Now where did I leave off in our exciting saga? I believe a little baby had joined the farm and we were just starting to get some eggs from our hens. Well, I fear I’ll have to skip a few chapters because Kevi Jr. is now 3 months old, 16 pounds, and wearing clothes that are made for 6-9 month-olds, and our little batch of laying hens are producing 240-260 eggs each day!It is a great time to be on the farm. We are coming up on our 1-year anniversary of moving to TomKat Ranch and already we are maturing enterprises we weren’t expecting to even begin until our third or even our fifth year. The pigs are thriving in their rapid rotations through the forest and this next batch we are processing is right now gorging themselves on the wild blackberries and strawberries that are ripening all over the place.
Our nascent egg business couldn’t be doing better too! Our egg mobile is performing perfectly and this week we are installing the final components (solar powered automatic doors, bulk feed storage, and rain-capture tank) that will make it a breeze to rotate around the 2,000 acres of TomKat Ranch. As it stands, the custom design appears to be just what this special terrain needs. The wheel base sits approximately as wide as the structure is tall (6.5’) so it sits quite comfortably on even the most uncomfortably slanted hill. The internal space is amazingly accommodating for the hens and even without accounting for the eucalyptus roost bars that span the whole structure, each hen is getting about 0.65 square feet of internal space in which to sleep.As for outside space, these girls are given limitless paddocks. That’s right, in order to let them do their job of gobbling up all the bugs they can find, we let them roam completely uninhibited. The girls absolutely love it and every night dutifully return home to by sunset so we can close them in their house and move them to their next paddock in the morning. It’s simply amazing!
Kevi Jr. is starting to use his voice more too, which brings us a great deal of entertainment and joy. The squeals and half words are adorable, but we are most struck but how he mimics the rhythm of a conversation, waiting until we reply to say anything else.It’s looking like 2012 will be quite a great year. We’ll do our best to keep you all in the loop!
