Finally, I am back in the black! I have made a profit on the chickens for the second or third time since we have had chickens. It has not been easy and our chickens have been especially productive in 2020. We only lost 6 chickens this year which is not very many. I usually lose around a dozen to the predators.
We fed on average 186# feed/month at a cost of $51/month. The real winner here is that the chickens converted only 0.56# food into a single egg at the cost of $0.15/egg. We used 2240# of food to feed 32 chickens that dropped to 26 by the end of the year. We collected 3983 eggs for the year at a cost of $1.83/doz approximately 332 dozen eggs. This resulted in a profit of $425 for 2020.
The 2020 supply expenses were $608, income for eggs sold was $1034 for a profit of $425! The chickens really liked 2020. The real reason for this profit was a friend of mine who gave me a bunch of free unsexed chicks and by the end of the year they started really laying a lot of eggs. I had to thin out the roosters but the mongrel chickens are the best egg producers I have ever had, thanks Scott.
Yes, I do realize that this report is a little late. I had plans to post these last year and then just did not do it. I lost money in 2018 on the chickens and was hopeful that I would at least break even. This was not going to happen, we spent $100 on new chicks and they were purchased late so they were not productive this year. If you subtracted the cost of the chicks then we would only have lost $46.85, for a grand total of $146.85 loss for 2019.
We started the year with 20 hens laying and ended up with only 9 laying eggs at the end of the year for a loss of 11 hens. Our productivity was horrible, 32% for the year. We averaged feeding 137#/month of chicken pellets. For a total of 1810 eggs collected for the year, about 150 dozen. My feed costs were $436.85 for the year. This is always raising and feed is the single driving force for cost of chickens. When you add in total costs the average cost of a dozen eggs is $3.58. I sell them for $4/doz so you would think we would make a profit. Unfortunately, we eat a lot of eggs! I still don’t give us financial credit for eggs sold unless they actually leave the farm and are sold. The difference is our consumption. Again, farm fresh eggs are the BEST!
Our chickens converted 0.91# feed/egg laid. The average cost of an egg is $0.24/egg. My hope is that when the babies grow up and start laying next year there will be a profit made! If I can avoid having to purchase chicks that will also help.
Our total expenses for 2019 were $536, with an egg sale profit of $390, for the loss of $146. That pretty much sums it up, another year in the red, but we ate a lot of incredible eggs.
I had to go out again this morning and run the tractor over the driveway. The snow just keeps coming down, there is over 18” on the ground. I even went down to the pregnant cows and drug a path through the snow to the water and flattened a spot under a tree. They had already knocked down the snow all around the feeder. I went up to check on the upper feeder cows and had to drag a path out to them. They had about 1/3 of a bale so I went out and broke up a bale and scooped it up a few large flakes at a time. I then drove those out to them and tossed them over the fence. When I was cutting open the large bale I discovered that one of the white alpaca had died last night. It was not even frozen or stiff yet, it was curled up sheltered between two large bales. The alpaca are old and we are going to have to look for a few more this summer. So if you know of someone within 120 miles that wants to get rid of their male alpaca we are willing to pick them up and give them a forever home. Unfortunately, we can only take males as we do not want any cria, no baby alpaca! The snow is so deep I was unable to move the body up to the boneyard. I could not even get it out of the field, the snow was just too deep. So I blocked the gate with the body so I will be able to find it when the snow goes away.
I spent the rest of the day trying to get the bathroom wired with our final choices. I installed all of the push button switches and started in on the outlets. I got the lights in but initially had the sconces turned upward. Annmarie came up and looked at it and stated that we had talked about it before and wanted the scones turned downward. So I went back and fixed them and turned them all downwards. They look better turned downwards! I still have three outlets to wire up before I am done in the bathroom. I do need to install a closet light still.
We have had three more lambs born this week. I will have to update the data soon. We tagged the twins, both girls, and turned them loose into the main herd tonight. Annmarie had told me on Friday that I needed to bring the gloves and come to the barn. The Gloves are shoulder length OB vinyl gloves used to be able to reach up inside the sheep and pull out babies. This is never a good sign. Luckily the mother was not in distress so I did not have to intervene. I dread having to use my nursing skills on the sheep.
It is here! Our Montana snow kit has arrived and it is almost the end of Winter. We have had nonstop snow for the last two days and have over 18” of snow on the ground now. Our friend from Montana, Doom, promised to over deliver and under promise when it came to his custom Montana snow kits and he managed to out do himself this year. We are shoveling snow twice a day for the walkway and today I had to break out the tractor and spend two hours clearing the driveway. The snow is getting too deep for Annmarie’s all wheel drive Subaru so I needed to clear a path so we could at least get to the road. They finally plowed our county road today. It is supposed to snow for another 3-5 days then rain for another 3-5 days. It’s going to be a mess and we will probably get flooded again, ugh. Luckily, I expect the new fences I put in to break away instead of bend over like they did last year. I was unable to get the backhoe up to the upper field and redo the ditches that are up there and got washed out last year. This is going to have to happen this year after everything dries out.
When I was out with the tractor I managed to accidentally ran off of the road, tractor slid sideways down a five foot hill. I managed to not roll the tractor and got it to slide down the hill sideways the rest of the way. While I was trying to not roll the tractor I spotted another water leak! I knew there was one as our water pressure had dropped slightly. I am honestly unsure how to solve some of the water leak problems. The last plumbing repair put in a rubber joint to hopefully absorb some of the stress of the pump cycling on and off at the pump outlet. So when the weather warms up I will need to dig the ditch out again and call the plumber. It’s not worth paying the plumber to dig the ditch.
The alpaca just do not care about the weather, Snoop dog has been hanging with the cows and looked miserable with his entire face covered in ice. Annmarie called him over to the gate and I let him through. He rambled up to the machine shed and hid under the overhang to get out of the weather. Within 15 minutes she decided to let the brown alpaca through the gate also so he could get to some food. Before she could get the brown one out of the orchard, Snoop dog ran into the orchard! So he was right back to where he started just back through another gate. The others just wanted to make sure they were near food, the snow and ice just does not bother them.
I got the overhead railing for the bathroom closet door installed and our grate cover for the oven vent outlet hole came. I got them both installed. The snow shoveling has been taking a lot out of me and I have been taking naps, which slows down the process on finishing the bathroom. I did manage to get the final lights brought in from the old house and killed the power to the room so I can get it all wired tomorrow hopefully.
Luckily, we had finished feeding all the cows yesterday before the snow got super deep. My hope is the snow will melt off before I need to feed again.
Well it’s the downhill side of the project now! We managed to put up all but one piece of crown molding today. I had to cut all of the angles after paying for angle cutting, the cuts went the wrong direction. We have enough left over to put crown molding inside the closet also! Mr. Professional helped me get it installed. It just takes time, all of these finishing steps just take time, the last 15% of every project takes almost as much time as the first 85%.
The closet door is glued together and just needs to dry overnight. I will glue the shelves together every couple of nights this week so we can get those installed. I ordered metal shelf brackets today but I am not sure if they are going to be here on time to get the shelves in next weekend. Nope, I just looked the shelve brackets do not arrive until Tuesday, nine days from now. They are only one inch wide so we may just be able to leave room to install them when they arrive and still hang the shelves as long as we don’t put any weight on the shelves. The paint stripper is coming by Friday so we can get the grey paint off of the one side of the bathroom door. Annmarie tells me I am not allowed to use the bathroom until the door works! Currently that is not an issue as the plumber has not been here yet. I am hopeful the plumber will come in the next two weeks.
I am loving the new clean breeze porch. I was able to transplant 10 jade plant starts today from their watery containers into actual soil pots. I only started one more jade cutting today, I am trying to shape my big plant and it keeps wanting to send off random shoots. I keep cutting them back and it is finally starting to fill in.
Annmarie just informed me that I am not allowed to build any new fence this year! I had two new sections of fence planned for this summer. I have to complete the culvert in the barn lot that got torn out last year due to flooding and then I need to put a new front porch deck on. I know that the front decking job will be a nightmare because as soon as I tear off the decking I will see the support framework and it will probably need a lot of help. The front deck job has been on the calendar for the last three years. My new fencing project has been on the calendar for six months. I love new projects!!
I am also going to start looking into plans for a craft building. I have found a location am just trying to finalize the shape. I won’t start on that for a couple of years. I really like the idea and think if I do the floor in tongue and groove wood, and the outside in rough lumber I can do the inside in plywood. This would let us build custom shelves and long work benches that are counter height, maybe even an island in the middle of the room to just use as a flat space for assembly and whatever. New projects are the bomb! They let my brain spin, plan, assemble, tear apart and redo without ever lifting any tools.
I have one chicken that cannot figure out it needs to lay eggs in the chicken coop, not the barn! I found a green egg in the barn straw this morning when I went out and let the sheep outside. When Annmarie went out to feed the sheep this evening she found the culprit in the middle of a feeder hunkered down but she did not have any eggs. The chickens are not very smart but boy the home grown free range eggs are amazing and now we have one chicken that is laying double yolk eggs consistently.
Stewart Creek Somethings 