Ikea Chicken Tractor

Several people have sent me a link to the Ikea hacker blog, which is featuring a chicken coop made from Ikea furniture.  It's so clever!  I notice that they don't detail how much it cost, but it looks like it would be a lot easier to put together than making your own from actual lumber, like I am.

I'm about two thirds finished with the third chicken tractor.  To recap, the first chicken tractor that I built was really lousy.  It was kicked apart by the big dogs on its first afternoon.  Fortunately I happened to be looking out the window at the time, so I was able to catch it before any of the chickens escaped.

The second chicken tractor is in use right now.  I built it with a two story design, so that the coop is directly over the run.  Unfortunately, it turns out the chickens do not like to go up and down through a hole in the floor.  Who knew?

It also has a fairly severe design flaw, which led to a chicken escaping.  I built the door into the run so that it's hinged on the top.  This means that you lifted up from the bottom to open it.  The nice thing about this is that you don't have to worry about the door sagging on its hinges.  The bad thing is that when you open it up, you can only block half of the door with your body.  And guess what?  Chickens can escape through the other side.