Moving the chicken tractor was starting to become a lot more effort with the chickens escaping. In the beginning it was relatively easy to herd all the chickens back into the pen once the move was finished. Now the birds are bigger, braver and more independent. They scatter throughout the garden and need some convincing that inside the pen is better then the ground they are currently pecking at.
If I have the time it isn’t a problem to let them out with two exceptions. First is the family of hawks that live close by and tend to circle a little to close for comfort at times. Second, they have discovered my onions and literally go in and demolish them. I had started to cover the onions with a row cover before moving the birds. Now even that doesn’t stop them. Any space in the cover for them to get under and they are in attacking the onions. Hopefully they’ll have time to clean themselves out before butchering because when I catch them to return back to the pen I can smell onion on them.
The attempted solution to time, onions and sanity was to put a skirting around the pen. The jury is still out on how successful this design will be. We are still using the dolly to lift the front end of the pen for the move and that little space to freedom is enough to have chickens escape. In general though it seems to be working.
Putting the skirting on was a bit of a challenge especially with all the curious chickens managing to get in the way and pecking at anything new. We moved the pen to fresh grass but I still managed to roll into fresh droppings. I don’t know why I’m grinning in this picture the stench of that spot on my shirt was pretty bad.
We sowed metal piping spaced around a rope along the bottom of the skirting to help weigh it down.
