EGG MOBILE'S: Show me yours...

Welcome back to another episode, folks. A little bit different one this time. I got really inspired during the farm like a hero experience. Just seeing how many people doing amazing stuff and just really taking stock of the influence we've had on small scale farming over the years and through our books, through our YouTube channel, through the innovations that we've made here. And it's really touching.

I thought I'd love to make a.

Video now celebrating this style egg mobile. I've seen, you know, hundreds of these all over the world now on Facebook feeds, etc. So what I'd love is if you have built a Ridgedale style eggmobile or have been heavily inspired by our design in the build of yours, I would love to make a little video featuring everyone's eggmobile pictures with the name of their farm, partly to help promote all the farms doing epic pasture raised eggs. So there's an email address popping up here. Send me a photo of your eggmobile with the name of your farm in the email and I will put together a video detailing all of the eggmobiles that come up in this style.

I really hope everyone gets to hear.

This and I need those photos within a week of this being published. So get on the case, send me a thing and I'll help spread the word about your farm and just be amazing to see all the different styles and colors and locations that people have them in. So send us a photo, the name of your farm and the country you're in. That's a good one. So photo, name of your farm and the country, and I think it'll make an epic little montage of all these beautiful eggmobiles and happy hens out on pasture.

So in the aerial flyby I've just posted up on YouTube, I talk a bit about some of the things going on for me relating to previous videos and something I need in my creative life is stimulation, innovation. I never set out to be a farmer, just producing epic eggs and vegetables out here in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. This farm has been about a whole lot more. That's been something playing on my mind a lot recently where I want to get back engaged with furthering and taking next steps. Where do we go from here? We've established what we've done here. We know how to run that. And I need further stimulation. One such project that came up was when we did a recent maths class and we had Catal here from Ireland, who if you followed the farm like a hero experience, you'll know he took one of our eggmobiles built it up and then automated it for €400. He also moves it by electric winch from trees at either end of the field, which is pretty cool system. So throughout the farm, like a hero experience, we've been hearing a lot about how people have had difficulties with this model in different parts of Europe because of the EU regulations about scratching space underneath where the birds can't be pooped on from above. And so they have access to scratching space 24 hours a day. And the commercial models available in Germany particularly that have that available, are too floored and they have a conveyor belt in between that catches the manure and you have to wheel it off. That's the one flaw of that design. You have to actually remove the manure and then either compost it and put it on the gardens or put it back on the pasture. But that's obviously a bit annoying when you have a beautiful egg mobile that spreads the manure quite naturally. However, what I've seen in our pastures is, you know, we have done so much regeneration that we don't need that excess manure. So I could be happy with that conveyor belt model in the sense I could then use that in our market gardens. Currently we buy in pelliative manure and there is obviously manure getting put all over the pasture from the hens out and about all day every day anyway. You just wouldn't have that concentrated block under the egg mobile. So what I thought about and started discussing with others is why don't we do a build this winter and take all the best elements of the expensive commercial models. Bear in mind the German models that are set up for EU standards and organic production. They're about 40 to 50 to €60,000 and that's a big expenditure for most people starting out. It's obviously worth the cost if you're in the egg business seriously, but I think it's worth considering. How do you take the best of all models and do it home built, low cost for like 4 or €5,000? Yeah, the hens are attacking the phone so it's getting hard to do this.

But I thought it would be really cool to like.

We've seen Jaspers, if you follow our channel. You remember Jasper in Germany and his use of like the chicken caravan style egg laying boxes but homemade with the.

Automations cattle's put together and then the.

Integration of a scratching space that makes it bird flu safe, hey, etc. It would be super cool and so it would be Eggmobile version 2.0 and then we would hopefully get A build.

Together this winter, build a prototype, test.

It next year and blueprint all those plans. So I'm not sure exactly what that looks like, but certain design considerations that will make this even more useful. Now I still stand behind this model.

As a super low cost way to get started. We can build this €1500. It takes an hour and a bit a day and produces €30,000 of eggs a year. But as we get older, things like automated opening in the morning, automated nest closing and exclusion of birds, automatic lights to help them get back in at.

Night, and automatic closing of the actual.

Egg mobile along with brand new energizers. The ones that Jasper purchased and talked about in the farm like a hero experience have also now talked to Thomas in Poland. That was here on the masterclass too. He bought one too. And they're getting 5,000 volts through two poultry nets in grass, which is fantastic. And so I think we would definitely be investing in new energizers.

But I really like the idea of a home built.

All the bells and whistles. Eggmobile version 2.0 that could be then.

Spread out across the EU so that.

People can build that without any issue.

If you look back at videos with.

Jasper, you'll see he got around his scratching space issues in Germany by putting poultry fence around the eggmobile and building.

A hatch where they could go down to the ground below as well as putting a temporary sheet that catches the manure at night.

That got him through the regulations, but it's obviously far from an ideal working scenario. And then we've also spoken on the farm like a hero experience to producers that have invested €40,50,000 in EGNobilts. But the trouble is I think the 40,000 Euro version is only for 250 hen and in my mind 350 to.

400 hens is the ideal eggmobile size.

For cost efficiency and economic returns for.

The unit, as it were.

So we're looking to build something for 350, maybe 400 beds. It'll be slightly longer than this to incorporate the double sided nest boxes with the conveyor belt in the middle. It will be solar powered and I don't think it would have food and water on board.

That's something you get in these more expensive models. You get a week or two weeks worth of food and water. But we're coming up every day anyway, so bringing feed is not an issue. And water we do on our pipe system I think is more practical because when you start integrating feed and water, you're obviously getting up there with weight.

That you suddenly need a tractor to pull it around. And the design consideration would be the same. It needs to be pulled by an ATV and it needs to be fitting through our gates and pathways on the farm. So something we've considered already is to make that metal frames and try and eliminate wood as far as possible in the design. Wood obviously is conducive to mites, so metal framing could make it a lot lighter and allow us to keep a bigger mobile that actually weighs the same as these do anyway, so it can be pulled easily by an atv. And so that's a project I'm excited about to get my creative juices flowing and be a benefit to the whole in outsourcing these plans so that other people can jump on that. And I'll stress again, these work perfectly fine. There's just a little bit more labor.

Input than is required if you put in the automations and it's no big deal, but certainly if you can at a low cost afford to improve the design, then it's well worth doing.

So let me know your thoughts about.

That in the comments below.

And if you want to send us a picture of your version of a.

Ridgedale Egmobile or inspired by us, please.

Send your photo and the name of your farm, the country you're in, to.

The email that popped up and we'll.

See you in the video soon. Bye for now.