Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil

Rating:
Summary: It does work!
Review: I found "Chicken Tractor" to be a good basic informative book,though some information was repeated several times which was a little annoying. The designs for the tractors are simple constuction leaving plenty of room for my ideas and modifications. I liked this book because it gives the complete information I needed to start my project with confidence.

Rating:
Summary: Very good for the suburban gardener
Review: I originally got some chickens because Martha Stewart said they love to eat crickets and here in the desert we have quite a problem with crickets. I found out that chickens are wonderful pets, not much trouble, very friendly and they have personalities. And they really eat bugs - best pest control you can have. I read this book on the concept of the chicken tractor and realized for the suburban gardener this is ideal. Hens eat bugs, grain, and vegetable scraps from the kitchen. Hens are great little composters, and they eat weed seeds and pests up to and including scorpions and baby mice and snakes. They don't need much except food and water, and protection from predators. We allow ours to roam a fenced in yard freely, and pen them up at night. This is a useful book if you just want a few hens and want to improve your soil (we don't move our hens around, once a year we take 4 inches off the soil in their yard and spread it around our trees and gardens.) The eggs are great - I like giving green eggs to little kids because they all have read Dr. Seuss. This book isn't for someone who is more interested in egg-laying or meat production on a large scale. And, by the way, we don't eat our hens. We are running a chicken retirement home - they don't lay eggs any more, but they still till, compost, eat weed seeds, and control pests.

Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional
Review: I purchased the book because I was interested in raising chickens and building a chicken tractor. The technical aspects of building the chicken tractor are not clearly outlined, but after many re-readings I was able to construct one. The authors also mention nesting boxes and pop door on the chicken tractor but show no pictures or diagrams. Much of the information was repetitive in spots, and I thought that many of the cartoons were in bad taste.

Rating:
Summary: has good concepts, but the steps and details are off
Review: I used this book for some research and experiment ideas in agriculture. while it has some great general ideas and concepts, i found that the entire instructions for building the chicken tractor were lacking in detail and had conflicting drawings and steps. some required materials were not listed, and the process was vague. in reading the book, it seemed to me like a great book idea, but was very hastily presented and lacked thorough attention to detail. it looked very "thrown together". it is a book i recommend checking out from a library if you want some ideas, but i wouldn't waste my money purchasing it in hopes of practical steps for a chicken tractor. (the book might give inspiration, but YOU will have to come up with the practical details of trying and experimenting to build your tractor.) hint...lightweight and portable materials and use creativity to adapt their basic (and vaguely presented) tractor

Rating:
Summary: Very good for the suburban gardener
Review: I will add my voice to the other reviewers because there seems to be a wide swing in opinion and maybe my thoughts will help others to decide whether or not to get this book. First of all, I know absolutely nothing about chicken-raising...starting from "scratch", as it were. I think the most serious flaw in "Chicken Tractor" is that the author barely mentions how to set up for laying hens and concentrates mainly on raising broilers and fryers; yet he always refers to slaughtering the chickens as "processing", a euphemism that is confusing at best. He refers to "processing plants", i.e. places that you take your live chickens and return to pick up "dressed", frozen chickens, but says that using this method is costly. He mentions home-slaughtering with the briefest of references to machines with horrifying names like "killing cone, thermostatically-controlled scalding vat and table-top plucking machine", but only says the machines are expensive and then leaves the reader totally in the dark (perhaps mercifully). I agree with the other reviewers that the author rambles and repeats himself endlessly, although when I realized that he would present the same information twice in a row, I just skipped the second go-round. I also agree that the cartoons are not very helpful in figuring out how you actually go about building the items needed. His instructions on building the chicken tractor could be followed, with some difficulty. But anyone trying to figure out how to build the perches and egg-laying boxes would have an almost impossible time trying to find that in this book. Also, he does a lot of cost calculations that date the book and are only minimally helpful. You will have no idea how to raise chicks or how to determine which rooster will be less noisy from reading this book. I gleaned only a fuzzy idea of how to protect my flock from predators or dogs.

The book's strengths lie in the explanation (albeit stated MANY times over) of the bio-ecological circle (he calls it "stacking) a small farmer strives for between the chicken manure enriching the soil, the soil producing more vegetables, scraps of which in turn feed the chickens, and so on. Another strength of the book is the list of suppliers and resources. The list of chicken breeds is quite long, but would have benefitted by adding more information about each variety. Bottomline, I think the book has some worthwhile information, but I definitely agree with the other reviewers who say that you will need other books in order to understand how to optimally raise chickens on a small farm. It might be better to start with another book.

Rating:
Summary: good ideas, some flaws
Review: I will add my voice to the other reviewers because there seems to be a wide swing in opinion and maybe my thoughts will help others to decide whether or not to get this book. First of all, I know absolutely nothing about chicken-raising...starting from "scratch", as it were. I think the most serious flaw in "Chicken Tractor" is that the author barely mentions how to set up for laying hens and concentrates mainly on raising broilers and fryers; yet he always refers to slaughtering the chickens as "processing", a euphemism that is confusing at best. He refers to "processing plants", i.e. places that you take your live chickens and return to pick up "dressed", frozen chickens, but says that using this method is costly. He mentions home-slaughtering with the briefest of references to machines with horrifying names like "killing cone, thermostatically-controlled scalding vat and table-top plucking machine", but only says the machines are expensive and then leaves the reader totally in the dark (perhaps mercifully). I agree with the other reviewers that the author rambles and repeats himself endlessly, although when I realized that he would present the same information twice in a row, I just skipped the second go-round. I also agree that the cartoons are not very helpful in figuring out how you actually go about building the items needed. His instructions on building the chicken tractor could be followed, with some difficulty. But anyone trying to figure out how to build the perches and egg-laying boxes would have an almost impossible time trying to find that in this book. Also, he does a lot of cost calculations that date the book and are only minimally helpful. You will have no idea how to raise chicks or how to determine which rooster will be less noisy from reading this book. I gleaned only a fuzzy idea of how to protect my flock from predators or dogs.

The book's strengths lie in the explanation (albeit stated MANY times over) of the bio-ecological circle (he calls it "stacking) a small farmer strives for between the chicken manure enriching the soil, the soil producing more vegetables, scraps of which in turn feed the chickens, and so on. Another strength of the book is the list of suppliers and resources. The list of chicken breeds is quite long, but would have benefitted by adding more information about each variety. Bottomline, I think the book has some worthwhile information, but I definitely agree with the other reviewers who say that you will need other books in order to understand how to optimally raise chickens on a small farm. It might be better to start with another book.

Rating:
Summary: Need a supplier
Review: The book gave a lot of great information for me as a first time chicken raiser but I am not a builder and have been unable to find someone to build the chicken tractor because the plan is so vague. I would love to know of a supplier that I could by a kit from with complete instructions for us who need more help

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Source of Ideas
Review: This book is a great source of poultrykeeping ideas, containing descriptions of the different approaches taken by a large number of individuals. It sheds light on the innumerable possibilities and styles of poultry raising and how poultry can be kept synergistically with other farm or garden activities.

However, the book does not provide the detailed, step-by-step instructions that novice poultrykeepers often long for. It attempts to do so in places, but not successfully.

Still, this is a must-have book for anyone interested in poultry. Other books provide the nuts-and-bolts details, yet do not present the sweeping range of possibilities that this one does.

Basically, you're going to have to buy at least two books. For the backyard poultrykeeper, it would be this book and STOREY'S GUIDE TO RAISING CHICKENS by Gail Damerow. For the small farmer, PASTURED POULTRY PROFITS by Joel Salatin is an absolute necessity. But CHICKEN TRACTOR has its own unique merits and should not be neglected.