June 2025 vol. 1
When the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus made its first appearance at an Indiana poultry farm in February 2022, roughly 30,000 turkeys were euthanized in an attempt to avert a larger outbreak.
It didn’t work! Three years and nearly 200 million dead birds later, they (the experts) still don’t have a solution. To me the solution is simple. Let the birds develop natural immunity and start selectively breeding. But that was the topic of a previous newsletter.
An unfortunate (or perhaps intended) effect of killing 200 million birds was that it has made it nearly impossible for a small producer like us to get any replacement hens. Even our friends over at Coyote Creek have been struggling to get pullets. I typically buy a batch every year from them, so back in December I asked Rob to get an extra 200 for me when he puts in his next order. He informed me that he was having trouble getting resupplied. He said that even his operation was too small for them to commit a hatch to. He was on a waiting list and would add me to his count if they gave him a call.
Last week (six months later) Rob called and said he was driving up to pickup chicks the next day and asked if I was still interested. It was the spur of the moment so I blurted out “I’ll take 500!” . After I hung up the phone I quickly realized what I had done. FIVE HUNDRED CHICKENS! So, like any man, I started justifying what I had done. After all, we sell upwards of 200 dozen eggs each week, and with our current flock getting old, another 500 chickens isn’t a huge stretch. Besides, some wont survive the 6 months until they start laying, and if we have extras, we can always sell them – and the justifications just kept coming.
In truth, we raise groups of 400 broilers every month, so 500 pullets isn’t a big deal. The problem is – where to put them. I already have 400 broiler chicks in the brooder, and another 400 out on pasture. And laying chicks take much longer to grow than meat birds, and when they do grow – they fly. Not only do I not have the room, my setup just isn’t ideal for young layers, so I had to scramble, and cobble together something to house the 500 new guests. For the time being, I’ve set up a makeshift brooder in one of the cattle trailers.
We’ve been wanting to make some changes to our layer operation for quite a while. Mainly we want to get the chickens out of the yard and away from the house. You heard the saying “when the chickens come home to roost”? Well that’s our problem. Once chickens take up roosting on your porch, there is nearly nothing you can do to get them to take up residence elsewhere. When the time comes to move the new pullets out on pasture, I don’t want them picking up any bad habits from the Porch Pirates that are laying now. So with these 500 “soon to be layers”, we’re building a new chicken coop. I’ll do a whole newsletter on the build for the “Egg Mobile 2”, but as I’ve only got a few weeks before they outgrow the cattle trailer/brooder, I better get back to work.
See you at the market!
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