tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post4146387556109773657..comments2023-12-15T02:04:08.213-08:00Comments on meat: How much space does it take to produce pastured eggs?Bruce Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10995706761794063165noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-34910152233546123602010-11-01T22:18:07.400-07:002010-11-01T22:18:07.400-07:00Kelsey; the birds are on a patch of ground for a d...Kelsey; the birds are on a patch of ground for a day, or two, or three, and then moved. That patch of ground won't see the birds again for at least a month-- in my example, for 43 days. <br /><br />Make the pen as large as you want it. Lets say that you give each bird 10 square feet. Or a hundred. When you move the wall, you expose another 1/2 square foot for each chicken. They all rush over there and start working on the grass. The chickens will spend most of their time on the new ground.<br /><br />while they're doing that, you're moving the back wall of the enclosure up, and that land then has a month or two to regrow and regenerate its vegetation. In a month or two, you'll be back over that same spot. <br /><br /> The point is to carefully and efficiently use your areage to minimize the cost of that acreage you have to support.Bruce Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10995706761794063165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-30940358793650102432010-11-01T22:12:31.880-07:002010-11-01T22:12:31.880-07:00Rebecca, the sunworks video, at 12:03 in the video...Rebecca, the sunworks video, at 12:03 in the video, shows their laying hen houses, which are moved in the same sort of rotation as their meat chickens and turkeys. <br /><br />The key element of their operation that I liked was that they used completely enclosed pens -- no issues about the birds hopping the fence and getting into other areas, giving very precise grazing control. <br /><br />While criticism is fine, presumably you're basin that on your own experience. I'd like you to take a few minutes and describe your egg operation? How many acres for those 5,000 hens? what sort of fencing did you use? Were they all on a single parcel, and did any other animals share their pasture? <br /> <br />With respect to reccomendations; in this case i'm not reccomending. I'm pointing out several examples of farms that produce substantially the same organically-fed and humanely-treated products you do that are active and profitable. i'm presuming that you followed every one of the standards you mentioned to the letter -- and it killed you.Bruce Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10995706761794063165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-40726495498288716112010-11-01T16:02:35.139-07:002010-11-01T16:02:35.139-07:00Bruce- both of your examples are for meat birds, n...Bruce- both of your examples are for meat birds, not layers. Can you find me an example of a working model with healthy animals and healthy pastures, no nutrient overloading, excellent egg production, and only providing 1/2 square feet per hen? Most good farmers don't make recommendations about production practices unless they have both experimented with it for years and done thorough research on the subject. Still waiting for you to do both of those things.Rebecca T.http://www.honestmeat.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-82216128802438994452010-11-01T11:48:57.194-07:002010-11-01T11:48:57.194-07:00Thanks for explaining, and for providing the links...Thanks for explaining, and for providing the links and video. Very interesting! However, after going through the math myself, I think I am missing something. What exactly does it mean to have 43 days of rotation? Do you divide the 3 (or 6) acres into 43 sections and on day 1, keep the all of the chickens on section 1, day 2, section 2, and so on, and so forth, for 43 days, and then on the 44th day, go back to section 1? Or am I getting it completely wrong?<br /><br />I keep coming up with one chicken having 1/2 square foot in which to exist on a daily basis, which doesn't seem to line up with what I see in pictures of your farm.<br /><br />Another question - I am trying to find a turkey for Thanksgiving - do you have any left for ordering?Kelseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00544518612807483400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-342652547475481392010-11-01T10:06:47.103-07:002010-11-01T10:06:47.103-07:00Bruce- I will try this again. What you are recomme...Bruce- I will try this again. What you are recommending is not feasible for many reasons. First off, you are assuming year-round access and year-round grass production. Don't know many climates or soils that will support that. Secondly, you are forgetting what chickens like to do to each other- these are laying hens, not Cornish Cross broilers that just like to sit and eat all day. Laying hens peck each other and the density you are recommending will cause severe pecking, which results in feather loss, bleeding, and decreased immunity. That will all lead to egg production decline, which is not acceptable for a commercial producer. What you are suggesting is the space that caged layers in this country get- around 67-86 square inches per hen. Do you know that "free-range" standards in the EU require 43 square feet per hen and the Soil Association (the biggest organic certifier in the UK) recommends on the order of 150-200 hens per acre in a rotationallly grazed system?<br />In our farming situation, with half of our land under water for 6 months a year, we have to have double the amount of pasture needed. Plus, when you rotate in pigs who like to turn up all the grass, you need even more acreage in order to have the hens on actual green, growing vegetation. So your assumptions might work on paper, but not in a real, biological environment in which you have many different factors at play.Rebecca T.http://www.honestmeat.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-14538725573256441442010-11-01T09:49:48.022-07:002010-11-01T09:49:48.022-07:00at 80 hens an acre even the entire acreage wouldn&...at 80 hens an acre even the entire acreage wouldn't have handled the 5,000 birds they had last year, and they had pigs, lambs and beef on that same acreage; and Rebecca also described a situation where half the land flooded half the year and the other half dried up the other half of the year (including the well serving the parcel), so my impression was that they had 24 usuable acres at any given time. Maybe more in the shoulder seasons.Bruce Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10995706761794063165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1842136564899097734.post-3430752291587605702010-11-01T06:16:57.904-07:002010-11-01T06:16:57.904-07:00I would have to say from my personal experience wi...I would have to say from my personal experience with laying hens (800 hens)as a small commercial enterprise in Western Oregon that 10 acres was about right to practice MiG (Management-intensive Grazing)to keep the hens producing at a acceptable rate and not impact the land too much with manure etc. We moved the birds every 3rd day, any longer than that the impact was too high on the land and the forage was stale. We used 4 162' poultry nets for the enclosure, like Salatin. You also have to take into consideration the replacements and any other poultry you have on your farm cannot use this acreage either in the same season. Crowding and mixing young stock in too small of spaces or livestock in the wrong order is the quickest way to expensive problems and it works for a little while providing a false sense of security. It does not work in the long run.Throwback at Trapper Creekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12418370592659531735noreply@blogger.com