Keep up to date with the latest at Clare's Organics.June 2008 NewsletterHello to you all. Well, we have had a much better month even though we both managed to get food poisoning and subsequently had to miss a farmers market! The house move went very well as we did it over 3 days and was relatively stress free compared to previous moves; one of my relatives has decided that unless we settle down he will have to start charging us for new home cards. The new refrigerated packing room should, by this Monday, be ready to go and your boxes should have been packed in it; we are just waiting for a replacement generator to arrive for it as the one that came with it decided to start smelling of rubber and lay down a giant smoke screen that I’m sure the SAS would have been proud of. Thermals
The big part is about 26ft long and will be the packing room which has 2 of the giant fridge units in the ceiling; this will be set for about 0-3 degrees C when we are packing so it’s a thermal underwear job. Cover Crop
The yellow is the mustard that makes up part of the crop but is easily the most visible. It is fantastic and in places over 6ft high.
It's widely regarded that if 20% of your birds are in and the rest are out you are doing well, so I’m really chuffed. No VaccinationsAll in all our birds are doing really well at the moment and we get very few problems with them; our last 2 batches had mortality rates of 0% and 0.625% which is also very good (a good batch would be about 2.5 – 6%). I think this has a lot to do with the size of our system and the natural immunity which our birds build up without the use of any antibiotics. Did you know that 99.9% of all chickens are vaccinated at one day old and then are given antibiotics throughout their lives? Ours do not (at my request) so they really are as natural as we can get in a commercial system. Most other producers who I speak to think I am mad. Triple Yolk Egg!
Well, that’s about enough for this month. So, until July... Best wishes,
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As you can see (right), the room has yet to be kitted out with tables and sink etc but you can see the door at the end that leads into the freezer which is about 7ft by 8ft wide. This is where we will store all of the ice packs.
Month after month, I have been going on about the cover crop that I planted for the birds to range in and thought it was about time you had a picture (left).
Last weekend, when I took this picture of the inside of one of the sheds (right), there were only 3 birds indoors and the other 327 were in the cover crop.
We keep a few laying hens for our own eggs and I was amazed that I had a triple yoked egg last weekend. This has happened 3 times in the last year and never fails to amuse me (I don’t get out much you see). So, I thought you might like to see it (left) or I really just want to show it off; one or the other.
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