Introducing the Hoevator

Since most of the chickens that we raise end up spending some time growing up in the chicken pen area, which was put in an area shaded with oak trees, they end up liking to stay, considering that home base, and often perch in the trees when bedding down for the night. Well, out here there are just too many harmful critters that roam around at night, so we try to make sure to get the chickens into the chicken tractor. If I couldn't stand on the chicken pen's coupe, I was having to climb some of the trees to get them down. This got tiresome quite quickly.

One night, I thought I would try to just poke them out of the tree with something, and decided to try using the garden hoe. When I put the hoe head up to the chicken to push underneath it, I believe it just sort of hopped on; and I was able to just lower it down while it sat perched on the hoe head. Hmmm....let me try that again. And it worked again! And again, and kept working with very good success! Hey, pretty nifty! So, we thought we'd offer a demonstration of the Hoevator in action!

Once in a while, especially if I start the process too early in the evening, the chicken will fly off; but for the most part, it all works very consistently.


I know, it's a simple thing, but it beats climbing the trees or trying to get the chickens to fly down. We're thankful to the Lord for Him allowing us to discover this little chicken-retrieving technique!

-- David