Do our innovative farming approaches meet regulations?

So yesterday we had a full inspection of animal welfare, looking at spaces and the size and dimension of field pens, boiler pans, eggmobiles, etc. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about that because I know a lot of people face different challenges with different regulations in their countries. And it comes on the back of hearing that our friend Michael in Denmark, who has the chicken caravans and he's been raising livestock dogs with his flocks and has recently been told he can't keep dogs in with his hens, which is tragic news after all the work they've put in training them. And also seems a little bit silly in my mind because they quoted risks of E. Coli and their E. Coli checked every two weeks and they obviously never have E. Coli. So I'll tell you a bit about what happened and how they view our farm. So one thing they looked at was the eggmobiles. Now, regulations stipulate that you need to use a certain amount of feeders per hens and obviously around the roosts and nest boxes. Now, we built the Eggman bills around 350 hens. They have enough perch space to enough nest boxes to meet the regulations there. But interestingly, something that's always been a concern for us for the regulations is that we only use the single tray water feeder and feed on the ground. Now there is some regulation written about not feeding on the ground because birds can catch something from the ground. But a hen is obviously pecking and scratching through the grass all day, every day. So we just disregarded that. But actually the inspectors came and they were really interested in this model. They said these were the nicest hens they've inspected out of all the farms they inspect. So that's testimony to the hygiene and welfare of moving birds on pasture daily and giving them the right amount of space. These birds get typically 4 to 450 square meters per 350 birds. That's achieved with two of these poultry nets. And obviously the way you put a fence up affects the space inside it and we're working within our tree lanes. So in this case 10 meters by 40 meters and that varies field to field, but it's typically 400 square meters per day with the eggmobils. But they really like the models and they have no concerns with that at all. The point of note with the eggmobiles was the mesh flooring. Now we use a 40 by 40 mil mesh sheet with 4 millimeter thick wire. And she felt, the inspector felt that was on the edge of what's acceptable. The regulation doesn't stipulate any sizes. It says it must support all the toes. And I chose 40 by 40 mil and recommend it to other people because it does support all the toes. She suggested if you build more, it would be good to perhaps make that mesh thinner. But I've seen many of our participants go off and build eggmobiles with too small mesh and the manure builds up and that to me is much more detrimental. The birds have no hesitation in crossing the mesh, and she observed that, and so she's totally fine with it. It's not that it doesn't meet regulation, but I think it's actually the optimal size and still a size that I recommend to people. Cows and sheep were fine. We talked a bit about winter bedding and they like the impact that they have through this kind of grazing. They have no concerns with the cows or sheep in any way. And they talk a bit about the winter housing. You have to have access to indoor space, even though these are hardy mountain cows and they choose to be outside if you let them. And so they have access to the barn, but they bail graze throughout the winter on the pasture. And so that's what we typically do, giving them some dry bedding as a deep litter indoors, which they tend to not actually use very much boilers. On the hill, they were totally fine with the broilers. Now these birds are in a smaller setup than normal. We typically have four of these shelters and run up to a thousand birds with a 50 meter and a 25 meter net. Birds are looking great and they're super dry despite the wet weather. And they're totally happy with these. And the salatin pens, they had no problems with them at all. The salatin pens being built to 20 kilos maximum per square meter when the birds are feeding fully grown. And at that point the birds are moved twice a day. Swedish regulations, you're allowed up to 24 kilos per meter squared in organic production. And the birds probably never move in those kind of productions. So this is actually about 20 times less intensive than organic reared certified birds that you would find in a store. So they were very happy with that. And again, they could see the health of the birds. And we actually have those two older broilers that are weighing up to six kilos now, which is also testimony to how management is key in keeping these birds happy and healthy in their bone and physiology, bone development and physiology working as it should. So, in fact, the only single thing that the inspectors had issue with, which I think is remarkable, I mean, it really brings Me a lot of confidence. I know regulations differ in different places and people have to sort of work out the finer details with their regulators. But bear in mind, it's a conversation. They're not out to get you, they're out to just check things are going well. Hey, Winston. But the only thing they weren't happy with is Winston shouldn't be on his own, he should have some company. Now, we've kept him on his own because we don't want him with the sheep yet. He, Winston, he's one of the most cuddliest rams. He's looking gorgeous shaped. We have wonderful ram and a wonderful bull. So peaceful. But he shouldn't be alone. That's the single point that was an issue for the inspectors. So we need to either put him in with the sheep early or get an old ewe or another ram to keep him company. We give him a lot of love because he loves cuddles and human attention, but he's doing great.

So one thing the inspectors were asking about was the pond and how we irrigate the market garden. And there's no major regulation, but they're saying you need to take particular care in the water you put on the vegetables the few days before harvest. Now we have a pond that has life in it, but it's basically fed from about 280 hectares of forest with no one living in it. And there's trout living in the water and it's pretty clean. They are concerned about possible E Coli contamination from wild birds on the pond, things like that. But it turns out that they're fine with us using that water. And then for the wash and pack station, we are using well water, which we also use for the animal lines. That was one of their questions. We're using, you know, really high quality well water, which we use in the slaughtery down here too. So they had no problems with that.

And with the procedures for wash down.

And packing that go on in here and our protocol. So a lot of the inspection stuff is about protocols. Keeping animal journals when animals are moved to different farms is really important, and that doesn't happen so often here, but when animals are sick or die or.

How their feed is kept.

So they looked at the silos and you have to show that you buy food from reputable companies and all this stuff. So a lot of documentation and paperwork.

Which we do across the board for.

All the animals, as well as for vegetable harvests, etc.

So pretty useful.

I think it went better than Johanna thought. Now we made a little pond as part of Key Lime Week and we've been going through people's different enterprises looking at farms, but we actually extended this pond, this fills from the roof behind us over here. And I've only caught a few clips on camera in the last weeks. I've been busy in my spare moments working on the book. But we've massively extended the surface of this pond that was plastic lined before to enable us to have a more natural pond with plants growing in it and better habitat for creatures and just make more use of the available space.

Here at the top of the guns.

And it looks really great. It's just using a free bit of offcut from the GCL liner that we've had.

Alright, so that's it, folks. And I thought some of you might be interested. I know that regulations can be a pain and it's, you know, a minefield because regulations are not written for innovative models of farming. They tend to be written for industry and they need navigation, you know, and if you're a pioneer, you have to stick your neck out a bit. And once you've done something, it's often the case, you know, when inspections happen or these kind of things, we look back and say, oh, that was easy. But it paves the way for other people to do the same.

So the work that, you know, many.

Of you are doing is fantastic for paving the way to make it easier and easier and to start new conversations with the regulators. They're intelligent people who, you know, probably share many of the same aims and dreams that we have and they're trying to do their best job and it needs education and dialogue and that's what we're doing here as well. We educate customers, educate the people that come and inspect us and talk and share. That's a great thing. So hope you found that interesting and we look forward to giving you some more updates in the coming weeks. I'm very busy with my spare time at the moment trying to get this book out and finished soon. We'll be launching the crowdsource campaign soon, just dealing with packaging and finding out the printing details so I can launch the crowdsource campaign with accurate costs and funding expectations. I'll let you know on social media as soon as that comes about. Thanks so much for your patience and for following us and supporting us in all that we're doing here. Find out a whole bunch more in the links below and we'll see you in a video soon. Bye for now.

Sam.