I never planned to have a laying flock.. and look where we are now! I originally got a handful of laying hens back in 2022. Seen as though I had so many meat chickens it would be nice to have a few eggs I thought. Any spare can go to customers. Apparently people will go a long way for a decent egg and at the time supermarket shelves were struggling to keep them in stock. So as it turns out my little hens couldn't keep up.
Customers have been so patient with me, after all new eggs don't appear over night. Hens don't really start laying until 22 weeks old and they need a place to live, nest boxes, perches, enough pasture to graze over, not to mention they cost a bit of money to rear to egg laying stage.
I got in 30 new hens last October which have been laying some fantastic eggs since the original crew went into retirement in and around the gardens of Huddersfield. This helped cover demand somewhat but still wasn't really enough. I needed a dedicated egg coop that moves around the pasture. In comes the egg mobile. Some what of a long project as I bought the old caravan base year before last at some point. However the majority of building has been done over the past four weeks.
Not only is the new egg mobile finished but it's got 180 new residents, 18 week old leghorns brought up from an organic farm earlier this week. Not all 180 are mine. Some belong to Hillcrest and we are sharing facilities, with my lohmans in their egg mobile meaning we are now running two egg mobile's on site. The white leghorns have already started laying albeit little pullet eggs but within the next few weeks they will gradually come up to regular egg size.
You can expect jazzy white and brown eggs in your orders in the coming weeks.