Another Bird Flu Egg Update, More Goat Kids, Woods Pigs & Post-Snow Grass Growth

The egg demand craziness because of bird flu continues! For those of you who missed my first blog on Avian flu, you can read that here.

Because we don’t keep our birds indoors with thousands and thousands of other chickens, they are healthier, have much lower stress and perhaps the risk is lower. 

However, Avian flu can be spread by migratory birds, especially waterfowl, so our hens are not immune by any means.

So while thankfully our birds have not been affected, demand for eggs is higher than ever, for us and every other egg producers we know.

And while we are still in the low production time of year, the hens have started to increase their laying as the daylight lengthens. It’s just still below last winter, unfortunately.

Certainly the epidemic is continuing to disrupt the entire poultry industry. And because laying hens take five or more months to start laying eggs, it will take time to repopulate the flocks that were killed. Since breeding flocks and hatcheries have also been affected, that puts a further lag on the total number of laying hens in the country.

One frequently asked question we’ve gotten in the past few days is how we know the eggs we are selling (from our hens and the other farms we source from) don’t contain bird flu?

While viruses can evolve and change at any point, currently there is not evidence of chickens carrying bird flu and not having symptoms. The length of time from chickens contracting the virus to symptoms and death is extremely rapid. We — nor any of the farms we source from — do not have hens dropping dead left and right and therefore there is nothing to cause us to believe that any of our hens have bird flu.

There also isn’t evidence (again this is currently, viruses mutate and change) that chickens can pass the virus through their eggs. But of course, if you want to be extra cautious, remember that fully cooking eggs kills any viruses or bacteria present.

Because of all the disruption in the industry and costs increasing (mainly for getting new birds in later this year as we always do), we did have to do another price increase on the eggs last week, to $10 per dozen.

It has always been our goal to have a diverse farm with multiple enterprises and a business that does not rely on any one product. Therefore, when we evaluated the price increase to reflect the current situation, we decided to do a discount ($1.50 off per dozen) if you buy other products (totaling $30 or more) along with your eggs. This applies just to our Local Cooling Farms eggs, not eggs we source from other farms.

We hope to reward loyal customers who support our business with a larger share of their grocery budget and perhaps incentivize others to do the same.

Thanks for your understanding as we navigate these crazy times in the egg business. Happy to discuss if you have questions!

In much happier news, Sylvie kicked off our next round of kidding on Friday with two adorable doelings.

We have as many as 11 more does that kidded last year, but not in November with the rest of the herd who could kid this winter and spring, plus 12 yearlings (first timers).

The bucks were in with the does from June through just a few days ago and based on observed breeding behavior and developing udders, we’ll have some more in the next few weeks and then another round in April and maybe some after that, too.

The November kids now look enormous in comparison to Sylvie’s newborns!

The breeder pigs are still tearing up their latest patch of cogon grass in the field closest to our house.

Since the breeders are right outside the house, one of my favorite things is waking up and looking out at them already hard at work rooting stuff up!

And I realized they’re the best animal to have outside the house because they don’t cry and bellow at you constantly. Goats are certainly the most vocal, but the cattle can be demanding sometimes, too!

Meanwhile the feeder group of pigs got moved to a big woods section late last week. We had the cattle in this wooded section during the snow storm and several days afterwards.

We wanted the cattle to have the wind break for the storm and we had them bale graze through it as we’re trying to promote more grass growth and more of a silvopasture system in this section. The pigs will clean up their remaining hay and disturb the dormant seed bank and leaf litter just enough before we move them out to the next area.

And after their time in the developing silvopasture section, we moved the cattle to the acre paddock for the week.

I checked on the far area of the farm where we had a deer food plot of daikon radishes and purple top turnips as well as lots of rye grass and I’m still amazed that it all survived the snow and freeze. I forgot how well those plants can withstand cold temperatures and the snow may have insulated it a little, as well.

With the warm temperatures this week, they’ve really taken off and we should be grazing it in no time!