The New Flock is Doing Very Well! - October 11, 2019 @goldenoakfarm

They sent in 9 eggs for 18 birds on Thursday night. That’s a 50% Rate of Lay, not bad for 24 week/5½ month old birds. They also have no supplemental light, being out on pasture still. Unlike the slacker old flock that sent in 4 for 14 birds…

It also means that the Australorps have started to lay, a bit earlier than I was expecting. They are a later maturing bird than Barred Rocks, who started to lay the end of August.

I started getting medium eggs a couple weeks back. Some were big enough to sell in the “big girl” boxes. But most are still small and pullet size.

Supervisor on the job, waiting….

It’s sort of sad in the mornings when I process the eggs to have it dark still. No view of the farm, just pale sky.

And every morning my supervisor is on the job, mostly waiting for her “pay”. When I had a glut of eggs a long while back, I started feeding her the very old ones, 1 each morning. They have to be beaten as she can’t deal with unbeaten white. So when I have old or broken or dirty eggs, she gets them.

I am keeping the 2 flocks output separate, as I do stats on both to see how well or poorly they are doing. I sell the pullet eggs for $3/dozen and the full size (larger mediums on up to bottom-out-the-scale Xlg.) for $5/dozen. So they are boxed up separately. Right now I have 4 boxes in my fridge: pullets to sell, pullets for the cat (too old), full size to sell, and dirty/broken ones to feed right away.

As you might imagine, this doesn’t leave a lot of room for food in the fridge. I can’t wait for the cellar fridge to be in the clean room, as they will all move there!

But before that, I will not have 1 of the boxes as Wednesday is Freezer Camp for the old layers. That will be the end of food processing for the year.