Egg Count 12

The egg count for November was 280 dozen, or 3,363 eggs, from 315 hens, which works out to an average of 9.34 dozen per day. Thankfully, this represents a significant turn around from the last few months. During November, the Ecotone hens ate 1,850 pounds of grain, or 61.67 pounds per day. If you're following the ongoing grain to egg ratio, this is .55 lbs. of grain for each egg, or 6.6 lbs. per dozen. Like the egg count more generally, these numbers reflect a welcome return to the price of a dozen eggs being lower than their cost.

To some, this turn around may seem counter-intuitive. As you may know, the number of eggs a hen lays over the course of a year is directly related to the number of hours of daylight. As we approach the equinox and the days continue to get shorter, in other words, the number of eggs naturally wanes. Because we've had such low numbers over the course of the summer, and because Animal Welfare Approved allows supplemental light not to exceed 16 hours a day, we decided to experiment with this option.

On November 27th, Jonathan helped run electricity through the pasture to the hens (and pigs), and we successfully installed several CFL lights on a timer. I began the hens off slow, giving them an hour or so of extra light at both ends of the day. As of today, with sunrise set for 6:51 a.m., and sunset scheduled for 4:34 pm., we're just barely getting 9 hours of daylight. Three weeks after installing the lights, the hens (and I) are getting up at 4:30 a.m. and going to sleep at 6:30 p.m., which gives them roughly 14 hours of light. Thus, the eggs.

A Day Late, Plus Eight

On Monday, November 29th, Sadie gave birth to eight healthy piglets. Not wanting to disturb them too much, I lifted back the tarp covering their house only a little bit, so the resulting video is a little dark.

That morning, C.J. was in the process of getting the farrowing huts ready for the next round of piglets when he realized he hadn't seen Sadie yet that day, and that the other pigs were standing at the fence looking anxious. Realizing what was afoot, he went back into the woods where the pigs are eating this year's mast and - sure enough - Sadie was in labor with two piglets already having been born, under a nice oak tree and right next to several old, discarded tires.

With rain and freezing temperatures approaching within hours, the panicky new farmer began running around trying to figure out what to do. After first preparing to move mom and babies into the fancy farrowing huts he built for them, the plan changed; he now decided to take the hut to them. With the help of Jim and Jonathan Smith - the dynamic father-son neighbor duo that has helped C.J. so much over the last two years - they carefully lifted a lighter shelter over Sadie and her now seven piglets. They were then covered from the rain, just beginning to fall from the sky, and extensions cords provided the electricity for the heat lamps to ward off the chill from the night to come. The eighth soon followed.

Good Husbandry Grant

I'm happy to announce that Ecotone has been selected to receive a grant through the Animal Welfare Approved Good Husbandry Program. This grant - awarded at $5,000 - will enable the full and timely completion of a poultry mobile processing unit (MPU), scheduled for debut at the Tennessee Organic Grower's Association meeting in March 2011.

For the interested, find below the details of the grant proposal. In the service of transparency, I will also begin to track its expenses and construction, both as an exercise particular to this project, as well as an initial step toward a more comprehensive policy of open accounting for the farm generally. Finally, throughout are some recent photos of the farm this fall, as well as three photos of the unit at Foothill Family Farms in North Carolina that sparked this idea, and is the basic model on which we'll proceed.
The goal of this project is to complete a poultry mobile processing unit (MPU) to be made available subsequently for rent to regional farmers wishing and willing to process their own animals, on their own farm, in a welfare oriented way. Currently there is only one small-scale poultry processor in a five state region.

For both homesteaders and farmers, then, this MPU will serve a direct and vital need, and will be the primary vehicle for the new agrarian coalition F.L.A.G., or Farmers for Local Animals and Grain, which aims to promote local food sovereignty and the transparency of farming practices and marketing claims.

Over the last year, in cooperation with two other local farmers, we have acquired the following items to complete this project: a 28' double-axle trailer, a rotating scalder and plucker, and a stainless steel evisceration table. In addition, we have built several iterations of slaughter cones, to be attached in an exchangeable way for different size poultry. Funding from this grant will facilitate the completion of this project, including major renovations to the trailer. The outcome will be the regional availability of a major piece of agricultural equipment for which there is a direct and vital need.
Mobile processing units are of significant benefit to farm animals. Without the enormous stresses associated with transport - catching, caging, moving, and unloading - the MPU is especially beneficial to poultry, which are often caught the night before, overnighted in transport pens, and unloaded hours later, many miles away, by people working as quickly as possible. With a MPU, it is conceivable that birds never even have to leave their enclosures on pasture.

The MPU, moreover, will be a classroom on wheels, and inevitably be a space for the agrarian education of farmers and eaters. As we have seen just with this equipment on the farm, both producers and consumers are eager to learn how their food is raised and prepared and, in turn, to learn how to raise and prepare their food. In short, this MPU will enable people to eat and live in ways that are beneficial to themselves, their neighbors, and the lives and places that sustain them both.

Once the already significant expenses of this project are recovered, the MPU will improve the viability of Ecotone by providing an alternative source of income through rental and processing services, and an ongoing means for agrarian education, which is one of the primary aims of the farm.
As a cooperative project, however, the MPU will have a much more significant and widespread effect. By enabling local farmers to process their own poultry, on their own farms and in welfare oriented ways, not only are the expenses and stresses of transportation to the nearest facility in Kentucky eliminated, but one of the most important pieces of infrastructure for building local food economies will be available for use by the general public. In short, this grant will improve the viability of many farms throughout the local and regional food-shed.

Egg Count 11

The egg count for October was 130.44 dozen, or 4.21 dozen per day, from 319 hens. If you've been keeping up with the count, then you know that this represents a significant turnaround from last month. It seems that the main problem concerned the hens not getting enough of their vitamin and mineral supplement mix, Fertrell's, which had been offered free-choice since the transition to organic feed grains.

On October 12, I began to mix the Fertrell's into their feed by hand. On that day the count was 1 dozen total. By October 14, the total count had climbed to 2.5 total. A week later the count had risen to 5.5 dozen. By the end of the month, the total daily egg count was close to 10 dozen.
This is really sort of remarkable. Over the last two weeks of October, once I began to hand-mix the Fertrell's into their grain ration, the number of eggs laid by the Ecotone hens rose by almost 1,000% a day. Cumulatively, from October 12 to the end of the month, there was a 866% increase in the number of eggs laid on the farm!

Even with these numbers, the feed conversion ratio remained rather high. For the month of October, the average amount of grain it took for each dozen eggs was 12.27 lbs per dozen, or just over a pound per egg. This put the cost of each dozen eggs from Ecotone at $3.68. Given the last two months of significant costs and very few eggs - where the average cost of a dozen was $11.60 - this is no doubt encouraging, but still some tough accounting.

Lessons in Leverage

The art of raising pastured poultry requires frequent moving. Once each flock of chickens has spent a few days in one location, with their two roosting tractors and one nesting tractor as the center of their world and a ring of electric netting defining its perimeter, they've had enough time to scratch and peck through almost every inch of their territory, gleaning nutritious bugs as they go and depositing precious fertilizer. Then it's time for fresh ground.

Moving the roosting tractors and nesting tractor used to be a frustrating and daunting activity requiring two people, back when we were using flimsy little warehouse-style dollies. Now that CJ has custom-welded these fancy new special dollies (in red) with a five-foot wheelbase and curved spot where the base of the pen sits snug, he is able to move them by himself, realizing a major goal in hen husbandry.

Cluck Old Hen

Upon recommendation of the Pastured Poet, I began to sing this song to the hens in the morning and evenings as a greeting. It seems to be working. The eggs seem to be coming back.

I got a hen, pretty good hen.

She lays eggs for the railroad men.

Sometimes one, sometimes two.
Sometimes enough for the whole dang crew.

Cluck old hen, cluck and sing

Ain't laid an egg since away last spring.

Cluck old hen, cluck and squall.

Ain't laid an egg since away last fall.

Well, perhaps it's my melody, or perhaps it's due to the fact that on October 12th I began to mix in the organic (non-Methionine) Fertrell's that was being offered free choice until then. That day, I mixed in roughly 25 pounds of the Nutri-balancer to 100 pounds of feed per flock. The total egg count on the 12th was 1.25 dozen. Two days later on the 14th, the count jumped to 1.25 dozen per flock, which is more than we've collected in day for months.

On Sunday, the 17th, still waiting for the other formula of Fertrell's to arrive, I went ahead and mixed in another 15 pounds per 100 pounds of grain for each flock. That day, the count was 1.83 dozen for Flock A and 2.33 dozen for Flock B. Yesterday's total egg count was 4.83 dozen.
So stay tuned out there! Eggs will soon be rolling your way! Until then, the return of hens clucking outside my window is a welcome sound indeed.

Radical Agrarianism 3

Next week the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (C.I.W.) will bring to Nashville the Mobile Slavery Museum, which documents contemporary agricultural slavery in the balmy fields of Florida. On Monday the museum will be parked on Alumni Lawn on the Vanderbilt campus from 9 am to 4 pm. Check out this article, and the links above, for more information. Eat local. Live free.

How to Read a Chicken

As always with ongoing experience, new hypotheses emerge. Lately I'd come to think that the egg problem was nutritional in nature. The problem, I thought, either had to do with the size of the grind itself - the most significant evidence for which is the fact that industrial operations do it, and because it costs more to do so, you gotta figure there's a reason for it - or that the hens were not getting enough of their vitamin premix and calcium. Since the transition to organic grains, these supplements were offered free choice only, or not mixed in with their regular rations. The Fertrell's Poultry Nutri-balancer premix is formulated for 60 pounds per ton, and it was obvious that they weren't ingesting it at that rate.

Also with the transition to organic, we switched over to the organic formulation of the Fertrell's itself, which is identical to its non-organic counterpart expect in containing a synthetic version of the amino acid Methionine. This amino is crucial for laying hens in particular, and is only found naturally in animal proteins, e.g., insects, frogs, rodents, worms, etc., that the birds consume on pasture. (Remember: chickens are not vegetarians.) Currently there is a USDA exemption for Methionine in organic production simply because there is no available alternative on the market.

So yesterday I spoke with the poultry nutrition guru at Fertrell's, Jeff Maddox, and after describing the situation he identified the following two potential problems. The first concerned the temperature at which the soybeans are roasted. For cattle and other ruminants, soybeans are typically roasted at 270 degrees for 20 minutes. For poultry and pigs, however, the temperature must be higher for longer, ideally at 300 degrees for at least 25 minutes. The second potential issue was indeed a Methionine deficiency, which he diagnosed through the hens occasionally eating small, fluffy feathers that have fallen to the ground. (Again, think about lacking adequate animal proteins, of which feathers are nothing but.) Jeff recommended switching back to the original Fertrell's formula.
Also yesterday I went up to get this month's feed from Windy Acres. Mr. Farris takes his beans J&M Farms in Guthrie, KY, which is an organic dairy that has the only known independent roaster in the region. And, indeed, after speaking with the folks at J&M this morning, they're roasting the soybeans between 245 and 260 degrees. So either we're going to raise the temperature adequately, or roast the beans and keep them warm for a longer period of time. Temperature recommendations are 270 degrees for 25 minutes, 260 degrees for 35 minutes, or 250 degrees for 45 minutes. As for the Methionine, I've ordered the original Fertrell's formula, and it should be in within the week. (Incidentally, we also get the Fertrell's and the other minerals we use on the farm from the folks at J&M Farm.) Alternatively, Jeff said, the Methionine requirement can be met with 25 to 40 pounds of fish meal per ton, but this is not allowed in organic production.

In addition to these changes, I'm moving the hens through the pasture fairly quickly to get them in place for the winter. Once bivouacked I plan on introducing some lights to extend the appearance of day light and so induce them to lay. Animal Welfare Approved standards allow such artificial light, not to exceed 16 hours total per day. I have until now resisted this option as a husband, instead wanting to allow the hens an "all natural" laying cycle with the seasons. But people want to eat farm-fresh eggs year round, and its seems like many farmers do this just to pay the feed bills on heritage breed hens. Otherwise, I'm told, you're just keeping pet chickens. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Egg Count 10

The egg count for September stands at a grand total of 31.55 dozen, or 1.51 dozen per day. The worst month yet for eggs since the first flock of hens began to lay last September. And rather than bemoan the obvious, I thought I'd just post some recent photos.

The Machine

Well after almost a full year of research, thinking, and financial planning, the machine has arrived. This tractor is a new Mahindra 4025, with 40 horsepower, 2 wheel drive, and loader. I purchased it at Highland Rim Tractor in Goodlettsville, which has been selling Mahindra tractors for 35 years. While Mahindra is an Indian company, this tractor was assembled with American labor at their assembly in Chattanooga with several significant American parts, such as Bosch pumps.

In 2009 Mahindra was the best-selling tractor in the world, and to thank all those past customers the company was offering a manufacture's discount that made this machine quite affordable. Indeed, it was almost cheaper than a used one, and with a 5 year warranty was hard to beat. As Jerry pulled the tractor off the trailer this morning, he told me to take good care of it and my kids will be driving it. And while I'm certainly going to do that, I don't think I'm going to jump to any conclusions about the next generation's agrarian aspirations. Until then, I'd stay out of them bushes!