Our turkeys are now about 6 weeks old, and they are getting big.  They are ready to be out on the pasture eating fresh grass and bugs everyday (but I think they are still to young for the pasture yet, but don’t tell them!).  I needed to get their turkey tractor done this weekend so it would be ready to go when it was time to put them out on pasture in about 2 weeks.  There are 2 different types of turkey/chicken tractors.  There is the Salatin style that is about 10′ x 8′ and about 2′ high.  This is good for broilers but not good for turkeys.  The other style I guess you would call the Palmondon style of chicken tractor and their hoop coops.

Well, the Palmondon style suites turkeys much better.  It uses cattle panels to make a 6′ tall area that is about 9′x8′.  This should be more than big enough for our four turkeys.  We had the cattle panels and old chicken wire around, all I needed was some wood and some screws.  So early Saturday morning I headed in to town to pick up some wood and some screws (by the way I got some new style of screw that has a special head, LOVED IT!!! I’ll never go back to phillips head screws!!!)

Some of Julia’s family were here so I didn’t get to working on it until later in the afternoon, but everybody decided to run in to town and I started work on putting it together.  Terry came out and started helping and we were able to get the base built and angle supports on and the hoops on in no time.  By the time everybody got back we had it all together.  We called it a day.

Today Julia and the girls ran up to a picknic, but I needed to finish these so I stayed home and built the front and back walls of the tractor.  I really had only seen pictures of the hoop tractors so I really didn’t have any plans so I just started building.  I built a door and then the back wall.  Then the door jam and then covered the rest of the tractor with chicken wire and I think it turned out pretty good.

The first picture is the front with the door and the 2nd picture is the back wall.  The horizontal board that looks like it goes across the back wall actually is about 3 feet ahead of the back and is for the turkeys to roost on.

I towed it with our new mower to the pasture behind the shop and thought I would see how the turkeys like it.  I brought them out and they seemed to enjoy it.  They started scratching and pecking the plants and bugs right away.  They had a good time exploring!

The other animals were not quite sure what these funny looking funny sounding animals were.  They were all entranced by them.

I am now going to cover it with a tarp (not a blue one, probably green) so the turkeys will have shade and be covered if it rains.  That is all I need to do at this point.  I am also going to build one for the 50 broilers we are getting in a few weeks.  They will be in the brooder for about 2 weeks, then they will go out on the pasture for about 6 weeks.