Moving €25,000 of PASTURED POULTRY in 20 minutes

So we're, we're gonna move these first, normally moving the pendants first and finishing with these. You can see the impact that the birds have had in a, a day here and what the ground looks like where they haven't been. So they are foraging a bunch. This ground is not recovered, but it's the only fresh greens that we can give the young birds. And there's a lot of young birds so we want to give them that. So times, you know, like this, we have to make decisions like that. So this is a higher risk thing. There's €25,000 of birds in here and so just bear that in mind as we do this because we're pulling heavy things over the top of very small, fragile birds. And anytime you squash a bird, those €30 disappeared. So it's a little bit more high risk. But I like this because the whole intention of the model is giving the birds 30 or 40% more space and less work to move them. We've had no predator issues. Everything seems to be going good and these birds are now self moving to like 70% of them. The last few always need a bit of encouragement. But you can see the path. We're going uphill. So this one we have to be very careful setting up the nets and we're using food to go down the middle of the new pen and that will encourage them to run through. They'll run through anyway, but they come running back again when they realize there's no food. So this energizer is very powerful. You want to be careful you don't touch that. I'm double checking it's off. It wasn't. And so we leave this fence and set up the next fence ready for them to come running through. This is kind of whilst the ground is not recovered, it's ideal for these young birds. It's not too tall for them and they're only six weeks old, so they're still babies, but it's very vegetative. That is perfect forage for such young birds. Now they know they're going to move, so we have to work a little bit swift and we have an opening up here so we can open this into the new pen as soon as we're ready. And we're using a 50 meter and a 25 meter fence and they will get both of them at full extension as they grow now. But you see they're not getting the full 50 meters. And so what we're actually going to do is play with adding another fence that goes from there to here up and connects back in. It's obviously got to be long enough for the four pens. Well, each pen is a salatin pen with a wheel on it. So it's four by three. So you can see it's 16, 17, 18 meters. So we got to know we have 18 meters in this case. I think we're going to take a 25 meter from here to here and bring the end of that fence to meet it. And it will be just long enough to get all the pens in. So we lay the fence out and then we get it up as quick as we can. They might start crashing the fence soon because they know we're going to move. They know the ground's good over here. You see they're foraging and there's no electric in the fence. So let's get going. We'll take this bit away as we let the birds through, but we need to know it's in the right place. So this is where it starts. And so when we get two sections across, then you can head 90 degrees that way so someone can follow Lucas and start putting that up. I'll take this out the way and we can take these two bags of feed and we want to put them down the middle here in a long line. And the reason we're doing it precisely in the middle is then we can pull the pens over the top of the birds who are going to be focused in on eating food so nice and evenly. You'll start in the middle and you can see how long it is. You want to be in a straight line here. And we're using the old fence to create a guide for them. I would put it on the inside maybe. And so you see the birds become self moving and then we just start unlocking the wheels. Then they have a little screw through the spokes to stop them moving. And then we have to come along and carefully move the pens over them without squashing a bird. Now this must be done. It can be done swiftly, but it must be done well because if you run over a bird, you kill it basically. It will die of internal bleeding. And we're watching all our wheels. We're not just walking along. We're being very mindful of where we're at. I'm actually watching all the wheels because I'm not sure if you're watching them, but I'm normally. I'm doing it alone. Like I don't need other people to move this. We get this right to the end. Now we're trying to keep the fence up to it and then we plug in the screws again right into their holes. And because this isn't a natural connection, I need to sort of plug that under there and I'll just tighten it back up again. With this one, we want to get this waterer to the middle of the pen, so we need to actually enter again here and we'll pull it all the way to the middle where it's accessible to the maximum amount of birds. And it's always important with this kind of water, it's just homemade and it's like loose connections that you hold it by the actual cord as you walk, not just pull it along, because you'll be fixing it every time you do that. So I'm just holding it with that as I move it, just to not pull on the actual joint, as it were. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In the middle. Yeah. It's better for getting as many birds to it. So it's nice having automatic water, particularly in these hot times. And that's one of the benefits of a pen style, is that we could piggyback another water off the back of that and have enough water for all the birds. We just haven't got round to it. But right now I want to keep a water on each one just so birds have access to water really close, because they're not necessarily moving around so much right now. Early in the morning, they're looking around, they're taking a lot of greens. Later on, they're sitting around talking about the football, how England beats Sweden, didn't they? And then the energizer will go back on when we come in, because that's where we want to turn it off again. This is a Swedish version of the. The things we've been using in the fields. It's rubbish, it's very strong, but it's totally impractical. It's too big, it's too clunky. In the photos, it looked normal size because I bought it because of the rating of the power. It's the same rating kind of as the ones in the chickens. It's just double the size and weight. And so it's kind of impractical. So we use it for like static pig fencing or whatever. We just run out of energizers this year, so we're using it here. But you see how it's working with the. Like. This fence actually needs to be left in because it's part of the electric fence and that's a single. It's only got a single foot. So it's a rubbish quality fence. You need these Double feet. They're much more practical, they're much more stable. This one's a nightmare to push in the ground because the pole is just bending out. But now, as the birds are getting bigger, we can keep increasing the size. Right now they've just got a 25 with the ending to the 50, but the whole pen, it's built for a thousand birds, and if it had a thousand birds, the maximum we would need is the 50 and the 25 as a full pen, obviously, that would be coming quite far away from the pens. So what I would do in that formation is leave a bit more of a gap between the shelters to minimize the space between a fence and the shelter, because if it's not too wide a gap, a predator bird's not going to come in there. Like, imagine landing in here. It's pretty intense now. It could happen. I mean, I've seen buzzards sitting up here watching, but they're a little intimidated to land in there because they don't know what's going to happen. And so this one, it's a variable energizer, which is really nice because you can turn it right up to super strong. But in the very beginning, when the birds come in, it's a bit too much. They're only this big and they haven't got all their feathers and that can really shock them. And so now as they're bigger, we turn it right up, or not all the way up, but up enough that it really shocks them. And they learn pretty quick. Like, they don't sit on the fence ever anymore. And as they get older, they get smarter. Like, I came up when it was drizzling yesterday and they all sat under the rain line in the dry. When they first come out, they're just like. And they sit out in the rain or they get scared by the noise on the roof and they all go sit in the rain. And that's what kills young birds, is wet and exposure, particularly to wind. So this one's ready to go, I think. Yeah. Or have we filled up water? No. So we have to fill up water at the ends first and then we're ready, turn it on. But pretty quick. A thousand birds can be done very swift and they have more space and that will increase the amount of forage they actually take. You see, they really enjoy taking leaves and forbs, and they also, at this age just eat sticks and whatever. They, you know, they haven't really worked out what's what. But compared to the laying hens, like, these guys shit a lot Right. So, like, compared to the hens, as they get bigger, they leave massive shits and they should a lot, which is partly why you need to move them twice a day in the salatin pens when they get bigger. Like, you can see what an impact it's had here. But it's a very even load of manure compared to the layers where you have a high concentration of manure under the eggmobile and a bit of manure around the place. With the boiler pens and this pen, it's all very concentrated that you get a very even fertilisation, as it were. And you can see that in the aerial footage laying paddock, you'll see where the eggmobiles were from the aerial footage. Whereas these guys, you'll see where the entire pen was. So it's a much better, even fertilizing tool, as it were. But I like it. I'm more and more into this model and I've just always been cautious to like, you know, recommend people to try it because it is a big potential risk. You need to think about your predators and you need to respond to whatever happens. But I think I will always do something like this. It's much nicer for the birds and the workflow is really easy. The first days is more work because you have to kind of come along with these boards and move all of them for like maybe four, five, six days. And then they start like, okay, yeah, we're going over there. And they're not particularly. They're not big enough to do that big run yet. Were they here when you were here before? So at that point they were like small. Right. And they were not really following and just a bit meh. But quite a change, no? Yeah. So the first week is more work, but it's an investment in a lot less work over time. And the birds get a bunch more space when they get their full netting. So the amount of space a bird needs is based on a full grown bird. Right. When they're young, they don't need that much space because they're not moving around much. They're tiny still. So we're increasing the paddocks as the birds grow. Right now I'm happy with this, so size, but we've got this situation where we were using a 50 and a 25. And the reason we're doing that is we always want an opening for the next day, as it were. So if we. You can't do that with 250s. It's too big a fence. So we've bought 25 meter fences just for this. And that allows us to always have a gate to join the next one with a gate and have a gate for the next. You know, you need to get your both ends, otherwise it doesn't work. So this is like this model, you should think of it as a thousand bird model with a 50 and a 25 meter and four pens. But they have as much roof space as five Salatin pens. But they have a lot more space on the ground obviously. So the salatin pens are built to regulation of size. But in this case we want to give them a bit more space than that because I think it's a bit intensive. The salatin style pens, they're also very well thought through. I mean gel Salitan's developed them over 40, 50 years and they work and there's a reason they work and there's some of the intricate details you can only appreciate by actually using them. It's all good trying to innovate and change things. But you know, there's a lot to be said for really trying to understand why people develop things over decades. You know, it's good reasons, but I do find it intensive and I do think we could take care of birds welfare a little bit better by giving them more space, more forage and better. Like in the hot spell we're having now, you see the other birds get very hot and this has got a lot more ventilation. But on the equal opposite side, when it's wet and windy, these birds are more exposed. Now you could remedy that by just sticking some drop down sheets on the side. A nice design addition here would be to put like a corrugated plastic V in front of each wheel so it like scoots the birds out the way. But even then probably feet would get stuck under and then people wouldn't be being so cautious. They'd think it's automated so they'd just pull it too fast and probably break feet. And so, you know, I'm cautious to do that because it's observational based, it needs to be done carefully. But I haven't ever put drop down sides because I'm just curious how it goes like this. If I need to I'll obviously come and do it. But we brought these birds out in a thunderstorm. It was like the only rain we'd had. And we actually came out and put sawdust under them and just made sure they were dry. But they were all inside in the dry. And so we just chose not to move them onto wet ground, just keep them where they were in the dry and put some bedding in there, and they were totally fine. They, you know, there was no.