My wife asked me if the guinea pigs could use a spare chicken tractor during the summer so they could ‘free range’ and eat clover and such from the yard.  A chicken tractor won’t hold a guinea pig; however, I used a lot of what I’ve learned building the tractors and coops to make a ‘Guinea Pig Tractor’.

I’m not going into a “how to” on building a guinea tractor, like the “How To Build a Chicken Tractor” guide I did, but here are some basics.  I purchases 2 2x4s and 4 2x2s and scavenged the rest from leftovers of other projects.

I started with a 2×4 frame, cutting the boards at 34″ to give me the inside width and ~5 feet left over for the length boards.  I used a scrap 2×6 for the board on the end with the house so that I could attach some wheels later.  That gave me an extra 2×4 to use for the floor/nailer of the house area.

The tricky part was the 45 degree A frame.  I calculated the length needed as ~24″ for the “rafter” pieces, subtract the width of the 2×2 header, and that gave me ~23.5.  Measuring  from each end of a 2×2, then making a 45 degree cut angled toward the end, so 23.5″ is the length from the tip of the angle, will let you get 4 rafters out of one board.  Measure 23.5″ from the remaining tips and made 90 degree cuts at the marks.  See layout below below.  I cut 8 rafters out of two of the 2x2s.

I cut the 3rd 2×2 at 34″ and attached it to the back 2×6 and attached the 2×4 flat to form a ledge for the house floor.  The width of the hose is 14″ because of the scraps I had to work with.  The leftover 5′ from the 3rd 2×2 becomes the top header.  I pre-drilled the screw holes in the header where I attached the diagonals, making sure to offset the screws so they didn’t hit when they crossed.  I attached the diagonals at each end, under the inside of the house, and where needed for the door in the tractor.

I used the 4th 2×2 to make a 2′ door to the tractor area.  The rest was just fitting my scraps in the house shape and stapling on the chicken wire.  I also used 2×4 fencing on the bottom to keep any predators from sliding under the sides and into the tractor.

In these pictures I have a board as the floor of the house area.  I later removed this because guinea pigs are not particular about defecating in the area they sleep in and this area was difficult to clean.  It’s now just fenced in open bottom like the run area.  To clean it, we just move the tractor.