Moving Our Meat Chicks to the Chicken Tractor for the First Time!

It's graduation day for our 2.5 week old Cornish Cross chicks! They're moving from the brooder to the chicken tractor that Steve built using plans from ‪@theJustinRhodesShow‬. It's been in the high 80s here for the past several days, and in the mid to high 60s at night, so they should be good to go! This is our first time doing this, so let's see how it goes.

[@debradiane3929]

I miss your videos! Hope you are all doing well. ❤

[@McVeyMcFarm]

Aww, thanks! We’ve been so busy with our remodel and the farm that I haven’t had a chance to work on any videos recently. But I do have one that should be done this week!

[@stijnt2377]

Curious why you decided to use premier one fencing in addition to the tractor. Did you fear predation of digging animals?

[@McVeyMcFarm]

Peace of mind really … the only predator problem we’ve had was a fox jumping the fencing and snatching a full grown turkey and pulling through the premier fencing. This was an open roosting tractor though. We’ve never had a single predator problem from a chicken tractor + premier 1 netting. When you invest a ton of time, energy, and money into your meat birds, I’d hate to lose them all in one night to a frisky coon.

[@stijnt2377]

@@McVeyMcFarm Yeah makes sense. Here in central Italy I use the netting for my layers who go inside their chickshaw at night. No issues with predators there either despite high fox and wolf activity in our area. I'm wondering if the frequent moving deters foxes because they can never really study the weak spots for very long.