4x10 Cattle-Panel Hoop Chicken Tractor Plans

The base is the foundation, the tie that stops the hoop from spreading, and the thing you drag. There are no piers and no floor: the birds stand on grass, which is the entire point. Cut two skids 120" long and stand them on edge 48" apart, measured OUTSIDE to OUTSIDE. That 48" is the chord of every arch in this plan, so it is the one dimension that has to be right. Cut 5 rungs 45" long and screw them between the skids, on edge, flush with the skid tops — one under each wooden arch at 0", 52", 118-1/2" from the closed end, and the rest mid-bay so the skids cannot spring. Run the skids crown up. They drag on wet grass for years and a cupped skid holds water in the hollow and rots from the top face down.

The wheels go on before anything heavy does. Each wheel hangs off a wheel arm 14" long, bolted through a pivot block on the outside of the skid. Flip the arms DOWN and pin them and the closed end rises onto the wheels; flip them UP and pin them and it settles back onto both skids with the tyres 3/4" clear of the grass. That is worth two extra parts. Wheels bolted permanently below the skids hold one end off the ground all night — a gap 48" wide under the end the birds sleep in, which is an invitation. Wheels bolted level with the skids never touch the ground at all: lift one end of a rigid frame and it pivots about the other end, so a wheel in the middle only rises. Set the arms so the wheels touch down 39-3/4" from the closed end. The finished centre of mass works out at 52-3/4" and the wheels have to land AHEAD of it. At the far end, lag a handle 42" long to the outside of each skid, projecting 18" past it, and join the two with a grip bar.

This is the step the whole plan is built around, so read it before you cut. You cannot measure an arc with a tape and you cannot cut a curve in a 2x4. So the wooden arches are not curved. Each one is 6 straight arch segments that sit on the arc as chords — a 6-sided piece of a polygon that the bent panel lies across. Every segment is the same part, and that is not a coincidence: equal steps around a circle subtend equal chords. Cut 18 of them, 15-3/4" on the LONG point, with both ends at 18.1 degrees off square and the two cuts CONVERGING — the piece is a shallow trapezoid, not a parallelogram. The short point measures 13-7/16". Set the saw once. Lay the first arch out flat on the ground, on the setout drawn on the next page. Butt the segments long-point to long-point and screw an arch gusset across every joint on one face — 5 per arch. The gussets are the joint; butted end grain carries nothing. The frame turns 36.2 degrees at each joint and sweeps 217 degrees in total, which is why a finished arch is 50-5/8" across its belly and only 48" across its feet.

Before the arches leave the ground, check them against the table on this page. Every number in it is a straight tape pull. The arch is sampled at 7 stations; for each one the table gives the offset from the outside of the left skid, the height above the skid top, and — the useful one — the chord, which is the direct hook-to-station distance from the left foot. Hook the tape on the left foot, pull it to a joint, and read one number. The same stations mark the panel. A cattle panel has a welded stay every 8" along its 192" length, so the stations are whole wires: count 2 stays per station and tie the panel to the arch there. You never measure the curve. You count wires. One number in the table is deliberately not tidy. The six chords add up to 94-1/2", but the panel lying over them is 96" long — the arc is 1-1/2" longer than the frame under it. That is the sagitta, it is supposed to be there, and it is why the panel stands 1-1/4" off the middle of each straight segment. Tie the panel at the JOINTS, never in the middle of a segment, or you will pull a flat spot into it.

Stand the 3 arches on their rungs, feet flush with the outside of the skids, and fix each foot with an arch foot bracket plus one screw skewed through the bevel. Brace them upright as you go. They go at 0", 52", 118-1/2" from the closed end: the closed end, the coop/run partition, and the door end. There are no arches in between and there do not need to be — see the note below. Then run the ridge purlin and two side purlins the full 120", screwed to the OUTSIDE face of the arches at the chord joints. On the joints, not mid-segment: mid-segment there is a 1-1/4" gap between the frame and where the panel wants to sit, and a purlin there bears on nothing.

Two 16-ft cattle panels, cut in half, make the 3 hoops this tractor needs with no offcut — that is why the arc is 96" and not something rounder. Read this before you buy: a whole 16-ft panel will not do this job. Bent so its feet land 48" apart it sweeps 284 degrees and balloons to 77-9/16" across its belly — half a metre wider than the frame it is supposed to sit on. Cut in half it sweeps 217 degrees, which is the hoop drawn in this plan. Cut each panel at the middle stay with bolt cutters and leave the stub wires long; they become the tie points. Stand a half panel on the base with one edge against the closed-end arch, walk the two feet apart until they land on the outside faces of the skids, and staple. It takes two people and it fights back — the panel is a spring until both feet are down. Fasten a fence staple at every stay along both skids, and wire the panel to every chord joint on every arch. Lap the next piece 15" over the first and wire the lap together at every crossing. The lap is the stiffest part of the whole hoop; do not trim it out to save an inch.

Both ends get 1/2" plywood cut to the arch — a 6-sided shape, not a curve, so it scribes off the frame you already built. Lay the sheet against a standing arch, trace the segments, cut on the lines. The closed end is solid. That is the end the nests and the roost live in and it is the end the weather comes from; park the tractor with it into the wind. The door end gets the same sheet with a 24" x 26" opening cut out of it, centred. Check the corners, not the middle: the opening is a rectangle and the hoop over it is round, so the top corners are the tight spot at 33-7/8" above the grass with 36-7/8" available at the crown. Screw door stops round the inside of the opening for the door to close against.

Every opening in this plan gets something that closes it, and this is the big one. The door slab is 23-1/2" x 25-1/2" — a quarter inch of gap all round, which is the difference between a door and a door that binds the first wet week. Two ledges across the back and one diagonal brace running from the bottom hinge corner UP to the top latch corner. That direction, not the other one: the brace works in compression and a brace running the wrong way just hangs there while the door sags. Hinge it on the left, two 3in strap hinges through the door stop into the arch segment behind it. Latch it with a barrel bolt top and bottom, not one in the middle. A raccoon opens a single centre latch; two bolts at opposite ends of a door need two hands and an opposable thumb. It swings OUT. A door swinging in sweeps the ground the birds are standing on, and in a hoop the wall it would swing against is curved.

The cattle panel is not a fence. Its grid is about 6in x 8in. A hen walks out through that and a raccoon walks in. The steel is structure; the cloth is the barrier, and if you skip this step you have built a very strong open-air perch. Run 36" 1/2in hardware cloth in 3 courses up and over the hoop, each course the full 120", lapping 2" onto the one below and wired at every 4in along the lap. Half inch, and here is the actual source, because most of what is written about mesh sizes is retailer copy. The wildlife-damage handbook chapter on weasels (Henderson, 1994) says to close every opening larger than ONE inch and to do it with 1/2in hardware cloth; the same one-inch figure covers mink. Colorado State, writing about chicken tractors by name, says 1x2in welded wire or smaller. Kentucky's extension hoop pen uses 1x2in 14 ga. So 1/2in cloth is at or inside every sourced recommendation. What you will NOT find behind the usual advice is a number for how far a raccoon can reach through wire — nobody has published one. Trap the bottom edge under a cloth batten screwed to the skid rather than relying on staples. A predator pulls; a staple lets go and a screwed batten does not. Cut the end cloth to the same scribed arch shape as the plywood and fit it over the door opening as well — the door gets its own piece on the back of the slab.

A stationary run gets a buried apron. This thing moves every morning, so nothing can be buried, and a floorless coop sitting on open grass is exactly the case a digging predator is built for. Read the honest version first. The two things that ARE sourced for a pen that moves are on the next step and in step 9: wire carried tight down to a solid base rail (Kentucky ASC-189, which is the extension design this archetype descends from), and a stake at each corner (ATTRA, which prescribes U-shaped rebar and says it stops digging AND stops wind moving the pen). ASC-189 itself specifies no ground skirt at all. The skirt below is builder practice, not extension guidance, and we mark it that way: 12" of hardware cloth screwed along the outside of each skid and each end, bent out flat so it lies ON the grass rather than going down into it. The reasoning is that a digger starts at the wall it can see, hits wire a foot out, and does not know to back up and start again. That reasoning is sound and it is not evidence, so build it if your ground pressure warrants it and skip it if it does not — the wire-to-rail detail and the corner stakes are the part this plan will not let you skip. Lay the skirt flat and let the grass grow through it. It stays put under its own weight and it drags without catching.

A bare hoop is a sieve, which is right over the run and wrong over the roost. Cover the closed 52" — 34.7 sq ft — with a tarp or roll roofing, over the top and down both sides to the skid, and trap both long edges under a tarp batten screwed through into the panel line. Grommets and bungees flog themselves to pieces in a month on something this shape. Leave the other 65" bare. That is the run and it is meant to be open sky — it is what the birds are out there for, and an entirely covered hoop is a greenhouse with chickens in it. The uncovered/covered joint is the ventilation. There is no vent to cut and none to screen: the closed end is open along its whole cross section into the run.

2 boxes, 12" clear each, 13" deep, 12" of clear height, standing on legs 3" tall. On legs, not on the ground. There is no floor in this coop and the ground under it is the wet grass you parked it on this morning. It goes hard against the closed end, which is the dark end — hens want dark to lay and the whole rest of this coop is see-through. A sloped lid over the top on a piano hinge is the egg access; it lifts from inside the door. A 4" litter lip across the front keeps the bedding in when the tractor is dragged. Everything in a tractor slides forward every single morning, which is a thing stationary coop plans never have to think about.

One roost bar, 46-1/2" long, 2x2, running the LENGTH of the closed section on the centreline of the hoop at 20" above the grass. Along the length, not across the width, and this is the one thing the hoop shape gives you free. The crown is the only place with full headroom. A bar on the centreline is under the crown for its whole length, so every bird on it has 16-7/8" over her head. Run the same bar across the width instead and the birds at the ends of it are under 29-3/8" of hoop. Hang it off roost hangers screwed to the crown joint of the closed-end arch and the partition arch, with a prop down to the base rung at mid-span. At 10" of bar per bird this roost seats 4, which is at or above the 4 the floor area allows — the floor is the binding constraint here, as it should be.

A hoop is a wing. 34.7 sq ft of tarp on a curved surface will lift a 310 lb tractor in a gust, and it does not have to lift it far to roll it. Drive a stake through a stake plate at each corner, into the ground outside the skid, every time you move it. Four stakes, eighteen inches, thirty seconds. This is the step everyone skips and it is the step that writes off the coop. The stakes are also what stops the whole machine sliding downhill on wet grass with the birds shut in it overnight.