Poultry Nerds Q&A
We asked you for topics and suggestions and we answered! We had so much fun in this episode and giggled a few times. If y’all need to know or have suggestions for shows, let us know!
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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.
0:16
Mhm.
Carey: 0:23
Good Morning,. Today, we're going to make an episode that is geared towards you, the listener. We went back and we looked on our social media and our Facebook direct messages and all that good stuff. And a lot of the questions that you guys have sent us over the last couple of months, we decided to do a podcast because a lot of people they want to ask questions, but they don't want to ask questions or whatever. So we're just going to throw these questions that we got out there today. And we're going to give our best, best shot at an answer to help you guys out. All right.
Jennifer: 1:01
We're going to do rapid fire.
Carey: 1:03
I don't know that rapid fire would work on some of these. Cause some of these, the answers a little probably should be in depth, but we'll do the best we can.
Jennifer: 1:15
All right. Sounds good. Let's go.
Carey: 1:17
All right. What is the best way to ship hatching eggs?
Jennifer: 1:21
Egg foam and double box always. Secure those eggs in there tight, and then secure them again.
Carey: 1:30
And so like when you pull the little pieces out of the egg foam and put the egg in, then you use those other pieces to go between the two boxes, right?
Jennifer: 1:38
Yes, I think the biggest problem, or biggest thing they do wrong, is they put the egg foam in the box, and put the eggs in it, and then put the half inch pads on it, but then they don't fill that empty space. So make sure you fill the empty space so the foam and eggs can't move around if the box is dropped.
Carey: 1:56
Now, a lot of times, like I've gotten eggs from people before where the box looked like a scrambled egg.
Jennifer: 2:04
Now,
Carey: 2:06
you actually tested that out one time. You put some eggs in. Packaged the way you're talking about and kicked them around in your barn, didn't you?
Jennifer: 2:14
In my garage. Yeah, man. I soccer kicked them everywhere.
Carey: 2:17
Did you try to hatch those?
Jennifer: 2:19
No, I didn't try to hatch them. They were just eating eggs, but I did candle them and the air cells stayed intact.
Carey: 2:26
All right. So if you use egg foam and double box them and package them correctly, and the post office does what I suspect sometimes is play soccer, with your eggs, because they see the stickers that say hatching eggs, fragile, handle with care. They're like, Oh, let's play soccer. We're bored. If that happens, you're still going to have your air sacks. So you'll have a good chance at having a good hatch rate.
Jennifer: 3:01
You'll have a better chance.
Carey: 3:04
Yeah. Better chance. What heating, how do you heat your chicks when they come out? He lamps plates. Reptile heaters. What do you use?
Jennifer: 3:16
Plates are the only way to go a hundred percent, a thousand percent.
Carey: 3:21
So I'm a huge fan of plates myself. If you've got a small area, they come in 10 by 10.
Jennifer: 3:28
Yep.
Carey: 3:28
And if you have a big area, they come in 12 by 12 and you put two of them together. That's right. I like it because you, man, you can put it way down. The birds get in there. They hover up under it, just like they would hover up under the mama. Or, you know what, if they get too hot, they move.
Jennifer: 3:49
Yeah, I keep my tilted.
Carey: 3:51
The big problem with the heat lamps is fried birds and fried barns.
Jennifer: 3:59
Yeah, it happens. It's a
Carey: 4:00
big problem. People think
Jennifer: 4:01
that's a myth, but just come spring, just watch social media and people will post their burnt down barns.
Carey: 4:09
And then you'll have people like me that say it. Did you use a heat plate or a lamp and they're going to tell you about their big red lamp?
Jennifer: 4:19
I would say 90 percent of the time somebody says that they don't think a heat plate gets warm enough That they probably have the brooder on a cold concrete floor
Carey: 4:30
And we actually have an episode about brooding And we talk about Getting your brooder off the floor, all that good stuff.
Jennifer: 4:40
So go back to that one, but plates is the answer.
Carey: 4:44
All right. Everybody knows what a mud is, what a Heinz 57 is. But what is a barnyard mix or a BYM?
Jennifer: 4:55
So BYM stands for barnyard mix, and it's just a mutt. It's, it can be a cross of two breeds or it can be a cross of 47 breeds. It does not matter. You start crossing out, it's a barnyard mix.
Carey: 5:12
Now, like a dog, those can be some of your best chickens.
Jennifer: 5:17
Absolutely.
Carey: 5:19
They can lay you some great eggs that are huge, different colors. They can do all that, and they can outrun some of the fastest predators.
Jennifer: 5:31
But at the end of the day,
Carey: 5:32
yeah, oh yeah, they're going to have some hybrid vigor because you take two birds that are free ranging out in the yard doing whatever teenagers like to do. And that, that's how that egg gets made. All right. All right. Here. Oh here's a really good one. I like this one. What's an egg float test? And I see people, everybody talks about how do I know if my eggs are good, how are they not, whatever. Somebody's going to comment that and then 50 people are going to say, what's egg float?
Jennifer: 6:08
I have, I want to preface this answer with I have never done it. Have you ever done it?
Carey: 6:15
Yes, I actually have. What did you
Jennifer: 6:17
learn?
Carey: 6:18
Okay, so for me, I see this question a lot too. How long are your eggs fresh if you leave them on the counter? So I took some and I started writing dates on them and I, I told everybody in the house, I said, don't mess with these eggs that I have. I used a silver Sharpie because it was different because I normally use a pencil or a black Sharpie to label my eggs. I said, don't eat these. And so I kept them and I was like, okay, it got down to close to the two months and at first I was cracking them well at two months I had one that I don't think that egg was ever good. And it should not have come in the house
Jennifer: 7:09
because
Carey: 7:09
my daughter will help me gather them help as I'm holding up air quotes because sometimes I will go check pens and when I'm feeding or whatever and I'm like, Hey, when's the last time I gathered eggs yesterday? And I'm like, I got a pen that has a trio in it. It's got half a dozen eggs in it. I know that's crap. So I'll preface that, but I had one explode as I, like I tap, tap, boom.
Jennifer: 7:37
And
Carey: 7:37
it was like one in an incubator that blew up. It was rough. So after that, I started. I would put them in water and see if they float. And now I've seen different people, if it floats so much, then, you need to eat it within a day or two. I'm going to say, no, I'm going to say that if you're unsure enough that you're resulting to a float test to check them. Number one, you should probably eat more eggs. Number two, you have too many chickens. Number three, if it floats any at all, throw it in the garbage. That's just me.
Jennifer: 8:20
So I think people may misconstrue the purpose of an egg float test. The purpose is to see if it's good or bad. Or if it's still viable. While you're incubating. So let's start with the incubating question. A bird is already breathing at that point through the air sac and through the porous air shell. So please don't put in a bowl of water. And then second. The float test, and I did do a little cursory research on this. All it will tell you is how much air is inside of the egg, and that is going to depend on the porous. Porous, is that the right word? Porous.
Carey: 9:06
That's a long word for Middle Tennessee, how
Jennifer: 9:08
porous and egg is, or the sp is gonna be dependent on the species. The hen, the age of the hen, the size of the egg, I mean there's so many variables there, but it just simply tells you how much air is inside of that egg. So the fresher eggs have less air. And, the older eggs don't, is a very broad generalization.
Carey: 9:37
And that's why I say if it floats any, don't do
Jennifer: 9:43
it. That ain't
Carey: 9:44
right.
Jennifer: 9:45
And according to the stuff that I was reading, it does not work on quail eggs.
Carey: 9:52
Never try to go on quail eggs.
Jennifer: 9:53
They don't last
Carey: 9:55
long for me.
Jennifer: 9:56
No, no, when I'm bowling, um. Carpooling them, then if they float I just throw them in the peel pile, but I just figured there's, if there's that much air in there that they're floating, there's not enough egg in there to worry about peeling are already a pain to peel anyway,
Carey: 10:12
unless you got one of them handy dandy electric peelers. They're pretty nice.
Jennifer: 10:15
I do have
Carey: 10:16
one. They're nice.
Jennifer: 10:18
They are. It's still a
Carey: 10:18
pain in the butt though.
Jennifer: 10:19
But if they're floating, I still don't want to peel them because a half size quail egg? Come on.
Carey: 10:25
Nope. If I buy eggs, if I buy eggs and a hen, will she hatch them? There's another 10 million different options. If it's a silky, who is a breed that is notoriously known for being broody? You got a really good chance, a really good chance if it's a standard bred Rhode Island red, or probably one of your Orpingtons, probably not going to be broody.
Jennifer: 11:04
So you, first of all, you have to have a broody hen. So just because you have a hen doesn't necessarily make her broody. And I guess we didn't put broody on this list. Nobody asked us about broody. Broody means that a hen wants to hatch eggs, that she's ready to set. Yeah. Yeah. So if you can't just hand me an egg and, I'll have a baby in a few months,
Carey: 11:27
Here's three eggs and I'm gonna hand you a chicken upside down by the legs here. Go hatch. These don't work.
Jennifer: 11:34
Yeah, no, that's not gonna work. You need an incubator
Carey: 11:40
and, we both have links to incubators on our sides, ranging anywhere from 25 to 30. 2, 500
Jennifer: 11:47
or wait until the end does go broody and then try to find eggs try to time it correctly. Yep You can do that.
Carey: 11:54
All right. What is the difference? Oh, this is a good one. What is the difference between? hardware cloth and chicken wire so chicken wire is that Octagon shape stuff that is about as thick As two, maybe three hairs and so a hardware cloth is like locking a door is there to make you feel good like you tried, but it's really not going to do the trick. It's something trying to get in or the chicken wire. Now hardware cloth is. Made out of actual real metal. The wires are typically welded together is what three, four times thicker than chicken wire, at least. Typically got squares or maybe rectangle shapes. I can tell you from firsthand experience, chicken wire will not keep a raccoon out of your chicken pen. What it will do is keep the chickens inside the pen. So the raccoon doesn't have to chase him very far when he gets in. However, hardware cloth will keep a raccoon out. That's my experience. Hardware cloth is a pain in the butt to work with because it is so thick and durable. And pro tip on hardware cloth, if you paint it black from a distance, it's like it disappears. What's your thoughts?
Jennifer: 13:42
Wear gloves.
Carey: 13:43
Oh yeah.
Jennifer: 13:44
You will tear your hands up.
Carey: 13:47
Especially some of the cheaper stuff that you find on Amazon, like the ends of it. I got some out one time and, I love Amazon and like my hands were bleeding. Within two or three minutes, I was like, oh, bumped this. I went, washed my hands, got'em to quit bleeding and I put some gloves on and I hate gloves.
Jennifer: 14:08
Yeah, leather gloves. Yeah. I personally buy my hardware cloth off of Amazon, but I am done building. I don't want anymore stuff. I have enough. I believe I have 32 pens at this point and I don't need anymore, I I'm done. That part of my life is over. But, that is, that was the cheapest place to buy it.
Carey: 14:34
32 pens, you can do a thing or two with that.
Jennifer: 14:36
Yeah. If you are just getting started and you're going to be using a lot of hardware cloth, there is these nifty cutters that go on your drill. They're not expensive. I want to say 20 ish bucks or so right through the hardware cloth, like butter,
Carey: 14:54
Another thing that works really well. There's a type of scissors that people that do vinyl siding use, and that's what I started cutting mine with. My wife's dad, he was in the trades for a lot of years, and he saw me putting one together And he was like, dude, you're doing it wrong. Do you got any snips? And I was like, yeah, he said, use them. They're made for vinyl siding. He goes, that stuff ain't much thicker than vinyl siding. Touche. They, it'll go through them just like scissors would.
Jennifer: 15:29
Now, if you're using your regular old household scissors to cut through it, which you can do with chicken wire. Then throw it away and order Harbor cloth because if you cut it with regular old scissors, then raccoon claws will go through it.
Carey: 15:44
Oh yeah. Especially your neighbor's dog.
Jennifer: 15:47
Oh yeah.
Carey: 15:49
Ooh, here's one that's could have a multiple choice answers or multiple part answer.
Jennifer: 15:56
All right.
Carey: 15:56
When a chicken falls over, In my yard and fans the wing out. What is she doing? Is that they're asking for a margarita, right? Here's another. No,
Jennifer: 16:12
wait, I have to answer it. So he's just sunbathing. She's put her wing out so she can get the heat on her skin and stuff.
Carey: 16:20
Yeah. Okay. Sunbathing. So the other answers were right. They were asking for a margarita. Is one I see in all kinds of groups. And it's one of my favorites because sometimes I'm just like Lord, do I need a rooster to have eggs? She's lying. Y'all Is a lot like,
Jennifer: 16:52
no, don't go there yet. No, you don't need a rooster, You can, a hen will lay an egg anyway.
Carey: 16:59
I was gonna say an independent woman, she don't need a man. No. You do not need a rooster to have eggs. However, if you do want to get an incubator or. A broody hen and hatch them. She's going to need a man in her life.
Jennifer: 17:22
You need a rooster for that.
Carey: 17:24
You do need a rooster for fertilized eggs. Yeah. All right. Let's see here. Ooh here's one. What is the yellow stuff inside a bird's cavity? So after you've put it to sleep, processed it,
Jennifer: 17:44
what's
Carey: 17:44
that yellow stuff?
Jennifer: 17:45
The flavor packets.
Carey: 17:47
That yellow stuff is what you pay money for around Thanksgiving and Christmas. To buy in liquid format, you melt that down and it becomes broth.
Jennifer: 18:04
It's fat, but
Carey: 18:05
yeah, it is technically it's fat. That's where the other stuff comes from.
Jennifer: 18:10
Yeah.
Carey: 18:11
Ooh, my favorite. How do you fix the feathers? On a bird Now, folks, I'm gonna tell you,
Jennifer: 18:23
you comb it
Carey: 18:26
I was gonna say, you buy the good shampoo What you do is you check what you're feeding the bird. You make sure it is at least close to the nutritional levels of protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, all that good stuff that the bird is supposed to have. If it is, you wait until it molts. Because until them feathers are replaced, it's not happening.
Jennifer: 19:00
Exactly.
Carey: 19:01
Now, I will say if you got like split feathers and stuff like that, some of that can be genetic. Some of it can also be that you fed them turkey starter instead of chick starter for way too long and it started negatively affecting their kidneys and overloading their body with protein and messing them up. So that's really like a situation by situation thing. But if you're feeding them the proper feed. The only way you're going to fix that is wait till they molt.
Jennifer: 19:33
Yeah. Anything called quote unquote feather fixer is really a marketing thing. You have to wait for the molt for a new feather to come in. And that is your opportunity with your nutrition to get the proper feathering again. And then it's up to you to maintain. That condition for a year, because you only get this shot once a year.
Carey: 20:01
Yeah. Yeah. Once a year. And what comes back. It is what it is. All right. Let's see. What other questions do we have?
Jennifer: 20:12
I have one. I see. What's that? All right, how about the breed of Easter Egger? What does it look like?
Carey: 20:20
You look in the nesting box, it looks like a rainbow.
Jennifer: 20:26
But,
Carey: 20:28
it's my understanding now, I'm no expert on Easter Eggers, just like I'm not an expert on Silkies. But, You can make several different combinations of different breeds. And basically you're making a mixture and it changes the color of the eggs.
Jennifer: 20:53
You are making an intentional barnyard mix.
Carey: 20:57
Essentially. Yes.
Jennifer: 20:58
Yes. It is not a breed. Cause that basket looks so
Carey: 21:02
pretty.
Jennifer: 21:04
It can literally look like anything and it won't necessarily lay. A pink or blue or green egg. It can still lay white or brown. You're just playing with the genetics.
Carey: 21:16
That's it. Science experiments is another way to refer to them. Ooh, ooh, sex and chicks. If it's got a B shape on its wing, it's a male.
Jennifer: 21:30
Oh, bull.
Carey: 21:32
Ooh. Here's another one. Look, I had this guy last year. He was like, can I pick out my chicks? I was like, I was at a, like a trade show type deal. None of those chicks was going back to my farm, so I didn't care if he touched them or not. This guy was picking them up by their feet, holding them upside down. And he said, the ones that try to get up are roosters and the ones that just stay laying down are hens. And I'm like if you think of, if you think about, I don't know, I ain't seen him since. If you think about, moving around six month old birds or whatever, a lot of times the male birds will try to get back up, when you're holding them upside down. And a lot of times the females don't, that ain't the exact science though, because I've had females try to fly when I was trying to hold them upside down to carry them from one pin to another. Like they tried flipping over and flying.
Jennifer: 22:30
Had a good one. I was selling poults to some people. They came to pick them up and she was holding them in her hand and letting the legs down between her fingers. And I can't remember which way is which, but if the legs stayed dangling, it was one sex. And if they retracted them and tried to hold them up, it was the other.
Carey: 22:49
Yeah. I've seen them. I've seen them like they'd pick them up and then hold them. And I'm like, what are you doing? You're Checking for future weight like you want to see what it's going to be like in the crock pot. I don't know. Let's see.
Jennifer: 23:05
So wait, is there a way to sex the birds? The only true way would be auto sexing.
Carey: 23:11
I was going to say there, there's two ways you could auto sex, which that starts when you pair the birds together. You know what's going to come out and the other way is, and I'm not a huge fan of vent sex and babies because it's pretty brutal, in my opinion, and they're reproductive stuff hasn't really formed yet when they're a couple of days old or right out of the hatcher. There's been times that I have ordered from commercial hatcheries. All cockerels, because I had a guy that he wanted to buy roosters that were ready to go in a
Jennifer: 23:58
crockpot.
Carey: 24:00
So I'm like, Oh, cool. I'll get online. I can get them things for 99 cents all day long. They'll send them to me happily because a lot of times people always want hens. So boom, it's a win. Cause I know what it costs to feed that bird for about 12 weeks. Good to go. I've done that and I've got hands. So when they're that young. Nothing's formed, so you don't know what's popping out and what's not.
Jennifer: 24:31
So there's a diagram that floats around Facebook all the time where they're holding out the wing feather of a day old chick or three day old chick and the feathers, the flight feathers, one's longer, one's shorter, one's longer, one's shorter. I hate that diagram. Because somebody took it out of the longer article which is easily found and it's saved on my computer But I can't tell you right at the moment what the name of it is But it's only for a fast feathering large breed bird Like a brahma or something. It's not For every chick it was taken out of context So find that Do a reverse image look in that article come up but I wish people would quit sharing that darn diagram.
Carey: 25:23
All right, here's another one that I see a lot of. People talking about using tree limbs for roost.
Jennifer: 25:30
Not a fan.
Carey: 25:32
See, like for me if that tree limb is like the size of your fist, which is too big to be working with inside of a coop, it might be a little different. I personally like two by fours, horizontal, yeah, horizontal where the four part, because even though it doesn't get really cold in Alabama, when it, for those three days that we do have that are cold. In our chance to get rid of all the mosquitos, I want my birds to be able to squat down over their feet so their little toes don't get cold.
Jennifer: 26:13
So the argument is, on the other side, is well when they were wild they would get up in the trees and they would get on the limbs. That is a true statement. The part that is left out is they would pick the limb they wanted to be on and they would probably pick a larger limb and the widest part closest to the main trunk of the tree. Yeah, whereas humans build small coops and pick small limbs that fit in their small coops.
Carey: 26:46
Because they're easy.
Jennifer: 26:47
Yes, and this does not service a bird well. You can also end up with a crooked keel bone. Which is the more, you're just going to have to research that on your own. We're not going to talk about it today. But if the bird is roosting crooked consistently, you can get a crooked keel bone. You could get a pendulous crop. There's a lot of issues. You can get frostbite. There's a lot of downsides to using a tree limb. So I would encourage you not to use one. Use a board. I mean you can get boards pretty cheap. Just use a board.
Carey: 27:23
I mean anything to be honest you can go to job sites and find drops that people would probably let you pick up for nothing.
Jennifer: 27:33
My favorite fruit. One of my very best friends in Michigan asked me what to do about a coop when she was building a coop. And I told her to use saw horses. Because then she could move them around where she wanted them, take them out and hose them off. So I've used saw horses, I have saw horses now. You can build them as tall as you want, short as you want, whatever. They're easy to build out of scrap.
Carey: 27:59
If you like going to garage sales you can find used saw horses there. You take it, the one where the top's been sliced up and down, you get you a really long screw, put you a flat 2x4 on top, Screw it down where it can get a hold of something. You're good. I've also found aluminum ones That looked like they'd been beat up and drugged behind the car. at yard sales, but they work really well too. I have some of those in one of my grow outs and they look.
Jennifer: 28:34
That would be fine for us down here. Yeah, I wouldn't do that up north. No, don't do metal up north.
Carey: 28:40
Yeah. Now, if you're further north in Tennessee, don't use the metal ones. Best substrate in a coop.
Jennifer: 28:48
Peat moss.
Carey: 28:51
That's I gotta go next week and pick some up. Because I finally have some empty breeding pens. Yeah. So I'm going to, over the next couple of months, play musical pens.
Jennifer: 29:09
I started mine today.
Carey: 29:10
I'm gonna, I got me an electric rotor tiller that's really quiet and I'm gonna run that thing and turn the ground and throw some lime and turn the ground and do all that mess. And fix it. Supplements. People ask tons of questions about supplements.
Jennifer: 29:30
They do. So let's just start at the chick stage. The only thing I ever put in water. There's two things I put in water. The first week that I have a chick. Regardless of species. They get a starter tonic from Moonlight Mile Herbal Farm. I have been using her natural stuff for probably ten years at this point. I buy enough once a year to last me for a year. Maybe one day I'll buy enough and she'll give me the recipe. But I swear by her tonic, it's just fantastic. Probiotics, they get that for a week, they're good to go. And then the rest of the time I have a garlic, oregano, AC oh, A CV stands for apple cider vinegar, by the way. A CV. Garlic, oregano. A CV. That's it. And it sits in water and it seeps. And it steeps and it just sits there in my barn fridge constantly. I never, I just add to it. If I use some, I just put some more stuff in there. But it doesn't take a whole lot. I just put like a, I don't know, two second pour per gallon whenever it's time of stress. So we're actually having a cold snap here this week. So I probably will give them some tomorrow. And all of their, they're molting. They're already stressed. So I'll just add some to their water just for an immune booster while the weather's changing. That's it. I don't add anything else to their water. Good, clean water is all they need.
Carey: 31:02
I'm a huge fan of good clean water.
Jennifer: 31:04
Yeah. As for feed supplements, first of all, don't try to fix cheap feed. Buy good quality feed. Yep. And then you can do supplements on top of it. No matter how good the feed is, it's still a commercial feed. I still use a breeder supplement during breeding season on top of it. It just gives the chicks much more vigor and it helps the hens through the season. But that's all I do. Carrie's better at that than I am. I'm a lazy supplement person. But I do have it and I do use it.
Carey: 31:45
Yeah, I used to use supplements and good feed. Then I started making my own feed. And that's a whole nother show.
Jennifer: 31:53
Yep.
Carey: 31:54
All right. That is all the questions we have for today. We appreciate y'all listening till next time. Y'all have a good one.
Jennifer: 32:03
See ya.
