Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil: Amazon.ca: Andy Lee: Books

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First Sentence
This whole thing with chicken tractors started back in 1990 when we were starting up the Intervale Community (CSA) Farm in Burlington, Vermont. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
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Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars has good concepts, but the steps and details are off, Sep 6 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil (Paperback)

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

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good for the suburban gardener, May 6 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil (Paperback)

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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars good ideas, some flaws, April 9 2001

By

amrdmr "amrdmr" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil (Paperback)

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.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine book for right audience
amrdmr is worried about the wrong things. We don't raise chickens for pets. Why read this book if you have no plans to butcher you chickens some day. Read more

Published on Aug 11 2001

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Source of Ideas
This book is a great source of poultrykeeping ideas, containing descriptions of the different approaches taken by a large number of individuals. Read more

Published on Dec 15 2000 by Robert Plamondon