I STRONGLY agree with one of the last assertions made in the video. Egg sales are such a valuable point of entry for farm customers. It is far easier to sell a butchered chicken, duck, rabbit, side of beef, whole hog, canned stock or lard, etc to a regular egg customer with whom you have a relationship, and who understands your farming philosophy and standards than a complete stranger. They're also far more likely to keep their lips sealed if you're operating somewhat outside of the strictest regulatory parameters!
I’m in the USA (Pennsylvania) and me and my family will be starting our farming adventure next year . I can’t wait to have my husband and I teach and show our 6 children about a hard days work and we love animals and so do all our kids.
I'm from PA too! We already do pastured layers, but I've been researching ideas to make it more efficient and profitable. Hope your farming adventured are rewarding!
I had to pause the video.....twice....my goodness that's a lot of info to digest, Take notes there is so much information here. Always glad to see others incorporating the full use of the animals into the farm. Peace
Dear Richard. So good to get this condesed knowlege just one day before our fist ever lifestock arrives. Tomorrow on June 1st we receive 40 layers that move across an old moto-x-track to regenerate the land. Because of strong predator pressure they will move in a geodome structure we finished today. All eggs are presould to a local Permaculture COOP here in Sintra, Portugal. My friend and I spent intense 12 days to set everything up. Geodome covered in chicken fencing and partially roofed with a tarp, roll away nest box and a closit like box for food storage. The whole enterprise will be on an off grid plot of land outside of the village and we are very excited. You made this possible with all your great videos and your amazing book. Thank you so much. In case all goes well in the first year, we will shurely scale up!
Hi my_permaculture, good to know people doing that in Portugal. I am curious about what kind of predators pressure do you have there? And how about the market in Portugal?
OvertheWheels We have Foxes, several predatory birds, a Wildcat called Gineta, Martens and stray dogs and cats. Most difficult is that the land the chickens will live on is a bit remote and uninhabited. About selling, we presoould all our eggs to a local Permaculture food COOP.
I had no idea about all those predators in Portugal. Is it common in all areas? For example, I am looking for a place in the north, in the Douro area. Would be those predators a problem there as well? Do you have instagram or facebook where I can pictures of your farm?
Overthewheels it really dont mater ere you are predators are every were, foxs of all breads are common no mater were you go, same with birds of pray, raccoons snakes, we dont have bad snakes here but places not to far away do, anything that is seen on my land is shot on site no mater what it is
Can verify the comments about being able to detect interesting things about eggs by touch with practice. Worked at a large scale egg production facility while in high school. Hand collected between 60-70 cases per day and your fingers become remarkably tuned to texture, shape, and weight of the eggs. Double yolks, thin shells, cracked shells, etc. can easily be detected by touch.
Sitting on the edge of my seat waiting on my book from kickstarter! Really excited to read up on some ideas to get our property earning some income. And methodologies you have developed along the way.
Great class! Inspiring to see the level of planning and organizing (and learning), so useful in any undertaking And videos are getting better and better, thank you for sharing and teaching!
I know this is an older video but that light for the layers is probably on a solar panel...yes. Add a $15 dc timer to turn on and off a lot cheaper than labor to go out and flip a switch
I just switched over to all grass fed beef, wild caught fish, and pasture raised eggs and chicken on my keto diet. This diet has enabled me to get off all but one of my diabetic meds. One thing that concerns me is the chicken feed, is it corn based? I have found that as my cholesterol has risen from the diet my concern for the type of cholesterol I am producing increased. It doesn't help that the American medical industry doesn't recognize cholesterol quality they just vilified all cholesterol. I suspect cholesterol meds gave my dad dementia. The main reason why I switched to wild caught fish was because my diet was heavy with salmon but as I found out the feed was based on corn , I had to assume the fish meat cholesterol was heavy on the LDL.
Richard have you considered using Ayrshires as a dairy breed? The breed tolerates heat well. They do decently for beef with the bull caves. They have great utters and do well without concentrates. The Ayrshires will do far better than Holsteins. Sorting eggs in the field is a new concept for me. I may try that on our small flock in The Philippines. God bless and thank you for sharing. God bless!
Oh that's it - I've always been wondering why some boiled eggs are so hard to peel. Fabulous information again - thank you so much. :-) You guys have a beautiful place to live.
Heli Iso-Aho when you boil your next bunch of eggs place them straight into chilled water while they are hot & this will make the membrane retract from the inside of the shell. You won’t have as much trouble peeling after this method.
@@luckerooni7628 Absolutely, where I am, meat & veg have skyrocketed in price & quality not the best as producers are trying to grow things as quick as possible.
here in Canada we have to wash all egg for sale even as use small guys, no stamp needed, my eggs are washed in warm well water, many mid sized egg farms have closed there doors in the past 5 years that have been around for 50 to 70 years do to new goverment regulations that would cost them farms millons of dollars to up grade to comply with the new government standards, they cose not to go into that financial burden and just closed down, now it is just the huge egg farms left up and running, the eggs for our area are shipped in thousands of miles, by the time they hit the stores they are old eggs and a lot are close to there stamped exsiry date and thousands are thrown away, really driving store egg prices up, witch is good for use home family farms that have little tono restrictions yet
In your videos you talk about closing the nest boxes, but when do you open them again? Also do you pour the feed on the ground like the broilers, or how do you feed the layers?
Hey guys, I live in India in the western ghats region and I'm thinking of starting a pastured poultry farm. The only issue that I was wondering was that, here we get heavy rainfall for about 4 months and i am not sure how to tackle that and keep in moving the chickens. Does anyone here have any experience with working in heavy rainfall areas and raising chickens?
If you are in European Union you are bound by laws telling that if you want to sell eggs you have to ensure that no wild bird got contact with your herd, how you comply to that laws without actually having nets all over the place from fence to fence? (birds can poop thru them anyways lol) I'm thinking a longer while about starting but more and more obstacles appear sadly.
Do you worry about chickens getting ahold of maggots and botulism in the manure? I’ve always understood that maggots can run the risk of botulism? Any comment regarding this?
Great video, my name is Jerry and I have an Acre of land going to waste and I'm really interested in raising pastured Cornish Cross Broilers but I'm afraid of having an infestation of rats. In the 80's I raised Homing Pigeons and the rats that came to the loft was crazy, afraid of a repeat. Can you please advise on rat control.
Why not make a stamp grid so that you could stamp all the egs at once in one move? I'm sure it would take some time to make it but it would definitely save a lot of time down the road.
Another awesome video thank you so much for the awesome info. Is the design for your nest boxes in your book? I am going to be buying it here soon as your info is so awesome and I'm going to base my farm build off of all I've learned from these videos. Thank you again.
Im interested in the protein cycle in this polyface farming system. would recycling the protein from cows threw a maggot farm be more efficient than relying on the natural maggot cycle? Aside from the problem of getting the logistics of using the cow manure in a maggot farm but would the concept work better? Perhaps the use of a maggot farm lower the cost of feed for the chickens to offset the cost of moving the manure to the maggot farm.
Where's the bit about the truck-fulls of chicken feed? Of course the pasture gets better when you are transferring nutrients from the feed to the pasture. Like hay, you are buying both feed and fertilizer.
i am impressed. A lot learning from your video. One point, you did not show how you picking eggs (for me the best part). I just want to know the name of hen breed you have at farm. Pls. do reply. Thanks
Hey richard! Do you slaughter/sell your hens at the end of the season and start over for spring or do you house them in the egg mobile over winter and continue collecting minimal eggs? If so, do they stay in the egg mobile all winter or do they go outside in the snow? I imagine it takes a lot of feed with no return product to do this over winter.
Gday Rich, Can you pass on the details of those plastic yellow egg flats that you’re using in this video. I’m sure there are comparable companies in Australia, but would like to cut down my research time. Thanks mate.
I really want to give up city life, but the quota is an obstacle to start poultry farm in Ontario, Canada. I am running my own business, and I work 7 days a week.
This is hands down the best YT Channel in my opinion. I learn everything I ever wanted to know from you. For free. Thanks for educating us ♥️
I STRONGLY agree with one of the last assertions made in the video. Egg sales are such a valuable point of entry for farm customers. It is far easier to sell a butchered chicken, duck, rabbit, side of beef, whole hog, canned stock or lard, etc to a regular egg customer with whom you have a relationship, and who understands your farming philosophy and standards than a complete stranger. They're also far more likely to keep their lips sealed if you're operating somewhat outside of the strictest regulatory parameters!
European quality RUclips. Simple, coherent and extensive clarifications. Thank you and hat down Sir.
I’m in the USA (Pennsylvania) and me and my family will be starting our farming adventure next year . I can’t wait to have my husband and I teach and show our 6 children about a hard days work and we love animals and so do all our kids.
I'm from PA too! We already do pastured layers, but I've been researching ideas to make it more efficient and profitable. Hope your farming adventured are rewarding!
Excellent info! So valuable to see how it's done by an actual working farm. Thank you!
I had to pause the video.....twice....my goodness that's a lot of info to digest, Take notes there is so much information here. Always glad to see others incorporating the full use of the animals into the farm. Peace
Dear Richard. So good to get this condesed knowlege just one day before our fist ever lifestock arrives. Tomorrow on June 1st we receive 40 layers that move across an old moto-x-track to regenerate the land. Because of strong predator pressure they will move in a geodome structure we finished today. All eggs are presould to a local Permaculture COOP here in Sintra, Portugal. My friend and I spent intense 12 days to set everything up. Geodome covered in chicken fencing and partially roofed with a tarp, roll away nest box and a closit like box for food storage. The whole enterprise will be on an off grid plot of land outside of the village and we are very excited. You made this possible with all your great videos and your amazing book. Thank you so much. In case all goes well in the first year, we will shurely scale up!
Hi my_permaculture, good to know people doing that in Portugal. I am curious about what kind of predators pressure do you have there? And how about the market in Portugal?
OvertheWheels We have Foxes, several predatory birds, a Wildcat called Gineta, Martens and stray dogs and cats. Most difficult is that the land the chickens will live on is a bit remote and uninhabited.
About selling, we presoould all our eggs to a local Permaculture food COOP.
I had no idea about all those predators in Portugal. Is it common in all areas? For example, I am looking for a place in the north, in the Douro area. Would be those predators a problem there as well? Do you have instagram or facebook where I can pictures of your farm?
OvertheWheels Not shure about that. But a talk to your locals will give you all the answers.
Overthewheels it really dont mater ere you are predators are every were, foxs of all breads are common no mater were you go, same with birds of pray, raccoons snakes, we dont have bad snakes here but places not to far away do, anything that is seen on my land is shot on site no mater what it is
great video, wonderful farming system; it's got my mind working, we've got the room.....
Can verify the comments about being able to detect interesting things about eggs by touch with practice. Worked at a large scale egg production facility while in high school. Hand collected between 60-70 cases per day and your fingers become remarkably tuned to texture, shape, and weight of the eggs. Double yolks, thin shells, cracked shells, etc. can easily be detected by touch.
Sitting on the edge of my seat waiting on my book from kickstarter! Really excited to read up on some ideas to get our property earning some income. And methodologies you have developed along the way.
Dear Mr Richard ur r good example for hard work👍👍👍
Thanks for sharing the information Richard.
Richard you explain everything so well. Great video!
Great class! Inspiring to see the level of planning and organizing (and learning), so useful in any undertaking
And videos are getting better and better, thank you for sharing and teaching!
great video ive been working chicken for 2 years.
this is very encouraging
Nice 👍 Richard, beautiful farm with beautiful chickens and cows 🐄❤️
I know this is an older video but that light for the layers is probably on a solar panel...yes. Add a $15 dc timer to turn on and off a lot cheaper than labor to go out and flip a switch
Confirmed myth! I give my chickens all broken eggs and they love them and never harm any eggs in nests.
I just switched over to all grass fed beef, wild caught fish, and pasture raised eggs and chicken on my keto diet. This diet has enabled me to get off all but one of my diabetic meds. One thing that concerns me is the chicken feed, is it corn based? I have found that as my cholesterol has risen from the diet my concern for the type of cholesterol I am producing increased. It doesn't help that the American medical industry doesn't recognize cholesterol quality they just vilified all cholesterol. I suspect cholesterol meds gave my dad dementia. The main reason why I switched to wild caught fish was because my diet was heavy with salmon but as I found out the feed was based on corn , I had to assume the fish meat cholesterol was heavy on the LDL.
Absolutely amazing!!! you are so tuned to what you are doing...great job...
This was very educational for me...starting my egg venture early next year...thank you so much
love how detailed these videos are
Very good, thank you.
Mycket bra, uppskattar detta.
absolutely loved this video, not sure why this one of all of your videos but it was just class. Keep up the good work!
Great information, our new layers are a week old and they're already making short flights! Looking for a small trailer now.
Thx for the vids
Thanks for another great video, very helpful and love the format.
Get auto doors so u don't have to close and if u get a feed hopper open can be auto
Richard have you considered using Ayrshires as a dairy breed? The breed tolerates heat well. They do decently for beef with the bull caves. They have great utters and do well without concentrates. The Ayrshires will do far better than Holsteins.
Sorting eggs in the field is a new concept for me. I may try that on our small flock in The Philippines. God bless and thank you for sharing. God bless!
*udders*
awesome my son wants to live like you when he grows up
Very well done.
Thank you.
Thanks for Info it's so informative and Now I feel Confident so Start..
Thank you Richard for sharing.
i like how the cowas are working to get the grass rather than some feed being plopped down in front of them so they can gorge
Question: was this pasture seeded when you first started? and with what blend of grasses / forbes?
Thanks for the packing tip , flipping the collection trays .Will definitely be using that one 👌
Love your set up! I plan on doing the same thing once I get a farm!
Oh that's it - I've always been wondering why some boiled eggs are so hard to peel. Fabulous information again - thank you so much. :-) You guys have a beautiful place to live.
Heli Iso-Aho when you boil your next bunch of eggs place them straight into chilled water while they are hot & this will make the membrane retract from the inside of the shell. You won’t have as much trouble peeling after this method.
Yup - that's true D B , that is exactly what I do and it helps. Thank you :-)
Can we get an update on the broiler mobile chicken coop ? How's it working
about how many cows to do keep in front of the chickens? Also, about how much space do you give the cows each day?
I like that you called it 'knowledge in your fingers'. We have words for that stuff in our local comunity, but they are dissappearing.
If you boil them in silicone eggletts, you don’t have to peel them.
A good tip to remember: yes, it's seven days a week, but you're getting paid to be at home.
Let me tell you, in 2020 that is NOT an advantage!
@@TheHonestFoodTeller Growing your own food is going to be a huge advantage when supermarkets start losing supply.
@@luckerooni7628 This was a COVID-oriented joke, my friend. But of course, you are right!
@@luckerooni7628 Absolutely, where I am, meat & veg have skyrocketed in price & quality not the best as producers are trying to grow things as quick as possible.
Must be some of the happiest cows on the planet right now ;-)
Great video, how do you control rats from eating the chickens and eggs?
That was a beautiful grass
Excellent video - thanks!
here in Canada we have to wash all egg for sale even as use small guys, no stamp needed, my eggs are washed in warm well water, many mid sized egg farms have closed there doors in the past 5 years that have been around for 50 to 70 years do to new goverment regulations that would cost them farms millons of dollars to up grade to comply with the new government standards, they cose not to go into that financial burden and just closed down, now it is just the huge egg farms left up and running, the eggs for our area are shipped in thousands of miles, by the time they hit the stores they are old eggs and a lot are close to there stamped exsiry date and thousands are thrown away, really driving store egg prices up, witch is good for use home family farms that have little tono restrictions yet
Your contact number i want some suggestion
In your videos you talk about closing the nest boxes, but when do you open them again? Also do you pour the feed on the ground like the broilers, or how do you feed the layers?
Those birds look super super healthy
Hey guys, I live in India in the western ghats region and I'm thinking of starting a pastured poultry farm. The only issue that I was wondering was that, here we get heavy rainfall for about 4 months and i am not sure how to tackle that and keep in moving the chickens. Does anyone here have any experience with working in heavy rainfall areas and raising chickens?
Thank you 😊
You are wonderful
Hi - where do you get those egg trays and egg cases? (The cases I have found don't have those slits for easy removal)
Are those Golden Comets that you raise for egg laying? All you animals look so healthy. Great job!
Im guessing its Lohman or Bovan, its the most common egg layers in Sweden
Richard, try steaming the eggs, rather than boiling them. The shells should come off cleanly.
If you are in European Union you are bound by laws telling that if you want to sell eggs you have to ensure that no wild bird got contact with your herd, how you comply to that laws without actually having nets all over the place from fence to fence? (birds can poop thru them anyways lol) I'm thinking a longer while about starting but more and more obstacles appear sadly.
Super healty animals
beautiful looks amazing. keep up the great work.
I know this is a couple of years old, are you still using the egg collection boxes, and do you have a link to them please?
Do you worry about chickens getting ahold of maggots and botulism in the manure? I’ve always understood that maggots can run the risk of botulism? Any comment regarding this?
Good advise. Good luck.
Hey, very informative tutorial. Can you help me how to deal with cats and mongoose and snakes when we are keeping hens in open like this.
Great video, my name is Jerry and I have an Acre of land going to waste and I'm really interested in raising pastured Cornish Cross Broilers but I'm afraid of having an infestation of rats. In the 80's I raised Homing Pigeons and the rats that came to the loft was crazy, afraid of a repeat. Can you please advise on rat control.
Great ideas.
Why not make a stamp grid so that you could stamp all the egs at once in one move? I'm sure it would take some time to make it but it would definitely save a lot of time down the road.
I added a timer to close light at 22 o clock.
Another awesome video thank you so much for the awesome info.
Is the design for your nest boxes in your book? I am going to be buying it here soon as your info is so awesome and I'm going to base my farm build off of all I've learned from these videos. Thank you again.
If you steam your fresh eggs for about 23-24 minutes they will peel easily.
Im interested in the protein cycle in this polyface farming system. would recycling the protein from cows threw a maggot farm be more efficient than relying on the natural maggot cycle? Aside from the problem of getting the logistics of using the cow manure in a maggot farm but would the concept work better? Perhaps the use of a maggot farm lower the cost of feed for the chickens to offset the cost of moving the manure to the maggot farm.
I'd be going loopy with the way you're stacking those yellow trays.......arrggh!
Great video thanks for the info keep it up
what do u do about hawks , owls raccoons?
Great Info, thank you!
Once you've eaten eggs from pastured laying hens, you will never want to eat a supermarket egg again.
Where's the bit about the truck-fulls of chicken feed? Of course the pasture gets better when you are transferring nutrients from the feed to the pasture. Like hay, you are buying both feed and fertilizer.
bought your book sir!
Great video!
i am impressed. A lot learning from your video. One point, you did not show how you picking eggs (for me the best part). I just want to know the name of hen breed you have at farm. Pls. do reply.
Thanks
Happy chickens 🐔
Great info!
Do you have any plans for the egg mobiles?
Every video is a lesson.
Thanks for the great input :)
Steam fresh eggs for 23 min and the peel easy!
Hey richard! Do you slaughter/sell your hens at the end of the season and start over for spring or do you house them in the egg mobile over winter and continue collecting minimal eggs? If so, do they stay in the egg mobile all winter or do they go outside in the snow? I imagine it takes a lot of feed with no return product to do this over winter.
As far as I know he keeps them for 1 year and keeps the in the solar house for winter
Well presented. Thanks
great vid...very real....encouraging.....you should monetize the vids
So you dont candle every egg or size them?
Awesome info! You look very reminiscent of Johnny Depp as well... 0.o
Oh wow you had a nice poultry 😀
Gday Rich,
Can you pass on the details of those plastic yellow egg flats that you’re using in this video. I’m sure there are comparable companies in Australia, but would like to cut down my research time. Thanks mate.
Bellsouth in Melbourne sell them
What do you do when they scrat down all the grass
Beautiful
Do you ever get double yolk eggs, and are you aloud to sell those ?
no and yes
I really want to give up city life, but the quota is an obstacle to start poultry farm in Ontario, Canada. I am running my own business, and I work 7 days a week.
Yes the quotas here suck. Check out the Artisanal Poultry program for meat birds.
@@ontariosfinest8971 thank you
Do you start with your layers as chicks or pullets? TY for all of your very valuable info.
cucurbitfan He receives them as point of lay pullers. Check a handful of videos back, sometime within the past month, for when they were received.
How many chickens do you have per tractor and is the area per tractor 50 by 50 meter
Yes he does
Do you grade eggs to different sizes?
Super🐓🦃👍
Thanks for the info ☺
A light to check egg freshness ?
Do you use electric fencing for the cows