The Featherman Equipment Story
Such an interesting story based on need and then a small business! We hear the story from the beginning and get all the interesting history.
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Carey: 0:01
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
0:14
Mm.
Monica: 0:22
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Jennifer: 0:43
Okay. Alright, so we're here today with David from Featherman Equipment. David, you want to introduce yourself and tell us about your business?
David: 0:52
Thank you, Jennifer. I'm David Schaefer with Featherman Equipment. The business supports small farmers like I was for 35 years. Learned the hard way that I learned the easy way that I love raising animals on pasture. And when I finally raised chickens that my customer base just expanded exponentially four years in a row, it doubled the only, only thing about chickens, you can have a great return, a very short turnover cycle, seven weeks and a few days They don't kick or bite. Easy to work with. There's just one drawback and that's getting the feathers off and the guts out. And there wasn't anything out there for that when I first started. And we made a lot of our own equipment and long story short we stumbled into the business of solving the problems of processing. And it's been a business from heaven. We love it. We feel very sympathetic with the people that are, you're doing it. We're on a mission to heal land and put better food in front of the, in front of people. And just everybody raising poultry wants to do. And so it's it's been a very gratifying journey. Lots of twists and turns and. And I had no idea I was ever going to do it, but I'm loving it.
Jennifer: 2:09
What kind of birds do you have?
David: 2:11
Right now I just have a small flock of Bielefelders that my wife bought. I never would have picked them out, but they're good birds. But I always I only had a few layers in my past life. This farm is, a hobby farm, obviously, the one I have now is just eight acres, but I've been on a couple of farms, grandparents 520 acre farm was where I started and cut my teeth and learn how city kid can make every mistake in the world, and then I moved after 20 years there to I did homestead, a farm, built a straw bale home off the grid, composting toilets, the whole thing. And there I was raising a thousand Cornish cross per year on pasture. And cause that was the legal limit. And all my customers wanted the birds sold out easiest. And we're in the market for some new layers. And I'm not exactly sure what kind, wifey's in charge of the layers. She picks them out. I'm sorry. Say again.
Jennifer: 3:12
What state are you in?
David: 3:14
We're in Florida now, central Florida. We've been here for two years. It's hot as can be right now. I don't know how people work all day. I really don't. I came in at 8:30 this morning dripping and I went back out for a little bit more, but it's rough. Maybe I'm soft, I don't know.
Jennifer: 3:32
No, Carey's in Alabama and I'm in Southern Middle Tennessee and it is just sweltering.
David: 3:37
Yeah. And
Jennifer: 3:40
where are you
David: 3:40
Carey?
Carey: 3:41
I'm right outside of Birmingham. I try to get the things that I need to get done. Before seven, eight o'clock in the morning.
David: 3:48
Exactly.
Carey: 3:49
And then I venture out again about five, four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Yep. Some days, not going to lie. I'll be out in my chicken yard with a headlamp because it's hot. Yeah, I get it.
David: 4:02
It got really hot in North Missouri, 107, 109. I just don't ever remember being this hot though. And consistently for so many days, there were only a few days of the year. In Missouri where it didn't get into the seventies at night. And we haven't had that yet here either, but still, it just I don't know.
Carey: 4:22
It's just, it's the humidity. Yes, it is. In, in the South, Florida, Alabama, our humidity is regularly 80 plus, even in Tennessee where Jennifer is. My father, he lives up in Missouri and their humidity is nowhere near that high. And to me, that's what really, that's what really hurts you. Is the humidity not so much the heat?
David: 4:48
Yeah, you can't cool. You can't cool.
Jennifer: 4:51
You did the thousand cornish
Carey: 4:53
All
Jennifer: 4:55
right, and you did not have processing equipment. How are you doing your processing?
David: 5:00
I was lucky enough in 1993 To go to the auction of Alice's poultry in Chilicothe, Missouri, and I bought Virtually all their stuff. And this was a little shop that, was engaged in commerce and people would bring in chickens and I don't know what they charged a buck and a quarter or something. And they put them in wonder bags and a wonder bread bags, so I bought a couple of big scald pots like 20 quart pots. I bought a drum roller plucker. So it was, it's about as big as a toaster with fingers sticking out that rolls and you hold the bird and feathers get all over you. And so I had my scalder, I had a pot, and I had the the plucker. and I had and I think I bought, yeah, I know I bought a, like a handful of really terrible old wood and wired crates, transportation crates. So that got me started. And what a painful start. Most people earn their stripes that way with a very unsophisticated set up and you can do it by hand. You can do it in a pot with a wood fire and you just you make mistake, you make more, you make a lot of mistakes and you have some birds that lose their skin. You have birds that you got to put cold feathers forever. And that, that's how I did it on a very cheap budget. And then I was involved in a farmers group, Green Hills Farm Project. They're still going on. We were all about grass farming and six of us went together and built a mobile processing unit and we got a grant. The first SARE grant, it was actually called LISA back then, Low Input Sustainable Agriculture, the very first series of grants. We won some money. We bought a 750 pick wick. Plucker, it was, I think, 48 inches in diameter. And we built our own dunking apparatus. We made a scalder out of a 55 gallon barrel and two, 3000 watt heat elements. We put a lot of effort into that, put it all on a trailer. We were going to move it around from farm to farm. It never moved. It was just big and clunky and awkward. I've got pictures of it, but it got the job done. Lots of mistakes. The biggest being that this plucker was designed for 15 birds and we were putting in four. And they were like kids on a merry go round. They were not rolling, and I'm rubbing my hands together for the people that don't have visual on this, which I guess is going to be everybody. It needs, plucking needs to have that action of the birds touching each other. That's why we tell people if they, the first question we ask, if somebody calls up Featherman and says Plucker's not working right! Feathers are all left on. And we said first question is, how many birds are you doing at a time? It's usually just one or two, and we tell them go ahead and put four in there and see how that works. And that usually solves their problem. Anyway we had to, we, it took us a long time to figure that out on that first big plucker. And finally, we did, and we decided to go from four to eight birds scalding. That over faced our scalder mechanism, our dunking apparatus. We did build a cage to hold eight birds and we could get them in there, but I had to help the darn thing go up and down, so it was like lifting weights. We did 160 birds a day and eight at a time. What is that, 20 batches of lifting weights for a minute each batch? Screwed up my back. I was, I couldn't get out of bed. And so then we went to see our Amish neighbor down the road, Ernie Kaufman and Ernie's family was doing birds, I think for a buck and a quarter. We helped them. They took 50 cents off for us helping out. And Ernie and I became great friends. And he after I'm throwing this all in at once on you, but Ernie and I went to see an auction old equipment not really old to us. It was new. But from a big outfit doing pheasants and quail in North Missouri. And it was, I bought a few transport coupes, but everything else was way too expensive. They had a giant stainless steel plucker and Ernie came home. He said, I do believe I could make one of those because Ernie was using one of these drum rollers, like I started out with too, and he was good at it. He could do a bird in 30 seconds. Darn if he didn't chop the ends off of a 55 gallon plastic drum set the fingers that he took off from his drum roller on a plate on one of the lids, the bottom of the, this, the plucker, the 55 gallon plastic drum, cut holes, put those fingers in there and made the first do it yourself homemade plucker. I've made plans, sold plans through Farm Show Magazine for, Five years, that was 1995. I said, somebody ought to develop this. This was 1995. I had no, no dreams, no interest in developing that, but I sold lots of plans for five bucks. And then one of those pluckers that from those plans was used with by Herrick Kimball, who wrote the anybody can build a mechanical chicken plucker, also known as the whiz bang book. Pluckers and a lot of people, I think you have one of those, Jennifer, I was just looking at you on Facebook, your blue pluckers.
Jennifer: 10:00
Yeah.
David: 10:01
Yeah, that's, that looks like a whizzbang pucker made from those plans. But you didn't know that The granddaddy of those was my Amish buddy, Ernie. Anyway, that was a really cool thing and that, that started me thinking about that and I know I've jumped off from the original question, but I'll tell you how we got an official start. The setup that we had that we used for the Greenhills Farm Project worked okay with eight, but like I said, I hurt my back, had to go through Ernie. And other people kept using the the machinery that we put together on a trailer, but I was going to Ernie for a while and Ernie made this other plucker and I developed plans for it. And then I'm not sure, I think it was about 99. Yeah, it was, must've been 1999 when I was on a trip to Asia at the Hong Kong farmers market. I saw all these vendors there, lots and lots of vendors selling their birds. They'd bring in live birds, they'd take them to this room on the first floor, giant three story, like a giant parking lot, this Hong Kong farmer's market was. And on the first floor, they had this room out of Dante's Inferno where they'd killed and scald the birds. And that was something else. They'd tie the chicken's feet together, five, five birds. And these all look like layers to me. And then they'd throw them in a big cauldron, like a pot you can cook a missionary in and stir them around with a paddle, like a rowboat paddle. And that guy. He knew exactly when they were done. The water looked nasty. He had two of those big pots, and I forget what kind of fire, I think he had some kind of coals underneath them. But Ernie, by the way, also scalded with a wood fire. And and then out of the scalder, they'd put him on this little like a cart, like a dolly that goes underneath the car, and then they'd, Pull those out and up some stairs and to their little stalls where they had one of these tiny pluckers, like I'd never seen before, about a foot and a half in diameter and little electric pluckers and they'd pluck them two at a time and then polish them up. Cause they didn't get a very good job done and polish them up. And I said, isn't that neat? And then we went on to my then in laws house in Bali. and stayed there for a week or two. And on the way to the airport the parents had to pick up something at the hardware store. And the hardware store was unlike any hardware store we have here. And right, right out in the front, it was about maybe 20 feet wide and a hundred feet deep, seemed and right out on the front steps were two beautiful cheap metal, but shiny steel pluckers, just like the ones I'd seen in Hong Kong. Like them, same size, tiny. And I said, look at that, and I got out and looked at it and turned it upside down and said, gee whiz, wouldn't that be great if I had a chance to get one of those? And what, I could have really used that. And I said to the guy, how much is it? And he told me, and man, I started thinking. I said how much for And he gave me a price. I don't remember what it was, but I thought about that all the way home on the airport and ended up getting my father in law to help shepherd a small container of those that I call the Featherman Jr. And that was either 1999 or 2000. And I put motors and belts in them. They were all belt driven fixed them in my shop and sold them all out within a year all right. So after I sold out of those imported Featherman juniors, two bird pluckers I got my friend Syl Graber, Amish buddy, to make one more like Ernie's, but a little more sophisticated. And I took it up to the McMurray Hatchery because at that time McMurray was selling the drum roller thing, but a little bit bigger one, as a kit on a stand. So That you put together and it was 795 and I thought, shoot, I can make this automatic one for, 400, I bet, and or, put a 100 motor in it and and sell it, have 500 in it and sell it for 8, like these guys are, and it'll be automatic four birds at a time. So we took the idea up to McMurray. That was a bold move for me and Sil I was nervous as a cat and he said, if you can make it look a little less farm shop, I know we'll, I know we can sell them. So we went back, happened to have, I had so many stars lined up for me happened to have a rotational mold company. One of these things where they have it looks like a carnival ride. It goes, turns in all directions. You pour a bucket of plastic BBs in and they melt, they put them in a 500 degree oven, they melt and they get flung out to the side slowly. And so it. It makes septic tanks and, hunting cabins and, deer, deer blinds and anything round anything that you can make a welded mold for, you can pour a, pour one of these rotational molds and make it. So that's what we did. We designed a base and a top. At that time, the only thing you could buy was a Pickwick junior for 3,600 brand new. And that would do four birds at a time. And that was just, a poultry budget. You guys know that you just, you can't spend that kind of money on your poultry. So that was the only thing out there at the time. And spent what seemed like to us a lot of money on making those first two molds. And it was a gamble. And I also, another one of the things that was really lucky for me was I had a buddy who was the Midwest sales rep for, oh gosh,. It was a major motor company and he gave me a multiplier as if I was doing 300,000 a business a year. He gave me a great price on motors, a motor that would have cost 700 cost me 180 back then, I think. And we introduced the Featherman at I think 795. And that was the only product we had for many years. I was a rep for Ashley equipment, so I could add a scalder. And then after several years and and the poultry man came along and made a cheap copy of the Ashley Scalar. I told Jim at Ashley that I'm sorry, but I gotta make, I gotta make a cheaper scalar than yours. And he said, that's business. And so anyway, we started making our own stainless stuff. We kept with the plastic pluck. That's how Feather man got off the ground for a long time. We, it was just a pluck. But now we have, yeah,
Carey: 16:33
I think a lot of businesses start. Out of some type of necessity. There's something missing and somebody has an idea, Hey, let me see what I can figure out. And then when you figure it out, other people are like, Hey, I want one too. I need that. And next thing you're making it instead of doing what you originally set out to do.
David: 16:59
Isn't that part of the joy of farming though? Discovering stuff on your own. There's so many needs when you're a, when you're a small farmer. And you can't go to the store every time you can't hire a, an electrician every time you can't,
Carey: 17:14
you just
David: 17:14
can't, you don't want to do it. You don't want to pay for it. And so you, it forces you to be creative. And my buddy Wilmer, who does some of the most sophisticated work that we do, he says, necessity, isn't the mother of invention. Desperation is
Carey: 17:27
that's right.
David: 17:28
Yeah. And There's no more desperate feel that I know of than when your equipment breaks down and you're processing birds. That is the worst. You spend all that time, raise them, give them the best life possible, take care of them during storms and get hung, getting hung up at processing is the pits and we, because we know that we design with that in mind, I see stuff on the market now that's going to break down for sure. That does break down and it's good in one sense. I know those cheap pluckers inside and out because I imported one, not too different from them. But I know what their limitations are. And I think it's great that people have a low ticket entry, a 300 tractor supply or 400, whatever it is. Entry with Yardbird and similar and I hope that they have a good experience with them and that they want to expand because that's when they're going to graduate to our level. So I have no grudge against all the imports. I knew they would happen. I had to decide whether I wanted to carry that or not, buy a container or two full of those little ones. We decided not to, and I don't regret that a bit. I'm glad those are out there, but it made me, it made Featherman go from like the cheap entry to a more high grade entry. And by, by the time the Chinese import started coming in. We already had 20 or 25 products and we were being pulled up into the stratosphere of bigger scalders and USDA inspection and stuff that I never would have dreamed of when I was raising chickens for. For sale at the farmer's market.
Jennifer: 19:18
So if you were talking to a newbie that didn't wanna do all of that stuff that you just talked about doing over the course of many years, So if they just wanted to do some Cornish for themselves and their friends or whatever and get started, what would be the first thing they would need?
David: 19:39
To do it yourself, a cone and a sharp knife and a big pot. And we have what we call a starter kit. And it's got the cone, the knife, and a shackles actually, because the shackles is you don't really have to have the shackles. It's a 35 luxury that keeps the bird off of a table or in a tray. Ernie used to have a, like a dish tray for each of his kids and they, each one was full of water and blessed his heart. Shackles keeps them from contaminating a flat surface, like a tray or a table a knife and a cone. I think a cone is essential. I have a lot of strong feelings about the way people dispatch birds. And I'm not a very good salesman because I'm vocal. about decapitation, stunning, shooting, pithing there's no reason for doing all those things that disconnect the brain of the chicken from the heart and the lungs. And I believe that when people understand that the normal brain function and heart lung function. really is essential for a good bleed out, then they don't go to all those extreme efforts of stunning. But unfortunately the animal welfare people have got in and managed to make stunning one of the tenets of organic or humane farming. And it's completely upside down. They're wrong about what they think their research is flawed, that they use to support it. And of course the industry loves them because Industry is all about stunning. If they couldn't stun, they couldn't have these blazing 175 birds per minute throughput, which is what they're all about. And so the humane people fell right into their sweet spot with saying, you need, you got to stun anyway. But I've got a better deal for the newbie than the starter kit. I think everybody should learn to do it. So I think everybody should have the starter kit and the cone, by the way, restrains the bird gently, like a hug. And this has proven our, one of our heroes, Temple Grandin, the autistic cattle pen designer when she was in college, she made herself a squeeze chute to calm herself. Have you guys seen Temple Grandin's documentary? Put it on your list. It's a great, it's a great Netflix. And Temple Grandin is one of the true heroes of the Of the small farm industry bringing her knowledge her understanding of how animals think and what they perceive as they go through these facilities. And a lot of people use her to design their facilities. Anyway, the cone is disoriented because the birds are upside down. It's like a gentle hug and there's nothing that compares to it for for restraining the bird during bleed out. That said the best deal going for start it for starters is to go to our rental page and featherman equipment where folks that have, you have our equipment. We post a, we post their equipment for rent for no charge. We have a map. You put in your put in your zip code and it'll show whoever's near you. And they'll rent you a 6, 000 set of equipment for a hundred bucks a day. That's what I do. That's what Courtney does. And our office gal, my niece in in outside of. Fort Worth and that's what Marie does at the shop in Jamesport, Missouri. We all have a set of rental equipment. We rent it out for a hundred bucks, our gamble. And we tell everybody bring it back better than you found it. Otherwise we'll keep a hundred dollar damage deposit. But and they always do. They, these are great people, of course. And they always honor that. And our gamble is if they get along well with it, and they can see an expansion in another income stream, they'll buy our equipment eventually. But it's a very cheap way to get great equipment. And,
Jennifer: 23:32
I'm on your map right now. You've got quite a few people doing that.
David: 23:36
We should have a lot more, Jennifer. And it's one of the, it's one of the campaigns I just haven't thrown my energy into. I really want to make a, an appeal for it because it just makes so much sense for you as an equipment owner. It's another income stream. We've had people buy an extra set of equipment. We have a I think it's a soil conservation service up in the Pacific Northwest. It's either Oregon or Washington State. They've bought three sets of equipment. Because they rent it out so much, and we love that. We love that. A small percentage of our owners do it. I think they are concerned that they're not gonna get it back in the condition it went out. And I get that, but I think there are ways to ensure, so anyway that's the easiest startup, and it really is super. Even if you just get a pluckers. Or you just get a scalder. Now you got to have a, but yeah. So learning the skill with crude equipment is good to know, no matter what, if the wheels fall off, that's a great skill. And you've got, if you've got chickens and they keep breeding, you've, you know how to feed your family. But. On a, on another level renting will show you who's close to you. You might be surprised probably make friends. You may help each other process and and you get to experience what we consider is the best equipment made just for what you want to do.
Jennifer: 25:09
So for a newbie getting started, obviously they need a knife. And the cone and you need a bucket. I'll just tell you that you need a bucket and
David: 25:21
Can't farm without buckets.
Jennifer: 25:22
No, I mean I do have that plucker now that was given to me by a friend that has gone now, but he gave me that and I don't know where he got it, honestly. But yeah, it works. It's a great little pucker.
David: 25:36
Yeah, it's one of the whiz bangs. It's a, it's got a belt drive, and you'll have to tighten up the belt every now and then, or replace the belt.
Jennifer: 25:43
I have to tell you, I have a trampoline spring holding it where it needs to be right now.
David: 25:50
Your idler pulley. Absolutely. The key with running one of those is you start it before and any plucker you started before you drop the birds in. You probably already figured that out. And the water. Yeah, if you started loaded, it will. it'll slip and it'll ruin your belt.
Jennifer: 26:07
You start it up and you have to have your hose going. And then you just drop the bird in there. And I think I've got 23 second videos, 23 seconds and they're done.
David: 26:18
I have. Plucking is really the easy part. Scalding is where the, where you have to really develop your skills.
Jennifer: 26:25
Yeah and it's the, so for people who are new to scalding, that is a trial and error thing. If you're at 150 degrees, it takes about 12, 14 seconds, 15 seconds, but if you start getting them too hot, it gets real messy real quick. You start. That's true, Jennifer,
David: 26:46
and when you say that, you have to also have a caveat that. you're, are you leaving them in the water for all that time? Or are they going up and down in and out of the water? So I do 150 degrees which is a little bit on the hot side to most people, 148 is how we set our scalders when they go out and we just tell people, even there, but if you go in and out of the water somehow, if you're holding them with your hands by the feet, or you're using shackles, which looks like you push h all the way under feet an jiggle it and then you li heads out of the water an for three seconds. Then y process to me is usually I think when you said 15 seconds, you were talking about just completely holding them down under water and jiggling them around for all that time. Is that right? I'm a swisher. I swish them in a swisher! I should have known you were a swisher. This is funny. Are you a one bird swisher or a two bird swisher?
Jennifer: 27:54
I'm a one bird swisher because we're old school. We use a turkey fryer pot. So there's only one bird going in there. But we have fluffy birds. So I swish them to get all those soft feathers on the underside.
David: 28:07
Yeah. Things I don't know. So you're talking about spent laying hens,
Jennifer: 28:11
we so I raise Cochins and Orpingtons for show, but then we have to eat the ones that make the cut.
Carey: 28:18
Yep.
Jennifer: 28:19
And so we actually pluck the heritage birds but we skin the Cornish, so go figure. So Cornish
David: 28:28
are easier to pluck, though.
Jennifer: 28:30
They are. I'm not dissing it at all, but just for the way we eat in our household, we just skin the Cornish, but the heritage birds, the broth that you get from the skin, the bones, and everything is so rich. We can't even compare it. We actually lug out the plucker when we go to do the roosters and stuff from the heritage birds.
David: 28:52
The main thing the newbie needs to know is that the age makes a huge difference, doesn't it? It does. So even in a Cornish, if you let them get older or like people say, redbirds pluck harder than whitebirds. It's not necessarily the breed, but those redbirds are 12 weeks old. The whitebirds were eight or seven. And so just those four weeks can make a difference in how those feathers are set. And on your spent hands or ones that didn't make the cut for whatever reason, those birds are quite old by then, a half a year at least, their feathers will be a lot harder to get out. Anybody who's plucked laying hands they've earned a stripe or two because it's a totally different, it's much harder than the Cornish. So
Jennifer: 29:35
how does your equipment do for ducks and turkeys?
David: 29:39
You just said a four letter word. God made ducks waterproof. Turkeys are no problem. Turkeys are no problem at all. But God made ducks waterproof. And the most important thing about plucking a duck is the molt. You have to hit the molt. You have to hit the molt. You have to hit the molt. Those are the three most important things about plucking a duck, or a goose. And the molts are at eight weeks and 12 weeks, but you'll know for sure when you see the little breast feathers getting pushed out by the new feather coming in. And I've never done it. I've not raised my own ducks. I've helped a couple of people pluck ducks, one with wax, one without. I've never felt really good about the job I did, but if you look in the store or at a fine restaurant, You're going to see, you're going to see hair follicles on all those ducks. And another secret to doing ducks, I think, is to use white ducks. Because if you use dark ducks it'll look like they're really hairy. White ducks won't show it. But they're so worth it. And let me give a plug for the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association. And the latest issue, I think it's the latest. No, this is March, April, is by probably one of the best duck men in the country, Ben Grimes. And he's, the article is demystifying ducks. There is so much great information in this magazine. Everybody, first of all, ought to have their animals on pasture, moving them every day. That's why we do the chicken shift. Put in the manure pinpoint precision where it should go instead of leaving yourself a chore and keeping the chickens cleaner and then yeah, like even ducks ducks, everything's discussed in this periodical, our newsletter, and I love it. People share information so freely and then online as well. It's a great resource. You guys are probably very aware of that. Appa. org best money you can spend.
Jennifer: 31:49
Carrie joined is part of the app thing. I'm not.
Carey: 31:53
Yeah, I like it. Yeah. I've definitely learned a lot from joining APA. They, I went to their show back in January and the different seminars that they had, I learned so much about pastured poultry, be it Cornish heritage birds, They had things set up all for all different stages of the bird's life to help teach people how to take care of them and how to manage it.
David: 32:26
Yep. It's getting more and more sophisticated every year, Kerry. I love that. I love the conference and The conference is, it just blows me away. The quality of people, the sophistication. My, my era was, we were feeding liver to try to keep the splayed legs from happening. And then Jeff Maddox and Fortrell came along. And that was history, so the problems I had are not the problems that the growers have today and they're, they're figuring out refrigeration and stuff like that.
Carey: 33:01
Yeah.
David: 33:01
They're so far down the road and so unafraid to do 5, 000 birds a year. Homesteaders don't need to do that. It's good to know there's very small scale people doing that. And chickens are the easiest thing to sell. They're the foot in the door for all the other meats you want to grow or vegetables or flowers or whatever, but Chickens are easy to sell. Eggs are easier.
Jennifer: 33:26
All right, so Let's see back to the newbie stuff So you have the chicken ships which would be how to move them around your field or yard in a controlled manner, controlled
David: 33:39
predator proof.
Jennifer: 33:42
So that canvas top is predator proof?
David: 33:45
Yes. Okay. A bear could get into it
Jennifer: 33:49
Okay.
David: 33:50
If I had to worry about bears, a raccoon could get into it, but I've never heard of one doing that. I haven't heard of a bear getting into one of these, but I've heard of bears getting into chicken pens. If I had to deal with bears I'd put a hot tape around the. A big piece and then just move within the big move within the hot tape.
Carey: 34:09
Oh, but yeah,
David: 34:10
no I do not tolerate any predation anymore. I've been involved. I've had so many predator attacks. I had eight Salatin pens and I lost a lot of birds in Salatin pens. I've had, I've been a part of an 8, 000 layer on pasture operation. I was a consultant for it, and we fought aerial predation. I started out I started out when I went to my, my homestead didn't have electricity there. We had eight solar panels, very small system. And I made a 20 by 40 foot PVC, called it the prairie schooner. That was the very first prairie schooner, covered with a big billboard tarp. It's cheap and I brooded in there and it worked. It worked great. I had to move my brooding into April late April instead of March or early April. But I got along fine with the little birds staying warm. The brooder kept them warm for three days and then it ran out of propane and they stayed fine on their own. Maybe I lucked out, but I'm a big advocate for brooding on pasture. Anyway Yeah, that model, the PVC prairie schooner, these folks with 8, 000 layers on pasture, built 22 of them, and they're great until they're not, they're gonna, they're gonna be destroyed sooner than later, sooner or later, and it's usually sooner, and yeah we fought predators, I fought predators in, in, in mine, owls and hawks, and I just decided didn't want to build a metal version of the prairie schooner because it was just too expensive. It was going to be 7, 000 or close to it. I actually built a smaller one that was about five and change. And but I decided that zero predation is the goal. And it's just no fun to, to do all the work we do and then have. Predators pick off your stock. So we went to we made the first movable chicken tractors, the Prairie schooners. That was about 2011 or 12 and two sizes. So I've been in that space for a while. And when the 10 by 12 aluminum coops came out, I'm looking out my window at two of them right now. I couldn't believe people would pay for that. And then. I talked to my friend, Rosanna Bauman at the conference, you were talking about Carey, but two years ago, and I said, Rosanna, did you see those Alumi-Coop and she said, yeah, can you believe how expensive they are? And I said, no. And she said, my sister bought one. Rosanna's a. I think she's a German Baptist. She's some plain plain folk group in Kansas. I visited their farm a couple times. Garnett, Kansas. Rosanna's the superstar. I met her when she was 18 years old and she's just set the world on fire with her own operations. She's got a beef plant and a poultry processing plant. Anyway, she said, yeah, my sister bought one and I went out and looked at it and you know what? I think it's worth it. I said, no kidding. And I just couldn't get out of my head. And so we became dealers. And as I said, it was good and not so good. We couldn't ship them and they're too expensive. So we made a less expensive version by. Instead of buying expensive pre made pipes, we took a sheet of aluminum and with a sophisticated program, it figures out where all your pieces go so that you have the least drop, the least waste on that sheet. And we cut it into C channel instead of a whole tube. And so our costs are a lot less to do that because we have this great how to write fabricator and not only are the costs less, but we're A lot lighter because of that as well. Same strength of aluminum members, but a lot less weight. Anyway, so yeah, I'm really excited about it because to me, it's the next step after you've had a coop and raised birds close to your house and fought predation, even with a stationary coop, everybody does. The, these things are. I guess weasels can get in there, but I don't hear of weasel attacks very often. I had one once, I think, but no, I've only had one predator attack on, on the aluma coop, and it was within the first two hours of when I put that out there one of the little babies was small enough to get her head through the So like the one inch screen and I know a hawk, a red shoulder, a red shouldered hawk got her and cause I just found a headless body. And then I had the hawk sitting on top of that little coop for a couple of days, it would come looking for heads poking out anyway yeah, virtually predator free put the manure where you want it. The chickens get a daily salad bar. In addition to their the ration that you give them. Oops. And and a clean bedding every night. It's just it's the highest level of stewardship husbandry. I think that you can do, and it takes a learning curve to get there and be willing to pay for it. It's still a lot of money, but it's not as much as anything else out there. So we've, at Featherman, we've always been extremely sympathetic because we've lived through. Homesteading and making a living out of selling pasture based animals. And we're not here get rich on, on our products. We're here to solve problems and help more people be on the land. And that's what really turns us on.
Jennifer: 39:54
So that's one thing that I am hearing and I like is that me and you are similar in the way that we promote the products that we use. We're just not somebody that's a businessman that sees a niche in the market and sits at his desk in New York and wants to fill it with. With imported stuff. We're actually out there using it. You're using your equipment out of necessity I have foam that I created for shipping eggs, and I use that And kerry has a need and found Feed and minerals and everything. And does that. So we're similar in that sense that we're actually using the materials and we know that they work and we're putting them out there on the market for other people.
David: 40:42
Yep. To me, that's, that's thrilling, isn't it? To identify a need, come up with an idea of your own that, that, that addresses it and then actually. make it happen for other folks as well. To me, it doesn't get better than that. I benefit from you. You benefit from me and the community. The community of small farmers is such a beautiful thing in this fractured, fragmented, crazy world we live in. We, we can we know, we can get online or get on the phone and talk to sane people like us
Jennifer: 41:17
We reach out to people, same crazy chicken
David: 41:19
people.
Jennifer: 41:21
We reach out to people who are actually doing it though. They know, and they know, hey, you can put a point on this thing to fix it, or you can shift it this way to, to fix this and tweak it, And
David: 41:34
We're still at the beginning stage, we really are. There's so much more that, that can happen. We're all still pioneers. I'm convinced of it. There's just a lot yet to be figured out. And feed, feed, by the way, Carrie, did you say Carrie was doing stuff with feed? Yeah, that see, that's always been a mystery to me and it still is right now because I only have a few birds I can't order in bulk and I know I don't keep it. I had it's too old by the time I'm using the last of it. I don't like it. And the only way I rationalize all that is that I move them every time I'm out there, sometimes four times a day.
Carey: 42:14
And I know
David: 42:15
they're, I know they're picking up stuff because they get excited every time I move them, but I'm, I feel pretty inferior about my feed management. If you can help me on a, the small scale the 20,
Carey: 42:28
do you know bergen Farms, he's down in Florida. He actually brings some feed down from Pennsylvania that is formulated by Jeff. Huh. So look them up. He sells it in his farm store and that, I don't know exactly where y'all are in relation to each other, but that's a feed that was designed by Jeff. And he feeds it, he does turkeys and broilers on his farm.
David: 43:03
Okay.
Carey: 43:04
Okay.
David: 43:05
I have some other folks, Dave and Ginger Shields. You probably remember them from, is it the, if it's the same feed that they do, cause they're, they deal with Jeff as well.
Carey: 43:16
Yep, it is.
David: 43:18
See, they're not, they're two hours for me. I actually am one of their customers. I drive 38 miles to their most southern point to, to buy meat from them. And it's not worth it for them to bring me a sack of feed too. But I'd like to ask them,
Carey: 43:34
If they're bringing you some chicken they can bring you a back or two of feed as well, don't you think? I'm sure I know both of them. They're great people.
David: 43:41
No, they are. They're wonderful. They're superstars. They're right up there with Polly face in my book. Yeah. Yeah.
Carey: 43:48
It was great to meet you today, David.
David: 43:50
Yeah. There's Ruby. She's the star. It's great to meet you too, Carrie. I've seen your, I've seen your name around and probably seen your byline on A few APPPA conversations. Maybe that's where
Carey: 44:04
yeah, I know I've seen you
David: 44:05
at the conference.
Carey: 44:06
Yep. Yep.
David: 44:08
Thanks for having me guys. I applaud your mission of helping the homesteaders start up It's a confusing amount of things to, place to juggle for the newbie. And I know it, I've been there and want to help however I can. And I support what you do. I think it's great. All the information exchange going on.
Carey: 44:31
Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
