In some of the older homesteader type magazines, reference has been made to chicken tractors and how useful they are. The name gives one pause... " John Deere chickens "? As we have two elderly tractors that the birds delight in perching on, I really could let my imagination run away here, but the true meaning is a bit less colorful.

A chicken tractor is essentially a low, sometimes bottomless cage. It is placed strategically around the garden to allow your hens access to weeds, fresh dirt, and gloriously tasty bugs. It does an adequate job of protecting the chickens from predators, while protecting the garden from the pecking, scratching hens.

When one area is fluffed, turned, and scoured clean by the chickens, two people can move the 'tractor' if careful to lift only a few inches and slide it to a new spot. Some have skids so a cart or tractor can move it easier.

This is Jewel Blanch's version of her Chicken Tractor and her goats.

I have kept hens for quite a few years, and had a little trouble from our resident yobbos, involving egg thefts and vandalism, but in February of this year I was unfortunate enough to have most of my hens stolen.

However, when the story of the theft was published in our local rag, a number of kind people replaced my lost birds with hens from their own flocks.

In one consignment of very young birds, the erstwhile owner said that he thought that one of them may have been a rooster. The passage of time has proved him to have been correct.

I had never kept a rooster and was a little hesitant to do so, as some of them are very aggressive, but John Halifax Gentleman is a lovely bird, both in appearance and temperament.

Having a rooster on the premises meant that chickens would naturally follow. When the first hatching of 10 turned up, I had to borrow a coop from my nextdoor neighbour, as Mistress hen had been sitting in seclusion, and I had known nothing about it. Unfortunately, only one chicken of that batch survived. I couldn't find where a weasel or rat could have got in, but these small predators can get through amazingly small places.

I allowed another clucky hen to sit on a clutch of eggs, and set about making a chicken coop of my own. I wanted something that could be easily shifted, so that I would have what is picturesquely called "a chicken tractor". I was very pleased with the nearly completed project, and the final and most necessary touch was the wire netting top.

As I wanted to install the hen and her eggs, plus the older chicken, the top was to be only temporary, until I had time to make something a little more substantial.

All went well! I had just completed the transfers successfully when the goats came in, after their day out in the paddock.

With cries of delight, the kids bounded onto the trampoline that mama had made them for Christmas. Did I say that the top was only temporary? A chorus line of enthusiastic, albeit small goats tap-dancing on it proved just how temporary it was!