Healthy eggs

Healthy eggs don't just happen by accident, they have to start with healthy chickens. My idea of confinement starts with what is know as a chicken tractor. There are a lot of different ideas for the perfect chicken tractor and there is probably a good argument for reasons why, I'm not even sure such a thing exists. When I started down the chicken road I looked at a lot of different ideas and then came up with something that I figured would work for me. Now I truck farm so I wanted something that wasn't much wider than my beds so that if I have to confine my chickens for a few months over the summer so they wouldn't wreak havoc with my plants I could keep them on the beds that I want extra fertilizer on. The pictures included are of my first design but I have a second design started that I think will be a big improvement. My tractors are 4ft x8ft with a second level that is cantilevered over the frame in the rear to make the front end lighter to lift to put the wheels on and take them back off when I want to move it. It also has nest boxes that extend further out the back with a separate lid to collect eggs from. The roof is hinged so the whole thing flips up to make it easier to clean. It's a total of 48sq ft, 32 of it to open ground and 16sq ft inside not counting the nest boxes. For the bigest part of the year all it is is a place for them to be in overnight and a few hours in the morning until they are done laying eggs. I mentioned my second design and it's going to be pretty similar except with a wire floor inside and a droppings board underneath that will emtpy into a tray under the nestbox to make it easy to get the waste from there to the compost pile. I'm also going to put a pitched roof on it that extends over the yard a couple feet to give them more shade in summer, the roof will still open from one side for cleaning.Hopefully the new model will be a bit lighter, I'm building it out of lighter materials and I'm also going to put sliding windows on the sides and on the ends of the roof so I can open and close them as the wind changes direction and the windows will leave in more light. I think as confinement goes these do ok, they're small enough inside that the chickens can stay pretty warm even on the coldest winter nights but even in the summer when they are cooped up in them they have 4-5sq ft of space per bird. The biggest drawback so far is keeping water open on the coldest days of winter, I usually check water every couple of hours on days when the temps are below freezing. I started this off by talking about healthy eggs and it's easy to keep your chickens healthy with a place to stay dry and good feed and the other ingredient I have for healthy eggs is to clean out the nestboxes and rebed them first thing in the morning if needed so the eggs are always clean when I collect them and that leaves me confident that I can sell the freshest healthiest eggs possible.

Some ideas on sustainable farming

For the past few years I've been planting a 2 acre market garden that so far I have been able do without any chemicals or commercial fertilizer and aside from some weather issues and not being able to make enough compost to suit me, it's gone ok. To me, any kind of sustainable venture needs to include growing vegetables, any vegetables that you grow will save money at the market plus you know how your food is grown and, if all goes well it should give you some cash besides, it really is about the same as growing money. Back in my Grandfathers time it was called truck farming,I'm guessing because the vegetables were put on a truck and hauled to market and I like that name. There is a lot of thought that needs to go into something like this and if you get it started, you will probably be constantly tweaking to come up with a combination that works for you and that is the most important part, making it work for you. Education is your best weapon here and I'll be including links here or you can go to one of my Facebook pages and find links to articles that I've used in the past but the bottom line is that you really need to figure out what will work for you and then start working at putting that plan in motion. One of the biggest problems with truck farming is that most of the work happens over a couple months in the summer so if your going to make this a venture that you can live off of then you need to spread it out to as close to year round as possible. Most of the months from April to October will be covered but adding crops like garlic which around here is planted in the fall or mushrooms like oyster or shiitake that will grow with little input  from you once they are started will help spread out the labor some and in the case with mushrooms, give you a crop to harvest in the spring. I've mentioned chickens before and if you can build a market for eggs and meat chickens, they can add some extra late fall/early winter income or extra spring income that can get you through the winter and give you the added benefit of eggs,meat and fertilizer. Now those chickens will have to be fed all winter even if production is down but by starting hens laying at different times in the year you should be able to keep some laying over winter plus if you can free range them in the garden through the fall plus grow a late season garden of mostly greens that will usually get you into winter at least and a fodder growing system that will keep feed costs down for the laying hens in the winter months it is workable. Looking for new ideas and figuring how to make them work in your favor is your best bet for coming out on top of any business venture and sustainable farming is no different.

A man, a small tractor, a couple acres and chickens

I've done a good bit of research in the past year on sustainable farming and permaculture and I really believe that it has, not only the benefit of being good for the earth but can also provide a good income or at least a very good second income to anyone with a couple acres and some ambition. A few years ago I would have been satisfied with $5000-6000/acre of off a market garden but I really think now that there is a lot more potential. If your not familiar with permaculture it involves putting all of the waste back into improving the soil for the future. One of the setbacks that I've experienced in the past couple years has been to have enough compost to make a difference in the soil for a 2 acre market garden. I use everything that I can compost around here and get some extra from a nrighbor with a landscape business but so far it's been a pretty small amount. About a year and a half ago I added a few chickens and recently increased the flock to 20. In my opinion, chickens are the ultimate composting machine along with providing eggs to eat. Now 20 chickens are still only going to add about 600lbs of fertilizer/year but I really think 2 acres can support a much bigger and still healthy flock of chickens especially if it includes broiler chickens a couple times/year. And that is what permaculture is all about, having a plan to use the land in the most efficient and sustainable way. Stay tuned for more thoughts on this and see where this project is headed.

Outback Farm

Outback Farm, even though it had no name back then was an idea I came up with back around 2007. I was in NY at the time working as an owner/operator with a tri-axle dump truck. Work was getting slow, fuel prices and everything else except rates was going up and I was looking for a way to make some extra money.My plan at the time was to rent an acre of ground from a neighbor that was downsizing her operation but a few other things came up and I figured that I'd be better off in Pa where I had access to more resources. Now before I go any farther, I'm not someone that is tired of the workaday world and wanted a change in scenery, I spent most of my first 40 years on a working farm and I'm the 9th generation to farm land in Nescopeck Twp so I know the life and knew what I was getting into but I also have a good idea of what I'm doing when it comes to farming. I do have to admit though that I have always been a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy and really never had much of a plan until recently. I figured in the beginning that I could make an ok living on a couple acres of produce and a woodlot but in the past year I've really looked into sustainable farming and I'm pretty convinced that I can make more than a decent living off of the couple tillable acres that I have with time being the biggest investment. I mentioned Joel Salintin from Polyface farm, Will Allen from Growing Power and Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Institute of Australia before but I'll tell you if your not familiar with their work do yourself a favor and check out some of the things they are doing, it's pretty amazing stuff. In their world anyone with as little as a half acre or or less can feed a family, if you have a couple acres, you can do that plus have a good business besides. So what does that mean for Outback Farm? Well you can already see that I'm into produce and chickens for eggs. Hopefully by this fall I can be raising chickens for fresh meat. Down the road a year or so I'm figuring a 20x50 high tunnel greenhouse that I can raise greens almost year round, tomatoes and peppers by early June and then raise turkeys for fresh meat until November/December. And looking even farther ahead I might even get into selling compost. That's the plan lets hope it works.

Starting chicks

I see a lot of people are getting chickens to raise  right now, I know TSC has had theirs in for a few weeks now and I see a lot of questions being asked about starting them. Chicks are really pretty easy to raise when it comes right down to it, they are one of the few animals that are born with the instinct to find their own food and unless your getting chicks at day 1 from a hatchery most have already gotten a pretty good start on feeding. All the little critters really need is a warm, dry place to sleep, food and water and they'll do fine. People worry a lot about keeping them warm enough but unless your keeping them in an unheated garage or something they should easy stay warm enough to survive, they do need some extra heat but the idea that they need it to be 95degrees is a little overrated. If you keep an eye on them for the first few days put your heatlamp in one corner of their enclosure and then see where they lay, if they're laying in a pile right under the lamp then the heat should probably be raised a little by putting the lamp closer to them but if they're spread out some they're fine. Really all you want is to keep them from sleeping on a pile and risking suffocation.

The pictures here are from 30 that I got last October, the second picture is from a few days ago, that was the first nice day that they could be out on their own free ranging. I still have 20 of them, I sold the rest, these guys are doing great and right now are giving me almost a dozen eggs per day. Stay tuned for more chicken adventures.