Point of Point of Lay pullets available now

 We have pont of Lay Isa Brown pullets available for pick up at the farm at Grantville  this weekend. ISA Browns are ideal backyard hens.  Details here. https://www.freeranger.com.au/products.html .  200 pullets were delivered to us yesterday, and already two have started laying. The hens are ideal freerange birds and are suitable as pets and backyard egg layers.

New pullets have settled in

Our latest batch of Isa Brown pullets has settled in, and the girls like their protector, Bella the Maremma (which is just as well) ! This is a flock of 350, or 340 now as we sold 10 to the Rhyll Trout Farm on Phillip Island.

We often sell off a few of point of lay pullets as long as we have enough for our own egg production. The plan is that this flock will start laying in a couple of weeks and will quickly get into full production to help meet demand. Then in November, a flock of 200 will arrive and hopefully we will be able to cope with demand over the December/January holiday period.

It's probably a forlorn hope, as demand always outstrips supply - especially if really hot weather kicks in early.

Quiet hens roaming on pasture

Early morning with the chooks  -  and Angus


There's plenty of grass around this year. We've had a tremendous season so far and the chooks have maintained around a 90% lay rate for most of the summer.
Right now, with the latest batch of pullets we have 1200 hens on the farm - so that's keeping us pretty busy.

New flock of pullets

Our new flock of 300 Isa Brown pullets arrived today.We settled them in to two of our mobile sheds in Monte's (one of the Maremmas) paddock.
While we were unloading the young hens into the sheds it starting raining (of course) - so once we had finished, the delivery ute and trailer had to be towed out of the paddock by our trusty Chinese tractor. The grass was just too wet for the ute to get enough traction.
The youngsters will help to build up our business now that Anne has time to work on the farm full time. It will be more productive than beating her head against a wall, which is what she has been doing  in the last year or so working for Trust for Nature.
The Trust was great in the early years, but it has lost its way in recent times and it's now anyone's guess if it will survive.

20,000 pullets wanted

I've had some strange 'phone calls over the years, but one this morning was pretty good. A bloke rang me asking for 20,000 pullets because he wanted to start a free range egg farm!
I actually mis-heard him and said "two dozen?" to which the answer was "No - 20,000".
He obviously hadn't looked at our website http://www.freeranger.com.au/ or at this blog because he would have known that we couldn't possibly meet that sort of order.
We do sell some pullets when we have them available but it's usually 3 or 4 at a time. I think our largest order has been 20 - yes 20 not 20,000!!!With individual flocks of around 200 birds and overall laying hen numbers of 1000 or so, we are running a business but it's hardly big time.
I suggested he contact Baiada who should be able to help him as he wanted delivery in September.
It's another indication of big players getting involved because they can see a dollar in producing eggs they can label 'free range'. It's a safe bet that this bloke, if he goes ahead, will have de-beaked birds and will not meet the requirements of the Free Range Farmers Association  but he will still call the eggs 'free range' and will charge unwary consumers a premium.

New flock is out exploring

The 300 fifteen week old Isa Brown pullets in our new flock are spending their days exploring their paddock. Here are some of them under a stand of eucalypts.
There are two mobile sheds in the paddock but many of the young hens prefer to roost in the trees rather than spend their nights in one of the sheds.
Hopefully, once they start laying eggs (in two or three weeks) they will get the message that the nest boxes in the sheds are wonderful things.
The pullets quickly realised that their Maremma, Abby, is a friend and she now has an air of self-importance because for three weeks she didn't have a flock to protect.

New flock of chooks arriving soon

We have a new flock of 300 Isa Brown point of lay pullets arriving at the end of this month so I'm busily selling off the last of our oldest flock of hens to people who want them for their backyards.
The last 100 will go on Sunday to a young guy who is setting up his own egg farm on his parents' property.
From then I'll be able to clean out the two mobile sheds, fix one of the skids which needs a bit of repair work and get them ready for the new girls.
I usually like to leave the sheds empty for a couple of month betwen flocks but we will need maximum production during the Christmas holidays when Phillip Island sinks under the weight of all the tourists.
We plan on a production level of around 600 dozen a week from mid December until the end of January - which won't leave time for much else!
So I'm getting as many farm inspections and audits done as soon as possible because it will be even more like a madhouse here than usual once the festive season hits us.

New pullets ready to start laying

Our new flock of Isa Brown pullets is just about ready to start laying. They were 15 weeks old when they were delivered - and that was three weeks ago.

At 18 weeks we should start to see some eggs, and they look like they are ready to begin earning their keep!

It's interesting that each batch of pullets is different. Ones that are hatched in September usually start laying at 15 or 16weeks. Those hatched at other times may not start laying until they are18 or 20 weeks old.

Our production is still sitting at around 90% for the laying flocks - but we need every egg we can get to meet demand.

Preparing for the new flock

I've spent the last few days getting a couple of our mobile sheds ready for the new flock of point of lay pullets which will arrive towards the end of this month. Some of the nest boxes need to be fixed up but everything should be right within a day or so.
We buy-in the birds at 15 or 16 weeks old and normally they start laying within a couple of weeks. Occasionally we have raised our birds from day old, but the workload is a bit much with everything else we have to do and there is no cost saving.
The biggest single problem is vaccinations. Many of the vaccines are only available in large doses - 3000 or 4000. And if you are only vaccinating 300 birds the rest of the vaccine is wasted because you have to throw it away.

We have found that the Isa Brown pullets raised by Mark Plowman http://www.freerangehens.com.au/ are just as good as the pullets we raised ourselves in the past and it's much easier to get them by sending an email or picking up the phone!

It's essential that the birds are not de-beaked and are raised in the open once they are fully feathered and don't need heat.