How to raise Cornish Cross baby birds outside in a chicken tractor protected from the elements

Raising your own meat birds to fill your freezers full of high quality meats means you’ll need to have a plan for how and where you’re going to raise them. From adorable little yellow fluff balls to bulky white dirty birds, meat birds need protection from the elements when raised on pasture. Since their favorite hobbies are eating and pooping, meat birds become smelly fast. Here is how we have raised our cornish cross meat birds outside protected from wind, rain, and too much sun.

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Geography, Temperature, and Weather

Before we start, you’ll need to know this is based off our experience raising meat birds outside two times a year, spring and fall, since 2023.

We are in northeast North Carolina where we generally have mild winters.

Consider where you live, your normal climate and weather patterns, etc.

Spring Birds: we buy these in mid-March and raise until the end of May.

Fall Birds: we buy these in September and process before Thanksgiving.

Keep an eye on the weather every day for the 8 weeks you are raising your birds! Look for heavy wind or rain or temperature drops at night.

Read on for how we address each of these to keep our birds comfortable and dry while on pasture.

The Chicken Tractor

Tractor assumes mobility.

Mobility is crucial on a small scale such as our one acre homestead. We need things to not be permanent unless that’s exactly where we need them to stay.

Joel Salatin said in a talk at the annual Homesteaders of America Conference in 2024 that you shouldn’t make a structure permanent until it has been there 3 years. If it hasn’t needed to be moved in that time, then you can make it permanent. Sound advice.

Because our homestead is our 1/2 acre backyard (front yard isn’t being used much at all except for fruit trees), we need mobility.

Once the meat birds get their feathers in, we put them “on pasture” or our backyard grass.

Note: There are SO many chicken tractor designs on the internet. Pick one or design your own. This one is working for us for now as we only raise at most 68 birds at a time.

Using the design in our pictures, we can house 20-22 birds comfortably in one tractor. We have two tractors and a friend we raise with has another if it’s needed.

Grab this FREE design here.

Before the feathers

The little yellow balls of fluff are adorable for approximately 3 hours on delivery day. Then they become stinky from all the pooping they do.

You want ventilation with these birds! The best ventilation is to move meat birds outside ASAP.

For the first 3 days, our meat bird babies (generally 30-50) will live in a 64 gallon tote container or two with feeder and waterer plus a heat lamp out in my husband’s workshop (or a garage will work too… I’ll mention carports below).

You can raise them in large totes or cardboard boxes (reinforce that bottom with plastic as wet poop and water spills will make that box’s bottom a mess when you go to move or throw it away). I’ve also heard of people using the plastic kiddie pools to raise the babies in for a few days.

*Keep protected from cats and dogs that may be able to access the birds’ area.

By day 3, I’ve freshened their wood chip tote floor twice a day and within an hour or so, it’s poop-filled again. It’s time to be moved to the chicken tractor.

Because these floofs do not have their feathers yet, it is imperative to keep them warm.

Tarps, Heat Lamps, and a Thermometer

Upon moving the meat birds outside into the great outdoors, we hang heat lamps from the ceiling of our chicken tractors by carabiner clips and run extension cords to the nearest outlet.

Additionally, we make sure the chicken tractor is covered fully in tarps for wind and rain protection even though we do keep the tractor under the workshop’s lean-to.

Tarps are held down by whatever means necessary. Bricks, scrap pieces of wood, bungee cords, cornhole boards, I mean–homesteaders know how to get creative and use what they already have.

Buy a small, battery operated greenhouse thermometer. You’ll use this inside the tractor with the birdies to keep an eye on the temperature.

• If baby birds are huddled together, they are too cold. Consider lowering heat lamp using metal wire or clipped together carabiners or something else secure.
• If baby birds are spread out all over the tractor in small groups along the edges, they are too hot. Consider moving the heat lamp to a corner so the birds have more room to spread out and regulate their body temperature.

SOME SAY to bring the temp down by 5 degrees each week from 100 degrees until you reach 70 degrees. Do this by moving the heat lamp higher.

I say use a thermometer and your eyes to see if the birds appear to need more warmth.

Buy that thermometer here.

What if I do not have a garage or shop to house the meat birds?

Carports or lean-tos are still eligible for this project from day 1 until processing day.

Again, make sure to use tarps to cover the entire chicken tractor for all-weather protection until white feathers come in (or mostly).

If you have neither carport nor lean-to, you’re going to have to get creative in order to keep your meat birds outside, protected, and with ventilation.

• Can you craft a secure and stable lean-to of plywood or scrap tin metal around your chicken tractors in the yard? Perhaps thicker tarps?

• Can you safely run an outdoor extension cord to a power source for the heat lamps?

• Can you put the tractor somewhere with permanent wind protection like the side of a house or outbuilding?

Making the floor of the chicken tractor

Again, meat birds poop a WHOLE LOT. And it stinks.

Meat birds outside in a tractor helps with the stink but keeping their little bottoms poop-free is important too. It helps when their floor space is kept dry and poop-less.

Here’s how we do that:

• Before moving the chicken tractor in its place for the next approximately 4 weeks, lay down a large tarp or two small ones. Enough to cover the entire chicken tractor enclosed floor space.
• Layer one entire bag of wood shavings (I prefer “flakes” from Tractor Supply) before adding in the baby birds.
• Each day at morning feed and water check, add in fresh chips especially to high traffic areas such as the waterer and feeder areas to cover up the poop.

Pasture Moving Day

This can be messy or tedious depending on the method you choose:

• If you have two chicken tractors available, the babies are in one tractor under the lean-to and the other in the yard waiting for its inhabitants (as pictured below- the starter tractor is barely in the picture at the top right).
  • Simply move each bird from one tractor to another (the help of willing small children is nice).
  • Then two people move the starter chicken tractor by lifting it up off the wood shavings/tarp floor and away.
  • Move wood shavings to the compost pile or another safe method of disposal.
• If you only have one chicken tractor available, you’ll need to use your creativity again to make a secure enclosure to move the feathered-out birds to from the tractor.
  • Then move the tractor from the wood shavings/tarp to fresh grass in the yard,
  • and now move the birds from their secure enclosure to the tractor on fresh grass.
  • Dispose of wood shavings via compost pile or another safe method of disposal.

Things get a whole lot cleaner from this point forward for you, dear Chicken Tender.

Now you’ll move your chicken tractor the length of the tractor each day or more than once a day if you prefer.

Notes on pasture moving:

• depending on your location’s weather, you may decide to keep the heat lamps clipped in for night time chills and/or the tarps strapped on for windy rain and cold.
• move the tractor the length of the tractor each move to ensure completely fresh yard/pasture/grass for the meat birds to forage on.
• our preference is to move the chickens as much as possible. Generally 2-4 times a day, making sure there’s a move right before bedtime. I prefer the birds to have fresh grass to sleep on and not poop-covered grass.
  • this is the meat bird “tuck in” each night: a move, heat lamp on if needed, tarps pulled down if needed.
• we attempt to move the birds along the perimeter of our property or low traffic areas due to the poop they leave behind.

More Meat Bird Things from Johnson Home

No, our way is not the “be all, end all” of backyard meat bird raising. It’s what works for us. We like sharing our experience with others to help, if it can.

DIY Chicken Processing/Killing Cones for less than $5 each

How we raise cornish cross on less than 1/2 acre backyard

How to decide if it is worth it raising your own meat birds

Is raising turkeys and chickens together a good idea?

Thanks for reading!

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