ROLLAWAY NEST BOXES GIVE CLEAN EGGS EVERY DAY

So having really clean eggs every day is really important to us here because you're not allowed to clean eggs in Europe. If you want to clean eggs you need to send them to a certified facility. And for a small scale producer it's just not economic. So normally the birds are out in the egg mobiles on pasture. At this time of year it's super cold, so we bring them back in again and these will sit here over the winter. We use the same nest boxes in the wintertime, just in the barn. Now if you've been following us, you'll remember we had the chickens in the polytunnel last year, which was nice. They clean up all the crop residues and de seed the area and fertilize it. But now we scaled up the market gardens, we really want to be using that early in the season. So we put them in the barn this year. Same kind of setup, deep litter system and using the nest boxes out of the egg mobile. So let's go and take a look in the barn, see how the eggs are today.

These are roll away nest boxes that we've built and they have inside them a slanted floor at 14 degrees is about optimum slope. And then we use simple mats, the industry standard mats. But they're like an Astroturf with holes on the bot can pressure wash. And that allows the eggs to roll away under this flap out of the way that the birds can't reach them to peck at them. And you get beautiful clean eggs every time we shake these mats out about once a week. Another important thing is making sure the birds have enough calcium source that you don't get cracked eggs inside there. Birds will take quite a lot of calcium. I mean we're here now mid November and the birds are still laying at 92, 94. That will drop down as winter progresses, maybe down to 85%. But they laying an egg every 26 hours or so. So you need to make sure you keep up enough calcium in the way of seashells or whatever it is you use. And with strong eggs you won't get any broken eggs inside the nest. But rollaway is a really fantastic way to allow you to collect eggs without disturbing the birds too much. And with with the double handling, I first collect the eggs and take them back to the egg packery where I have to then pack them again and trade. You can get systems where you have conveyor belts where you can stand at the end of the row and harvest all the eggs in. But those kind of nest boxes are maybe four or five Thousand euro investment for the capacity we have here. And this is about €100 of materials to build all nine boxes in it. And about another €180 for two sets of mats so we can swap them out and set. Having these perches doubling up as a way to close the nest box is great. At night time, you don't want to have birds roosting in their nest because they'll shit in there. And that's a very quick way to get dirty eggs. You keep the mats clean all the time, keep the bedding clean and dry clean chickens cook clean eggs. So one of the keys to having good clean eggs is the bedding. Now here we're using a sawdust and we put this down about 30 thick at the start of the season when the birds come in. And we'll add sawdust whenever it's needed, just by visual inspection. And this acts as a little carbon sink for their manure and they'll scratch it up inside there themselves and it stays lovely and dry all winter. And it's beautiful way to capture the nutrients from the chicken manure. And it goes straight onto our agroforestry systems as a spring mulch and feed when the birds come out into their eggmobiles, the spring. So that's it, folks. That's how we deal with keeping our eggs clean. Simple, low cost solutions here at the farm. As with most things we do here. If you liked the video found it beneficial, please hit subscribe below. You can share it with your friends. Put any comments or questions below. I'll see if I can get to them too. And you can find out more in our book, Making Small Farms Work. It's available only on our website or follow us on Facebook where we try and post regularly up to date happenings at the farm. Thanks for watching. See you next. It.