Moving Day for the Pullets

The day has come to move our new laying hens on to pasture! The new chicken tractor is ready and so are the pullets! We tested a new moving method this time since we have so many birds (83 to be exact). The back of the pick up truck with a piece of the broiler pen as the top worked pretty good. They really had too much space and were pretty jumpy in there...

 Once we got them moved in they seemed to adjust really quickly! On a sunny day like this one they seem to stay really close to the coop and venture out more when the sun is going down.

Our laying hens were also moved  to the pasture area from their winter home across the street. They are loving the new grass!

They found a compost pile we had dumped in the field and totally tore that thing apart! Guessing there was lots of tasty worms in there!

We wrapped the electric netting around the old hay rake... hoping they take to using it as a roost so we can snap a pic :-)

The extra electric netting we purchased this year gives us a much larger area for the hens to graze. It reaches from the woods line all the way to the road. Right now we have a divider fence between the new pullets and the older hens so that they can get use to each other. Soon we will remove the divider and let them hang out together. Our plan is to eventually use only the new chicken tractor/coop to hold all the laying hens. 

Early Spring Update 2013

Things are really picking up now on the farm! Here is a few of the things we've been up to...

Our newest laying hens are really getting too big for our small brooding coop and their new home is just about done! Here are a couple of photo's...

We still need to add roosts and egg boxes but it's looking really good!

It has been very dry so far this spring but because the ducks love the water soooooo much we usually fill the turtle pool once a day for them to splash and play in. They are so fun to watch!

Our rhubarb is just getting going, we hope to have a bumper crop this year!

Our tomato seedlings have just been transplanted into large soil blocks. We are keeping the in the green house with an extra layer or two of row covering over them at night just in case. 

Outside we have lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage in. We are using row covers on these also, mostly to keep away those pesky cabbage loopers.

Our first batch of broiler chickens have arrived. Also ordered three guinea hens to help keep the tick population down.

Winter Update: New GVF Babies Arrive

 Things are pretty slow right now at the farm. We have our vegetable seeds ordered and are waiting their arrival. Some of the guys have been working on our sawmill but quickly came to realize that frozen logs do not cut well! We are also about to start tapping trees for this years maple syrup run. We are praying that it is a great year for sap so that we have enough syrup to sell in our farm stand all season.

 Most of the excitement right now is coming from our order of 100 Rhode Island Red chicks! We are trying to keep ahead of the demand for our pastured eggs come this summer. Right now we are just barely keeping up! We ordered them to arrive at the start of February so that they would be laying in June.

They are so cute and fun to watch at this age! They are living in a large box in the house for now but will be headed to a coop once a few more of their feathers come in. Then once the snow is gone and the grass is in we will move them to the chicken tractor.  The kids are loving having them inside the house!

 We will most likely add another 50 chicks in the summer so we will end up with a grand total of 200. We hope to be able to offer our eggs at a local natural food store! Stay tuned!

Pastured Eggs For Sale

We finally have eggs for sale! Our beautiful Rhode Island Red Hens are laying up a storm and we are now ready to sell some at our farm stand. To the left is our new egg box label that you will see on our boxes when stopping by.  

Here are the girls happy to see us as we head to the coop to pick up eggs.

 The back of the chicken tractor/coop is where we added on the egg boxes. You access them by opening these double doors on the back.

WOW! An amazing 34 eggs today! The most laid so far!!!

As you can see above we have ten boxes shared by 46 hens. They seem to have gotten the hang of it now. Occasionally we will find an eggs laid on the ground inside, we are guessing this is from a hen who has just started laying and has not found the boxes yet.

 Our little helpers today were so excited to count all those eggs!

 If you've never heard the term "pastured eggs" and are wondering why we use it you should know a few facts about them:

Fact #1 - Pastured hens are raised on pasture! Unlike factory hens who are kept in confinement and fed primarily grains. Fact #2 - Pastured eggs contain up to 20 times more healthy omega-3 fatty acids than the factory produced eggs. Omega-3's are healthy fats that are anti-inflammatory and good for your heart. Fact #3 - Pastured hens eat lots of bugs, earthworms, and other such critters that makes their eggs better tasting and more nutritious. Fact #4 - Pasturing hens is far more humane. The hens have lots of space to move and run and explore unlike the factory hens who have no fresh air to breath or space to move. Fact #5 - Pastured eggs also have higher vitamin's A and E and 10 percent less fat and 34 percent less cholesterol than eggs obtained from factory farms.

Stop by to try some of our eggs today! Our eggs are fresh, clean, and delicious!!!

The First Eggs

We were so excited to find three eggs this weekend! We were about to give the house the old heave ho when we spotted one. It was laying right on the ground in a little hole the hens had dug! Next thing we knew we had found two more!! We were relieved to have spotted them before moving the house, our first eggs could have been scrambled!

Thanks girls! No egg boxes or anything!! Now to get those boxes done and attached to the back.

A Chicken Tractor for Pastured Egg Layers

Our next construction project after the duck house was a movable chicken coop (also known as a chicken tractor) for our Rhode Island Red pullets (young hens). We decided on a light weight A-frame style with some metal roofing to keep out the rain and provide protection from the sun. 

Here's Patrick our "construction manager" adding chicken wire to the ends. This end will hold the egg boxes later in the year but for now it will just be chicken wire.

We also added two clear plastic panels to each side to allow light into the roosting area.

From this view you can see the end with the door and the roosting area inside. The roosts were just 1" poles we cut from the woods and crisscrossed inside the tractor. Just inside the door we allowed for enough room to hang their feed and water. We also used electric wire netting since it is easy to move! 

This is moving day! The kids are excited to let the pullets into their new home.

Here are the girls (and a few boys!) enjoying the fresh grass in their new home! It took them a few days to find the roosts but they easily adapted to the new area. Eggs coming soon...

Just a few bits of info if anyone is interested...
 We could not find any info on chicken tractor designs for pastured egg layers online when we started this project. Hope this may be helpful to someone else.

This coop was built for 50 hens but could hold up to 70-75. 

It is 16' long and 12' wide.

The total cost of materials was around $1000.

The electric netting was purchased at Premier we have184 feet in two sections.

We use a hanging metal feeder that we bought at Tractor Supply.

We use this style dispenser for water that we also bought online.

We have found that the tractor needs to be moved twice a week, once within the fencing and another when we move the entire fencing system. We will update this with the egg boxes when we get them on.


UPDATE: Check out this post to see how we added the egg boxes on to the back.

UPDATE 2013: This year we needed to add 100 new laying hens to our flock to keep up with the demand for our pastured eggs. We are trying out a new tractor/coop in order to house them all. We were also wanting more space for egg boxes since we have had some issues with broken eggs and eggs being eaten by the hens. Below is a link to the post with a few photo's of our new set up. We also added double the amount of electric netting as we had last year. The new  house is quite hard to move right now since we have not added the wheels. We are moving it by slowly dragging it along with the farm tractor. We would love to elevate the whole thing on some kind of steel frame with wheels and then be able to hook on to the frame when moving.
Post 1 with construction photo's inside and out.
Post 2 with photo's in the field.