundreds of birds may cost somewhere between $10,000-$20,000. 

Of course larger commercial chicken tractors are also used to make profit and can usually pay themselves off within a few years. 

The amount of chickens you can put in a chicken tractor depends on the size of the tractor itself. 

If you allow your chickens to roam outside of the tractor itself during daylight hours you can go with a smaller coop since you only need for them to roost. 

We recommend allowing at least 8-12 inches for each bird for roosting, and if you aren't allowing your birds to go outside of the chicken tractor during daylight hours, we recommend giving them 4 square feet per bird for laying hens and 2 square feet per bird for meat chickens. 

It depends on how many chickens you have in your chicken tractor. We recommend having somewhere between 50-100 chickens per acre. 

That means if your chicken tractor houses 300 chickens you would want around 3 acres for it. 

Yes! Chicken tractors allow chickens to get in the outdoors and perform natural functions like pecking, scratching, and dust bathing rather than being contained in a very small cage for their whole existence. 

That's exactly what chicken tractors are - moveable chicken coops. In others words, they are designed to be moved! 

Moving a chicken tractor ensures that one portion of land does not get completely depleted or packed down, and also allows your whole property to received the benefit of chicken droppings. It also allow chickens to move to a new place where there are plenty of insects, grasses and more so they can remain healthy. 

A chicken tractor is a chicken coop on wheels that moves around your pasture or backyard every day. It's called a chicken tractor because the birds loosen up the top inch or so of earth underneath the moving coop much like a regular tractor does. 

A general rule of thumb is to have 4 square feet per chicken for egg layers, and 2 square feet per chicken for meat chickens. 

So, 50 laying chickens would need 200 square feet or something equivalent to a 10x20 chicken tractor. 

50 meat chickens would need 100 square feet or something equivalent to a 10x10 chicken tractor. 

NOTE: If you allow your chickens to access pasture outside of the chicken tractor during daylight hours, and they only roost inside the tractor at night, you don't need this much space. We recommend 8-12 inches per bird for roosting.