Picking A Tractor for Tractor Coops
Chicken tractors are a popular method of housing and grazing birds on the homestead. One significant feature of these chicken tractors is that they move, but they need something to move them! Let’s talk about some considerations when picking a tractor for tractor coops, or conversely, features to consider for your tractor coops to work with what you already own.
Tractors For Tractor Coops
Firstly, we must consider how much load your chicken tractor will present. How heavy is this coop? Is it a light hoop house or built to survive a tornado? Is it built to skid and slide, or does it all sit on wheels? A wheeled chicken tractor built on an axle or trailer could be moved easily with a low-powered tractor or a pickup truck. If you have a heavily built skid-style coop, you’re presenting a higher load to overcome, and you’ll need something with power and significant traction.
Traction
When choosing a tractor for tractor coops, you must consider your terrain. If you’re moving a coop along a reasonably flat and dry field, you can get away with just about any farm tractor, classic or modern. The real issues start to pop up when the terrain is rough, or you encounter mud.
Making It Work
Consider loading your tires if you’re left making a two-wheel drive tractor work on a budget. Instead of air, you can fill your tires with a liquid, such as calcium chloride, Rim Guard, or Foam. Loading your tires will offer more downforce and lower your center of gravity, but as long as your tires are in decent condition, loading your tires will help give you traction when pulling chicken tractors.
Tires
A few types of tires are available for modern tractors, but the three main ones are Turf, Industrial, and Ag-style treads. If you’re moving coops across a hay field, you may want to consider using an R-3 turf tire to avoid chopping up the sod you’re trying to preserve. If you’re encountering muddy areas and rocky surfaces, you’d be better served by an Agricultural tread like an R-1 type tire. R-1 Ag tires are great if you don’t want to get stuck, but they can be harsh on soft surfaces, leaving marks and ruts behind. If you need more traction than a turf tire but want to avoid tearing up your field, I’d steer you toward an R-4 “industrial-type” tire. These tires are gaining popularity with modern tractor buyers because they represent a reasonable compromise between turf and Ag treads. R-4 tires are tough enough to give you traction while offering road manners and less damage to grasslands.
Lift
Does your coop need a lift? Skid-style coops may need a little elevation as you move to overcome obstacles like rocks and ditches. A front-end loader would be particularly handy in such a scenario. If you’re stuck with an older tractor without a bucket loader, you could also make do with a 3-point boom lift or a 3-point drawbar. A boom or drawbar would lift the coop and add weight to the rear wheels, which will be helpful if your tractor is a two-wheel drive model, adding downforce to your drive axle. This also goes for a two-wheel drive tractor with a bucket loader since putting your load on the front axle will negatively affect the traction of your rear axle.
Four Wheel Drive
If you plan to lift your chicken tractor with a bucket loader, either partially to drag it or lift it clear off the ground, you’ll want a four-wheel drive tractor. When you add weight to the front loader of a tractor, the front axle becomes a fulcrum. The more weight you add to the front loader, the less downforce the rear axle has, causing you to lose traction. If you have a four-wheel drive tractor, you can engage your front axle to regain that lost traction.
Power
If your coop is heavily built, you’ll need a tractor with enough power to pull the weight without bogging down. A coop on wheels will significantly reduce the need for power, especially if it’s on a hay trailer frame, leaving no tongue weight for the tractor to overcome. A sub-compact tractor up to around 24HP should suffice for light coops and light trailers, but if your coops are built “farmer-tough,” then you’d be better served with a compact or agricultural-sized tractor in the 40 to 50HP range.
Non-tractor options
The style of your chicken tractor build will dictate your options; however, if your coop rolls and does not require a lift, you can look at alternatives to a tractor. Pickup trucks, preferably four-wheel-drive models, are perfectly adept at pulling a trailer, even a hay wagon-style trailer, over moderate terrain. If your coops are in a remote area, then a UTV or ATV may be enough to roll your birds around the pasture.
What are you using to move your chicken tractor coops? Let us know below in the comments!
At 12 years old, JEREMY CHARTIER became involved with his local 4-H group, later joined the local FFA chapter, and showed livestock until his college years. After graduating from the Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture at the University of Connecticut, he joined the University of Maine’s Poultry Service Provider training program. Today, Jeremy sells started pullets to local backyard farmers, is still involved with 4-H as a poultry showmanship judge, and writes about his passion for farming.
Originally published in the April/May 2024 issue of Backyard Poultry magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.