Mastering Chicken Math: Essential Tips for New Poultry Keepers
Getting started is tough! Knowing what you need and don’t need, save some money and find out the essentials to get started.
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Carey: 0:00
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant, and we're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible. Alright, so today we are going to talk about the, what some of us refer to as being a victim when you go to Tractor Supply or whatever your feed store is and you hear that chirping sound. And they were only a couple of bucks. Whatever story you tell your spouse when you brought them home. And they looked at you and said, chicks. So today we're going to talk about what all that entails what you should have, what you need to be prepared for, because you can't just bring home some chicks and throw them down on the ground.
Duncan: 1:05
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Jennifer: 1:23
No.
Carey: 1:24
So we're going to talk about that today.
Jennifer: 1:26
So it's almost like you catch a disease while you're at the big box store and it's called chicken math.
Carey: 1:31
Okay, so chicken math is a legit thing. I used to think it was not, but the only thing that is more real or more worse than chicken math is quail math.
Jennifer: 1:44
Oh yeah.
Carey: 1:45
Because they're little and they're cute and they multiply quicker.
Jennifer: 1:54
So for people who don't know us, we might want to tell them like how many birds we have on the property at our home. Lowest or highest?
Carey: 2:06
Okay, so My wife lives my life with me so She may not listen to the podcast, so we'll be
Jennifer: 2:14
Okay David doesn't listen either
Carey: 2:17
Okay. He actually walks in your barn though on occasion. Do you know how many quail you have?
Jennifer: 2:25
I do not. I can tell you that I think that I went over 4, 000 in the spring in the barn. That was just a good educated guess.
Carey: 2:37
Okay, so on the
Jennifer: 2:38
property today right now,
Carey: 2:41
I
Jennifer: 2:42
would say it would be safe to say I'm under 2, 000.
Carey: 2:47
A lot of people cull a lot of quail for the summertime because it's hot.
Jennifer: 2:55
I'm doing good at 2, 000. I'm under 2, 000.
Carey: 2:58
Yeah, okay. How many chickens do you have?
Jennifer: 3:01
Oh, I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say a couple hundred.
Carey: 3:06
Turkeys?
Jennifer: 3:08
30 or 40.
Carey: 3:11
Sure think more 50. I've seen your turkey grow out.
Jennifer: 3:15
Let's go with 30 or 40.
Carey: 3:17
I'm good. Okay. All right. For chicken math sake. So right now I do not have, that's at Bryant's Roost in Tennessee, down at Double R Farms in Alabama. I have, We'll say a little over a hundred ish chickens. And I don't have a whole lot of quail right now because I built a barn and then I set it up and then I changed the way that I want it set up. So I culled a whole lot and fed a local family, a good bit. And so I don't have a whole lot of quail right now, but that problem is still there. about to get fixed because I'm going to redo the inside of my barn the new way that I should have done it the first time. And I'll blame that on Jennifer because seeing her barn gave me ideas and I was like, I should have done this different. So before it's too late, I'm going to go ahead and do it different. But it peak season, I have between seven and 900 quail because I only have seven stacks. I use the hatching time stacks which you do too for a lot of yours, but you also have some that, that your wonderful husband custom made for you that are pretty nice. So yeah. So today we're going to talk about that. How real chicken math gets and we're gonna we're gonna give you guys some stuff to think about when you do go into that big box store or your local feed store and you hear that chirping sound and you look over and you're like, Okay, these are cute. We want you to think about the bedding. What's your runs gonna look like? Your nest box, roosting bars, ventilation, light, hot, cold, water, feeder, wintertime, summertime, how it all needs to look. And I will say coop bedding, we'll start with that. I am a huge fan of peat moss and stall pellets. I used to not because I was afraid that chickens would, and turkeys would try to eat the stall pellets. And I did see some peck at them, but They don't eat them because they're huge. And once I got over that, I had that fear for me was like the first time I wing banded a chick and you laugh at that because
Jennifer: 6:02
the
Carey: 6:05
whole time, because I'm like really nervous. And, we're going back and forth talking about it. And I'm sent you a picture and I'm like, it didn't die. And you're like, it didn't even bleed. So that's a whole nother thing.
Jennifer: 6:18
Let's back up for just a minute. We actually did a three part podcast on brooding. So when you bring those chicks home, go back and listen to the brooding one. We're going to pick up on this podcast after brooding. Yeah.
Carey: 6:33
Yeah, they're there. If it's a chicken, five, six weeks old, time to put them out. If it's a turkey, you need to wait a couple of months, three months, probably depending on the time of year before you kick them out. If it's a quail, I'm going to say it depends on the genetics of your bird and the climate. One to two weeks.
Jennifer: 6:56
Oh, you're getting a little early for Alabama. Let's be reasonable here. Summertime. Oh, summertime. Okay.
Carey: 7:03
Yeah, summertime One to two weeks. Now, I will say with quail the first week Of their life, you need to just about cook them. They love heat.
Jennifer: 7:18
Let's go, let's get out outside.
Carey: 7:21
Go back and listen to our brooding podcast where we talk all about that.
Jennifer: 7:25
Yeah. Let's talk about outside. So I've been keeping birds for a long time, had them as kids. Then I didn't have them. Then I got them back again. And I am not capable of. Cleaning coops some people on Facebook, it appears they do it daily. Some of their coops are very high maintenance and I'm not all about chickens being that high maintenance. Did the shavings thing. I don't do sand and I don't like sand. Don't see any reason to do sand. And we'll get into that in just a minute, but that's a personal preference. So I came up with this way of doing it and a lot of people on my personal Facebook group have copied me doing it and have all texted me back and said that it's the bomb. This is the way to do it. this cuts down on upkeep to almost nothing, honestly. So what I do is I dig my coops out down to the bottom when you're first starting. Mine have clay bottoms and then I fill in any cracks with some play sand, just whatever kind of cheap sand you can get. Just make a smooth bottom, fill in the cracks and then get your aglime. From any of your box stores, it's 4 for 50 pounds. You do not need to buy that name brand stuff. That's what 30 for five ounces or something. I don't even know how much it is.
Carey: 8:59
Yeah. It's really expensive.
Jennifer: 9:00
Yeah. Don't do that. Go to the store, get Aglime. It's crushed limestone. That's all it is. Make sure that's what you get. There is a different kind of lime hy hydrolyze hydrated. Hydrated lime. Don't get that. That's for making concrete. That's bad stuff.
Carey: 9:15
Yeah, you don't need that.
Jennifer: 9:16
Get the cheap stuff. You can tell by the price tag. It's$4 for 50 pounds. Anyway, it's just crest limestone. It won't hurt anything. And just make it snow on top of that base that you have. In my case, it's clay. But make it white. Just dump the whole thing in there. It won't hurt anything. What it does is it's changing the pH Of the ground and it just makes it what I consider inhospitable to other things, bugs aren't going to like it. Bacteria is not going to like it.
Carey: 9:50
and so you want to put that base like that. That's how you keep all the bugs. A lot of people have my problems and this bug and that bug. If you dust it, like a scene from Wolf of the Wall Street, dust it before you put your other layers in. You're not going to have bugs.
Jennifer: 10:11
Nope. You won't. Then I come back and I dump stall pellets in there, probably two inches deep, not terribly deep, two or three pellets deep. And of course, depending on how big of a space you have I have eight by eight coops on the breeder pens. And it takes me two or three bags to go in there. It's been a few years since I did it. So I'm trying to remember. I want to say two or three years. Then you go over to Lowe's and you buy one of those big bags of peat moss. Those big cubic things that they're heavy. Yeah, you might want somebody to load them for you. But how much are those like 15, 16.
Carey: 10:56
So they're a little more expensive closer to 20 here.
Jennifer: 11:01
Okay.
Carey: 11:02
But. If you get lucky and somebody dropped a pallet of them and the bags are busted a little bit, they'll knock off 20 30 percent, which is nice. But I will say for the people that are thinking peat moss,
Jennifer: 11:20
15
Carey: 11:21
to 20 dollars, we're talking about a one and done thing.
Jennifer: 11:26
Yes.
Carey: 11:27
This is not the way to set up your run.
Jennifer: 11:31
It's not that expensive though. It's
Carey: 11:33
not that expensive. But I can say as being somebody that did shavings on top of shavings on top of shavings and mixed it in and shavings and it's, you're going to spend more money in a year buying shavings than you will buying stall pellets and peat moss and doing it this way. As
Jennifer: 12:01
many birds as I have, I might go through 20 bags of shavings a year and that's during spring.
Carey: 12:08
But that's also considering the fact that you have a couple hundred square feet inside your barn that you put three to four inches worth of shavings. In that in the winter time.
Jennifer: 12:24
I do. Yeah.
Carey: 12:25
So that, that's one of the reasons why you go through a lot of your shavings there.
Jennifer: 12:30
Yeah. Okay. So back to our breeder coop. So any outside that you got, you're going to start with your ag lime. You're going to put down stall pellets. Now the reason for stall pellets is they're going to absorb moisture. You don't water them down. You just dump them in there, rake them. You can use, even use a broom really to move them around. Just rake them smooth. Don't, lose your brain over it, just smooth them out a little bit. So when it rains, that will actually turn to sawdust is if they get wet or if they knock over their water bucket or whatever, they'll turn to sawdust and it won't create a wet spot to harbor bacteria and stuff. And then on top of that, you're going to take this big old heavy bag of peat moss. Now in my eight by eight coupes, it only takes one bag. over the top of it. I mean it goes really far. That bag is really compacted.
Carey: 13:25
And once that bag in an eight by eight, see I use 10 by 10s and I use one bag for that too, but we're talking it's going to be a couple inches thick by the time that peat moss gets broken apart from being compacted like that.
Jennifer: 13:39
Yes.
Carey: 13:40
And for me personally, I don't get real serious about breaking up those chunks. Because when you have the chunks and you just, pop it loose, for me, it's really good, cheap redneck entertainment to put birds in there, take my bucket, sit down and watch them pick and dig and go crazy because they will do that crap for days until the chickens get. The ground just like they want it.
Jennifer: 14:14
Yes. So they'll play in that peat moss and they'll level it all out for you. And then if you are not crazy about the peat moss or they. If they're like my birds that lay eggs on the ground because they're too big to go into nest boxes. I do maybe dump some shavings in a corner where they're going to lay their eggs. But the peat moss, it's dry. It gets on the eggs. You just wipe it off. It doesn't hurt anything. The reason why I don't like shavings is because they just, they get wet in there. Icky and they start stinking and then you get bugs on them and I just don't like shavings
Carey: 14:54
like for me I was like what's the difference because stall pellets turn to sawdust which is still wood And I don't really know the science behind it But I do know for a fact that the dust or the sawdust, they won't, that doesn't harbor bacteria and that doesn't mold. One of the problems that I had with shavings is, I've got six of my breeder pens are in a low spot. And when I was using shavings, It would mold, and that's a whole new problem because you got chickens that are like, Ooh, what is this? Let me try to eat it. And now you're putting some kind of wonky gut bacteria inside of your birds, causing all kinds of gastrointestinal issues. And that's a whole nother nutrition show by itself.
Jennifer: 15:45
And the idea here is you want birds to be dry. Less humidity and most ventilation. So stall pellets keep you dry. Peat moss has a neutral pH. I think, isn't that what it says in Jeff's book, a neutral pH?
Carey: 16:03
It does have a neutral pH and they are. You can use peat moss to pack a wound when it's fresh out of the bag because it has a neutral pH. Jeff and I have actually had that conversation. We did a three podcast series with him several months ago where we went through his book niche poultry. And one of the things in there, we talked about bedding and I asked him about it and he told me that it's essentially sterile. It's sterile. Until, what they do, it does, it drains really well. It doesn't hold moisture. So like for me in my coops and my runs, I have fans because in the summertime, I have a timer that runs my fans. It comes on in the morning, cuts off in the afternoon. So that helps drive out even more when it rains, if there's not a breeze, it gives them a breeze. All that good stuff. And then I'll use the same timer for my lights because I like to hatch this time of year.
Jennifer: 17:14
So when it does rain, and now you got to keep in mind that my coops and I'm pretty sure Carrie's coops are to have wire walls. We are all about ventilation. We don't have solid walls on anything. So when it does rain, there will be water that does come in those. Wirewall sometimes, and I don't even bat an eyelash at it. I just look at it and keep on checking because by the end of the day, it's going to be dry and I just keep I know there's probably technical terms, but the metal rake that's like rectangular, not like a leaf, right? But the other rake, the metal rates, when it's dry, you just whack it down and rake it up and go on about your merry, merry business. Now as far as cleaning, now you guys who are only halfway paying attention cleaning your coops, listen to me for a minute. My main coop, which is my entire lean to of my barn, I created this mix in 2020 as an experiment on that side to see how long it lasted. in 2020. It's 2024. I still have it in there. I've never done anything to it. I did, we did have a flood a couple years ago, and I got a big puddle in there, so I did dump a couple more bags of stall pellets in there, but that's it. I don't do anything. Under the roost bars, I take that metal rake and just smooth it and dry it out. I don't have flies. I don't have moisture buildup. I don't get frostbite in that coop. They dust bathe in it. So it's because I have to have a rake in there to fill in their dust bathing holes I just yeah, I mean that's It's four going on four years now over four years and I have not shoveled it out Done anything more than just rake it smooth So
Carey: 19:21
that's why I say one and done.
Jennifer: 19:25
Yes.
Carey: 19:25
You're gonna spend a few extra, not a lot extra, but a few extra bucks up front. But we want you to learn from our experience and, Hey if you want to try it the other way and prove us wrong, go to it. But this is what's worked out for us.
Jennifer: 19:43
All so that's that. So in my runs now, I know there's a lot of arguing over how big does a run have to be? The run needs to be as big as you can make it. If you can make it 18 acres, make it 18 acres. But. It needs to be big enough that you can keep some kind of vegetation in there. If not, you have too many birds. That's just my personal opinion.
Carey: 20:06
That's right. Either, so some people like to rotate them. I think in one of your spots you have extras that you let the vegetation grow and then you, Move them over and then you let the other one go wild. And I'm a fan of that too. It works for cows, it should work for chickens. And to me, if you can, I can make you feed custom for your chickens that has all the nutrition they need. They still need to eat some grass.
Jennifer: 20:43
They do.
Carey: 20:44
It makes the gut health, like you can't put a whole lot of that in the bag. And so like for me, it even got to a point where I bought a lawnmower where I could bag grass to put it in my runs to make sure they had enough. Because last summer chicken math got out of control and I had over 300 birds on the property and I'm not exaggerating. That might be an understatement and that is way too many. So yes, and I do have all my pens are wire. In the wintertime, I do have. some minor wire at the bottom. A lot of yours have space where you have metal at the bottom, and that's a project that I'm going to work on once it's not 105 temperature and humidity in Alabama. Because what I like to do in the winter is I'll put up stuff to block the wind. This year I'm going to do that with sheet metal and it's going to be a one and done thing. I'm gonna put that there that way, If your bird, if it's 20 degrees outside and your bird wants to be a smart bird, they're going to get down on the ground and the wind's going to be blocked and, everything's going to be great. If your bird's going to be like several of the idiots that I have, when it got down to 15 and 17 degrees last winter instead of being below what was blocking the wind, the ding dongs were still three feet up in the air, four feet up in the air on the roost. Flopping in the wind. And I'm like, are you not cold? But the reason I did not have a lot of problems with stuff freezing and frost bite is because they're aired out. Yes, I have water in there, but it doesn't get humid because the wind constantly blows it out. And that's one of the reasons why, if you put your birds up in a coop at night, I would never put water in that coop.
Jennifer: 22:59
Oh, if it doesn't have ventilation, you mean? Yeah,
Carey: 23:01
yep.
Jennifer: 23:02
Oh yeah, no, no, they, and you can't have too much ventilation. You just can't.
Carey: 23:07
They're not they're designed to be outside. Chickens are designed to chicken. And their body temperature is several degrees hotter than ours normally anyway.
Jennifer: 23:18
And we're going to do another show on winterizing. We've been getting tips from breeders all around the country, as far north as. Vermont, right? And then you had a friend in Alaska. Give us some tips.
Carey: 23:31
Yep. I have, we're going to have information from Alaska. We're going to have information from Canada, Vermont, all the way down to Texas and Alabama. So Florida, they don't have winter in Florida.
Jennifer: 23:44
No, but we can still pretend. Okay. So you were talking about your roost bars. So my breeder coops have four foot metal walls and then it's wire the rest of the way up. Now my roost are only two feet high. But now I have giant birds and the bigger your birds, the lower the roost because when they land hard. So you don't want them breaking things. I use two by fours flat side up.
Carey: 24:14
You also don't want them to get bumblefoot.
Jennifer: 24:17
So you want to keep those roosts low. Two foot off the ground is sufficient because it's just really their posture more so than the height. Turkeys get two by eights. Just whatever I've got laying around. They get two by eights. The other ones get two by fours, flat side up. And My friend up in Michigan called me the other day and she found mites on one of her birds and she was freaking out. She'd never seen him before and she wanted to put some medicine on them, which I was telling her what to do, but she wanted to put some medicine on them. And I said, we'll just do it at night. She said, I can't reach him at night. They roost up in the rafters.
Carey: 24:57
Oh, yeah,
Jennifer: 24:58
that's why you want two feet off the ground.
Carey: 25:03
I know a lot of people that they just let them come in the barn and, even large birds, they're going to get as high as they can get. So you gotta, if you want to be able to do something at night while it's easy to get them because they can't really see you that well, you're going to need to control that.
Jennifer: 25:26
So my rooster only two feet up and that is plenty. And so they're blocked by the wind for that four foot metal. All right. So the water I see a lot of fancy waters on the market and I know you have a fancy water, but I use a bucket, just a bucket of water.
Carey: 25:48
So I am a huge fan. Because I like automation because sometimes my health isn't great and sometimes I can't get out and go and I don't have a whole lot of help and with the amount of food that I put out, I cannot feed a day and they will be okay. But I do not like a bird to be without water at any time. And I set up an automated system using the cups. And if there's a brand of cups out there, I've tried them over the last several years. Ones with names that you can't pronounce all the way up to the pretty red Renica, Renicute ones. Those are probably the best. But still when you're experiencing problems in your coops, because chicken math happened and your grow outs as they start growing out before you move them out even more, they'll get in there and they'll break them stupid cups and they will flood your pen. So for me, I've bellwaters those things, my turkeys love them, my game foul chickens love them. My American Breast love them and my Rodon Reds love them. They work. It's easy to adjust the height. It's easy to set it up to where they're on the float valve. And you never run out of water unless somebody cuts your water off. But there's reservoir for all that, but it works because before that I was a huge fan of the five gallon bucket and using the cups because they're really easy, put you a couple of three quarter inch copper fittings in there and you're not going to have any funky stuff growing and your water stay clean and everything's good. But them stupid cups when they break is frustrating. So I had to constant, like I had to keep them in inventory. I never knew when they were going to break. So had I not found the bell waterers there's a good chance that I would have float valves in short buckets, just sitting in the pants, because with the buckets that you use, they're designed for horses.
Jennifer: 28:15
They're goat mineral buckets.
Carey: 28:18
Sorry. But if, okay. If a dang chicken messes that up, you got a bigger problem.
Jennifer: 28:25
The only trouble I have is sometimes the turkeys will step in them cause they're clumsy and they'll knock them over. But those bigger birds, I usually keep two in there and not side by side. So if they knock one over, they don't knock the other one over at the same time.
Carey: 28:40
Even with that, with those mineral buckets you could, if that became a problem, You could take, they make the little piece that you can screw into a post and hook the handle for the bucket in. Those things, that's a very smart idea. And to be honest, had I seen that before I started using Bellwaters, most of my pens would probably just have buckets.
Jennifer: 29:10
Love the buckets. They're just easy. They're just easy and they're black. They don't grow algae really. Occasionally they might, but for the most part they don't. And they're pretty much indestructible. I've had the same buckets going on five years now.
Carey: 29:23
So those rubber buckets that they sell at big box stores. They also sell food bowls. A lot of people will use the same rubber.
Jennifer: 29:36
Some of the slicks ones?
Carey: 29:38
Yeah. they use people use those for their dogs or whatever. I use those for grit. In my grow out, my turkeys love grit. And so do you know, chickens they and they people say, Oh they got rocks in the ground. Mine do because I put it there, but I have that. I just throw it in the bowl like I, I stopped trying to, to reinvent that and get stupid with it. So now about every so often when I start to see the level get low, I'll get a 50 pound bag of grit, fill up all my bowls. Even with all the birds I have, I do that like a couple of times a year.
Jennifer: 30:23
If you really want some entertainment sitting on your bucket, change the bowl out for the turkeys. If you have a blue one in there, put a pink one in there and put your grit in it. Oh my word, they'll stand there and they'll pop and they'll talk and they'll discuss it and stranger danger. That's one of my most favorite popular videos on my Facebook page is the turkeys like circling the grit bowl because it's new.
Carey: 30:49
So you use buckets with your birds and they're black. When I got those turkeys from you and brought them home and put them in their new pen. It has a bell water in it. And, they were in a different place and man, they're ring ring. And then the tom, he was gobbling and, they were going nuts. And I'm like, man, I put y'all in here at dark, like y'all go to sleep, but they're making all these noises. And I'm like. Okay, fine. So finally, I grabbed one of them, picked it up, loved on it a little bit, got down on one knee in front of the bell water and stuck its head in it.
Jennifer: 31:29
And
Carey: 31:30
it looked at me like I was a psychopath. And then it started making noises to the other turkeys. And I don't know if that was turkeys or what for, Hey, this is water, but they come over and they just started drinking. And I'm like y'all are weird.
Jennifer: 31:46
Yeah. They're funny. They have a personality.
Carey: 31:50
That is so true. And I'm getting to where I like turkeys more and more which may create another problem, we're, we are actually officially. on the market for a farm. Yay! We had the breakthroughs this past week. And I got the parameters given to me by my boss and there's really only like she gave me one, two rules. Number one, the house has to be big enough to hold the however many people live with us now. I think it's 11 or I have to move my house there. That's going to be fun. Number two, she absolutely loves her job. Which I'm not going to knock that because that's really hard for a lot of people to say. And she asked for me not to make her commute more than 45 minutes. I can live with that. The flip side is, when all that happens, I'm going to have the logistics of moving all my animals and everything else, and I get to have more turkeys. I'm going to build, I'm going to build a turkey barn.
Jennifer: 33:12
Oh, yeah. Okay. Let me know how that works out for you.
Carey: 33:15
I'm going to raise them for me.
Jennifer: 33:17
Okay, they taste good. All right, let's talk about feeders, because I know we don't feed the same either. So I have moved over to the, I don't even know what you call them, the little trough things are like a foot long, they're orange. And I zip timed to the wire. I love those things. Everything is uniform. I can go in there. It's one scoop. It holds one scoop of food. So actually just about everybody has those now except for the turkeys. The turkeys have a hanging feeder that holds maybe 20 pounds of food.
Carey: 33:54
That's the one that I have is like probably two feet tall. Maybe I think it's 20 or 25 pounds.
Jennifer: 34:04
Yeah. I don't feel it up. It's just however many scoops I feel like calling in there. Usually it's four or five scoops. Cause I got way too many turkeys right at the moment. And turkey, adult turkeys eat a lot. I'm sure you have figured that out now. But they eat a ton of food. So I, I probably put in there 10 or 15 pounds a day and, yeah, that's a lot, but they have a hanging feeder. Cause you want to keep that feeder up. So you hang it on a chain so you can move it up and down as you want, because the turkeys are a lot like the quail where they shake their head in the food and they knock it out pretty good. So you want to keep that feeder up high and a hang in feeder will allow you to adjust as necessary.
Carey: 34:47
So I'm very pro when it comes to feeders having the feeder height at the breast of the shortest bird. Just a little, maybe even a little higher because if they reach for it, it doesn't want you wind up less waste on the ground. And that's for me. And I feed most of my feed is a mash. People that feed only pellets and they have a cleanup day or whatever, where they get it, what's on the ground, that's fine. But my mash when it hits the ground, it essentially becomes part of my peat moss Stall pellet mix, which is a waste of money because my feed's not cheap. So I keep it high with my turkeys. I have the same top hanging feeder. So in my breeding pens, the ones that are wire, I'm actually Copying you on that. I'm switching over to those as well because again, I've done the bucket thing where drill the hole inside of the bucket and put those in. I probably got 20 of those that I don't use anymore. My favorite type is something like that's a trough style feeder. Because whether you feed a mash or a pellet, it works good in a trough. Little pro tip on that, I don't know if you do it or not, I drill small holes in mine. I get horizontal rain and I've had it like get in there and turn the mash like into concrete. And that's not cool. But if I drill some holes, the mash doesn't go through the holes. But if the rain goes in there, the feed will still dry out and they still eat it. So it works out for me.
Jennifer: 36:41
So I I tried to only feed in my troughs what they will eat in a day. So I know each pen, how much they will eat. And if the rain is coming, like we don't have any rain. This week in the forecast, but let's just say it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. I would have fed them earlier today and only would have fed them. What I know will be gone by tonight. And I probably wouldn't feed them again until the rain passed. Now, if we're talking about a huge rain event that lasts several days, then I just wing it at that point in it. And it is what it is. But for the most part, we only get rain, this a day
Carey: 37:27
basically.
Jennifer: 37:29
So I would have fed them earlier today, made sure they had plenty of food and not either fed them tomorrow morning or not at all tomorrow and just fed them the next day in the morning.
Carey: 37:41
See what I do, if I know it's going to rain tomorrow afternoon, I'll feed a little heavy today. So they have enough food today. They got breakfast tomorrow. There shouldn't be a lot left when it's, when the rain hits that, that's what I do and using those that you use the trough style, I've also made some troughs out of PVC and they, with those, I am finding less waste. Some of the other dispenser type ones are cool. They look good. But, you spend money on them and you waste money with feed. You've got some troughs in your grow out that I think are 6 inch PVC pipe that you made years ago.
Jennifer: 38:29
Oh gosh, yeah, those things are practically 10 years old, yeah.
Carey: 38:33
It's PVC,
Jennifer: 38:35
it's not going to go bad.
Carey: 38:37
In my grow out pen, Jeff has a friend that makes a feeder out of, he does it out of plywood. I did it. I wanted to do it and I documented some of it, which I'll put that out later to make the feeder. But I use stuff that you can either cut it with a handsaw. Or a saw or a skill saw you, you don't need a table saw. Essentially. I bought the lumber for that. And you use a six inch PVC, and then you build the rest of it outta wood and in a five foot section you can put 50 pounds of feed when you're raising broilers, it's a lot. They eat a lot that, that's what it's designed for. I use them in my grow outs and I don't put near that much in them. I put what I know they're going to eat in a day or so, because, I don't want the rain to get it. Maybe we should
Jennifer: 39:35
have started this podcast with that little disclaimer. We're talking about normal birds here, not Cornish.
Carey: 39:41
Yeah. Yeah. We're, we are talking about normal, but. But still, it's a six inch PVC trough that you can put extra feed in if you have too many birds in your grow out. Works great. And with a trough style feeder, you can feed whatever. So if you do go to your local feed store and they don't have what you normally buy, and you have to buy something different, it's not going to mess you up with a trough style feeder. If you're using some of the other feeder types. And all they have is crumbles or a mesh and you normally feed pellets, man, it may clog the thing up and you got an even bigger problem. So something to think about with your feeders.
Jennifer: 40:28
All right. I think the last two things I've got on my list here is nest box and a light nest box is easy for me because mine lay on the ground. So it's a no brainer.
Carey: 40:40
Yeah. So for me my birds, like the smaller ones, like my game birds, I found a attachment that goes on the front side of a five gallon bucket and they will get in it and they love it. They love the five gallon bucket all the way up to a Rhode Island Red or American Breast. Which you think, okay that's a huge bird to get in a five gallon bucket, but they like it. They like the small area. They like the confined part. That's what they like. Now, for turkeys I plan to use a milk crate.
Jennifer: 41:26
It's not big enough. I used a galvanized tub. And I filled it up with hay, went over there and got some out of the run of the round bales and filled it up. They did like that and they would, they lay communal. So it's all of your hens to be in there. So I have a wicked picture of three or three or four hens, turkey hens in a galvanized tub that's, I don't know, what are they like two feet across? And they're all their heads are up looking at me taking their picture and it's wicked looking.
Carey: 41:59
That gives me an idea because I have, I also have some storage totes that I have used. And I can put one of those, it's two feet across and three feet long. It's a pretty big storage tote. I can put some hay down in that. I do know that turkeys love a open top. Nesting box.
Jennifer: 42:19
They do. Yeah.
Carey: 42:21
I do know that for a fact. Yeah.
Jennifer: 42:24
Same for me. And then the last thing is light. Pretty much all birds need 14 hours a day to be active laying sexually active you've got to, everybody talks about light to get the hens to lay, but you need the light to get the roosters active. Also.
Carey: 42:43
I was going to say they, they need that light to stimulate.
Jennifer: 42:47
So there's a, a lot of controversy. People are like, no, let them be natural. And I'm indifferent. Whatever you want to do is fine with me. I don't care. I like my birds in the spring, I don't, they're not lit right now. The quail are, but the chickens are not, they're molting right now. I just let them do their thing. But. I want them to start laying earlier in the winter. So I'll start lighting them up around Christmas just to stimulate them and get them going earlier. Whatever you want to do. If you want to light them. You can probably do it with some solar lights if you don't have electricity out there. Just my soap box here for a second. If you don't want to light them, then think about where you're buying your eggs from. So if you're buying your eggs at the store, those birds are lit up and that's fine. Just know where they're coming from.
Carey: 43:36
Yeah. A lot of people, they're like let chickens chicken. When you're going to the store in November, December, January and buying eggs, I will guarantee you that those chickens are on a timer and they're lit. And I will also guarantee you that they are not being fed. as good as what you're feeding them. And they may get fed some ingredients that you can't even begin to pronounce, which is stuff I don't want to put in my body. I used to be indifferent, but the more I study nutrition, the more I don't want to put stuff from the store in my body. And yeah, you want to give them a break for a little bit while they're molting. Sure. Go ahead. But. Chickens are chickens they're designed to lay eggs and they're designed to walk around and they're designed to go in a crock pot.
Jennifer: 44:29
Yep. So you could water glass eggs. We could do a show on preserving eggs and stuff. But if you don't want to light them, then preserve your eggs back in the summer when they're plentiful. But we'll leave that alone for right now and we'll leave that for another day. But I think we went through my whole list here that I had made and I figured we only had about a 25 minutes conversation.
Carey: 44:54
There's a lot when you get victimized to chicken math. Okay. And there's a lot to go over and we don't want to scare people, but we also want people to think before they buy 20 chicks.
Jennifer: 45:07
Yeah,
Carey: 45:08
you know what you're dealing with.
Jennifer: 45:10
All right. So if you went and bought 20 chicks, then listen to our brooder podcast on your way home.
Carey: 45:16
Two weeks ago, my sister says, Hey, do you know where I can get a small coop and some chickens? I think I want some chickens. And I said, I got you covered.
Jennifer: 45:27
Yeah.
Carey: 45:27
I'll give you a couple of brown egg layers and set you up. I got a coop. She said, I'll pay you for it. I was like, whatever, I got you. Perfect little setup for her house.
Jennifer: 45:39
Yep.
Carey: 45:41
She's still ain't come and got it. So yeah, maybe she did a little research and see that there's a little more involved, like having a kid and, they're cute and all, but there's a lot to it.
Jennifer: 45:54
Tell her to subscribe to Poultry Nerds. They might, she might learn something there.
Carey: 45:59
I might've scared her away with it. She might've listened to a podcast.
Jennifer: 46:03
And don't y'all forget, we have merchandise now. You can get your t shirts and your coffee mugs, and we would greatly appreciate it because podcasts are not free to put on. So please support us that way and subscribe and hit and like our Facebook page and all that stuff that you need to do.
Carey: 46:21
All right. Until next time, see y'all later.
