About a year ago they approached us about making calf hutches for them. We didn't have an oven wide enough at the time. Towards the end of last year we picked up the conversation and as of now we're able to make these beautiful calf hutches.
We've called our calf hutch a YOLO Moo Igloo and this is what it looks like.
A calf hutch is like a very large dog kennel for calves. The 'kennel' has an attached fence that makes a 'garden' and the calf lives in its own hutch-and-garden for up to three months, until its immune system is strong enough for it to join an outdoor living group. Hutches are spaced about a metre from each other so the calves can chat to each other.
These individual hutches are beneficial to the calves' health as they have their own food and water, their health can be easily monitored (easy to see if they're not drinking or eating and if they have diarrhoea) and the spread of diseases is limited - think runny nose in a nursery school. Of course the hutches provide shelter from the sun, wind, rain and cold.
We weren't initially going to make the pens, but then the dairy suggested we go for it as an option for farmers. Some farms will have existing pens that they can just attach to our Moo Igloo, but those expanding their herd may prefer just to get this pen from us together with hutches instead of making their own fencing. The cool thing about our pen is that it pivots to tilt upwards so that the hutch with pen can be dragged by a worker to a new spot. Being easy to move is a great feature - our local dairy moves their pens every week so that the calf has fresh grass under their hooves and to lie on.
There is a BIG agricultural show next week, NAMPU, and Wynn-with kindly invited us to have our YOLO Moo Igloo on their Valtrac stand (farming equipment). We're going through for the day on Tuesday and are so excited about being there. Just over a week later is the Royal Agricultural Show in Pietermaritzburg and our calf hutch will be there too. We'll plan to go along at least for a day too.
If you know any people with calves, sheep, goats, chickens or very big dogs, please direct them our way.
Our range of YOLO products is slowly starting to grow. We've got the YOLO Compost Tumblers in our YOLO Green (garden) category and now this YOLO Moo Igloo in our YOLO Yellow (agricultural) range. Very exciting!
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