What Comes First The Egg, The Chick, or The Started Bird?

Getting started with any poultry should be thought out and not an impulse buy. For some, hatching eggs is the answer, but you can also started with chicks or started birds. Get the pros and cons of all so you can decide for yourself which is the best fit.

• Transcript

  Carey Blackmon: 0:00

  Hi, and welcome to the Poetry Nerds podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, and I'm here with my co-host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. And we are here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:24

  We're gonna talk about if you wanna order hatching eggs, or do you just wanna order chicks or do you wanna wait and order started birds, like the pros and cons to all three of those options?

  Carey Blackmon: 0:35

  I guess that would depend on what comes first, the egg, the chick, or the started bird.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:42

  The breeder comes first.

  Carey Blackmon: 0:44

  There you go. We've already talked about breeder selection, right? That's in a previous episode that people could go pick up. So where do you get your bang for your buck?

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:55

  Personally, I think it just depends on your infrastructure. If you are already set up with an incubator and a brooder and you know what you're doing, and I think hatching eggs would probably be the best bang for your buck at that point.

  Carey Blackmon: 1:14

  So I am very pro. Started bird even though I have two large cabinet incubators, two barns 16 different breeder pens, all that good stuff I'm more believable with started bullets or some type of started bird period for me.

  Jennifer Bryant: 1:37

  So when I got the cochin, I started with, a started Trio, they were four months old. So I think that each category has its own pros and cons depending on what you wanna do.

  Carey Blackmon: 1:53

  Like for me, I like reds and I had found some really good looking reds. But they were not standard reds. They were close. But when you order hatching eggs if you're just starting out and you did not go through our selecting the breeder and follow those, you're still trying to figure it out and. When you look on the internet and you see what people have, they have pictures, but is that what you're really getting when you order hatching eggs?

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:32

  Let's just talk about hatching eggs for just a minute. Okay? So you're going to get quantity for your monetary investment. Gonna get the least amount of shipping cost. And you're. Chance, like a lottery ticket to have more chicks. So when you order hatching eggs, the industry standard is a 50% hatch rate. You could get zero and you could get a hundred percent. I have had people do both from my eggs because there's so many variables. The shipper handling, how much does the post office guy mad at you that day? The heat cold isn't necessarily such a problem, but the heat in the summer is an issue. Your incubator quality and skills. What else? Hatching eggs is a gamble. It's like pulling a lottery ticket in a lot of ways.

  Carey Blackmon: 3:35

  Yeah, I agree. When you're, when you buy hatching eggs, it's a gamble from everything. Are you getting what you think you bought? Is half of'em gonna hatch is more than half. Because if you, so let's say you want to get a decent amount of chicks because you know that roughly, if you're looking for a standard bird, something that's really good quality, a lot of breeders will suggest 10%. So with that in mind, you're gonna order a hundred eggs. You're going to hatch out 50 of them. Out of that 50, you're gonna select five keepers.

  Jennifer Bryant: 4:19

  If we're talking about chickens, I agree with you.

  Carey Blackmon: 4:21

  Yes. Yeah, with, I'm talking about chickens on that part now, obviously with quail, most people are into your meat and eggs and if it hatches and it grows, they'll be able to do something with it, even that, if, if you're wanting to start your farm off and so you order a hundred eggs, 50 of'em hatch out of that 50, you're gonna have a hen-roo pull it, a hen-roo mix. That's again, like the lottery. You could be like my most recent hatch of pharaohs and it was over 80 per 80% rooster on that. And I was like I put 200 birds in my incubator'cause I needed some hens and I got a lot of dog meat. Yep. A lot of animal food. And so

  Jennifer Bryant: 5:18

  if we're talking about quail, for those listeners, if we're talking about quail, yes. We talk about quail eggs in the hundreds. At least when I ship we talk in the hundreds Now if we're talking your standard bread chickens. No, you probably would only order maybe a dozen, two dozen eggs if you are even lucky enough to find a breeder to share hatching eggs with you. I, for one, do not offer hatching eggs off of my chickens. I will offer chicks and started birds, but I don't do hatching eggs

  Carey Blackmon: 5:55

  well, and that, that also depends. For the listeners what kind of bird, because if it's one of your dinosaurs or no, not necessarily the dinosaurs, but one of your Cochin's, they have an exorbitant amount of feathers and unless the breeder know even if the breeder knows that they have to trim some of those. The fertility is still correct. Usually not good. A reputable breeder is not gonna sell 12 eggs knowing that the fertility may only say two or fertile'cause it's gonna make'em look bad and they're not

  Jennifer Bryant: 6:38

  gonna do it. Which is why I don't do it right. Lemme see how I got started with the Cochins. So I found a breeder and I liked the pictures of her birds. Looking back in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't get birds from her. I ordered very expensive,$300 a dozen hatching eggs and none of them hatched. She, she replaced them. I paid for shipping. She sent me 12 more. I got one to hatch and it didn't make it two days. So I had zero chicks for over$300 in investment.

  Carey Blackmon: 7:19

  What kind of incubator did you put him in?

  Jennifer Bryant: 7:21

  Those 1502. I was a 1502. So

  Carey Blackmon: 7:24

  You did go, you did stick them in a good cabinet incubator and still had awful results.

  Jennifer Bryant: 7:30

  Correct. Because right after that, all of her birds went broody, so fertility was already dropping anyway. So then what I did was I went back to. To ground zero, found another breeder with exactly what I wanted. And he offered me a STARTED trio. And so what that means is they were four months old. In this particular case, they were four months old. He assessed them for any dqs that you could find at that age, and made sure to send me birds. Two females in a rooster for, with no apparent DQs to start me off the best I possibly can. So in the hatching egg side, I spent over$300 and had zero birds. And on the started bird side I had four month olds. And with shipping it was$475. At the time, I don't know what it would be now. But I had three healthy birds that started laying, of course, the next spring. But they were already, had been critiqued, had been started. They were past the super fragile stage and I was on my way and I had a reputable breeder assess them for me. And send them to me. So not only did I get birds and shipping, they were off-heat. They were started disease-free, healthy, and assessed by, and he's an APA judge also. And so they were already assessed by him to be DQ free at that age. So that was well worth the money for

  Carey Blackmon: 9:24

  me. Most definitely. Yeah. Definitely worth the money. So for me, the ones that I got I bought my 40 chicks and after talking to some people that have been breeding longer, I've been alive. I knew that what I had was decent, but I also knew that. I was anywhere from five to eight generations from getting a bird that I could enter into a show and have a chance at winning. Which, that can be done. And you know these chicks, I got'em as chicks. And the, when this statement was made, they were four or five months old. And I know that's still young, but who you got yours from? He was an APA judge and he was able to say, Hey, at four months, these are defect free. The person that looked at mine. Started telling me, the issues and the things that I needed to work on and how I needed to find a pullet to put with this cockerel and with these traits and that traits to be able to breed that out. And once I bred one thing out, I'd have to breed another thing out and going on down the track like that. And for me, I essentially hit the red lotto with the bloodline that I have and. I was able to come across some really good birds that somebody, an APA judge said, Hey, these birds right here, you could put these in a show. And they don't have any disqualifications. But here's the issue with your cockerel, your two pullets. They have these traits when these breed. Their offspring will not have that issue. And I was excited about that. And when I bought 20 No 30 chicks, what I spent on those 30 chicks is less than what I spent on the trio. Unless you include gas and drive time to go somewhere that I was going already. To bring them back.

  Jennifer Bryant: 11:52

  Let's order, let's talk about ordering chicks then. So chicks, I would say would be just a step above ordering hatching eggs. Is, there's no real way to assess them. Typically you're going to get. Just hatched chicks sent to you. Now, I personally don't do that. I try to send mine at about a week old. But hatcheries and post office guidelines, they're supposed to be just hatched. But I guess I'm the rebel. So if you order chicks, just for general purposes, let's say they're straight outta the incubator. Then you're getting a certain number of live checks. So if you wanted say 20, you order 20, you're probably gonna get twenty-two, most people will send you an extra one or two. I send one extra for every 10 ordered. And so you'll get what exactly what you're paying for, and at that point, it's up to you. To keep them alive and get them going. But now keep in mind that they have been stressed and the yolk, they're living off of the egg yolk. So you are making an assumption that egg yolk was healthy to begin with and full of nutrients, and then. That the post office was quick to get them to you, and the verge are not stressed to the point where you can't bring them back, which is why I started shipping at a week old. Kind of weeds out the weaker ones, gets them good and started, and they can handle the stress of being in a box for a day. Which is typically what I have found is just takes about a day for stuff to get there. And the post office has never once asked me how old the birds were inside that box. And I don't prep the information, so that's the way that I handle it, but I, you can't assess. A week old check for anything other than does it have three toes and two wings? That's pretty much the end of it. So you get what you get at that point. You will get more bang for your buck with chicks. So if you wanna just do numbers with hatching eggs, let's just say for the sake of. Of the conversation, you pay$2 an egg for hatching eggs and only 50% hatch, then you paid$4 for that chick, right? And so if you can order chicks that are already hatched and healthy and are going at$5 a chick, then that, but for sure is a better deal in my mind. And then if you can order sexed chicks, you're even doing even better. Especially if you live somewhere where you can't deal with a bunch of roosters.

  Carey Blackmon: 14:55

  Yeah, that's true. So for me I like chicks. Obviously they're cute. But like you said, when you order a chick. You at least know that the hatchability of that egg was a hundred percent because it's there and it's walking around. So you eliminate that part of the gamble. And at that point, it's really a matter of genetics and nutrition. Bird has to have vigor to be able to survive that trip, and then you have to provide it with adequate nutrition. To rehydrate itself and carry on with life. To me, that increases the odds. Now, I do know that getting chicks shipped is more expensive than getting eggs shipped. It is less expensive than getting started pullets or cockles shipped. But isn't that what you pay for is the odds

  Jennifer Bryant: 15:57

  I would say my average shipping cost on hatching eggs is somewhere in the$16 to$20 a box. The chick orders are gonna be somewhere in the$50 to$60 range because, but you also have to keep in mind it's not just the shipping cost, it's also the cost of that shipping box. Because it's a box feed gro gel shavings, everything, heaters.

  Carey Blackmon: 16:23

  Them heater pads are expensive. They are!

  Jennifer Bryant: 16:25

  I need some more of them. And I was like I need to find a deal on those.'cause they're like$3 a piece on Amazon. So I'm gonna try to look somewhere else but. So I probably just in a box shipping out before you even put chicks in it, I probably have$20 in that box. So just keep that in mind. And then started birds would be about the same thing. I've shipped, started birds out and I still put grow gel in there. Still put shavings and feed. But obviously for size. Zing, you can put less birds in there. So I shipped a trio out to Oregon last fall, and it took two boxes, the cockerel filled up box, and the two pullets went in a box together. So she had to pay for shipping for two. But typically the. That stuff is gonna run you about$80 a box. For that third, and then that's about what I paid to get the coachings down here. And I would pay it again in a heartbeat because it got my program started on a foot that would've taken me two years and the shipping for But, all right, so the shipping on the started birds, let's just say you have 150 in two boxes for a trio. Oh, that is significantly cheaper than a brooder feed, heat, a nd time. You're gonna have more than that in eggs or chicks.

  Carey Blackmon: 17:56

  Yeah, I was, that was fixing to say, you started off, when you started with the hatching eggs, you had an incubator that was a thousand bucks. Right? Which, obviously a lot of people go with a$200 or$300 incubator, but still you're$200,$300 for the incubator.$100,$200 bucks for a brooder setup, depending on what route you go. Even if you go cheap with a storage container, by the time you get your heat plate and all that, you're in it a hundred bucks. So you're looking, like$300 for an incubator,$100 brooder, that's$400 bucks. And then you got let's see, 10 chickens will eat a bag of food in two weeks. So you're looking. Another a hundred bucks in feed, easy for a trio to get'em to three to four months. So you're at$500 to$600 bucks right there, right? And you could have sped the process up four months and saved a few hundred dollars.

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:01

  And got'em

  Carey Blackmon: 19:02

  judged. Yeah. And got'em from somebody that knows what they're getting. What you're getting.

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:09

  Exactly. And that and of that trio, I still have one of the hens, the other two are gone now, but one of the hens is still kicking and she lays me an egg about every day.

  Carey Blackmon: 19:18

  Is she still doing her job? She's still

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:20

  doing her job. She's broody all the dang time, but

  Carey Blackmon: 19:26

  yes. What's the offspring of those eggs?

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:28

  They're showstoppers, aren't they?

  Carey Blackmon: 19:32

  Those are the ones, those are what you're showing right now. Yeah. Yeah. I seen you win platters, ribbons. Trophies Plaques. Yeah, they're, she's still definitely doing her jobs. If that's the offspring she's throwing off, that's really nice. Yep.

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:49

  Exactly. But now even with started birds, you still have to breed them. You still have to cull hard, you can't just assume every offspring is going to be a show winner. Yeah. Let's kinda recap here'cause it went all over the board. So if you have an incubator and you're set up to brood and you're set up to handle extra roosters, then I would order hatching eggs, but understand that it's typical to get 50% hatch rate, but it's also typical to get zero. And some of it may be the breeder's fault, but chances are it's not. It's just circumstance. And then if you decide to order chicks, you still need a breeder, still need heat, still need chick food. But you, the money you saved on the incubator, you're gonna spend on shipping at least some of it. But you have started birds. You have birds chirping and cute and fluffy and deliver to your door, and then started birds. They're gonna be older, they're gonna be off heat. You can put'em straight outside. You can. expect to get eggs off of them whenever they're supposed to lay. Some may lay pretty quick, and then you get big ones like mine that won't lay for a year, so you know it, know your breed that you're ordering, but that sticker shock. I don't know, how can I explain this? The sticker shock of the shipping and of the birds. If you would step back and do the math on and the work put into it it's still probably cheaper, honestly.

  Carey Blackmon: 21:44

  And like I, I sell, I usually cull or have a cull about Point of Lay and some of them will get cold to the freezer. And some of them will get cold to people. And I have people they say, I mean it is, why do you want thirty-five dollars? It's just a chicken. Yeah, thirty-five dollars for a four to six month old bird if you pull out your calculator. And work a little bit of math to get over the sticker shock. You'll actually find out that the bird is free. I'm charging you for the feed that it ate for the last four to six months. And when I've explained it to people, sometimes they're like, oh, I never thought about it that way. And then I've had, I actually had one person say I'm not spending more than$15 on a bag of feed. Yeah, and I'm like so what you're telling me is your chickens probably don't have adequate nutrition. And that's important to me because if I'm gonna give one of my birds to somebody, that's a red flag because I wanna make sure that they're gonna be well taken care of.

  Jennifer Bryant: 23:00

  So let me tell you a story. I went to the Green River Show last fall in Kentucky Bowling Green Kentucky. And I had the only cochins in the open show and then there was some in the junior show. It's a smaller show. and I walked around quickly and looked at some of the other birds. But I'm pretty set on my breeds and I don't usually pay much attention to too many other birds. I was sitting there just waiting for the judging and everything. And this kid come over to me and it turned out he was 17. And he come over to me and asked me, he's are those your cochins down there? And I said, yes. And he goes, gosh, do you ever sell them? And I said yes I do, but I don't have any with me for sale right now. And he said I brought one with me today. But mine doesn't look like yours. And I have to tell you, I had walked by this bird probably 18 times. And was literally sitting six feet away from it and had no idea it was a cochin. and the reason being is it may have weighed three pounds. It was so small and it didn't even look like a bantam cochin. He was meant to be a full-size bird and they did not have any money to feed them. So it only got kitchen scraps in what it could find in the yard. and it may have weighed three pounds. He was so scrawny and I felt bad for the bird. But I just politely and kindly told him that until he could afford proper feed or at least some feed at that he needed to just have yard birds. It was hard for me to say that to him. The rest of the story was his dad got hurt and he had to quit school and get a job and blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't change the fact that these are living animals that have to have feed. and if you're gonna have to have them, you have to feed them at least something. Now, obviously this bird was alive and it was crowing. But you could tell by looking at it, it was nowhere near what it should have been. I had didn't even recognize that it was a cochin until he pointed it out, and we stood there and looked at it for a while. That's how scrawny and malnutritioned it was.

  Carey Blackmon: 25:28

  And that is actually the perfect lead-in to a show that we'll have coming up in a few weeks where we're gonna talk to Jeff from Fertrell about nutrition and what it looks like. So there's that. Good. But that's one thing to me, that, that is sad. Usually there's a sad story whether it be the person had an unfortunate life incident or they just don't know.'cause some people think, oh I mean they're natural scavengers. And they are, and they can pick up a lot of nutrition if you plant cover crops and have. Just worms and stuff that they can eat, but that's not always the case either. So you know, the bird suffers.

  Jennifer Bryant: 26:18

  Exactly. I hope that we helped people maybe make a decision that hatching eggs versus ordering chicks versus ordering started birds. And these would apply to all species. Quail, Chicken, Turkey Ducks. A started duck though, might make a soggy mess out of a cardboard box in the mail.

  Carey Blackmon: 26:42

  Yeah, probably. So they can be pretty messy. I have to

  Jennifer Bryant: 26:45

  ship them in a plastic tub.

  Carey Blackmon: 26:49

  But to me, when somebody asks me, I'm like it's like everything else poultry related. It depends on what your goal is. What do you want to do? Do you want this? Do you want that? Do you want the other? So that's why, we wanted to talk about this.'cause in some situations, hatching eggs is the best thing to do and others chicks is the best thing and. For other people and their goals, getting the started trios it, that's the route to go because like for me, I had the ability to do all of them, but getting the started trio sped my breeding process up to get what I was looking for. My ultimate goal, five to eight years. Maybe longer.'cause that's, when you're dealing with genetics, it's a guess and like for you to get you where you wanted. It sped your process up a lot too. It did. And with the luck that you had it made up for some time.

  Jennifer Bryant: 27:51

  And if you wanna talk about quail for just a minute, I ship Celadon hens and roosters breeding sets and though they're not feather sexable typically, and so people who just want to start off with a known breeder set so they can move forward from there. We'll order from me and I will send them out. After they start laying, after I have confirmed, which I know my line is true blue, you don't know until, you know when that mess up may, may occur. So the birds don't leave this property until a blue egg pops out of'em, and then they go in a box and they get shipped to the purchaser. And I've not had a problem, and knock on wood, I won't have a problem, but I. Those customers takes me back that they're so happy because when they get that box, typically there's a blue egg in the bottom of the box too. So not only do they get the bird, but they also get the blue egg to prove. Yes, it's a celadon, that they didn't add, so there's a, they

  Carey Blackmon: 28:55

  opened the box, they look down and they're like, oh. It's like winning the lottery instead of playing the lottery.

  Jennifer Bryant: 29:02

  While I was trying to log in with you, somebody was texting me. They had just got their birds and they were, there was eggs in the box. They were so excited. Yeah, think about it. Sit down and think about your situation and what you're wanting to do. If you don't wanna brood, get started. birds. If you wanna brew, but don't have an incubator, get chicks. It's okay. Everybody has their preferences

  Carey Blackmon: 29:27

  and some people, they just have that chick addiction. And I gotta be honest it right there in chick season. I gotta stay outta Tractor Supply because you walk in the front door and you hear the chirps and the natural inquisitiveness inside of you wants to go look at'em. And then when you look at'em and you're like, I don't have one of those. Oh man. That thing, it's just a couple bucks. You take it home, don't have to worry about shipping or nothing. Yeah. So I have to stay out.

  Jennifer Bryant: 30:02

  Yep. Yep. No, that it doesn't get me anymore. It used to get me, but now that I know what quality looks like, I can just walk on by. It doesn't bother me, but honestly, I don't go in tractor supply very much. So very rarely do I go in there.

  Carey Blackmon: 30:20

  I try especially during chick season. All right that, it concludes the show for today. If anybody has any questions, make sure you send us an email at PoultryNerds@gmail.com 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're released and they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds@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.

What if I Wanted to Raise Quail...

Getting started with Coturnix Quail doesn’t have to be overwhelming, join Jennifer and Carey who have literally hatched tens of thousands of quail, give you the info you need to get started and why.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:00

  Hi, and welcome to the Poetry Nerds podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, and I'm here with my co-host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. And we are here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible. So today we're gonna talk about why would you wanna keep quail, why would you wanna keep quail? Why do I wanna keep quail? Yeah. Why would you wanna, why would somebody wanna keep quail? Why would our listener wanna do that? So many reasons. First of all, you would never have an egg shortage. That would be a good one. You'd always have eggs. You could have meat if you wanted to do that, you'd be just a tad bit more self-sufficient. They have a quick turnaround. They take up a small footprint. Anybody can have them, no excuses, and they're pretty easy to take care of. Does that sound like a dream farm animal? It does. I have a a lady, the, that my wife works with. And her husband live in an apartment. And she found out that I kept quail and she was like, I like that little noise that they make. And I'm, I just started laughing and I said, are you talking about the ones that the roosters made? And she said, yes, I love that sound. I can remember when I was a kid, I used to sit and listen to'em and it was just so relaxing. And I said, okay. And she said I wish I could have those. And I said why don't you get'em? And she said, they don't allow animals in our apartment complex. And I said, you could probably get you a rabbit hutch or something like that. You got a back deck? She said, yeah, we have a deck, we got a grill back there, table, all that kind of stuff. I sit out there and read all the time. I said, Reed, do you have enough room for a bookshelf? And she said, yeah, now she has quail on that bookshelf. That's right. And she was amazed to find out that most quail lay over 300 eggs a year. Yep. Pretty awesome. It takes three quail eggs to make one chicken egg. If you need to do a recipe, give or take. But if you can put a Coturnix quail in an apartment, that would be awesome. But if you have a super strict, apartment complex, you could get away with button quail. Okay. So if you live in a super strict apartment complex, you could probably get away with button quail. Now they're more like a parakeet or maybe like songbirds. They're very small, three ounces or so, maybe four ounces, and they lay little tiny eggs. But they're edible and they lay every day. You might have to crack 25 of them to make an omelet, but that's still a step at self sufficiency. Now, with the button quail, if I remember right. Didn't I see one time you posted? Some pictures of yours in an aquarium? I do. I had'em in an aquarium. I still have some in an aquarium. We've upgraded since then'cause we have so many. But Guinea pig cages. Hamster cages. They don't have to be tall, they don't fly like a parakeet. They're ground birds. They don't perch. They wanna be down in the shavings or whatnot. They need a hide. You can turn over a basket. We use coffee cans. We cut out a hole and they jump in there. They're super easy to keep. That would be neat. So if somebody was wanting to dip their toes into homesteading, they could essentially get an aquarium inside their house or their apartment. Like other people have fish. Put'em a couple button quail in there. Yep. And nobody would really ever know. The girls don't make any noise. And the boys, they, coo like a dove. It's a very soothing sound. It's not shrill. Nobody would ever associate that with any kind of animal in your bar, in your apartment. They're tiny. It couldn't be too loud. No, but now if they got loose or something, they do fly like a parakeet. You might have to, pull the blinds down or something to try to catch'em. We go to the dollar store and get the hummingbird nets out of the kids section and that's how we catch'em when they get loose. That's awesome. This morning Kevin called me and he's the entire juvenile cage got loose last night and I've been chasing him for 30 minutes out here. So he is those are not fun to catch. And the cats were trying to help, so he was fighting with the cats, trying to catch the birds. So note to self button, quail are a lot more active than Coturnix. They are. You definitely would want to have a lid on said, aquarium or Guinea pig cage. But as long as you were aware that they can do that, it is fine. That's hilarious. Yeah. So they're just fun to watch and if the kids were growing up in an apartment, it would be neat to be able to show them, Hey, we can feed these and they'll lay an egg and we can have this egg for breakfast. We can save eggs all week long and have breakfast on Saturday mornings because there eggs. It would be a way to do it together. Yeah. Yeah. It would be cool for the kids, if they were living in an apartment. Okay. So if we're trying to figure out what would be right for us. Button quail would definitely be a good option if you're in an apartment. Possibly maybe a small, like regular Coturnix not jumbos, maybe. I think that there is an odor factor difference there. For some reason, the button quail don't have the amount of ammonia smell, but if you stayed on top of it, sure, yeah. You could do it. Okay. What about, let's say I live in a neighborhood and I can walk outta my back porch and see three different neighbors, but I still want to have some quail. Which ones would be right for that? In a really strict HOA on top of it. Yeah. Bump of HOA. We don't like HOAs. Let's just go down the list of the most strict to the least strict. So if you have three nosy neighbors and a strict HOA, you know what I have always envisioned like drawing up and maybe trying to sell or at least promote would be a park bench. So you put a park bench out in your back porch or in your little flower garden or whatnot. And the bottom of the park bench, like the four legs, you would screen those in and the seat would lift up and there would be your quail hens. How cool would that be to like be sitting on your quail hutch? That would be cool. Hey, they do it with dog cages. The, I've seen dog kennels that were like end tables and coffee tables and things like that. So why not have a quail aviary? It would be outdoors. They could fly in it a little bit. I think that would be a great idea. But if you really wanted to hide them from your neighbors, you could literally be sitting on them and wave at your nosy neighbor and go, I don't know what you're talking about. Seriously. And if you only had hens, honestly they don't really make a whole lot of noise. They kind of chatter. Sometimes the roosters will crow, but if you put a nice water feature beside your park bench, nobody's ever gonna know that from a, an obnoxious crow up in the tree. I would be the one that would be like, oh my God, do you hear that? And I, I would know it was my one of my roosters, but I don't, I hear it too. What is that? And the whole time the rooster would just be going crazy shut up. That's one thing that I've always I, I understand, some chickens, I have some that are large and they got some bass behind their crow, so I could understand why an HOA wouldn't want those in the neighborhood. But a quail to me, that should be a different ball game because you have Bob Whites that could very well fly in a tree and not belong to anybody. Oh, yeah. Mockingbirds are some of the loudest ones around here. They harass my cat sometimes, so I. But if you just wanted eggs, you could just keep hens and don't ask, don't tell your neighbors that would, they would never honestly know. And what you just said is something that I have found that blows a lot of people's mind. Everybody thinks you gotta have a rooster to have eggs. Oh no. And I'm like, no, because, these commercial houses where they have all the eggs to go to the grocery store they don't have a bunch of roosters there too. Most of them just have hens doing their job. No. Popping out the eggs and the Coturnix as a general rule, they won't fly like a bird, like they may flutter out. But then they'll just land and you can very easily catch'em with the. Butterfly net from Dollar Tree. Or just walk over there and pick'em up. Most of mine, they just get down and they'll look up at me like, now what do I do? Pick me back up and put me back in my house, they're pretty mild tempered. I had some get out the other day and they were in my barn and I was like, I'm gonna find them sooner or later. And then they when got out and got in the grass and it just looked at me and it was like, what are you doing? And I was like, what are you doing? And I reached down and I picked it up and that was that. They didn't try to fly away. And that's the other thing is, and you need to make sure you're getting these from breeders who breed for Temperaments because you do not want one in an apartment setting or an HOA setting that is just obnoxious and wants to fight with you all the time. You want to get temperament bread. Quail. Yeah. Because I imagine if you had some crazies your HOA Karen would definitely be beating on your door at two o'clock in the morning, and that wouldn't be a good first experience for somebody like dipping their toes at self-sufficiency, unlike, unlike me and you who just cannonball into the whole process. Some people wanna to dip their toes gently and so button quail or Coturnix bread for temperament. And that would be just some gentle ripple in that pool of farm life, and it could either be one of those, Hey, I like it. We're gonna start looking for land. And, or it could be, this is really annoying. And you just. Post'em up. Hey, looking, these things are looking for a new home up for discussion, and they'll find a new home pretty quick. Yeah, they will. So could you imagine if you live in your HOA or on your apartment balcony and you had some pots of some fresh lettuce and a little tomato plant and a bucket growing, and you had your fresh eggs for your boiled eggs on your salad. How cool would that be to say, Hey, you know what, I do live in an apartment, but I grew this stuff from my lunch all by myself. That would be pretty neat. I guarantee you there's a sourdough starter kit on the counter. Maybe sitting on the bar or something along those lines. Yeah. All right. So let's say you move out of the HOA into just a general purpose subdivision. You have your nice half acre lot, you have some trees, you have a privacy fence. Now you can really get into some quail. Now you can have a 8 by 10 shed. You can put rabbit hutch style cages out. You could build an aviary that you can walk in and sit down with your birds and they can have, I don't know, rocks to play on. And you can really get elaborate with some setups if you have a little bit of space. I have seen some pretty elaborate setups and some of them I'm like, these, where do the people have this much time to put all this together? It's like a little quail haven. I know, right? There. So first of all, they can live outside year round. You do not have to bring them in the winter time. I don't even care if you live in Idaho. You can still leave them outside. You're just gonna wanna give them a little bit of shelter to get out of the muck or the wind if the, if they want to. So they may be standing outside going, woo hoo, look at that snowflake. But you could, you can put'em in stack cages out on the backside of the barn. You can get old rabbit hutches and repurpose them and keep them. You can, I've seen this before on the raised beds. You could build a cage that sits on the rails of your raised beds and just move them along and it self compost basically onto the beds themselves. And you don't even have to clean up after'em. Okay. So that brings me the one that I've been working, so I've seen in a lot of groups, people talking about putting quail and aviaries outside and more specifically putting them in tractors. Okay. So I have an Alumi-Coop dealership, and they have a small one that's a five by six, five feet wide, six feet long. So I'm gonna build, my wife has always said she wanted some flower beds in front of the house. Just to give it a little extra, some street appeal or curb appeal or whatever you call it, even though we're on a dead end road. So I'm gonna build some of those that are just a little over five feet wide and I'm gonna throw some quail in there and let'em do their thing. For a few weeks, and then I'm gonna move it forward a little bit, and then I'm gonna move it forward a little bit. And then I'm gonna go get'em all out of there. And then I'm gonna take that, take the tractor out of the flower bed, and then I'm gonna have this little tiny quail aviary that just goes back and forth across my front yard. Because, I'm doing research for the people here. So many people say, can you tractor quail? And on these, on the five by six, they have the wheels that come down in the back when you lift the handle up in the front. And I've looked, and if a quail is right there, they could slip up underneath it. But if I have somebody behind it to where they'll want to come forward I don't think they'll come out. I think you could tractor your quail know I. I don't think that a quail tractor is probably what Tamara had in mind when she asked for some flower boxes and curb appeal. But you need to ask her tonight. I feel overly confident that when she comes home and sees that she has flower beds and she knows that she's not gonna have to maintain them, that she'll be happy. Okay. You're the one that has to live with her, so let me know how that works out for you. Now I understand the tractor inside the flower bed maybe bit much. I don't know if I'm gonna get away with that, but it's really good fertilizer, right? I have great carrots in it. There is a lady that I follow that coincidentally, she was a teacher too. I follow her blog. She quit teaching and now she does homesteading at her house and she built some tractors. And what she'll do is in the off months, she puts hens, some of her hens in the tractors, in her flower beds or in her garden beds. And then when, she'll move'em from one to the next throughout the cooler months and she'll till it in and raise all kinds of vegetables and stuff like that when it comes back. So I just have to answer the question, can you, tractor quail that's something that's been asked. So I'm gonna do the research. Yeah. You come back and let us know how that works. As far as the manure from the quail, we do need to tell our listeners that is a hot manure and technically should be composted for 6, 9, 12 months, depending on what all you got in there. So if you have lots of it, then definitely pile up. But if you're just talking about little bits of it, by all means just mix it into your soil. I'm gonna till it in and call it a day. That's right. All right, so now you've got your half an acre, you've got your, you've got your rabbit hut style, and now, you really gotta, you've gotta pack'em in there. So you have a storage barn. How big is your barn for your quail? Like 12 by 12. The barn that, the area that I use for quail. It is roughly 12 by 20. Yeah. So you could put a storage barn in your backyard, in your subdivision and put an exhaust fan on it in the summer and put quail in it and nobody would still know. No, because I got, I have, I wanna say it's a 36 foot, maybe a 34. And the last bit of it is my incubator room. And I, in the other 20 feet, I have 5 stacks. In, just in there. And I have plenty of room for feed storage and all that other stuff too. And Yeah. Nobody knows. Nobody knows what's in it because like what you said, I've got an exhaust fan to 20 inch exhaust fan in the top at the back. Strategically put a window in one of the sides up towards the front. Crack that thing open. Turn the fan on. You can go in there and it'll pull any smells out in a matter of minutes. That's right. That's right. And so at that point, you're gonna be even more self-sufficient because not only do you have the eggs and you don't have to wait for Saturday morning to have enough, but you can have eggs every day. You could pickle eggs and sell them. You can harvest the meat for yourself, for your friends, for your family, for your dogs, for your cats. What else can you do with, you can make arts and crafts with wings and feet and skulls. People do that. You can, and I gotta say I gotta interrupt for just a second because. When you say that there's gotta be a lot of our listeners that are like what in the world? Yes. And I fully get it because that was my exact same expression. We have a mutual friend that when I first heard her say that, I was like, where's my car keys? I need to make, I need to make sure I have a way out. But then I started seeing pictures and like earrings charms for necklaces. Things that you would never imagine what they really were, but they were beautiful. Yeah. Just go on Etsy and look for quail jewelry or quail decor. You can take the feathers and make Reese, you can make cat toys. You can make I don't know. I'm not a crafty person, I don't care. But there's a lot of things you could do to'em. But I do dehydrate wings and sell to bird dog people. I have dehydrated the feet and tried to feed them to my barn cats.'cause that's all I have is barn cats. And they just looked at me like, whatever, I'm just gonna go out in the field and get me some fresh ones. But I think an apartment cat person might like that, yeah. They don't, they can't go out in the field. Let's see, what else can you do with the quail? You can eat'em, you can put'em on the barbecue, you can bake'em, chop'em up. Right now I have two little dogs in the house. I have a Chihuahua and a Shih Tzu. Right now they're eating quail, pumpkin, and carrot for breakfast in the morning. And they love it. So I was being I was talking to somebody last Tuesday and they asked me what my favorite type of quail was. And I had to say barbecue. Yeah. They're, the meat is very lean. I won't say it tastes like chicken, but I will say it is a bird. But I enjoy it. It's lean, it's healthy, and it, it's one of those things where, okay, you live in a neighborhood, so you're not really a farmer. But that's something you can say, I know what that animal ate because I fed it and now it fed me. Um, that's, to me, that's empowering to be able to control what you eat, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah. It's a way to make sure you have healthy stuff. Yeah. And you, if your favorite is barbecue. My favorite actually is I like to eat wings dipped in blue cheese. So my son actually smokes the legs and we toss them in hot sauce and we eat them in lieu of or of hot wing. I see. See, y'all can't see the look on his face. He is like, so the dogs can have the breast meat and I'll just eat the wing part. That's definitely a mini wing. It is, but I know where it came from. It's not some gigantic thing run through a commercial processing house. True. But you know what we didn't talk about though, for people who are in a subdivision is they don't, wouldn't know about harvesting the meat. I'm sure,'cause I can think back before I, I was aware of it. We did it as a kid but a chicken, you have to grow it out. You have to, dispatch it, then you would have to pluck it and part it out and all of those kinds of things. And that's a process. And it's, if you don't know what you're doing, it can be a time consuming process. But, and you have to have space to do it and water, you have to have a hose and all those kinds of things. It can be a little messy. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's a big, it's a big messy. And we do a lot of birds at the same time, so we actually run the mower over all the feathers and try to chop'em up. But the quail, you just need a pair of scissors. You can do it in your lawn chair. Yeah. I saw a video that Terry had done and he, the shears that he uses those things, I'll just say they have a lifetime warranty and they're really sharp. And if one of a parent, your kids cut something they shouldn't, you can actually send it back and they'll sharpen'em for you. Yeah. I have a parent. They're really nice. But you could take those things and pop the dispatch, wait about a minute, get your legs and whatever else you want off and, use your thumbs and separate the feathers off the breasts at the same time. Pull it out and you're done. Yeah, I can do one in under a minute. So it's, it is pretty, it is a lot quicker. And like you said, if you're thinking about chickens and all the stuff you have to have, I mean for this really, you just need kitchen scissors. Yeah. Kitchen scissors in a bucket. Yeah. Now when I first started, I wore the gloves and the, and I was like, I don't know what I even wanna say. Like I had a plan. Now I'm just like, gimme a bucket back of the gator. Scissors done. My, yeah. Yeah. I can remember when I was a kid going dove hunting and quail hunting. You have this thought and the way that you see it done inside the kitchen, and then you see the way it's done in the field and it's a little different. Yeah. I've had people ask me to make videos and we've actually done it a couple times and we sat down and we watched'em afterwards and we both said, no. Nope. We just delete'em. No. Somebody's gonna have something to say about that and it's not gonna work out to your favor. Yeah, it is definitely not OSHA rated. No. Okay. So now let's say you outgrow your little half acre lot and you really wanna get into this big time. You have outgrown this show at that point and now you are one of us and we welcome you to the club. Yeah. The thing that I tend to caution people when they talk to me about quail and they ask me about it, I say, listen, have you heard of chicken math? Everybody's heard of chicken math. They all know what that is. And I say, quail math is worse. It's a multiple. It's worse. Yep. Yep. So be careful. So for people who don't know, I have a 30 by 50 barn at this point, and um, the quail have actually taken over and I would have to estimate how many birds are in the barn, but it would be at least 2000 birds in the barn at this point, at any given point. So just absorb that for a minute. And how long ago did you start with quail? It's been a few years. Yeah. But I have four cabinet right now. It's February. I have four cabinet incubators. They're all full. So that just means what I. Twenty-five twenty-eight hundred eggs in the incubator at any given time. Some of them are double stacked, so it could actually be closer to 3000. I I realized that the the blue trays that have become popular, you can put, I wanna say it's ninety-six quail eggs in those, the decent sized, jumbo ones. And you can stack those on the top and bottom, top and middle row of some incubators. And you're like, oh, there's 800. Wow, I have too many. Yeah. What am I gonna do with those when they all hatch? So I can't double stack the ones you're talking about. Now, the original GQF style ones for the GQF, I have two 1502 and I have the original trays that go with those. I can double stack those if I'm put in my smaller eggs. But once those bigger eggs go into the dark blue trays that you're talking about, those eggs are so big that I actually can't double stack them. It will crack the eggs. I do have to be very selective with mine. Because if I don't put ones that are all the same size, give or take a gram, I can't stack'em. So what I have found is like I put my button, the buttons will actually fit on those GQF trays. They won't fall through. And so those are fantastic for the bottom tray. And then I can put the larger eggs on top, or the Celadon eggs are a more consistent 12 to 14 gram size. And I can use that as a bottom tray. Or if I'm doing like small baluts, small pet baluts, then those fit in those smaller, those are smaller eggs. So I just have to, you just have to be careful where you put stuff in there. It would not shock me if you went out there right now. And my hatching time, I had removed the black water tray out of the bottom and there was a hatching basket in the bottom. Because I have been known to double stack and show stuff everywhere in there. I will say this I don't know where my black water tray is. That goes in the bottom because you can take those baskets and sit too in the very bottom. And then stack some on top to where you can get three levels high in the amount of space that is only two of the racks that they have in there. We sound like lunatics. It's being used for a hatcher. So we have to stop enabling, each other. It is all in research for our listeners. Okay. So just forgo the rails then in the hatch and time incubators and just stack those hatching trays in there. I'll say past, past three levels, it's hard to get stuff in and out. So I just stack three on the bottom and then I go back to using the basket because that is for convenience and a lot of painters tape, I like white painters tape'cause you can write on it and it's the same color as the incubator. Blue painters tape works really well too when you're trying to keep things separate. I use lavender painters tape. Whoa. Lavender painters tape. I do. Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. Now I can't think of a reason not to keep quail. Is there, would there be any cons to keeping quail? Oh, wait, I do have a con. You must have a plan for the manure. Oh, then there's two. Oh, what's the other one? Your feed bill. Oh, yeah. We don't talk about that though. But you have to have a plan for the poop. You do have to have a plan for the poop because it stacks up quick. It does figuratively. Literally it's, you have two what? Mount Poopmores. Okay. So at the edge of my property there is, I pushed over some land, some stuff to level out my backyard, and so there's a ravine and luckily that, and the occasional 50 pound bag of lime keeps that at bay. But I'm almost to a point to where I'm looking at building some type of raised beds and putting Catawba worms in it. So actually the manure is extremely beneficial. Now I pile mine up. So we use we use shavings in the summertime in the poop trays because it absorbs moisture dries it out, which means the flies don't like it as much. But now we have more land than you do. And I have a chip drop. I have a tree service that drops me tree trimmings. And so we just mix that in with the manure and it composts nicely. And I have raised beds. Several, I have eight at this point, so That sounds good. I have seen in my area, they do offer that the chip drop service. From tree companies. I'm not really sure what 20 yards would look like dumped ever on the edge of my yard. I would say it's a small dump truckload, so I would say maybe two or three pickup truckloads was what it would look like. For me, I'm more thinking along the terms of how much trouble am I gonna get into? Would it be more than the tractor chicken quail tractor in the flower bed or less? Because mean if you convinced her that the compost would then grow her better flowers in her flower bed. I built a house six years ago and we still don't have flower beds. I don't know that she cares a whole lot about it. Mine's four years and we have no landscaping either okay, cool. Because I'm in the barn all the time. I'm in the boundary then, so I'm good. Yeah. I don't know. I guess you have to ask her, not me. what if I wanted Bob Whites, what would that need to look like? So I don't want to say too much about Bob Whites, so I can just tell you what I do know. It takes'em six months to lay where it takes paternics, six weeks to lay and if you want them to know how to fly, you have to keep them in flight pins. Otherwise they just act like a regular coturnix in the wire cages and they don't fly. So the lady that I got my 1502 from, or she originally wanted to start raising Bob Whites and what she had outside for hers. Reminds me of when my son was a kid playing baseball. It's a batting cage. One of the ones that said net. Like it was that big. It was really long, the whole deal. And she was like, oh yeah they'll get in there. They can't get through the net so it works. Perfect. And that's exactly what that is. That's a batting cage. But she said, I've had almost a thousand of them in there at one time. And I'm like, okay. So a Bob White's more like the kind of bird that you're gonna hunt for. So hunting clubs will buy them. When I was a kid they were wild, but we really don't hear them too much anymore. So you have to keep'em in flight cages. It's my understanding anyway, that to, so they know how to fly and then you, when you release'em in the wild, they know how to do that. But I don't really wanna say too much more about'em'cause I really don't know too much about'em. Yeah. I don't know a whole lot about'em other than you. You pretty much have to have an aviary if you're gonna have Bob Whites, because the whole purpose is because they will fly. And there are some other ones. 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're released and they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds.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 Cary signing off from Poultry nerds. Feathers up everyone.

APPPA Conference Episode 2

🌟 Exciting News from the APPPA 2024 Conference! 🌟

Hey poultry enthusiasts! 🐓 Just wrapped up an incredible time at the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) Conference in Texas! 🤠 The energy, the insights, and the community spirit were absolutely electric. 🔥

But here's the scoop – the dialogue doesn't stop here! 🗣️ We're continuing the conversation sparked at #APPPA2024 right here on our social channels. 🌐 Join us as we dive deeper into the game-changing ideas, innovations, and connections made during the conference.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:00

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackman, 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. They said that the way the meat is, and you'll never know it until you actually feel it, but they said that the meat is better. At 18 to 24 hours. And so what most commonly they is recommended that you pull the feed at night time, so they're not just because they will sit there and eat all day and all night, they recommend you to pull the feed at night. So what this person does is. Let's say if the sun's going down around five ish, that's when you would normally pull the feed. They'll go out there, two, three o'clock in the afternoon, pull the feeders out, take them back to the barn. And the next morning, they go to the birds, and instead of taking them some water, they've already got their cages there. They're loading them up in the cages. Taking them to the processor. Now. I understand pulling the food makes it for a cleaner Processing but what does it change with the meat? the fleshiness I Forget exactly how it was worded. I want to say they used a reference of being spongy versus a tighter meat Again, I'm I didn't really pick up on that. I was still taking notes. I took about 10 or 15 pages of notes. So we pull the food I pull the food the night before, partly because if you understand a bird's digestive system, the food just goes into the crop and then they have to work it down into their gizzard. So if it's in the crop, it hasn't provided any nutritional. Any nutrition to the bird itself anyway, yet at that point. And so if the food is still in the crop, you've just basically wasted the food. So I can understand that. And I do pull the food. Now we don't run tractors. We just let ours free range. We don't have predator problems. So ours just free range around the barn. So When we're butchering, they just wandered around, and we just pluck up the one closest to us, and that one is the next one. We're pretty old school about doing it. You're unlucky. You were easy to catch. And if you've never done Cornish before, for our listeners, they're not fast. No, they're like a snail or a turtle moving along, and they really don't run. They waddle back and forth. I was gonna say, by the time they get Past that five, six week they're not walking. They're not running. They're waddling. Yeah and I think us putting them out there. Free range does make a little bit of a difference. They get a little bit more, I don't know. Exercise, would be the right word. Yes. And I like to order all roosters when I do it. Because they just grow faster and bigger. And and you just get more bang for your buck that way. That is true. And a lot of people that, that, In, when you're talking about standard bred chickens, how long do you usually wait before you put one outside when you take them out of the brooder? Oh, yeah, they're gonna be, depending on the weather, it could be eight to ten weeks. Just depends on the spring weather. Okay. The most somebody keeps these things in the brooder is three weeks. Oh, yeah, totally. They are wet. If you've never dealt with them, they're, the only way I can describe it is wet. Because they're sweating, probably. They're very similar to quail in that regard. They, I don't know, they go through so much water, an incredible amount of water they drink. Yeah, they talked about that. They talked about how, if you let them run out of food, there's a period of time where you may or may not have an issue. Because a lot of people don't realize it, chickens turn into little cannibals. But they said that if they run out of water, they'll dehydrate and die in a couple hours. Because obviously they drink that much. But, so the people that are the, I called them the two weakers in my notes. We're talking Arkansas South. And I was just like, now, I think we said earlier, they, a lot of people do recommend that you don't do. Chickens, unless you have proper heating in your barn to keep them in December and January. But the rest of the time, maybe two weeks and they're out. I thought that was pretty crazy. Yeah we put them out. That's why I like the end of March. Because it, the two to three week mark, it's warm enough for them to be out. And another thing is when you hold them, they are hot, like coming out of the oven hot. It's incredibly different than a heritage breed chicken. They know their place that's, if you think about the chemistry behind what all's going on inside of their bodies to make them grow so fast, it has to be some stuff metabolizing pretty fast. Yeah, I would say they're similar to quail that way. Yeah. Because of quail. A quail will go from right out of the egg to full blown maturity on the caturnix, laying eggs. In that same eight weeks, less usually, so you can't get the Cornish to lay eggs in eight weeks. Did they talk about the rangers at all at your conference? There was a guy that done a talk about heritage birds, and he talked about the rangers. He talked about, let's see, rangers, Delaware's. Rhode Island reds and there was another one that's really massive and I can't think of it. I can't think of what it was. But he talks about those and he talks about a lot of the market for the different birds. And there's a lot of people that don't like the rangers for the, to eat because they're small. Most people that are poultry people do not, they're not going to keep them around 16, 18, 20 weeks, which is what they really need to get full size. So they, they're not big. And some people talked about them being stringy. There's that the I can say that a Delaware at 16 weeks with a certain group of people, if you've got somebody into that heritage bird, if you've got a good bloodline of Delaware's in 16 weeks, you got yourself some money. I have had people offer 30 bucks for mine. Still walking. It takes out a couple steps for me. There, but there, there are those now. When they mentioned Rhode Island Reds, it got me. I was like, not a red. And then when I saw the picture that the person used in their example, I was like, oh yeah, that definitely needs to go in some noodles. Are you a Rhode Island Red snob? Yeah, I am. In the search for a standard bread, Rhode Island red there's a lot of people out there with Rhode Island reds. And when you finally hit the lottery and you get a good one. It's yeah, that, that should be in with some noodles. All right. So now you're talking about the difference between standard bread and hatchery. So let's go back to eating a heritage bird versus a Cornish. I've had people ask me because we eat the Orpingtons and the way I can liken it is if you eat deer venison versus. Cow, beef they're, you can still do the same things with them. You can still make a burger, you can still make a spaghetti with them, but they have a different texture and an Orpington taste different texture wise than a Cornish, since we show the Orpingtons, we do end up with a lot of extras and. What I have found I use them for is I can them, because I have to let them grow out and an older boy is going to be a little bit tougher. So I can them and I use them for sandwiches or stews or soups or things like that. And the Cornish we grow out and we reserve those for, say, barbecue chicken or fried chicken. Things where you want to pick up and eat it. So it's just different. So to me, when I think of chicken fingers, or when I think of that boneless, skinless chicken breast in a bacon dish with some honey garlic sauce in it, 425 for 45 minutes. I think of a heritage bird with a heritage bird, you cook it low and slow, put it in a crock pot. You've got something that you have never had on the, on that takes me to this. At the conference, they included lunch a couple of days and supper on Friday night and lunch we had, they had quartered up. Heritage chickens, you know, that kind of, that was a first for me and it really makes me not want to eat chicken that hasn't been raised that way again. It's a whole new thing. And like with your Orpingtons, if I had a seven month old Orpington or eight or nine month old Orpington, I got eight or nine pounds of meat. That's enough. Even at my house with nine of us. That's enough for two meals. It, you feed it's one mouth and it feeds your nine. I like that. And so it makes me, as I'm, as I am going to embark on raising the Cornish because I want to really dive deep into this so I can do the proper amount of research for people. That's how I sold it. Then I also want to raise the heritage. I do have some Delaware's that I've been working with for about six or eight months now, and I have learned a feed regimen where I can get them rather large in 14 weeks. So I'm going to, I'm going to keep that in my back pocket for that person that wants that heritage bird, because it is a popular thing and in where I'm at. I have a large population of Hispanics, and that was one of the things that oddly a lot of people at this conference wasn't aware of, and my Hispanics, they love heritage burns. And. Before I tasted one, I didn't really know a difference. And then another thing, they really like the roosters. And I'm a foster parent. And once they come into my house, they're my kids. I have two daughters and a grandson that are Hispanic. And I asked one of them one time, I said, what is this phenomenon? Because I can't tell the difference between a rooster and a hen what they taste like. And she said, oh, Papa. It's really not so much a taste as it is an experience. I said, what are you talking about? And she says I've been with you when you've met people. They want the bird alive. Yeah. She said, there's no way. There's nothing they can go to Publix and buy. I don't care how non GMO or free ranged it is at Publix. That gives them the experience of being at home, and that's the only way they can get it like grandma cooked it. So I was like, that explains so much, and it makes perfect sense because there's times, my granddaddy, he raised cattle, and then before my son started doing that, nothing I had that was hamburger meat. Tasted the same. And so that immediately I can relate to exactly, what they're saying, because if I take something that was walking around in the pasture two months ago and cut it up and put it in a crock pot, I'm going to have stew just like my grandmother made, but unless that meat is raised like that, where, what it was fed, how it lived. The whole nine. I don't know if it's psychological or what it is. It just doesn't taste the same. Let's talk about the nutritionists that gave their talks for a minute. What did they recommend? So obviously in the game of chickens, it's about the dollar. And there's a lot of people, obviously you can, I can go to the store and buy a 15, a 50 pound bag for$14. I can go buy a bag for$35. Both of them will be 22 percent protein, but the difference is what's in it. And they talk about that. They talk about the what. What byproduct is a code word for on the label. Which for those listening that don't know if your label says byproduct, whether it be protein, corn or anything else, that means they probably swept the floor. It literally can be anything and that's a lot of filler and you don't know what it is and they talk about using a more nutritious food that's comprised of grains and minerals and all natural stuff. Yes, it is$20 more for that same bag, but number one, you know what you're putting into the bird number two when you this company actually has raises regularly test subjects and When you take the cheaper feed and that's what you give them. It's gonna take them a set of Cornish crosses Closer to 10 weeks to get to the weight that they need to be What's their target weight after this process of around five pounds. It takes longer. And they will consume, a group of 50 birds will consume over a pound each more of that feed than they do the other feed. And you think, okay, it's a pound. Whoop dee doo. But then when you look at feeding them the better quality feed with all of the stuff The science behind this feed has everything in it to meet the science behind the rapidly growing bird. Suddenly now you have a five to six pound bird in seven weeks. You're shaving weeks off of your labor of going out, moving them around, feeding them, watering them, tending, whatever you got, whatever your farm chores are. You're shaving a couple of weeks off of that, and time is not something you'll ever get back. So it's, they talk about the time value of money and all that, and if you look down, APPPA has a calculator in their members only site. And you can put in feed costs, bird costs, the whole nine yards, and it will calculate everything for you. And when you run the numbers on how much feed it takes, this is a lower quality versus how much feed it takes of a higher quality. It takes significantly less feed of the higher quality to do the same thing in significantly less time. And some people get hung up on the$14 versus$35 for a bag of feed, but they don't think about, Okay I'm gonna buy 10 of these bags, it's 14, but I might could buy six of these bags, it's 35. And I know the math isn't exactly the same there, but you're still better. And then when you shave off, one to three weeks. Of time and labor, it adds up. And we see that in the show world. Now I don't sell, I only grow the Cornish out for my own personal consumption. And we figured it out last, no, year before last. And I feed mine a non GMO starter the whole life cycle. They get the same food. And. It came out to 7 dollars and 37 cents a bird. Does that include your cost of the bird? Yes. Sounds about right. And it's, what went into it. Exactly. What kind of life that bird lived, the whole process behind it. And, I challenge people that are wondering to go to YouTube or go to Google. and look at commercial stuff. and how it's processed and I can guarantee you the same bird is fed a whole lot different stuff because they want to shorten that process, they want to try to get it down to six weeks, and, some of them have 40, 000 birds in a house. That's a lot. It is. I actually know a guy that lives in Alabama, up near Calhoun, Etowah County, somewhere in that area that has commercial chicken houses. And he has four that he built that cost him two and a quarter million dollars for the four. Now these four, that is a little high, but they're fully automated. He can control them with his iPhone. They have natural gas generators. They have natural gas heat in them. Totally automated. He said as long as his grain silos are full and nothing messes up, he's good. Six years ROI positive. That's a lot to the point that he's building four more. Wow. He don't eat the chicken that he grows What does that say I Said what he said I'm not gonna tell you who I grow for Because I will tell you that I won't eat that chicken. I know what's what's in the feed that they feed it and He said now if I did eat it if all the stuff that they gave it would transfer into my body, I would never get sick, and I would probably look like a professional athlete. Wow. That resonated with me. Yep. Alright, so we talked about types of birds and nutrition touched on housing I think. Tractors are probably the most common thing for beginners. Predator safe would be good. What other what and we talked about processing numbers. What other seminars lectures did you hear about? There was one that They said that avoiding burnout was a really big thing. In that seminar, they talked about different ways to avoid the burnout, and they just keep on talking about two hours a day. Two hours a day? Yes. You need to keep your chores. Under two hours a day. Oh my word. I'm like way exceeded that but and I'm like, it's huh and they said that When you fit when you're figuring out the number of tractors that you're gonna have when you work your way up When you figure out the birds you're gonna feed and all that you need to be able to do that in two hours and they're like they're not talking about all the other stuff that goes into farming just Feeding, watering, and moving your tractors. Got it. You need to keep that less than two hours. Makes more sense. Okay, I can agree with that. And they also, a lot of people think, Oh, I need a huge house. Every single person that I talk tractor with recommended a 10 by 12. or smaller? And having multiples. Couple of reasons they said that. Whether it be aluminum or wood or whatever it is, a 10 by 12, you're probably gonna need a four wheeler or a tractor. to pull it without any fatigue. But it can still be done relatively easy. Some of the other ones that are smaller, you can do without, and if you get some of the really nice pre done ones, fabricated ones that have wheels on them and stuff, a 10 by 12 can be moved by one person single handedly. There was a guy that had one of them put together in the convention center and it did not weigh hardly anything, you know me, I had tried out but they talk about that and they said that a couple of reasons, number one is less fatiguing on your body and the less you can tax your body, the longer. You'll be able to do stuff every day without aches and pains. If something gets into one of your tractors, they probably won't get into another one. So you have less chances of loss. That was another big thing. And oddly, there's a lot of people that are two, three, five, 7, 000 bird a year processors. They don't have LGD. There's a guy that one of the seminars that I sat in talked about predators and he has these night owls or something like that. And. They say that you have to set those things up per the instructions or they won't work. So you set them at like different areas at different heights, but it'll even keep raccoons from coming. These are like alarm systems that make noise. No, they're lights. Oh, they're, they, you can't see my fingers, but it's, I would say that's about four inches wide by probably four inches tall that this piece is, and you can mount it to a post or a pole or whatever to get it to the different elevations that it says. But basically it recommends you buy them in sets of four and you put a couple of them around They would be about at the height of a dog and this it has little red LEDs on it to look like their eyes and another one that recommends you put up about 10 feet to Look like an owl or something like that and that's how it keeps things away. I don't know that was another thing that they talked about and, there's one guy said that he uses ratchet straps on the front of his coops because they're flat and they have a handle instead of using a rope. The flat on the nylon and the strap is less taxing on the hand when you're dragging the tractors. They got down into it like that. So I could definitely tell that for some of these people, this is a science. This isn't a wake up and try it one day. There's a lot of them to talk about figuring it out. So it was stuff like that. They say that for meat chickens the mobile coops are best. Cause I know that a lot of people see the netting. The electrified netting that you can move around to protect them. Most people that did talk say that is best for egg layers because it keeps them in a certain area better, but that the meat birds are less intelligent. And you needed them, they were best kept in a structure. And they don't graze, so they don't, I know you want pasture, but in reality they're not out there like a cow munching on the grass. No, you gotta there's people that they will say that it's easiest and best to have two people to move your tractors. One person is going to go inside and hoard the chickens towards the front because, maybe for the first couple of weeks they run around like little crazies, but when they get huge. And like we talked about a while ago, they just waddle around. You have to shoe them up so you can pull the tractor further and do that. They talked about that as another one of the things, because like you said, they don't, they're not going to graze like a layer wheel. They'll eat bugs and grass and stuff like that. If it's right in front of their face. Which is why you move them around like that in the the layers, what they would do in a lot of instances is they would have their lay in house where they would roost at night and where they would lay their eggs and they would make an octagon around that. And what they would do is they would move section to section. That's why they use the netting fence and move them every day to where they're hitting a different. Area in that circle and then they move that tractor, because a lot of times you have to have a tractor or a truck or something to drag those because they're pretty large, but they would drag that and then they would coordinate off again and they talked about doing that. They only have to drag it about once a week. So that was pretty nice. I thought yep 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 eggciting. This is Kerry signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Carey Goes to APPPA 2024

Join us in this exciting episode as we dive into the highlights of the recently concluded American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) 2024 Conference, where our very own Carey was in the midst of all the action in the Lone Star State!

Carey's journey to Texas was nothing short of remarkable, as he immersed himself in a sea of poultry enthusiasts, experts, and industry leaders. From engaging workshops to thought-provoking panel discussions, Carey shares the latest trends, innovations, and invaluable insights gathered at the forefront of the pastured poultry movement.

Tune in to discover the key takeaways from Carey's Texas adventure, including the groundbreaking ideas, networking experiences, and the palpable excitement that filled the air at APPPA 2024. Whether you're a seasoned pastured poultry professional or just starting out, the next couple of episodes promises to provide a glimpse into the future of sustainable poultry farming.

Don't miss out on this behind-the-scenes look at Carey's journey to the APPPA 2024 Conference in Texas—subscribe now and join us as we explore the fascinating world of pastured poultry production!

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:00

  So tell me where you were last weekend. So last week I took off around Wednesday and drove to Allen, Texas to the APPPA conference. It's the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. And it was the first time I've ever been to Texas. It was the first time I'd ever been to a conference like that. And those people that were there were some of the most genuine, honest, and helpful people I've ever met in my life. My brain was literally overloaded Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So you got to talk chicken for three whole days? Three days! Are you sick? And I'm not sick of it, no. Literally, we talked chicken for three days. I learned a lot of random facts that One of them that I learned is A broiler chicken consumes 11 pounds of feed in its life. That's, why do you need to know that? But, if you're raising a couple thousand or more a year of them, you need to know that. Is that six and a half weeks or something? That is if you go the full eight weeks. I also got to meet with some people that are poultry nutritionists. And there was, there was seminars about feed. There was seminars about marketing, Facebook, building your story. You're a, how to write your about me. There, there was seminars about all kinds of stuff. And one of the things that really caught my attention. Was using feed nutrition to trim that eight weeks to seven weeks. And instead of having an average size of four pounds, your average size is a little over five pounds. So you gain a pound of meat and you cut off a week. And I'm like, it's just a week. It's a few days, but you do that five times a year and you just bought back five weeks of your life. To do something else. And when you're not feeding a thousand chickens for a week, that's a lot more into your profit margin. So I learned a lot about the why, the how, the law. A lot of people think, Oh, if you process chickens on your farm and sell them, you'll go to jail. You won't. There's actually some state or is that across the country? So that is actually us department of agriculture guidelines. I can process a thousand chickens with no questions. It doesn't matter who I'm selling them to. I can process up to 20, 000 chickens. In a year, as long as I am selling them direct to the consumer from my farm and they know that it's coming from my farm, I can sell 20, 000 birds. That blew my mind. Yeah. We always hear about all these regulations from the states and stuff that you can only do so many. So yeah. So that's not state specific. That's country. That is correct. The U S department of agriculture, there was actually an attorney there that was doing that particular talk on the on farm poultry producing exemption. It is. It's called the Own Farm Poultry Meat Processing with the USDA Exemption. Also referred to as the Poultry Producers Inspection Act. And it's I mean it's pretty, pretty specific in some of the guidelines that you gotta follow. You've gotta label the meat a particular way. You gotta say where it came from. A contact for that farm. You gotta say that it's not inspected. And it's smart on that sticker to also include proper handling and cooking. Hey, if you're going to handle raw chicken, you need to wash your hands. And you need to cook it to at least 165 degrees, which, that's pretty simple enough. I actually looked on Amazon and they have stickers that are pre printed by them, by the roll and by them suckers and slap it on the back. Is that the only thing you have to do, or you have to file for permits or anything? So talking about permits, this is actually hilarious to me. So you have a freeze dryer, right? All right, so let's say you take that freeze dryer and you fill it full of skittles and you freeze dry skittles, which is pretty getting pretty more and more common and they actually, they are pretty good. I had some of them. I tried it out. Runts. Those are pretty good. Freeze dry too. You have to have more paperwork. More permits are required to freeze dry skittles. store bought candy and sell it than you do to process a chicken and sell it. You know what? I'm glad. We shouldn't be eating Skittles anyway. I understand that Skittles are made of a whole lot of really weird things that I can't begin to pronounce. They're not good for you by no means, but it just blew my mind that I can process up to 20 birds, 20, 000 birds on my farm. Not just birds, but chickens in particular, because there's a lot of birds that are not regulated at all. Like what? Quail, for example. Now there may be some state specific things for quail. But I know in Alabama, and I'm told in a lot of states, they are not listed in a lot of different categories. They're just a bird. There's a whole lot less regulations for turkeys as well. Now back to quail, we're just talking about Coturnix here. We're not talking about bobwhites, right? Most definitely. Bobwhites, they're a whole different ballgame. And that varies from state to state. And in some states, I'm almost positive that it varies by county jurisdiction. They're really weird about their bobwhite. I have a, there's a guy that lives not far from me and every so often he'll contact me and say, Hey, have you started growing bobwhite yet? I'd like to get some for the hunting club. No. I looked into it there. They take a long time to grow a lot more time to mature and there are a lot more paperwork involved, so no, not doing it. What about turkeys? There's very little regulation that actually mentions turkeys. I have not read the entire Poultry Producers Inspection Act. But what I did see when it gives the 1, 000 bird exemption or 1, 000 exemption and the 20, 000 exemption, It did not mention turkeys, which makes me wonder if they're like a whole different ball game. I am interested in processing turkeys, but that's down the road for me, my, my initial interest and the whole reason I went was twofold. Number one, I wanted, I knew this was going to be good content for a podcast. Because there's a lot of people like me that want to know the answers to a lot of these. And I have a huge interest in self sustainable food, period. And so I wanted to go learn about chicken because my son has a cattle farm and he raises quite a bit of cattle and processes quite a bit of cattle. So wasn't really worried about that a whole lot. I needed to figure out chickens. So that was my main reasoning for doing this research. Will, did you get the golden information on how to cross something to get a Cornish cross? I asked that question a couple different times. One person looked at me. And he started into this very in depth about why you don't want to mess with that. He said there's some things in this world that are better left to the professionals. And depending on which spinoff of a Cornish Cross you have, it's anywhere from 16 to 18 different varieties. That makes that Cornish cross because to me the ultimate thing would be to Have a set of layers that lay the eggs that went in my incubator that hatched out made the chickens that I processed and I mean there was seminars on heritage poultry or standard bread poultry As a means and that's really well, but that I mean they're talking 12 13 weeks minimum For that bird, most commonly it's around 16 weeks and it's I want chicken in two months, I want chicken in four months. And you can only do this about four to five times a year. Cause they say that unless you have a really large scale operation with overhead hanging heaters and that type stuff to have in your broiler houses, it's really not. advisable to do December, January. Cause like right now we're talking about this at the end of January. And we had snow in Alabama for the first time in years. And there's people that I know in Florida that had freezing temperatures, which, so that makes sense why they say don't, unless you have. The things that you need don't do it in December and January. It was, it's a lot. So is the Cornish cross, is it a hybrid? Is it a GMO? Is it a Frankenbird? Like people talk about it. Did you find out what makes a Cornish cross? Okay. So some people call it. I think more accurately the Frankenbird, cause that's, that sounds better, but no, I could not get. Anybody to tell me how to do it. Now, I don't know if that's because they're suspicious and they know that I have an entrepreneurial spirit and I may go, get me these sets of chickens and may never buy a brawler from anybody again, I don't know. But apparently that is. Out of all the things that I talked to people about, all the things that I learned and the things that people were willing to share, how to hatch a Cornish Cross is possibly the only secret in the poultry world. At the end of the day, it's just a cross between a Cornish and a White Rock, right? What now? It's just a cross between a Cornish and a White Rock. But I would think they've been specially bred for their meat production. For the most part, I believe it is. They're specially bred for their Frankenstein like abilities to grow extremely fast. Yeah, I think that's the basics from what I've learned in doing my research online. I went to Google University and Tried to get a degree in that, but there's not even a whole lot of information on Google about how to make that, that's something that comes from the hatcheries that somebody's granddaddy has is still there because he might be the only person alive that knows how to do it. And that's what's keeping the hatchery afloat. And just waiting to share that secret with the next person. Alright, what else did you learn? I learned about coops, free ranging, egg layers. There's a lady that gave a talk who's in California. And she has pastured egg layers. I think she said she had 2, 000 of them. And she has a egg vending machine. And when she said that, I was paying attention. I was there in the room, but when she said vending machine, I set my pen down and I sat back and I was like, I gotta see this. I gotta watch this. I'll make notes in a minute. She has a vending machine. The vending machine has two batteries. One of the batteries controls the brain of it, which is the computer that makes the doors open and close. And the computer that runs the debit card reader, because she said that she is a card only. Vending machine person, the vending machine is on her farm. It's set up under a canopy. She said that's a whole lot better for the machine than leave it out in the open. Although you can leave it out in the open, but she has it set up under a canopy. People come up, she said that she runs out. It sells out every day of the week. Wow, that's pretty nifty. I think it has three different sections, and in two of the sections she puts one dozen cartons. In the third section, she has half a dozen cartons. And in California, you have to wash and weigh the eggs. You have to sell them by size. And as she called it, her good eggs go into the vending machine. And she has a 5 refrigerator beside it. And it's essentially a cooler that whether it's different colored eggs that aren't a, they may be a medium instead of a large or whatever. Those eggs go in there and she'll put them in either half dozen or a dozen containers depending on what they are and all that. And anything in that refrigerator is 5. And it usually sells out as well. I think egg vending machines are popular in Europe. That would make sense because that I looked online. Cause you know, that's, I'm thinking about it. I'm like a vending machine, and every one of them that I found was overseas. The ones that were for sale, there was a couple in America. They're very proud of them. And they're not very forthcoming with the information on the sites that talk about she, for those that are wondering, she said she paid$6,000 for this machine and she paid another$2,000 to have the graphics designed and wrapped onto the machine. Eight grand, but she, it sells. Over a hundred dozen eggs a week. She must be somewhere where there's not a lot of country people with eggs Because I live in the sticks in Tennessee, and if I put an egg vending machine out there It would be full for weeks, especially in the summertime. I mean if you put one At your place. Yeah, it would probably start smelling and she did say that she's in a high traffic area. I think she said that she was. Maybe a couple miles outside of town, but not a lot, and she is on a busy road. She did say that there was, stuff around, and people, she sells out of eggs. She has 2,000 birds, and she's doing, she, she sells them for$10 a dozen. What about pet food? Was there any pet food discussions at your conference? No, and I was curious. I was really curious that there wasn't, there was not a single seminar, discussion, listening to people talk. Nobody talking about food. Nobody talking about pet food, and I know that feeders is a big thing. Because a lot of people that have their precious older dogs that they love so much that those dogs do a lot better with fresh meat that the only processing it's had is in a food processor. To make it smaller. I was surprised about that, though. I thought there might be some there. Maybe we should look up about pet food regulations, and I wonder if there are any regulations. I sell a lot of feeders, but I've never even bothered to look to see if there is any. I'm going with no. And I say that because one single person can grow Process and sell up to 20,000 chickens for human consumption on their farm. I don't think they care about what you feed your dog. Okay, so let's go back to this human consumption. Did they care about how you processed them? Did you have to serve them whole or quartered? Could you grind them? What could you do? Alright, so most people process them whole. Because the time people that quarter them up, they cut the legs, the thighs cut the breast and they cut them up like that and bag them up. They typically charge three to 5 per pound more for process for doing that process. Now they did a competition and I saw a video of it. Where there's a lady that has a process implant in Texas, little bitty lady, but she took a carcass, it had been Defeathered, but that's it and in 27 seconds legs, thighs, breast, all cut up. That's fast. I saw that I was like, wow, that lady has done that on more than one occasion. And she has really sharp knives, too, I bet. Yes, that is one thing. In the seminar that I sat in that discussed processing in depth, she said that a lot of times, they will have several knives that they use in a matter of a couple of hours. The seasoned professionals that she has that work with her will typically provide their own knife. Because they like the better ones. She did say that they do have a lot of people that have come in for a day or two and decide it's not for them. And they'll provide them with a less expensive knife because it doesn't always make it back. You know when they leave so there was that but she did say a knife is the probably one of the most important things and what she does with her technique is the blade is pointed towards her Like she'll stick it into the bird and come up instead of going down in a way and at first I was like Okay, but she said she does that because she likes to see That blade did its entirety where it's going what it's doing and in the video where she'd done the demonstration I mean she's you could have dangled a hundred dollar bill in front of that lady's face and she wouldn't have saw it Unless it was between her eyes and that blade. She was concentrated. She was focused So I would think that as sharp as that knife needs to be especially since they talked about sharpening it and keeping it sharp. That's not something you want to touch your fingers with wow. You'll wind up with a little more in the chicken than some seasoning. Alright, so if somebody wanted to get started with pastured poultry and selling it, what would be like a couple of starter tips? So from what I learned, I would say start, number one. There are people there. That regularly and this one guy that did a show or he did a seminar, I want to say he said he processes an average of 10, 000 birds. He'll run a thousand here and a thousand there at a time. So he'll have, he said he staggers his to where, this, at the end of this month, he's got a thousand coming out of the tractors and more chicks going right behind them. And then the next month he has another thousand. So it, it's eight, it's an eight week cycle typically, but he does it on a four week, every four weeks. He's got birds coming off to maintain constant income. The first thing that I personally would suggest to somebody that wanted to do it would be to start small get you a coop that you can drag around. Doesn't have to be beautiful. It has to function. It could be something that you can make out of scrap lumber and some hardware cloth. Or, you could get a really nice coop that's designed for it and go overboard. Either way, I would start no more than 50 to 100 birds. And I would grow while you're growing them. You need to be talking about it on social media and see what the interest is. And then once those are ready, process them and see how long it takes to get rid of them. If you do it right and there's a lot of need, you're going to have a list of people wanting some of them before they're even processed. And those people will buy what they asked for and more if you have it, when they come pick it up. But if you can sell those 50, 70, 80, whatever you start out with. Then, there's probably going to be a need for it and I would do it again. Personally, my plan is I ordered a hundred chicks. That's what I needed to get up to the next price level price break when I ordered them. And I have a friend of mine that wanted some of them. So I ordered that. I'm going to process those. I've already got a couple of them sold and they're not even shipped yet and I'm going to see how it works and if it works out the way I hope it does. I'm going to do it again. I may do the same. I'm probably going to do about 60 70 is what I'm going to keep. And I may do the whole hundred myself the second time. But I'm going to do it a few times and if it, each time if it works out well, I'm going to increase my number and build up to it. They said that one of the biggest problems they see is people decide that they want to do pastured poultry because they Believe in sustainability. They believe in knowing what goes into your body, knowing what you eat and being healthy, clean eating is one of the terms I heard a lot, but a lot of people, the older 250 birds. And only sell 10 of them. 250 is an overwhelming amount of birds for somebody who's never done it before. Yeah. Yeah, so I order 200 at a time. When I do them, but I only run one batch a year. And mine come in March, I've tried them all different times of the year. I like the spring ones, I think they grow faster and bigger in the springtime. So I get them in late March, and then I have them out a couple weeks later. We start butchering at seven weeks. And we can't butcher them all at once. We're just not physically able to do that many. So we just do the biggest ones. And then the next week we do the biggest ones. And then the following week we finish up whatever's left. And that is exactly one of the methods that one of the people talked about in the seminar is while you're getting used to it. While you're getting your groove and, getting the flow of it, you're going to have some birds that are ready six and a half to seven weeks. A lot of times the cockerels are going to be larger and they're going to be ready to be processed. Take a third, take a half, whatever. Get those, process those. They're going to take you a lot longer. The guy said that this particular one, he said, the first time you're going to take a third of the birds, because it's going to take you twice as long as it will do to the rest of at once, because you're going to be figuring it out. I don't care how many times you watch YouTube videos, when you got the bird in your hand, it's going to take longer to figure it out. And he said, so you're going to use that first third to get your group. Wait a week, whatever, when the weather comes, do that. You can either process the rest of them if you're feeling lucky or take another third and then another third. Several people in their talks talked about that because that, that is, burnout is one of the biggest things that gets people out of farming. And they said that if you do too much at one time, you'll get burned out a lot quicker. So they talked about that. And they also talked about pulling food 18 hours before you process. I agree. They said that it makes for a lot cleaner processing area for obvious reasons. 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 eggciting. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Selecting the Cream of the Crop: Navigating Breed Selection Part 2

In this egg-citing episode of Poultry Nerds, we're continuing our deep dive into the crucial art and science of Breed Selection! Let Carey Blackmon and Jennifer Bryant guide you on this journey. 🐓🔍

• Accordion Item 1

  Description text goes here

Selecting the Cream of the Crop: Navigating Breed Selection Part 1

Breed Selection is super important in improving a line. Learn the basics to look for and deciding goals.

• Transcript

  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.

  Jennifer: 0:29

  Today we're going to talk about what kind of chicken you want to get into breeding and What made you decide to get those particular kinds of chickens? Did you want them for eggs, to eat bugs, to be pretty out in your yard, to breed them, to show them? What was your reasons for getting into the birds you chose?

  Carey: 0:51

  So for that, I want to ask you a question. For our listeners, they don't realize that you actually breed T Rexes, I mean your, your Orpingtons. Yes. And your kins Cochin cos Sorry I messed that up. Every time yep but you, your birds have won some very nice awards. Yes. Pretty ribbons. You've got the beautiful silver platter that you've gotten from your coaching. What, why? Why did you decide to start with dinosaurs?

  Jennifer: 1:25

  Well, when we first got back into chickens as an adult we got Buff Warpingtons. That's what we started with. That's just the quintessential chicken that everybody seems to see flittering through the yard, you know. And, and that's what David and I really liked, so that's what we started with. And then we decided to get into the exhibition quality type birds. And they are enormous compared to the run of the mill hatchery quality birds. Well then one day I got this brilliant idea that I needed to also have a Brahma, a light Brahma on the farm because they're really pretty too. And so I bought some light Brahma hatching eggs. And when light Brahmas hatch, they're yellow. And I got a black one. So I texted the breeder and I'm like what's this? Because I had never seen a black. Light from a chick before and she said oh, that's a coach and I'm gonna need that back No, I think I will keep it So he grew up and his name actually was pretty boy Because he's so pretty and he would strut around the yard and he had this weird head twitch that he would do and I just loved that bird. He was really, really sweet. So, I got to looking around and realized that he was hatchery quality. He wasn't really anything to want back, honestly. And so, I found a APA judge, actually, who bred cochins. And I bought my starting trio from him and had them shipped down. And that's how I got into Cochins. Okay. And I don't have Brahmas anymore.

  Carey: 3:04

  So basically you accidentally got into cochins. I did. I will say that the ones that you have, they are ginormous and they are very fluffy, but the, the hue that the feathering has is beautiful. That

  Jennifer: 3:22

  beetle green sheen. Yeah. You have to work on that.

  Carey: 3:26

  I mean, I feel like there's a lot that goes into it. Before you take them to a show, they probably go through a whole beauty regimen. And I mean, we can, I'd like to, I'd like to hear more about that later for sure. Yeah. So what is the real difference? You said hatchery quality. I heard you say that a couple of times. What's, what's the difference and why, why does it matter?

  Jennifer: 3:50

  So a bird that is bred for show or to the standard of perfection per the APA rules or per the breeders club they, they have certain characteristics called type that you want to look for. So, for example, an Orpington has a very fairly level top line. It has like a 15, 20 degree angle to the tail. But a hatchery quality, or utility type, Orpington, a lot of times when you see them they almost look like an Australorp with almost a U shaped top line. And they can be very narrow through the body, and a very narrow, we call them pinched tails. Their tail will actually come up to a point, but the Orpington, the standard bred Orpington will have a very full rear view look to them. I always call it like a flower. It it opens up almost into a perfect circle. And a hatchery quality is very pinched, like an upside down V, almost. So, it's a very different body type. And, in, at the end of the day, there's really not a whole lot of I don't know, resemblance. Like, once you know what to look for, there's not a whole lot of resemblance between the two.

  Carey: 5:19

  Yeah, there's, there's been times, there's, in Alabama, Around the Birmingham area. There's a lot of people that are breeders. And, you know, I see that I've got some, some actual standard bred Rhode Island reds and, you know, I've seen a lot of those in the past. You know, before I actually got to lay eyes, sorry, my incubators doing it's thing, but before I got to lay eyes on an actual standard bread to the APA's Standard of Perfection. Hey, I didn't, I didn't realize, you know, I see these good looking birds around here and I'm like, Oh, that's a good looking red right there. But now that I actually have some standard bread poultry in my yard. The ones that are trying to play them off as being standard bred poultry, when they look nothing like what the American Poultry Association says they should look like. Right.

  Rip Stalvey: 6:29

  Hi there, fellow poultry enthusiasts. I'm Rip Stalby from the Poultry Keepers podcast. Please pardon me for interrupting. I promise I won't take long, but there's something I need to tell you. I hope you're enjoying this Poultry Nerds podcast as much as I am. I think my friends Carey Blackmon and Jennifer Bryant are doing a great job here, and I know they have even more fantastic shows in the works. You better subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. Ha! I know I sure will. Now let's get back to Carey and Jennifer.

  Jennifer: 7:07

  Well, and there's, and there's a reason. I mean, hatchery quality is fine. They grow faster. They lay earlier. They eat bugs the same, you know, they're cheaper.

  Carey: 7:19

  They lay a lot more.

  Jennifer: 7:20

  They do lay a lot more. So if you're looking for bug eaters, egg layers something to have, then there's no reason to spend money on the standard bread. Just go get, you know, your neighbor's Buff Orpington's or, mixes or whatever it is that you want. There's nothing wrong with, with a utility bird. They all have their, their purposes. And and that's something that when you go to get chickens, that you need to decide. I mean, what, what is it that you want out of them? If you just want eggs, and you just want something to eat the, the chiggers, then by all means, I would, I would highly suggest barnyard mixes. The hybrid vigor, the health from them, you know, like getting a mutt dog, it'd be the same thing. Yep, they would be healthier. And you don't have a lot of money into them because I mean, everything wants to eat chicken. So if you lose one to a hawk, you're not going to be out a hundred dollars, you know?

  Carey: 8:26

  Personally, I would like to see a hawk that could take one of your Buff Orpingtons.

  Jennifer: 8:33

  I've had them try. Now I, keep Pyrenees out there with mine, and I did have one try in 2022. We saw it come down, but Bear also saw it come down, and the hawk did Get its hands on the pullet, his hands, his claws on the pullet but bear got his mouth on the hawk.

  Carey: 8:59

  I Had to have been a pullet because I mean going back to looking at your chickens I mean, you've got some way 10 12 pounds easy. Oh easy. Yeah, and that's I mean, I guess is that a hawk or a Teradactyl?

  Jennifer: 9:15

  Well, I don't, I don't worry too much about the hawks, in all honesty. I know that that's a big concern for a lot of people. Turkeys are good to keep. You know, hawks won't mess with turkeys, and I have turkeys out there. But I have three LGDs, so I don't really worry too much about hawks. So, now, another thing that you could keep, that if you just wanted eggs You don't want to worry about the birds flying over your fence, because you could get a heavy duck. The hawks won't bother the big heavy ducks, and they'll eat the bugs, they'll lay the eggs so you don't even need to get chickens if you didn't want to.

  Carey: 9:55

  I mean, you could, for that matter, you could get a stack, put a bunch of quail in it, and you can get eggs that way. They're not going to eat the bugs in the yard. No, they won't. The, the, no. They're, my quail are very picky eaters.

  Jennifer: 10:11

  No, yeah, mine aren't. I do have a funny deck story. So last summer or the summer before when the cicadas were out? Okay, so they're everywhere, right? And we don't have a lot of trees. So the cicadas were kind of just buzzing around and on the ground and stuff. Now I have the big heavy, well, there's, they're technically a medium, but all my birds are too big. So I have heavy Welsh Harlequins. And They were standing there, and the cicada flew by, and the duck he was a young male, he just reached out, and I wish I had caught it on video, because it would be a world famous TikTok but he reached out and grabbed that cicada, and it was screaming, like, for life, it was just screaming, and it was struggling with him, so he put his head down, and he, Like pushed it against the ground to kind of like regroup his grip on it and then he put his head up and he swallowed it And that cicada was in his crop, screaming bloody murder. And that duck is looking at me like, Do something! This is not right! You need to do something about this! And so he went running off because he didn't know what to do. That's hilarious. Oh, I was done laughing.

  Carey: 11:33

  That is, that is very, that's funny. It was great. What are your opinions on the let's call them yard candy. The the pretty birds that look good out in the yard that don't really lay a lot of eggs and

  Jennifer: 11:51

  So I do get a lot of people that come and buy my birds for that now I'm a different kind of breeder in the sense that my extras if I can't use them for my purposes Then to me, they're just another chicken. And so the term there would be pet quality and and I just sell them off as as just You know, the same price and whatever as a barnyard mix type bird. And so people will wait for me to do that because they want what they call a yard candy, because they, they're not going to breed it. They're not interested in showing it. They just want to look out the window and see that big giant Orpington or that. Giant black coching. I mean, you've got to admit that those things walking across the yard, make a statement. So, I mean, I have people that, that will come and get them just so they can watch them walk across their yard.

  Carey: 12:52

  So one breed that I have recently fell in love with is the American Bresse. Mm hmm. I got some of those. I got a five pullets that They're about five, six months old now. Beautiful white birds that have the red combs and waddles that, I mean, they're, they're like a perfect vibrant red, their legs are gray. Which is very unique to me. I thought it was really cool, but you know, the Polly Shore movie where he's chasing the chicken and he's wondering if it's extra crispy or original recipe. Well, this, this rooster that I have, like the drumsticks on this guy are huge and he's six months old and he weighs a little over 10 pounds. Wow. And I'm like. What? This is crazy. And the more research that I've done on these birds, The French consider them to be a delicacy.

  Jennifer: 13:58

  Their meat's supposed to marble, right?

  Carey: 14:00

  Their meat will marble. There's a, there's a process that you gotta go through in the finishing. Like if, if you're planning on, on culling the bird and putting it on your table, letting it be table candy. There is a process that you can go through and certain things that you feed them the last couple of weeks to get their, to get them marbled the way they should be. But I mean, I want to, I want to try it on one of them to see now these, the ones that I have are really nice. They are very, very close to the French standard. Obviously it's not recognized by APA yet. So we don't have an American standard yet. We do. There is actually somebody that I know is a friend of mine that's in the process of working through that. She's gotten the documentation and. You know, she's submitted a lot of the stuff and it's, I think it's been reviewed once or twice already, but I'm planning on, on breeding those because they're huge and, and they're really, you know, if they're really sought after by the French for eating, I like to eat a good chicken. So

  Jennifer: 15:13

  a medium or a large egg

  Carey: 15:16

  it's anywhere between 50 and 60 grams. is a good one that that's a good one to set in your incubator. The ones that are like 65 plus there, a lot of them are double yokers and double yokers are fine, but that that doesn't meet my objection. So I have identified one that is a double yoker and she has a I call it ankle monitor. She's got a leg band on and when I'm done getting her up to size she is actually going to be the first one that goes into the kitchen.

  Jennifer: 15:58

  Well, remind me and I'll bring you some milk and we can see if we can get her marbled.

  Carey: 16:03

  That's right, because you have cows and you have raw milk. That'll work out. Perfect. Cause I'm curious. I mean, who doesn't want to, I know Chick fil A is great, but who doesn't want to see what a hundred dollar chicken sandwich is like?

  Jennifer: 16:21

  So do you have to grow them out six months to get them up to size?

  Carey: 16:26

  Yeah. They're, they're a, what you would call a heritage bird or a standard bird. They're, they don't. They don't grow ridiculously fast like the Cornish crosses do. But that's like 16, 17 different mutations that there's nothing natural about a Cornish cross, which is why a lot of people don't like them.

  Jennifer: 16:47

  I love them. I ordered 200 the other day.

  Carey: 16:51

  And I mean, you know what my wife, she prefers her chicken to be boneless skinless. and that's what it is. And we go through a lot. I mean, that 200 at my house with the crew that I have might last us six to eight months of chicken. But from what I've been told, this full size bird is a whole different taste. My Granddaddy raised BeefMasters and he had chickens, which is what got me into poultry originally. and there was, I mean, until I was 19 years old working in a meat market, I did not eat meat that wasn't wrapped up in butcher paper. and my wife right before my granddaddy passed away. was the first time that she actually went to the store to buy beef. And when she did, I told her what to get. And we noted that it tasted different and that we liked pasture raised better. So that's, I'm trying to work around to that with the poultry. And I'm hoping that this, this Bresse will get me where I want to be with the, the chicken aspect.

  Jennifer: 18:11

  We eat our Orpingtons and our Cochins. I prefer not to eat the Cochins for various reasons that I won't get into, but I don't, I do eat the Orpingtons, most of them actually. And we do a batch of Cornish Cross every year. From March until May, we do the Cornish. And I had a customer here, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. And she asked me why. what I do Cornish if I was doing Orpington. And I'm like, well, it's kind of like saying, would you eat venison instead of beef? Yes, I like venison, but it's different than beef. And so the Orpington has a different texture than the Cornish cross. And I, it's just having a variety in the freezer is why we do both. Choosing a breeder quality or potential show bird, they kind of go together. So getting quality birds, they're very hard to find and it takes a lot of patience and You would need to, once you decided on which breed and which variety, which means color that you wanted to have, you would need to research the breeders. And I would start with the breed clubs. So like, for example, the Orpingtons, United Orpington Club, the Cochins International, I'm sure yours have breed clubs, right?

  Carey: 19:45

  The Rhode Island Red Club of America. Right there is an American Bresse. I actually think there's two of them. And they have, one of the things that I like about the Bresse and their breeders list is before you can get on their breeders list and be considered a reputable reader, you have to show that you've been working with that bird for two years. So you can't just wake up one day, order some hatching eggs and boom, I'm on the breeder list. Mm-Hmm. I like that because there's a lot of people that decide I'm gonna be a breeder, but they don't, they don't get the education to learn what a breeder is. Mm-Hmm. and, and they really, they're really just cloning chickens. Exactly and you know, back to the standards that we talked about a while ago, if you're cloning chickens. And you're not culling chickens, then you could be replicating bad blood. And that's, that's not good. You know, that's no,

  Jennifer: 20:56

  you're, you're being

  Carey: 20:57

  a hatchery. That's yeah, you're being a hatchery and that's, I don't know, there's, I understand that you have to hatch chickens out to make money, but I also understand that you should have some kind of ethics that you go by. And maintaining the purity of the lines that you choose to work with. Now, if you want to get online and advertise that you're a barnyard hatchery, then, hey, more power to you. But, you know, I really feel like if you're going to work with any breed, you need to maintain the quality and the purity of that breed. Yeah,

  Jennifer: 21:41

  I agree and then you need to make your decisions and pick for the direction that you want to go, you want to pick the color, the type, the, you want to make sure your skin color is correct and, and all of those things go into making a breed what it is. You can't have a Buff Orpington with black legs. That's not pure. That's not how it's supposed to look. Now once you go on and find your breed clubs, each breed club should, at least the ones I belong to, have breeder directories. Mm hmm. And, and you can usually find those on their websites. Most of them have Facebook group pages. Yeah. And then at the very minimum you can ask for references. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, don't forget to hit the subscribe to our podcast. So you get new episodes weekly, right in your inbox. You can email us at poultrynerds@gmail.com and we're also on Facebook. Until next time, Poultry Pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it eggciting. This is Jennifer signing off from Poultry Nerds.

  Outtro: 22:56

  Mhm.