Thursday, December 21, 2006

The summer is hotting up

We are surrounded by smoke today - from the wildlifes burning in Gippsland. Thankfully they are a long way from us but it's hard to breathe, even indoors.
The smoke means it shouldn't get too hot here today, probably around 34 - 36 degrees celsius so our hens won't be too uncomfortable.
On really hot days we have to spend time with them spraying water to keep their body temperatures down. A couple of years ago we lost over 40 hens on a 44 degree day and we don't want a repeat of that.
A new flock of 450 point of lay pullets arrived this week and they have settled in well with their dog for protection. One laid her first egg today.
The new hens should help us to meet the demand for eggs during the January holiday period when we never have enough! The restaurants we supply, health food shops etc all need more eggs for their customers and our direct sales at Farmers' Markets double or even triple (if we have enough).
I've spent a bit of time revamping my website in an effort to make it more search engine-friendly. And it seems to have worked. The site www.freeranger.com.au now has a far better ranking with Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista and Dogpile. Interestingly, we are still way down the list with Lycos, but are top of the heap on the Lycos subsidiary Hotbot! Can't work that out.

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