Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 22 March, 2024…
Hey Y’all!!
Good evening and happy Fast-Jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms!! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E flying low in Wales this week. Hannah, our daughter who is also an F-15E pilot, continues to do well. She is currently temporary duty in the United States (her home station is RAF Lakenheath, UK—in the same squadron I flew with twice). She is roughing it in Las Vegas flying out of Nellis AFB. Here on the farm, things are going very well. The sheep haven’t wandered since we locked them in with electric wire surrounded by netting. My sheep frustration has gone way down! The beef herd continues to do well and the layer hens continue to give between 5 and 6 dozen eggs per day. We have been donating eggs to the local Senior Center until the market starts in 2 weeks. The dairy cows are also doing well, with Happy still pregnant and still looking like it could be soon, but not imminent. The 4 remaining hogs are great and continue to grow. The news today is the top pic.
Our first round of beef chicks arrived this week! We are raising Cornish Cross roosters this year and have reserved 11 batches of 51 birds to be delivered every 2 weeks. It’s going to be a bit of a scheduling dance, but we’ll probably get a scheduling board, like what they use in the fighter squadrons, to chart their journey here on the farm. As things ramp up by the middle of the season, we will have 250 birds on the farm in 5 different batches, from brand new in the brooder, to about to be processed. We planned smaller but more frequent batches than we had last year when we processed about 350 birds, 75 every 6 weeks. This year we scheduled to process 50 birds every 2 weeks for 22 weeks. By reducing the batch size, it makes processing day a bit easier. By increasing the frequency, we will consistently have fresh birds throughout the market season, as last year we had birds for about 3 weeks and then had to say we were sold out for 3 weeks. This way, we will process a new batch every 2 weeks and even if we sell all of the birds the first week (unlikely), we will have more for sale in 2 weeks. This batch of birds marks the official beginning of Broiler Season…And So It Begins!
Thursday’s Dust’er Mud podcast topic was beef labeling and some of the “beef products” that are in ground beef.
Today’s video was our collaborative video with Kevin and Sarah from Living Traditions Homestead. They joined us to work the sheep and we had a great time!
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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