I know everyone has been dying to know how my chickens did financially in 2014 so here is the long awaited summary. I made $762, the most money ever, raising the prices helped dramatically ($378 more than last year). My annual expenses were $394 ($86 less than last year, buying feed on sale in 500# increments paid off). I purchased 1500# of chicken feed an increase of 150# over last year. My average laying hens for the year were 18.5 hens (a drop of 0.1 hens). I attribute the increase in feed to raising babies in the spring and in the fall. I currently have 9 chickens in the pipeline to start laying eggs in March. I will get another dozen this spring also. I am going to add another raised perch in the coop to add space. We keep turning customers away. I collected on average 9 eggs/day (an increase of 3.1 eggs/day over last year) for a hen productivity of 49% for the year (an 18% increase!). This is where buying chicks in the spring and previous fall paid off. If I can keep my productivity around 50% it is perfect for the breeds and free ranging. The hens consumed 0.45 lbs of feed/egg produced (0.18 lb/egg less than last year). It cost me $0.09/egg in feed expenses for a total feed cost of $1.08/doz ($1.32/doz less than last year). My actual cost per dozen with all expenses added is $1.43/doz ($1.87 less than last year). I was charging $3/doz until April when I raised the price to $4/dozen, that price increase made a big difference. 2014 was definitely the year of the chicken. I need to keep my chicken numbers up. I cannot let the predators or old age bring my production numbers down. It takes me 6-8 months to raise the chickens to a productive age and it can drastically change my outcome. I will start keeping upwards of 35 birds all the time. That way if I get 15 killed I can keep that 20 average going for the year.
I had a few issues with my chicken door but now have lots of spare parts and can repair it myself. We talked about adding a solar panel to the old chicken coop and running 100 birds. I am unwilling at this point to do that. I would need a small fridge that could hold 25 dozen eggs and they would have to be collected every day. I would need to add a subdivision in the building, clean out the feed room, add another electric chicken door running off of a car battery and solar panel. Plus, I would need an enclosed yard with a top! The coop is 100 yards from the house and if we are going to be gone I would need the birds to be safe. I would have an external gate that would be open most of the time to allow free ranging. I figure around $500-1000 to install. I would then move all my chickens out to that coop. I would use the close up coop for raising babies as it has electricity. If the price continues to rise on eggs I may consider it. I will watch out for those feed sales and jump on them. I know I will need at least 1500# for the year so It will be much easier to figure out how much to buy. I did find a calculation issue in my chicken spreadsheet. We had one month were we did not use any chicken feed. The spreadsheet didn’t use that month when calculating its averages. I will have to get Annmarie to make it smarter! I do data entry only on any spreadsheet and if I could figure out how to get out of it I would! She maintains the sheep and cow spreadsheets. I messed it up a few times too many.
Month: January 2015
Window tile cut
I spent another couple of hours today cutting tiles for around the window. It is starting to look good! I will glue them down in a couple of days. I just work when I have time. After I get those stuck on the wall I will tear into the countertop and cut it flush, sand the edges and install the hardiboard. I will need to tear out the sink when I start working on the countertop. More work, just gonna go one day at a time.
Window progress
I realize it doesn’t look like a lot, but that is over two hours work to cut the wonder board and all the wooden boards. I installed them and leveled all the ledge boards that the tiles will sit on while the mastic sets up. I only had to add one permanent spacer board. I want the tile edges near the window to be perfectly lined up as the wooden window trim will be sitting on it. I plan on using a piece of discarded wooden trim that was the wrong width from when we sheathed the beams, seven years ago. I knew that piece of trim would come in handy eventually. I managed to squeeze in a little work on the kitchen before going to the paying job!
We got the weights for the two cows we had processed, their carcass weights were 341# and 326#. Perfect weight for what we want. Carcass weight is usually less than 50% of the live animal. Some animals and breeds give a better carcass weight/live weight ratio. Our sheep are over 50%. So one cow was sold. We won’t have beef again for approximately 22 months. On a plus note, in April there will be five breeding cows and three more newborn calves. The cow herd is growing slowly. It’s much cheaper to do it slow.
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| Window ready for tile. |
Counter progress is happening.
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| One counter backsplash up and stuck to wall. |
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| New kitchen sink came in three days! |
I made good progress in the morning and got the backsplash on the left side of the kitchen. The mastic was much better after using the drill and paint mixer, consistency and stickiness was improved. I spent all afternoon taking down the sheetrock from around the window. This created a half inch deficit to the window that now needs to be filled in. I only have 1/4 inch hardiboard. Now I need a trip to the hardware store to get 1/2 inch if they make it. Otherwise, its two layers.
Our kitchen sink was delivered today. I walked out on the front porch and there it was. I ordered it on Sunday evening and it was at our doorstep on Wednesday afternoon. If anyone doesn’t believe that is amazing they need to move to a big city.
No new baby sheep. We keep looking every day. My chickens don’t like the weather swings. I have only gotten 2-3 eggs/day the last few days. They need to figure it out so we can have eggs.
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| Framing out window and putting in tile rest so I can tile above window. |
First counter tiled.
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| Tiles stuck to counter |
I have been working on the kitchen. I have to keep posting pictures so it shows progress! Yesterday, I went to town to get a paint mixer for my drill so I could mix the mastic. I did the first batch by hand and it was very painful. This mixer batch was much easier to do and it was far more consistent.
I will work on the window surround now. I need the new kitchen sink to arrive so I can install the other counter hardiboard. It has not showed up yet. I expect it tomorrow or Friday. If it shows up tomorrow then I can get the hardiboard installed on Friday and maybe lay out the tiles. It is getting there. I want to grout the finished counter on Friday. We will have a working counter top in the kitchen then. I will get all the countertops 100% done then I will move onto the downdraft vent fan. I have to custom build a cabinet and cut out a hole in the end of the house. I am not really looking forward to that project.
We got our annual call from the USDA yesterday about our sheep herd. They always want an update on how many animals and what kind you have at the first of the year. We did not get the online survey done so I did it on the phone. The phone was way easier. One of the questions he asked was what form of nonlethal predator control do we do. The list is surprising to me because we do a lot. We fence, lock the sheep up at night in a barn, have a dog, clean out the bedding in the barn annually, and rotate pastures. He asked me my expenses for lethal control of predators, $50 for .243 ammo! He did say on an anecdotal note that he has noticed most lambs are killed by coyotes from the surveys he has been doing. We lost two lambs last year to coyotes.
On a plus note, I saw the quail covey on Monday in the barn lot. I had not seen them all winter long. I saw the barn owl last week in the machine shop. I tried to get a picture but it would not hold still. It looks like our red tailed hawks might be moving back in to the upper pasture. The tall tree blew down but the next tallest tree (now the tallest tree around!) has had them perching in its upper branches for over a week. Maybe in a few years I will be able to find time to make some bat houses and bird houses. The bats now live out in the 100 year old poplar trees or the cedar trees, not sure which one.
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| Backsplash now stuck to walls. |
Stewart Creek Somethings 