These are the financials for the first six months of 2016. On average I had 24.9 laying hens (0.5 decrease) giving me 8.4 eggs/day(increase 1.6 eggs/day) for a productivity rate of 32% (7% increase). I am feeding on average 158.3# chicken feed/month(decrease 24.7 #/month) for a grand total of 950# this year already (400# increase). My monthly feed bill is $37.64/month (decrease $6.32/month). My feed costs are $1.97/doz (decrease of $0.71/doz)with my total cost of production at $2.30/doz (decrease of $0.38/doz), this was from having to buy bedding for the chicken coop. My chickens are consuming 0.64 lbs food/egg produced (decrease 0.26lbs/egg), spring is here and gone with chickens free ranging for all they are worth. It is costing me $0.15/egg ($0.07/egg decrease) in feed. I have collected 1491 eggs to date (increase in 896 eggs). My total feed costs are $225.81 (increase of $93.92) and my extra expenses are $41.30 for bedding. I currently am profiting $36.89 for the year! I am in the black finally.
Farm
2016 chicken financials first quarter
I am a little behind on the chicken financials. Now that the child is gone from the house I have lost my data entry person. So now I have to do it. This has led to some serious procrastination. In my defense, our company was down and out of the picture for almost two months before we got a new one, and I am still learning how to use a Mac computer. It is different and not quite like making my ipad work. I am now entering data for the entire year of 2016 but will stop every quarter so we can get a cumulative look at the chicken financials. Everyone loves the chicken report!!
These are the financials for the first three months of 2016. On average I had 25.4 laying hens giving me 6.6 eggs/day for a productivity rate of 25%. I am feeding on average 183# chicken feed/month for a grand total of 550# this year already. My monthly feed bill is $43.96/month. My feed costs are $2.68/doz with my total cost of production at $2.68/doz. My chickens are consuming 0.92 lbs food/egg produced and it is costing me $0.22/egg in feed. I have collected 595 eggs to date. My total feed costs are $131.89 and my extra expenses are $0. I currently am losing $43.89.
Losing money is never a good thing but it is winter and I usually don’t break even in the winter. It will get better when the chickens can free range and increase their productivity.
Just when you think it cannot get any colder
We have a routine down now when it comes to the animals in winter. Because of Mika’s bad hoof, we have to keep her feet dry. To do this she is spending most of her time in the old milking lean to off of the end of the barn. So in the morning we go out and water her, feed both horses and scoop poop out of her area. We both go to work and in the evening we water the horse again, feed both horses and clean out both horses hooves with a hoof pick. We then use the dogs to push the sheep out of the barn and feed them two bales of grain hay and one bale of alfalfa. Since we are feeding the two groups of cows a large bale each about every 10 days I push a new large bale in their area for them to eat. I get eggs every night also. This takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes every night and about 15 minutes in the morning.
Tonight when Annmarie went out to feed she found a pair of brand new twin baby sheep in the back of the barn! I knew a few ewes looked mighty fat but I figured we had a little more time. These are first time mom’s and their cycle is way off of the others. I am going to have to get all dressed up and go out into the single digit cold to check on the baby sheep. One was laying down flat in the straw when we left. We did watch it sit up completely and look around when it was startled so we did not remove it immediately. Hopefully, it will be just fine and looking around when I go out and check on them.
I checked on the babies last night before bed and they stood up and walked a few steps to get away from me. Annmarie said I needed to stick my finger in their mouth to make sure it was moist and warm, but I figured if they had enough energy to get away from me then they had been eating just fine.
Annmarie called me at work today to get me to come home while the sun was still up to feed the animals. I had one thing to finish, three things later I got out of work at 1610. On the way home she bargained with me that she would feed the animals if I cooked dinner and did the dishes. Usually, the cook, does not have to do the dishes at our house. We were having salmon patties and it is one of the few dishes that I do well and Annmarie has to work at. I suspected she did not want to make the patties and just tossed in the dishes as an added bonus! She fed, I did dinner and the dishes. It was COLD outside. The newborn sheep are doing just fine. We are leaving them in the barn for a few days before they get to go outside.
Internet vs4.0. The only option
I had visions of high speed internet. Those visions are crushed.
I was unsure why our internet had quit working in the night. I was waiting until 1100 when the dish guys were coming to go outside. The rental company had called and said they would be out this afternoon to pick up the boom. They showed up early. My mother-in-law called to tell me it looked like the semi might get stuck. By the time I got outside the semi was stuck in six inches of mud. I brought over some gravel with the tractor and a shovel in the hopes we could gravel a path back to the road. While we were doing that the satellite guys show up and barely got around the truck. They then proceeded to get stuck by machine shop and powered their way over to the road. The semi is going no where so the driver decides to move the boom around the machine shop. But it is only 2 wheel drive, advertised as 4 wheel drive and it cannot hardly move. The operator is making the problem worse by trying to power through the mud. He cannot around the machine shop as the road is slightly elevated so he had to come back. Unfortunately, he cannot get around the semi truck either. I think he wanted to use the weight of the boom to help him gain some traction in the the semi truck. This was a large “negatory ghost rider” moment.
Once he got out of the way with the boom the satellite guys got their truck in place and tried to aim the dish. One of them came over to me and said the pole was loose. I went over and crawled up the tall ladder on the end of the machine shop. The collar that was 2/3 of the way up the mast had spread and slipped down in the wind some time in the night. Wtechlink high speed internet is just not going to happen! They took the dish down and we laid the mast down on the peak of the roof. I will take it all down in the summer. Annmarie called the phone company and asked them to restart our old service.
The flat bed driver finally managed to get chained up and backed onto the road. The entire area looks like a mud derby was held in the vicinity. Our poor road has huge tracks in it and is mostly mud. I ordered 30 cubic yards of 1.5 inch gravel in an attempt to actually get the road back in shape.
The next day I spread out 20 cubic yards of 1.5 inch gravel on the road by our house and on the dirt road I made this summer. The dirt road looked pretty good. Our road turned out to be incredibly bumpy. Gravel this size is really not just 1.5 x 1.5 inches in size. it only has to be 1.5 inches narrow on one side to go through the screen. It is a lot bigger than that. The nice thing is it is staying on top of the road. The bad thing is it is staying on top of the road and the cars don’t like it. It got dark so I could not keep driving on it with the tractor. The next day it froze and it has stayed frozen since then. Annmarie is not too happy with the rough road. As soon as it thaws out I will take a load of gravel in the tractor and drive up and down the driveway to push the gravel down into the road bed.
We are now back to telephone internet at 1.5 MBS max speed. On a plus note, our phone/internet bill went from $110/month to $60/month after we cancelled for one month for the exact same services. I truly don’t understand why businesses do that. We do now have power at the machine shop and we have a light in the hay room. Both very good things.
Internet vs3.0
I had a plan, it just needed some freezing weather to come to fruition. What I did not anticipate was the plague. I started feeling very ill on Christmas Eve and it just went downhill from there. I missed Christmas dinner and spent over 36 hours in bed straight. By Monday morning I could move but AnnMarie had the plague and was miserable. It was my last day with the boom and I had promised AnnMarie internet or we would go back to the phone company for our super slow but reliable internet.
I put on my new coat and headed out into the cold. The boom started no trouble and I was able to maneuver it into place. I had to keep moving the boom around with the wheels. It goes up well but will only reach sideways so far. I did a bunch of manipulating and had to go everything three times as I was still fighting the funk and my brain was not at its usual 75%.
The longer I worked the softer the soil got and the wind started blowing. When you are 40 feet in the air and try to move the boom one foot to the left it jerks around a lot! I almost hurled a few times. I was really glad for the safety harness. I finally managed to get it up. Locktite on the tighteners and everything in place. I moved the vent dish around and hoped we had internet. My cell phone had died halfway into this three hour ordeal so I could not call anyone. Good thing I didn’t fall out of the bucket.
When I went inside we had internet!!! We watched tv that was not from an antenna. Life is good. I called the internet people and set up an appointment for them to come aim the dish and replace the bent reflector. They are coming at 1100 tomorrow, Mission accomplished.
It’s tomorrow and our internet went out in the middle of the night. The dish is still up and on the pole so I don’t know what is wrong. AnnMarie tells me that Skype or any live web stream has not worked since we switched to antenna. I will have to pass that along today.
Stewart Creek Somethings 