Back to the original Egg Mobile

All right. It is Saturday afternoon. I am exhausted, feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things to do. And we have got an issue with this eggmobile. It's so close to the ground. A lot of eggs being laid outside the nest boxes. Production's going up to full production now. I'm done with it. We're swapping out for the old original eggmo. Oh, food truck Saturdays burgers, the French made brioche. Pizza for dinner. Proper Saturday, Proper job, grab beef. So Eggman Bill 1 is working fine with the new nests and it's higher off the ground, it works good. This one is a nightmare. And to be honest, I've got so many things to do that I can't be dealing with dirty floor eggs. These are being laid in the corner. You can see we dug out the corner to make more light go under there and the same on the other side, but it's just not working well. And we've got production ramping up now. And so I've just been feeling like, oh, gosh, the amount of space these new nests take up, they make it rather difficult to work in the space. We knew that already. The nests are not designed for this eggmobile, they're just designed for people to be able to get access to low cost eggmobiles. Sorry, low cost laying nests. But with production ramping up, I'm just too tired to be dealing with this. We've got a lot of eggs being laid. Floor access to this side of the nest is too tight really in this one. The other one is not so bad, but taking away some of the space for this cage, etc just makes accessing the space really hard. And our old nests just seem to work much better. It's so frustrating. And this is meant to be our day off. We're trying to take days off seriously, but the quicker we do this, the quicker we'll get all the eggs in and they'll be clean and good. And there's something about our old original design. It works. The simplicity of it, it's spacious, it's ergonomic, it just works well. That's why hundreds of people have copied it all over the world. And frankly, I'm happy to go back to it. I think in this situation with eggmobile number two, it's going to work immediately. I've never changed the space that the hens are in, except for putting them into the tunnels in the wintertime. They might have an adverse reaction to the other one, but who knows? It's worth a try because, you know, we're wasting a tray or two of eggs every day like this. And as production goes up we can't be having these bad habits of laying outside the box. I think one of the new boxes, they'll go straight into them. I've toyed around with extending the length of those boxes because they're designed around two egg collections a day. But at this point I just feel like going back to the very original what we know, what we've done for years, what works, what you folks have copied all over the world and works for you too. So that's the plan. We're going to move this eggmobile out, close up this little portal, pull the new one in. The door is different. It won't have the automations to start with but it'll give us a chance to fix the wheels of this one and we can take out the nest and replace it with our old style ones if we want to. It might be that we can run one eggmobile of each both with automations and that will give an even better comparison over the year. But ah, yeah, it's one of them days starting to snow again in the sun. So we have successfully got all of the chickens out of eggmobile too. Closing the door, close the portal. We're gonna change their home. Don't know what they're gonna make of this. I've never seen the reaction of a chicken when they've had a new eggmobile sneaked in where the old one was. But let's have a go and see what happens. So to be clear, it's not the fault of the nest box. The eggmobile is very low to the ground compared to both the other two. And because it's parked on a slope, it's just the floor, the mesh floor is basically on the ground. So it's a nice dark spot. There's not a lot we can do about it. I do want to be testing the new nest boxes more but I also just want immediate solution for clean eggs because you can't clean eggs here. So it's a major faff and I've got way too much stuff going on to be able to deal with that. It's just not worth the hassle. It's meant to be a low stress year for us and with the amount of different projects and another farm to manage I just, I can't be dealing with it. Okay, jack this up. We're taking the wood supports out because this is on a slope, we're gonna pull this away. We've got to fix the two tires under there anyway. Hopefully I don't know. Maybe I'll put the bucket on and clear this pad so we've got fresh ground for while we can. And then the other eggmobile's got the front this side to have the door on the same size. It's going to be interesting. We've got some spectators. They are curious what is going on and why they can't come back in their home. But it's going to be very curious to see their reaction when their home has been swapped out. So even with two flat tires that came out okay, the chickens are all watching out the side screen wondering where the house has gone. Poor little things. Alright, so that worked out well. We're gonna pick up the other eggmobile which hasn't been moved for six months. See if that moves. Alright. It started snowing again. Come to expect that this is the original Eggmobile one. This is the original Ridgedale Eggmobile that's inspired the whole pastropoultry move. It's a very heavy eggmobile because it's built on a car trailer frame. But we're going to load up some nest mats. It's got all the original old fittings. We're going to roll into place, see what the birds think. We've just swapped their home out. No automations. But look at the space in there. It's like a luxury New York City apartment. Starting to green up. Slowly, slowly. Now we got to find out how to dock this one. It's the other way around. It's got front end in first. So we'll see how it goes. Okay. The original eggmobile that went in quite smooth. We've got to reconnect the portal and this door opened. We have little funny names for everything at farm. This passageway is called a portal and that's because we call it a tunnel. But obviously this is a tunnel. That makes communication very difficult. Especially when we're all from different countries and we all struggle with English. So. Especially me. So the trouble is now. Well, now the good thing about this one is that even though it's not level these nest boxes, we designed them originally so you could level them pretty much. We never bothered moving them because even with it on the slope this way the eggs are going to roll away. I'm fine with that. Look at the space in here. This is just. I gonna be so amused to watch them come in here because they're gonna love it. Brand new poo sheet, everything looking as it should. We can get back to our day off soon. And that's the thing about farming. We're Trying to keep weekends clear and trying to really make, you know, barbecues or little things to celebrate the weekend. But farming is not a 9 to 5 job. It's a do whatever needs doing whenever it needs getting done job. And that's what we're doing. Boys are helping out. This is Saturday, but this will save us a lot of time. So it's a good investment of time. Okay. Ridiculous things we do on Saturdays when we could be having a beer. This is our new portal extension. Now this is a manual door, so you have to manually release it like so. Lovely. Now the hens are gonna have a shock of their life when they see this. This is pure luxury for a chicken. They're ready to go. They've been sitting in this corner since we started messing around, waiting to come back in. So it's gonna be interesting to see them come down this portal. We've just gone for netting because we're just testing out if it's working. We can always put a sheet on after. But right now we just want to get this done and get back to having a Saturday. Okay? Excuse me, girls. Excuse me. You don't want to move? Alright, I'll give you a ride over here. Let's see, we open the gates up. There they go. They're straight off. Look. They don't know what to make of that. Things are different on the home front. They're all going in. That is hilarious. They're all stopping at the doorway. Oh, one's brave enough. Go on, follow the leader. That is so funny. One is in. There they go. Beautiful. Yes, this is luxurious space for them in here. Look at that, girls. This is the OG Eggmobile. Welcome Nest boxes are closed though. That's your nest boxes for tomorrow morning. Just looking at their reactions, checking it out. What's all this then? Hey, they're going to be straight in there tomorrow morning. So as I said before, you can see this eggmobile is a lot higher off the ground. They're going to go straight in this to lay eggs tomorrow, I have no doubt. So we're not giving up on the old nest. It's working well in the other eggmobile. It sits normally. But I think this was worth the effort on a Saturday afternoon because we're not. I would imagine we'll get most of the eggs laid straight in the nest box. No big deals. And so that will save a lot of stress for my little mind. Yeah, well, they didn't have any lasting shock moving into a new home. I expect they'll all be roosting Nicely tonight. Good move. So we're going to leave this segment, build one as is for now. And it's been working better in here. I think access is a little better because they can reach both sides much easier. And we're going to see how it goes. We'll monitor how it goes tomorrow with the old style nest box. I'm not totally against the idea of switching back to our original nest because it certainly is easier with the shape of this space, which was designed that way in the beginning and have worked fine for us for years. This has all been one big experiment to see if we can develop this prototype to get it available to many of you who are starting out in pasture poultry. But it's, it's never been designed around our shape eggmobile. So definitely having a bigger, open, sort of rectangular shaped egg mobile would fit this kind of nest box better. It's definitely, you know, works fine. It's just very logistical in our context with a small structure. And our old system just works so well. Now as egg production reaches peak, we want reliable, easy eggs and just no fuss. So we'll see, but you'll know about it soon enough. All right, folks, that is it this weekend. Thought I'd leave you with a nice clip of our little beautiful lambs. Beautiful mama. Have a great weekend, folks. Hope you get some rest. I hope I get some rest. I'm feeling beat. Thanks as always for watching our videos. Hope you find it interesting. I'm trying to just share as often as I can this year. All the different things going on. Good, bad, ugly, all of that. Hello. Yeah, we'll see you in a video soon. Don't forget to check the links below. Subscribe, diddly dally, all that stuff. See you in the next one. Sam.