By John Suscovich
Cover Designer: Gerber Studio
Publisher: Emerald Lake Books
Publication Date: August 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965674-8-0
Book Description: Inside these pages, you will find step-by-step instructions for a mobile broiler chicken shelter for pastured poultry that is used by farmers and homesteaders all over the country.
Raising chickens on grass provides them with a healthy lifestyle and a delicious flavor. You can raise just enough of them to feed your family or scale up to include pastured poultry as a profitable part of your farm business. John Suscovich has raised thousands of chickens using these mobile shelters, a main enterprise on his farm in Connecticut.
These chicken tractors were created using the best elements from other designs. They are easy to move and provide a good life for the chickens. With a little bit of creativity, they can also be modified for seasonal egg-layer housing, rabbits, ducks and forts for your kids.
Not only does this book contain the plans and supply list to build your first chicken tractor, but it gives you some insight into how to use it and what mindset you should have if you are to become a happy and successful farmer.
John also walks you through the light carpentry skills you need to build these chicken tractors and teaches you the most commonly used knots on a farm. You may learn these skills for this project, but you’ll be able to apply them on your farm for years to come.
And to hear it all in his own words, and with his unique brand of enthusiasm, check out the great book launch trailer he made.
For fans of:
- Joel Salatin
- Josh Volk
- Julia Shanks
- Curtis Allen Stone
- Harvey Ussery
- Jeff Mattocks
Project Info: Our friend, fellow masterminder John Suscovich, first self-published his Stress-Free Chicken Tractor Plans in 2013. Over the intervening years, he’s fine-tuned his design and identified errors in the earlier version.
In a recent mastermind meeting, John told us that he wanted to launch a One Million Chickens Initiative. The goal was to help homesteaders and farmers raise one million chickens in the next year. He knew that a big part of reaching his goal would involve updating and re-releasing his chicken tractor plans.
Knowing that each of them could house conservatively house 25 chickens, we calculated how many books he’d have to sell to reach his goal, assuming that every reader built one tractor. From there, we started strategizing what he could do to sell that many books. By the end of the conversation, John knew he wanted our help to make his Initiative a success, and we were happy to join him!
We knew that his book sales needed to extend beyond his own existing (and impressive!) following. While his YouTube channel currently sports more than 26K subscribers, if we wanted to help raise one million chickens in 365 days, we needed to get creative! Somehow, we needed to sell 40K copies, which meant we needed a bigger reach, including getting the book into the hands of retail feed and farming stores.
While we’re still working on the details, Emerald Lake Books is ready to support John in every way that we can, starting first with producing a book he can be proud of, and that easily describes for his readers how to get started with their own chicken-based enterprises.
Having enjoyed John’s pastured poultry these past few years, we can attest to the fact that grass-fed chicken is like nothing else you can buy in the store. And if you follow the step-by-step instructions John has laid out in this book, you’ll have a suitable shelter for your own little flock on no time flat!
In the News:
Young Farmer Seeks to Raise 1 Million Chickens on Grass
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