The Chantecler w/John Gunterman

The chantecler chicken history and breed attributes

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Carey Blackmon: 0:14

  Mhm.

  Duncan: 0:23

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of Show Pro. Show Pro is a revolutionary poultry feed supplement, supercharged with key ingredients like Cysteine the number 1 amino acid to make your Show Bird a Show Pro Champion! Check out show pro usa dot com for more information.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:41

  Welcome to The Poultry Nerds Podcast We're here with John Gunterman in Vermont to talk about the I'm gonna say it wrong the Chantecler

  Carey Blackmon: 0:51

  perfect

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:53

  All right.

  Carey Blackmon: 0:53

  Nice.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:55

  So tell us about yourself, John, and what you're doing,

  John Gunterman: 0:59

  wow. You got the name right. And I coach people by saying it's to sing clearly or to sing brightly. So if you think enchanté, chanté is to sing. And clear Claire Chantecler. But I'm up here way North in Vermont. I'm about 12 miles from the Canadian border. If you were to get on I 91 and head North as far as you can go, eventually you're going to hit a sign after a really long uphill. And burning a lot of gas. It says highest elevation on I 91 true story. And then from there, it's all downhill into Canada. You get off the very next exit and that's where we are, just before the border. So that, that's pretty significant to why I chose the Chanticleer. Breeds were bred to do a certain thing in a certain place originally. And, having, a breed that has no comb and no waddle to withstand the whipping, whatever sustained easily 20 mile an hour wind, Negative 38 Fahrenheit. There's nothing to get frostbitten.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:12

  So let's talk about the origin.

  John Gunterman: 2:14

  Right over there, about 20 miles away, Oka Abbey up in Quebec, designed the bird. For this environment, it's pretty rough up in Quebec in the Canadian Maritimes. They have very strong winds and bitter, cold winters. So they needed a bird that could withstand, the temperature challenges and the wind. So therefore we have no combs and waddles, that was bred very specific. But they were also at one time, they were considered like the bird of Canada. They were advertised as, the homesteading bird, everybody needs a Chanticleer. up until the 1950s, the poultry of tomorrow contests and the advent of the Cornish cross, they're pretty much what fed Canada.

  Jennifer Bryant: 3:03

  So they're dual purpose.

  John Gunterman: 3:05

  For sure.

  Jennifer Bryant: 3:06

  Now, if I understand correctly, they're on the conservancy's, endangered list, right?

  John Gunterman: 3:14

  They seem to bounce back and forth because the number of committed breeders and the number of, sustainable flocks that are around the country is a genuine concern. But, I'm not up on where they are this year in the cycle.

  Jennifer Bryant: 3:33

  So do they have a pea cone?

  John Gunterman: 3:36

  Yes. Tiny little, it's almost nothing. This isn't a visual show, so it's hard to show, but just picture. No comb and no waddle. It's a raised bump. So this becomes a liability now when we're entering into the August dearth and we're hot, we're humid, we're sticky. My birds are miserable. They do not like this at all because that we've taken away their natural perspiration and evaporative cooling mechanism. So if people from Southern climates are like, Hey, I'm really interested in your Chanticleer and okay, what zone are you in? What's your humidity levels in the summertime? I look at something from the horticulture industry of a VPD, your vapor pressure deficit, cause that roughly equates to any organisms ability to cool itself, where's the humidity in relation to the temperature that provides evaporative cooling. And these birds just don't have that ability. They just are not going to survive well in anything south of, say, Zone 5.

  Jennifer Bryant: 4:44

  So since we are geared more towards the newbie chicken person, the comb and the waddles is how a chicken cools itself. So if you live in the south, you're going to want one with a nice big single comb would be great, large waddles. And as you go north, you're going to want these bigger birds, Brahma's would do well up there. The Cochins seem to do well up there, but when I go to a show, the Cochins from up north will have a smaller wattle and comb and they're always amazed at how big they are on my birds because they, they're huge. They look like the same as an Orpington comb wattle.

  John Gunterman: 5:34

  That should adjust itself pretty quick. The comb is something that is definitely influenced, by epigenetic development. Environment drives the comb in it. So if you can, keep them alive for a couple of generations, they're naturally going to at least adapt in the comb. I have not seen the wattles respond, but I'm currently doing a project right now, to do just that.

  Jennifer Bryant: 5:59

  So how big do these birds get?

  John Gunterman: 6:03

  I like to take them at about seven pounds live weight. So it provides a good four and a half to five pounds of meat. When they're harvested, as roosters, I take them out to 20 weeks, on birds. I get rid of half of my birds at three weeks. I weigh all my hatchlings daily. And at the end of three weeks, I have a very good idea of who my potential breeders are for next year, who are going to be really good eggers and really good producers and who are just going to be paired with noodles. And I try to. Get things off of my feed bill that aren't going to be what I want to keep.

  Jennifer Bryant: 6:43

  What do you do with the three week olds?

  John Gunterman: 6:47

  So the ones that will provide good, homestead, backyard flocks, good layers. I try to seed the local economy with good layers. And if they're interested, I will try to pair them up with A rooster, ideally, people looking for, Hey, I'm looking to start a backyard flock. You give me what I've paid to feed these up to now. I'm going to set you up with a couple of really good breeding hens and the rooster that I would pair them with. if people are just looking for eggs, they may get different hens, but I'm always looking to. Proliferate the genetics, get people interested in the breed and have little genetic safe deposit boxes around the neighborhood too. Cause I have huge predator issues here. And just keeping my birds alive long enough to breed them is a challenge sometimes.

  Jennifer Bryant: 7:35

  All right.

  John Gunterman: 7:37

  There is a national, breed organization. There's a, and we communicate primarily on Facebook. It seems to be like the older generation's preferred method of communication, but there's the Chanticleer Fanciers International or CFI, and there's a public Facebook group, and there's also a private Facebook group that you have to be a member of the CFI, and I'm a lifetime member. It's not a long investment and it gets you, access to other people that are really committed to improving the breed and just not being backyard blender breeders and just, capitalizing on the name and the,

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:17

  cause

  John Gunterman: 8:17

  that does happen.

  Carey Blackmon: 8:19

  Yeah, it really does. A lot of times people just, I don't know, like I see online a lot where people just have 20, 30, 40 different kinds of birds and they have a menu, here's a menu of things that we have buy from us because we're breeders. And I'm like, no, you're a local hatchery because, I know a lot about a couple of breeds, but that's about it. But what I do know is there's no way you can provide the amount of time, love and effort that it takes to actually work with, make selection for breed standard and do the birds right, in my opinion, by having, even if it's three or four.

  John Gunterman: 9:13

  I had gotten down to one breed on the ground. For a while I was doing two breeds before I went completely into Chanticleer, I was also running the Buckeyes, and I was introduced to both when I was finishing my degrees at a local college here. the Buckeyes and the Chante cla I found quite by accident, made a beautiful sex link, which had a nice heterosis or hybrid vigor bump. Neither are slouches in their own rights, but by putting a autosomal red. rooster on top of a base white hen. We're going to get chicks to make it really simple. They're going to hatch and they're going to have a down color. So they're going to be identifiable as either male or female when they pop out of the egg

  Jennifer Bryant: 9:55

  So this is a Chanticleer rooster over a Buckeye hen.

  John Gunterman: 9:59

  It's the Buckeye rooster With a Chanticleer hen will give you a great sex linked chick.

  Jennifer Bryant: 10:07

  So what will the chicks look like?

  John Gunterman: 10:09

  They're going to be basically reddish brown coming out and then or White. Okay. And the reddish brown ones are going to be your hens and the white ones are going to be your roosters. It flips. Yep. It's one of those genetic weirdnesses, which is why I have this told. We've shared this crazy tattoo that I have on my forearm to remind me of. We do not know the voodoo that we do as much as we think we do.

  Jennifer Bryant: 10:39

  So for sex links hatches, they don't work both ways for people who don't know. You have to do it a certain way because. The males carry two of the sex linked chromosomes, and the hens only carry one. So they only work one way. So a Buckeye rooster over a Chanticleer hen will work, but the other way around will not.

  John Gunterman: 11:05

  No.

  Jennifer Bryant: 11:06

  No.

  John Gunterman: 11:06

  I've never taken this past that F1 generation. I believe that We would be doing a disservice by doing that. I use this primarily as a means to fund keeping the two distinct lines alive. It takes a lot of dedication and funding to do that. And that's why I ended up just going down to one breed because I didn't feel I was doing it justice by doing two lines. Just the level of intimacy. I think that you need handling your birds. At least on a weekly basis, feeling their fleshing development, feeling their carriage development. What is their heart girth and chest depth? What's the pin bone spacing? Like you get to know what your birds should feel like and what you want the next generation to feel like. And you just can't do that with too many birds on the ground.

  Jennifer Bryant: 11:59

  What else can you tell us about the Chanticleer?

  John Gunterman: 12:02

  One thing that they're really great at is winter laying capacity. There, there is a misnomer going around that they'll just chug straight through the winter. And that's not entirely true. They will take a pause and take a month or three off. if you're patient, round about the. Second or third week of January, they're just going to start laying again when the lights coming back on once we pass the equinox, They're one of the first breeds to turn back on laying naturally, and they were bred to do that because they were bred above the 45th parallel. Where the day length is shorter naturally. So in the springtime, Chanticleers would be laying, buckeyes are still hunkered down and they don't even want to get out of the coop. I found out quite by accident, they will survive completely on their own. I had a predator attack in late January and lost a bunch of birds and thought I had lost a bunch more, but back in April, I heard the egg song was I was taking my mid afternoon nap. And I'm like, That's strange. I don't have any hens right now that should be laying. And I went out to the coop and one of the hens that I thought had died had just Gone and found her way back, three and a half months later. And we hit temperatures as low as negative 38 Fahrenheit that winter. She survived out on her own and made her way back. And yes, I collected every egg she laid.

  Carey Blackmon: 13:27

  I have a question for you. How cold did you say it got? Negative 38 Fahrenheit. And what kind of supplemental heat do you use in your barn? Never. Exactly. Okay. So the reason I asked that is we, there's a lot of people that feel like, I've got to keep my birds 60 degrees or whatever, and you don't heat your birds. And I have a friend of mine that actually in the winter time, she keeps quail. And she will post pictures of her quail cage outside covered in snow, like a foot and a half, two feet deep. And the birds get absolutely no heat. They're fine. They're wild animals. They're designed to keep outside. To me, my opinion, the most important thing is to keep them dry. And to keep the wind off of them. And as long as you can do that's what they're bred for. That's why they have all the feathers. That's why birds temperature, body temperature is higher than ours.

  John Gunterman: 14:32

  I do modify my feed a little bit in response to some of Jeff's, inputs. Truth be told, I've been running, my own feed formulation with Jeff's input now for about three years and my birds are doing great. I source all my local grains, preferably from local farmers, and I can store them and crack them when needed and do my own mix. And that's really helped me save a lot of money along the way and keep my food fresh and at its peak nutritive value to my birds, I won't mix up more than what I can use in about two weeks.

  Jennifer Bryant: 15:08

  You're so rural that you can't just hop in the jeep and run to the tractor supply.

  John Gunterman: 15:14

  No, the tractor supply is 45 minutes in one direction and 55 in another direction. We've had some massive flooding events again. But I do have to get up to E. M. Brown and Sons and pick up, three 50 pound bags of soy meal so I can mix up more feed. Luckily, we are right on the Canadian border and there's a pool and mill right on the border, so they there's a logistics value there because we share a lot of the Canadian maritime for agricultural products

  Jennifer Bryant: 15:48

  to the Chanticleers need, a different mix, a different protein than say, you're just an average bird,

  John Gunterman: 15:56

  they'll survive. Okay. I don't want to say a 16 percent layer because that's barely keeping them alive. I would never go below an 18%. So if I were to offer one of my customers feed advice, and they just don't want to get into mixing their own feed, get an 18 percent finisher and augment that with about 4 percent aragonite or oyster shell, or a combination of both and grit mixed right into the feed, 3 percent of grit as well, right into the bagged feed and sprinkle it with some fur trail. Breeder supplement or, NutriBalancer, always breeder supplement two to three weeks before you're ready to start breeding and you'll be okay. You don't have to get the fancy food, but grit is super, super important. You're not extracting all the nutrients that you're putting into your bird. It's just coming out as waste and higher ammonia and causing more work on the backend because of that waste.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:02

  So grit works, in the gizzard, like our teeth work in our mouths and they grind the food. Grit, I buy granite grit, oyster shell will work, but it's just going to wear down really quickly.

  John Gunterman: 17:17

  it could give your birds too much calcium because it does wear down so quickly.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:22

  So and grit's not expensive, It pays for

  John Gunterman: 17:25

  itself.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:26

  Yeah,

  John Gunterman: 17:26

  actually.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:27

  So an interesting thing. I keep a lot of my birds up. My breeders are up in coops. But then I have a, essentially air quote, free range flock. And if I put grit out, my free range flock will gobble it up much quicker than my pin to birds, which I always find interesting because they have access to the gravel driveway and stuff.

  John Gunterman: 17:53

  Yeah, I wanted to ask you about free ranging your birds. Cause I, truth be told, I have your quail, in the brooder right now. Love quail. The feed conversion ratio is amazing. So my degree is in sustainable food systems and regenerative agriculture. So I'm looking at ways that we're going to feed the world population. And if we could just get quail to. nest and to hatch their eggs again, they would be the ideal sustainable poultry ish product and protein, but they've just lost that ability.

  Jennifer Bryant: 18:29

  we're talking about Coturnix, not Bobwhite. So Bobwhites are going to have that brooding, instinct, Coturnix are not native here. They were brought over, what, in the 60s, I think, and several attempts to make them, wild, have been attempted and they've all just petered out. So they don't occur naturally, Coturnix don't. So it makes me wonder if in their native homeland, I wonder how broody they get. That would be an interesting thing to find out.

  John Gunterman: 19:08

  I know the Japanese have bred them in captivity for a long time. I'm always hoping to find a hen that appears to want to sit and encourage that, but it hasn't happened yet. And I usually don't keep my genetics around long enough because winter is pretty brutal. And, last year I only kept my quail long enough till my watering system froze up in my hatching time cages. But I have trained my quail to, go off the nipple drinker and I've got a, Premier one heated nipple drinker that I use in the winter time. And I have checked that out and it does not freeze up down to negative 20. And if one bird saw it and came over and now they all know luckily the Chanticleer will eat snow in the winter. It's fun to watch. They open up their mouth and walk around and bulldoze snow into their beak. So I don't have to water my birds. in the winter.

  Jennifer Bryant: 20:06

  How interesting is that? Mine try to go swimming all the time, but they despise heat. So when I see these posts in the wintertime, it's snowing, do I let my birds out of the coop? The answer is yes.

  John Gunterman: 20:20

  Oh, yes. I've got a video up on my, YouTube channel of, I've got a particular rooster who would literally put himself in the path of the discharge chute of my snowblower because he liked getting, we call it a whitewash or a snow bath. He liked it. And it was the strangest thing crazy Chanticleers, I just

  Jennifer Bryant: 20:48

  You were going to ask me about the Predators, so we have Here we have hawks and foxes, raccoons. We have plenty of skunks, but I've never seen a skunk attack a bird. I think they're just more after the eggs per se.

  John Gunterman: 21:07

  We have skunks will reach in to pens and grab legs and snatch them towards the wire. Then they'll eat out. The insides, so we'll come out in the morning and it'll just be like a carcass with no insides pulled up against the wire, and that's pretty indicative of a skunk attack or a raccoon attack.

  Jennifer Bryant: 21:26

  Do you have rat problems up there?

  John Gunterman: 21:29

  No, the only real, what I would consider vermin are the red squirrels because they jump right through even a two inch deer that I zip tie to the inside face of my electric fence. Fence. and they'll come in and eat out of the feeders. So I try to put out just enough feed, so that, the birds go to bed with a full, and there's no food outside overnight.

  Jennifer Bryant: 21:54

  But

  John Gunterman: 21:54

  That's a continuing challenge.

  Jennifer Bryant: 21:58

  So the reason why I can free range, and I get actually asked that a lot. So we have 18 acres, and I have three Pyrenees, and they have access. To I'd say, 95 percent of the property and they can't get where the pigs are at the moment. So the rest of the property that can get to, and I have trained them that if it's just flying over. they need to chase it. I call it chasing the sky because they will actually run underneath any bird and bark at it to the point where the geese that nest behind us, there's a lake behind us 2, 000 geese on it. They will actually split and fly around the property now.

  Carey Blackmon: 22:48

  John, it's hilarious. I like these dogs. It's snowing up there, which I know it don't snow a whole lot in Tennessee, but I have seen pictures of snow on the ground, snow on the dog house and the dog's just laying out front and their heads are constantly on a swivel. And like she said, anytime anything flies overhead, they just. Lock on to it until it's gone.

  Jennifer Bryant: 23:16

  Yeah, I hope one day, because they run full speed looking straight up, and one day and I've been saying this for years they're going to run into a tree because they're running, they you would be shocked if you've never been around a Pyrenees. First of all, they're massive. But they're also goofy. They are. And lumbering. They can move wicked fast. Oh yeah. Bear's probably about 140 pounds. Kimber's coming in at about 110. Lady is mixed with Australian Shepherd. So that gives her speed. And she comes in right about 90 pounds. So I actually don't even lock up my birds anymore. I'm to that point now. They are access to the outside 24 seven.

  John Gunterman: 24:06

  I run layers of, electric poultry fence. The outer perimeter is under a seven jewel, wide impedance charger. And then I've got individual pens inside of that I separate my roosters and hens from my grow out as soon as they're identifiable. Any potential breeders, I will keep with the hens up at the top of the hill in the hen house with the elder rooster. my spare roosters, I try to keep two elder roosters and then the ones coming up and they also help set the tone for the younglings as they're growing, And if they get a little too aggressive, the elder rooster will go over and break them up

  Jennifer Bryant: 24:48

  I had a couple turkeys doing that last night and I was just dying laughing because they do it's like they whine or hiss like a cat at each other I should have got it on camera, but sometimes you just want to enjoy your birds without thinking about getting camera out, you know

  Carey Blackmon: 25:03

  So I was watching mine the other day and three, I had three or four of my breasts there in their coop together and two of them started chest bumping and one of them, I call him my trainer and he was, he just got up on his perch like this and started looking around.

  Carey: 25:34

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone. Mhm.

Talking Orpingtons’ w/Sara Batz

The president of the United Orpington Club joins us to explain the inner working of the poultry club

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  0:14

  Mhm.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:22

  We're here on Poultry Nerds podcast with Sarah from the United Orpington club. I always want to say national. It's United. Yeah. It's

  Sara Batz: 0:32

  United.

  Jennifer Bryant: 0:33

  Yeah. So tell

  Carey Blackmon: 0:35

  how when clubs you not

  Sara Batz: 0:36

  well, and the, here's the story about this. Okay. This is a little nerd trivia'cause I'm all about that kind of thing. When I started during C-O-V-I-D-I had a whole lot of nothing to do. I was sitting at home getting paid to not work. So I'm like let's do some research. And it always, I always wondered why it was the United Orpington Club, like why that name? And what I discovered is, there used to be in late 1890s into all the way into the 1920s, there were a dozen different Orpington clubs. There was a white, there was a straight, there was a rose comb white, there was a black club. Orpington club black rose comb, a black white comb. There was buffs. There were all of these Orpington clubs. And so sometime in the late 1920s to the early 1930s, they all merged together and became the United Orpington Club.

  Jennifer Bryant: 1:28

  How neat is that?

  Sara Batz: 1:30

  Yeah. I thought it was cool. The earliest I've found mention of the as it is, the United Orpington Club is a show that was advertised for 1932 in. Pittsburgh. So there's this kind of gap between where in the poultry magazines of the time where they stop mentioning all the various Orpington clubs and come down to the United Orpington Club. There's like a five, six year gap that I haven't quite figured out when was the actual founding of the club, but that's where we get that United Orpington Club.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:03

  In that time frame, we've got the Great Depression and a couple of world wars, so maybe, there is a gap there.

  Sara Batz: 2:09

  Eh, chickens were far more important than any of that.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:12

  We're coming up on a hundred years in the club, then.

  Sara Batz: 2:15

  Yeah, for sure, and I'm hoping we can do a big blowout of some sort because I think it will be fun to, that it has been in some level of operation. That whole time it there's been ebbs and flows where it's been more active than not but yeah, I just think it's cool. It's one of the longer been around longer clubs as far as breed clubs go.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:37

  So how many members does the club have?

  Sara Batz: 2:40

  We average around, I think we're at like 115 or so. It's where it stays. Sometimes it'll go up a little bit, sometimes it goes down a little bit. But that seems to be over the last 10 or so years, the trend is around 120 people. as active members.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:58

  So for people who are not familiar with a breed club, would you tell them why it would be a good thing to join a club?

  Sara Batz: 3:06

  So your breed clubs primarily are there to support the breeders and to advertise the club. To get people to know about the breed. So we have a website, which we actually a couple of years ago, just upgraded. We had this really old 1990s style website that wasn't compatible with anything because it was so out of date. So in 2021, we started a new upgraded. Our website. And then we have district directors throughout the country and we have shows to promote the breed. So one of the things that I Encourage our district directors to do is to go to as many of the shows as they can and to have a club table there with we provide a banner, the host, the National club does provide banners to each of the district directors if they want them and set up a club table because the club table is our visual, right? People see you, they come, maybe they come just out of curiosity. Like I've never been to a poultry show. What's it like? Or maybe my kid's in four H and now we want to get into APA or something a little bit bigger than just four H. And so having that club table there, it gets people to see that. that you exist. Otherwise, it's just walking down the aisles and looking at cages of birds, right? So the club table puts a person, a face to the club, and then that helps us to interact with the community and get people to know that we exist and that we've been supporting breeders and people who just like it. You don't have to be a breeder to be a member of a club, right? So the money itself, the dues pays for our website. It pays for our annual awards at our national meets. And it pays for any advertising that we do. Like we have an ad in the poultry press. We have we usually put a page in the APA yearbook as well. We didn't do one this year, but we generally do one every year in the, in that. So that's what the deuce pays for. And it helps us to Do those outreach type things like buy banners for the district directors or pay for those awards for people who participate. We're also twinned if anyone's familiar with that kind of concept, we're twinned with the Australian Orpington club. And so we have sent awards to them over the last couple of years for their nationals and they've sent awards to us. We publish things back and forth in each other's newsletters, LinkedIn websites and stuff like that. So it's our outreach there to the Australian Orpington Club as well. And that's been something that's been ongoing for longer than I've been in the club. So probably 15, 20 years now, they've been this little sibling or we're their sibling, however you want to look at it. That we interact with each other in that regard. Again, it's to build understanding of the breed standards, what is an Orpington, what isn't and just get people to. Interact with us and be supportive of the breed itself. It's one of the mid range age of breeds, right? When you look at all of the breeds that are accepted by the APA it's probably age wise kind of in the middle there, it's not some of these. breeds like the dorking and the old English, but it's also not some of the newer breeds that you're going to see out at a show. Keeping it visible so that it doesn't go into some of these problems that some of the other breeds have over the years. I just did a thing on Crevacours yesterday that I posted on Facebook and that breed has really struggled. It's still struggling because there just aren't enough people that know about it and want to breed it. So Orpingtons have been popular for a very long time but it still goes to that same ebb and flow of popularity like other breeds do.

  Jennifer Bryant: 7:01

  So also as a member, you would earn points if you decided to show. Correct. Those points would accumulate for club awards, not just awards, right?

  Sara Batz: 7:12

  Yeah, so as a, for membership you get we do newsletters, so we try to put one out every quarter so you get that. We do have a members only Facebook group. It's not as active as I would like, but it's there if you have questions or looking for a breeder to mentor you or something like that. It puts you into that master breeder. Points program and we do send out awards. I just sent out a whole bunch of awards for master breeders the couple of weeks ago. So we do keep a running tally of that and we do have an awards program for master breeder of the various varieties as well as the annual breeder of the year. But primarily, honestly, if you're going to be part of a club, the point is to support the breed. to keep it in the public's eye, to keep it growing so that it doesn't go extinct. It's pretty much that's really what the core is that you're supporting the breed more than the club itself.

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:13

  That makes sense. So how many different varieties of orpingtons are there accepted into the APA? Four.

  Sara Batz: 8:22

  So buff, blue, black, and white are the four in largefowl and bantam. So they're accepted on both in APA and ABA. And those have been accepted since basically the beginning. The last variety that was accepted in 1923 is the blue. The rest were accepted basically at the beginning. Buff came, I think black and white came first and then buff. But as I mentioned at the very beginning, turn of the century, there was still an argument over should it be a rose comb or should it be a straight comb. So those kind of things didn't get ironed out until 19, 1907, I think, is when they were the black was admitted. So it's relatively new as far as APA goes. Now, if you go and look at the UK, where's obviously where the Orpington comes from. If you look at their breed club there they have a lot more varieties that are accepted. They have Bard the Jubilee that was created for the Queen's anniversary. And they have two or three other varieties, totally spazzing. Spangled is one of them modeled, I believe as well. So those varieties are accepted there. The issue with getting a variety accepted here, and there's been consternation about how, why lavender isn't been accepted for years. As long as I've, as long as I've had Orpingtons, I've heard the argument of why isn't lavender an accepted variety? Because nobody's working on it sincerely enough. The APA has rules on how to get a variety or a breed accepted. And of the people that I know that are working on them, it just doesn't, they don't get consistent enough. So it takes a lot more to get them accepted. And so that's why we're still at just the four varieties. I know there are people out there that have some of the other rare varieties. But again, you have to have so many people breeding them for a certain length of time. It has to be petitioned to the APA in order to get that variety accepted. And there has to be consistency across all of the breeders as far as what the birds look like. So if you've got hatchery looking birds and then you've got, what people like to call the English looking birds all showing up at a show, you're not going to get the birds approved. Because there's no standard in the consistency or no consistency in the standard. So yeah, so we just have four. We're not cochinsins.

  Jennifer Bryant: 10:48

  So that leads to the next question I see a lot from people who are new to chickens is people go to the box stores and they buy Orpingtons out of the bin. And so we refer to them as hatchery or utility birds. Standard bred is what we call our birds because you really shouldn't call them, in my opinion, exhibition quality because you just don't know until they grow out and you take them to a show. But standard bred, right? Because you're breeding to the standard. So for somebody who is new to Orpingtons, How would they know if they have hatchery birds or if they had standard bred, and if they wanted standard bred, where do they find them?

  Sara Batz: 11:31

  This is definitely an argument that comes up and there's as many opinions as there are breeders about them. The stance that I've taken as, since I've been president is that all Orpingtons are English. You'll hear that, you'll hear I want English Orpingtons. Unless you're going to pay to have them imported, they're all going to be from the United States. So the question I always ask people is, what standard do you want to breed to? Do you want to breed to the French standard, the South American standard, the, or the South African standard, the Australian standard? Each one of those standards is slightly different, right? Some of them have core similarities, but there is, there are variances. When you're talking about where you're purchasing the birds from, that's going to be your key. If you're going to Meyer or you're going to cackle or any of the big hatcheries in this country, right? You're going to get that. Hatchery look. They're basically all the same shape, just with a different color, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely, if that's where you want to start, if that's where your budget allows, if that's what you aspire to, brilliant. All, I have hatchery birds at my house. They all have their purpose. They all have their purpose. So what you want to look at is do a Google search. Go online. Go on Facebook. Go on to the different groups. Because there's tons of Orpington groups online. And then start looking at the birds that look the way you want them to look. Some people like a fluffier bird. Other people don't. That's fine too. It's preference. And then connect with those people that are breeding the birds you want to look at right now. As far as how do you know if they're exhibition versus just a backyard bird? Does the person exhibit them? It's as simple as that. If the person doesn't bother to even take them to exhibit them, then you know they're not really focused on the things that are going to make it qualify for that. I know plenty of people who don't show their birds and again, there's nothing wrong with that's personal preference, but if you don't take those birds, and compete against other birds of the same variety, the same breed, then you are staring at what you have and you get what we call coop blind to what you're looking at, right? And so you may start to think, oh, that tail angle is good because that's what I want to look at, but is it measured against the standard? And if you don't own a standard, how are you measuring it against the standard? That's a key thing. I'm not advocating that everybody go out and buy a 75, 80 book. That's not always in the realm of possibility, especially if you're not looking to be a show person. But if you don't understand the difference between the tail angle that's required in the American standard versus what's required in the UK standard, then you can't say this is this, and this is that. You have to at least know those parameters. And now on our website, on the club's website, we do have a link to the UK standard. Because a lot of people will come to me and they'll say your birds aren't English because of this or that or the other. And I'll say to them, do you know the difference between the two standards? Because if you can't tell me the difference between the two standards, then how are you telling me that my birds don't meet one standard or the other? Or anyone's birds for that matter. It's not a matter of trying to argue. It's a matter of the facts of the, of what it is, right? The. Orpington Standard by the APA has a very specific degree of tail angle for the male and for the female. It's written, it's black and white, right? We're one of the few breeds, I believe, that have that specific of a tail angle. So if you don't know that, then how do you know what you're breeding towards? All of these birds, if they're Orpingtons, they're English. They fall under the English classification. And I get a lot of pushback on that. But it's the fact of the matter is they are English class birds. So therefore they are English. Now, are they bred to the English standard? That's a different question, right? So when you're looking at these birds and there's a weight category. If you put your bird on a scale, you put your hen on a scale and she weighs six pounds, she's not an Orpington, not to the standard, right? Your female should be eight pounds and preferably a little bit larger. One of the things I found over the years is if I'm breeding from two light of females, even if they are within the weight, 20 percent variance of the weight and they're on that lower end, I'll start losing size. And I'll start losing that in in my females and my males. So I prefer a larger female. My females are usually nine to 10 pounds on average. My males tend to be 11, 12 pounds on average, right? You don't want them too big, but you also don't want them too small because it's very easy to lose size. And I think that's one of the things that people don't understand about hatcheries is they're breeding quantity, right? They're fulfilling the orders that they get these. copious amounts of numbers and you don't think about or they don't have the ability to concentrate on those kinds of details. So what ends up happening is you, your birds, your bantams always want to get bigger and your largefowl always want to get smaller and they meet somewhere in the middle about that six to nine pounds range depending on the breed. So you've got to pay attention to your size. You don't want your bantams too large and you don't want your largefowl too small. That's just part of breeding, right? That's just part of paying attention to what you're doing. But when, if you're looking at Orpingtons and it has a hatchery name attached to it, you're not getting what you think you're getting. You're getting basically a you to tear you. That's not the word I want.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:32

  Utility.

  Sara Batz: 17:35

  It's going to be a decent layer. That's going to be a pretty bird out in your yard. A couple of years ago, side story on that a couple of years ago, I was surfing for something and there was a hatchery down in Texas that he was advertising black warping tens, which is very rare, right? I've seen some of them now have, are starting to advertise blues and lavenders and stuff like that. But again, look at the type there. There's still the, there's still hatchery quality birds. Any who they had. Advertise Black Orpingtons, and I'm like, okay, click, because I want to see what that looks like. And it was an Australorp. And I contacted him, I said, I don't know where you're sourcing your Black Orps from, because I know most of the Black breeders in the country. But what you're advertising, the picture that you have on your website is an Australorp. So you're already starting from the wrong point. And they're like, Oh thank you. We'll get it changed. I don't know if they ever did. But point of the story is that you're dealing with folks who are not necessarily well versed in the breed themselves. They are trying to fill a demand, right? So they're going to source birds that may not be the top of the line. And in order to fill that demand versus caring whether or not it actually meets the written standard of what it should look like. It's same with some of the imports, right? I'm not trying to smash anybody's name here, but. Back when I first started, importing birds was still a really big thing. And there were a lot of people spending money to do it, but they were, again, it was quantity over quality. How many of these can we churn out and send to people and make a profit on it versus let's import the best stuff. So what they were importing was some of the lowest end stuff from the countries they were importing it from. Because those were the people that were willing to pay the money to get it imported. So a lot of that new people don't pay attention to that. And unfortunately they do get burned very easily. They spend a lot of money on hatching eggs. They spend a lot of money on chicks. And then they don't get what they thought they were supposed to be getting because they didn't do the research into where it was coming from.

  Carey Blackmon: 19:53

  They got somebody's culls.

  Sara Batz: 19:56

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's not to say that I don't sell culls. Most breeders I know sell culls, but for me, a cull, if I'm selling you a breed quality cull, it is a bird that doesn't have any DQs. I would breed it myself, but I have something better than I'm keeping, right? I'm not selling you a show quality bird. I'm just not. I may sell your 4 H or a 4 H show quality bird, one that will probably, not to toot my own horn, but I've seen this other breeders do the same. You sell a kid a bird that's going to wipe the floor with all the other kids that show up to county fair because those kids are buying hatchery birds. Because their parents are buying chicks in February to be ready for the late summer Whereas you had a parent come to you and buy bought a properly already mature or maturing bird That's gonna be miles above what that kid the other kids are bringing in. It's not because that bird is something I would keep Because it wouldn't, otherwise it wouldn't sell it. But yeah, they're buying culls. And unfortunately, people have to stop before they start purchasing things and start thinking about why are they getting it. What is it they want out of it, right? If you just want a pretty bird in your yard that's going to lay you breakfast every couple of days. That's fine. But if you want something that you can go somewhere or that you can start your own line with and breed and be Close to that standard or be at least closer to that standard then yeah, you're gonna spend a little more money You're not getting show quality eggs. There's no such thing You're not even getting you know, when you're talking about eggs and people buy and I found it I bought hatching eggs It's not a criticism, but they buy hatching eggs expecting that they're going to get, a showstopper and if anything hatches at all, you're better off to buy a started bird that you at least can see which way it's going versus, I hatched hundreds, absolutely hundreds of birds a year and I might keep 50 and I average. Of the different breeds that I raise, I average about 600 hatches a year. That's only cause I don't have a bigger barn.

  Carey Blackmon: 22:14

  You have actual exhibition birds. So the ratio that you have is better, for somebody that's ordering hatching eggs and hoping for the best. If they order a dozen and all 12 hatch out, you might have one that meets that quality.

  Sara Batz: 22:30

  If you're lucky, if you're lucky.

  Carey Blackmon: 22:32

  Yeah.

  Sara Batz: 22:33

  Yeah. And, I do also do a lot of projects. So I raise a bunch of stuff because I'm just trying to get all of those genetics to fall, as many of them, the right ones, as many of them on a bird as possible, and so that's a numbers game. Any, it just is none of my birds are perfect. None of my birds are even, if you take this picture of the standard and you lay one of my birds, eh, they're close. But they're no means finished. So that I can just take those two finished birds and breed them together. And boom, I'm going to get perfect chicks every time. And even that doesn't work, right? Cause you're, again, you're talking about genetics. When you're talking about how many genomes that a chicken has and you have to get all of those right ones to add up together. And that's just. the probability of it happening every single time is slim to none, right? So even those breeders that have those perfect winning birds every single time doesn't mean that when they breed them together, they're getting anything worth reproducing because that's not always the case. It's just not. The genetics of it is more complicated than that. And it's like, I used to have racehorses. I didn't race them. I had broodmares. But you can take a winning horse and you can take another winning horse, and you can breed them together and that thing won't outrun a fat man, right? Not to insult any fat people out there. I'm no slim person myself. But what I'm saying is, just because this is a top winning father and this is a top winning mother, you breed them together doesn't mean you're going to get anything worth looking at. get a good Sunday dinner. That's about it. Because again, it takes understanding how those genes fall together. And if you're mixing lines that's always a huge risk there too, because not all lines cross. I learned that hard lesson in rabbits, right? I took some top winning recs and I bred them to some other top winning recs and everything that came out was, dinner. Because genes don't always mesh together well, or you'll get those recessive start popping up that you didn't see it in this line and you didn't see it in this line. But when you bred those two lines together, now all that stuff from 10 generations, 20 generations ago, bubbles to the top. And now you've got a whole bunch of stuff you got to get rid of.

  Carey Blackmon: 24:48

  I'm a huge fan of line breeding.

  Sara Batz: 24:51

  Line breeding. Yeah. Once you've solidified what you want. Once you

  Carey Blackmon: 24:57

  get your birds what they need to be and get it all the mess tangled out, I've seen people that have good looking birds and they're like, I'm, I need to bring in new blood. I need, I'm looking for a rooster and I'm like, no, that's not how that works. You're fixing to start all over.

  Sara Batz: 25:18

  Yeah.

  Carey Blackmon: 25:19

  Don't do it. Keep it clean. And then there's

  Sara Batz: 25:22

  other things like my friend Angela and I, whatever we've done over the years, our birds cross really well, right? We've had, we've sold individually birds. Like I sold a male to this one person and she sold females or vice versa. And then they're producing stuff. That's really nice. There's something about what we've done in our individual breedings that cross well, but that's not always the case. It, it just, this is where. Finding someone who you like what they're producing and developing a relationship with them and understanding what they do to get where they're at is going to be beneficial if you want to do more than just have yard birds.

  Jennifer Bryant: 26:08

  I want to circle back for one second because we are geared towards newer chicken keepers. When you were talking about the English, you classify everything as English what you're talking about is under the classifications under the APA how we show. Correct. Cochins would be Asiatic, the Morans are continental. Continental,

  Sara Batz: 26:33

  I think. Yes,

  Jennifer Bryant: 26:35

  they're continental. Orpingtons fall under the English class. Correct. When you were talking about English, you weren't talking about what we see on Facebook, the standard bread, the hatchery, and the English Orpington. You were talking about the classifications.

  Sara Batz: 26:48

  Correct. And so what ends up happening is people will will try to lessen one over the other. Oh I want English Orpingtons or you breed to American. Okay. That's fine that if that's the way you want to do it, but understand that Orpingtons as a whole are English. They come, they the breeder was the creator was from. Orpington, England. It's a real place. There's no H in it either. It's a real place. Kent, it's in Kent, in Orpington, right? When we talk about classification of chickens just like in AKC, when you're talking about dogs, right? If you have a pointer, it's in the sporting group, right? If you have a, whatever, a Cocker Spaniel, it's right. They have their own groups, right? Just like chickens have their own groups. Like you said, Asiatic, Continental, Mediterranean, English, right? So Orpington falls in the English classification. Now, when we talk about what you want to raise, what standard do you look for, right? Do you, when you look at this person's birds and it's Fluffy and it's got no real tail and it's got a short back and whatever. Okay. Now you're looking at more of an, or the European style of bird versus the American style, which tends to be a leggier, tighter feathered bird. Depending on which judge you ask, because some judges prefer the bird I have which is a little looser in the feather. My birds clearly have a back, they have a tail, they have a tail angle, but they tend to be a little fluffier as we like to call it in in the Orpington world, we have fluffier butts. But which is why, again, knowing the standard is important, right? Because our standard says that for Orpingtons, they can have fluff. It can't be excessive, right? Excessive is relative, right? All of these terms, when you look at the standard, unless it's got a specific number It's relative a shorter back, a moderately long shank. All right. Those are in relation to the bird itself. Does it look out of proportion to itself, right? The one thing that the Orpington has in the APA standard, and it was taken out in the 2014 standard, but it has since been put back in under extreme protest from myself is what we call the two inch rule. And what that means is. It's not excessive fluff as long as at least two inches from ground to the bottom of the fluff The amount of leg is shown. So if you have at least two inches of leg showing you can't be penalized in the show hall For being too fluffy, whether a judge likes it or not, because some judges want them to look like Rhode Island Reds. They want tight feather, tight body bird. That is not what the Orpington is meant to be. But there are other people who want to see that very heavy, all the way to the floor, can't see their feet feathering, which is what the European trend is. Now, that being said, that's not what the standard in England says. That's not actually what the French standard says. That is what breeders have started breeding to. that extremity, right? That going over the top with their breeding. And so that's what's showing up in the show halls. And so that's what the judges are having to judge and place. And then so that heavy feather bird wins. And then people go, Oh, this is what it should be. No, it's not. Not if you actually read the standards. And if you look at, if you go to the UK website and you look at the birds that they have Pictured as far as the drawings, just like the APA has, as far as what's the ideal, it looks a lot like our birds. There's not that much. What's happened is over the years, the trend has changed. And so those shorter backed, real tight, V looking from the neck up, back up to the tail, and then all the feather covering their feet, that's a trend. And that's what breeders have been breeding towards in Europe. And so a lot of people like that here. Again, there's no, not judgment one way or another, but you have to understand what you're wanting to buy. In order to know who to buy it from. And then using things like I want English Orpingtons. No, what you want is the heavily feathered fad that's currently running through Europe right now. Interestingly enough, this is an argument that is as long as this breed has been in this country. Literally, if you go back to the early 1900s poultry magazines about Orpingtons, The same argument. Oh, these heavy feather birds are going to come over here. They're breeding in cochinsins. They're gonna ruin the Orpington It's been an argument for literally a hundred years Literally, if not longer, so there's nothing new under the sun in poultry. Nothing at all It's what a person prefers Buy what you like to look at because you got to feed it.

  Jennifer Bryant: 32:18

  Take your bird to the show. Just find a show close to you. I think the most I've ever paid for a show is three dollars a bird.

  Sara Batz: 32:26

  There's some that'll do five, but usually they're double cards. But yeah, it's not an expensive adventure.

  Jennifer Bryant: 32:33

  Take your clean birds too. Clean. And don't just take them out of their sand baths. Take them, give them some fluff and some cleaning. And take them to the show and just watch what happens and see what else is there. And I think that's the worst that's going to happen. You had a little fun on a Saturday morning and decide it's not for you. Don't go back, but you may just decide, hey, these are my people. We get to just sit around and talk chicken all dang day,

  Sara Batz: 32:58

  which is the fun part. I don't, this is why I don't show any other animal because any other animal requires me to be more involved with the actual showing part. Chickens, nope, clean it, put it in a cage, now let's sit around and talk about chickens for two days.

  Jennifer Bryant: 33:11

  Exactly, yeah. Is there anything, oh, I do have one more question. We talk about the breed standard, is that on the website or do you have to buy the standard from the APA?

  Sara Batz: 33:25

  Okay, so it is not, there are some parameters like weights, Is listed on the website. The APA owns the publishing rights to the standards for breeds here in the United States. So therefore we cannot reproduce that. So you can either buy a standard from the APA itself, or you can go on like eBay. or even Amazon and buy an older standard. I would caution if you're going to buy a standard that's much older than say 20 years or so, make sure that it includes all of the changes because over the years there have been certain years where changes were made that might not be reflective. If you buy a reproduced copy of the standard from 1934, you're going to miss some of the changes that were made in the fifties and sixties and even seventies. And they may be not minute, but they also could be something that's major that's going to change whether you breed for this trait or that. For the most part, the Orpington standard has remained fairly the same for a long time. The two inch rule, I think got introduced in, I want to say it was 56. I have standards just before and just after, and the ones before don't have it in there, but the ones after do. And right now, no offense to the APA at the moment, but there's a big brouhaha about the current standard. So I wouldn't rush out to buy it. There's a lot of errors in that. So your best bet honestly is to find a mentor. mentor. I've been living in northern Ohio too long. They don't pronounce the T in the town of mentor here. It's better. Find yourself a mentor that has been doing this a minute and ask them just to look at their standard, right? Maybe they can give you some pointers that way or not supposed to do that. Again it's an expensive book. It's an expensive book. And if you are someone just starting out it's, I didn't buy my first standard. I was probably 10 years into it because I just reproduced what I like looking at. And I didn't pay so much attention to the showing aspect of things. I've actually only been showing, oh my goodness, since heavily, Like purposefully, not just the weekend day trip thing since 2017. So I haven't really been showing in the grand scheme of things that long. I just bred what I wanted to look at cause I had to feed it. And that's been my mantra with everything is breed what you like looking at. regardless of what anyone else thinks. Now, if you want to be serious and you want to start showing, then yes, you do need to do those other steps. You do need to find someone who knows what they're talking about, who is breeding birds you like to look at, and maybe is actually winning with those birds. Because there are a lot of people that breed pretty birds that don't actually Progress with them, right? They don't actually go anywhere with them. And that's not to say that every time somebody wins, it's because it's the greatest bird on the planet. It just happened to be the best bird there that day. What you want is to find someone who wins consistently, right? One of the most disheartening things I ever, realized was I, there was a breeder who I thought was like the pinnacle of Bantam Cochins. And I saw this person showing and yeah, the birds were fabulous. And then the next year I saw the birds that they brought and they brought a whole string of them. And I'm like, they are so inconsistent. Like literally just this variety, 20 some on birds and they were all over the map, right? If a person is breeding so inconsistently, they may be winning, but that's because they're bringing the best bird that shows up on a regular basis. It doesn't mean that their breeding acumen is all that great, right? There's a difference between being a good showman and being able to make a bird look really good. And being somebody who can reproduce that on a consistent basis. I know plenty of people who can show and they, their birds are conditioned. They win. But when it comes to the breeding pen, it's very lackluster. And that's where you have to get into. If you're dependent again, it's, what do you want to do? Do you want yard birds? Do you want something pretty to look at? Do you want to create your own line? Do you want to show? And maybe have some fun just on the side on the weekends, couple of weekends of the, out of the year, or do you want to breed something so that 20 years from now your birds are still around. And that has a lot of, that's an ebb and flow. That's a process we all go through, right? When I first started, I had six red layers that I had gotten for free. From a guy who my landlord knew who wanted to get rid of him because they stopped laying and I'm like, what do you mean? They stopped laying. He said they stopped laying. I'm like when I went to go pick him up, it's because they were on mud. They had no water and he was feeding them whole corn. No wonder they stopped laying. Within a couple weeks, I had him back up and they were, they laid for three more years for me. But we all start in our different places and that's what's important is figure out one, what you like looking at, what you want to have in your yard, and then do you want it to be. A hobby. Do you want it to be an expensive hobby? Cause that's, there's a big difference there. Whether or not you just want to have some pretty birds and buy some hatchery birds to replace them every couple of years, or do you want to start in the process of pens and separating and incubating and growing out? And cause It is an expensive hobby if you want to go that route. But if you are going to go that route, your best bet is to find someone who, again, is breeding what you like to see, is consistently breeding them, and doing pretty decent in the show hall if you want to go to that level of breeding. Because there is no purebred, okay? There is no purebred Orpingtons. If it looks like an Orpington, it is an Orpington. They don't do pedigrees. And that's one of the things I think for a lot of people who are coming over from dog world or horse world into chickens yes, they, their wallet likes it, but sometimes it's hard for them to wrap their mind around that. That we don't it's about what it looks like, not necessarily what created it. You got to figure out what you want to do and then go in that direction because there's all levels, right? Which is. One of the fun things about chickens, you can do any area that you can start at the lowest 2 chicks at a tractor supply and have a lovely yard full of pretty birds. Or you can start looking at breeders and spend 200, 300, 400 on a really good pair of birds. I've done both. Don't tell my husband. Don't tell

  Jennifer Bryant: 40:34

  him. He doesn't need to know how much. No, we don't tell them those things. Is there anything else that you want us to add in or was there anything you said you want him to edit out? Because he can edit it.

  Sara Batz: 40:49

  No, honestly and. I'm fairly straightforward. It doesn't matter whether you see me here or at the feed store or at a show, you're going to get the, you're going to get the same spiel if you ask, I haven't really changed my story much and in this whole time I've grown a lot and learned a lot, in the time of doing this. When I first started, I just wanted pretty birds. I was on Backyard Chickens back when it was its own website. And that's where everybody hung out. Cause Facebook didn't exist. And I saw Orpington's and there was a lady down in Alabama who bred them and she had beautiful birds and I wanted those birds. And I've never quite raised the level that she was. She's since retired from breeding. But. I'm pretty pleased with what I have on average. And I do have people who think the same because I get contacted a lot about getting birds. I don't have very many to sell, which I, cause I, I'm not a hatchery. And I think that's one thing that probably a lot of new people need to understand. Is that if you're going to a breeder, somebody who does this as a serious hobby they're not hatchery. They're, they don't, this isn't, I'm going to go on a website and order 15 that, and I want it delivered on this day. That's not how it works in our world as far as when we're breeding for ourselves. Cause that's, I breed for myself. The projects that I do is for myself. And it's. not to be able to sell them around the country for, whatever amount of money. If I have something it's usually first come first serve and it's going to be the fall because right now I'm still hatching and most people I know are still hatching. They're growing out for the fall for the breeders that they're going to keep and then whatever they're not going to keep and use themselves, that's what's going to be for sale. When you're talking about purchasing birds, if you want to impulse buy something, that's what the hatcheries are for. If you want something of better quality, that's going to look like it's supposed to look, then you need to find a breeder and you need to have patience and you need to build a relationship with that person because what it boils down to is I get. Dozens of emails every month. I get phone calls. I stupidly put my phone online once And so I get random calls all the time it's the person who shows that solid interest wants to learn wants questions answered as far as How do I do this or where do I do that so on and so forth versus how much? Generally speaking for me, and this was the same when we had dogs that we bred and sold, if your first question to me is how much, I'll get back to you because to me, that's I work hard to do what I do. I spent a lot of time and money and like I said, I've been doing it for 15 years. That's a lot of my personal self into what I'm creating. And so I want somebody who's going to value that. They don't have to be a breeder. They don't have to want to go and show all over the country, but they need to value the effort and the work that I'm putting into my birds and most people that I know are the same way. If you're serious about wanting to have something more than a hatchery bird, then you're going to have to put a little effort on your end to build those relationships and make those connections with people.

  Jennifer Bryant: 44:15

  Yeah, I haven't been doing it as long as you have. We've had chickens off and on. Basically my whole life. But I have my cochins. I spent the money up front. My cochins has come from Jerry and Jamie Matz and my Orpington's come from Scott and Jerry. And I'm not overly happy with exactly. They don't look like I want them to look. So I'm fixing to do a sub line with from somebody else. But, people do travel quite a distance to come get my Cochins because they're never outcrossed. They're still technically Jamie's line. But I don't advertise. If somebody wants them and I happen to have some and they're willing to travel to come get them, I'll sell them. But if they don't, we just eat them. Yeah.

  Sara Batz: 44:59

  Because that's what it is. Or I've got, there's a little Amish auction down the road for me and those folks will buy them, fatten them up and eat them, so they don't go to waste, at least somebody can use them that way. But I think what happens when people are excited. And they're new and they want to get into something. That excitement tends to overrule a little bit of the process they should go through to make sure that one, they're not getting ripped off and they are getting what they asked for. And that's where the folks have to just take a step back and go, okay, what do I really want and where do I want to go with it? And it may take you a little while to figure it out. I went through all kinds of breeds. Oh my gosh, I drove my husband nuts. I bought the cackle hatchery surprise for probably five years running because I just wanted to figure out what I liked and what it always boiled down to is no matter what else I've had peripherally, I always come back. I've always had black Orpingtons. I've had barred large fowl cochinsings probably 10 years seriously breeding them for the last six or seven generations. The birchens, I picked them up about the same time, about seven years ago. And that was only because I couldn't find it. In a Orpington. And I didn't, I love the pattern, right? That's why I have Bertrand. Cause I love looking at the pattern, but I didn't want to dub. So I wasn't going into old English and I wasn't going into moderns. Although I've had a couple of moderns. I, the idea of dubbing just was not something I wanted to do, which in order to show you have to do for them, if you're talking about showing hens and cockbirds, you, they have to be dubbed and I just didn't want to, I didn't want to do all that. So that's why I have the Cochins. But if. You see me at a show and I'm prepping featherleg bandoms. You will hear me cursing. Why am I doing featherlegs again? Because they are a pain in the rear, right? You have to keep this feathers in decent condition. And even though I keep mine, mine don't run around in the mud and all of that kind of stuff. They're on the ground, but they're in a barn. They still, they break their feathers. You're cleaning poop and all of that stuff out of their feathers. Yes, it is a frustration, but I love the pattern. And it's a lovely pattern. So I have those birches and I have the silver blue and then I've been working the salmon's probably I'm on my seventh generation there too, I think. Because I saw them online. You can't get them properly here in the United States. The ones I saw were in England and I was like, that's beautiful. I want that. So I'm like, how do I make that? And that's what I've been working on. But again, I do that for me. So if somebody is interested in what I'm doing and they want some of my birds, for me, again, this isn't just me speaking here. If you want something that I've got, then you got to talk to me a little bit, right? It's not I'm just not, I'm not a store. I'm not a store. I'll sell it if I have it. But if I don't have it, then, that's just what it is. I've gotten to be that person. I used to think when I first started.

  Carey: 48:07

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

The Featherman Equipment Story

Such an interesting story based on need and then a small business! We hear the story from the beginning and get all the interesting history.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  0:14

  Mm.

  Monica: 0:22

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of eggfoam dot com. Your trusted source to ship hatching eggs safely. They have several sizes available from small button quail to turkey size. Their shippers are cut to fit into United States Post Office complementary boxes to make your shipping a breeze. Check out eggfoam dot com

  Jennifer: 0:43

  Okay. Alright, so we're here today with David from Featherman Equipment. David, you want to introduce yourself and tell us about your business?

  David: 0:52

  Thank you, Jennifer. I'm David Schaefer with Featherman Equipment. The business supports small farmers like I was for 35 years. Learned the hard way that I learned the easy way that I love raising animals on pasture. And when I finally raised chickens that my customer base just expanded exponentially four years in a row, it doubled the only, only thing about chickens, you can have a great return, a very short turnover cycle, seven weeks and a few days They don't kick or bite. Easy to work with. There's just one drawback and that's getting the feathers off and the guts out. And there wasn't anything out there for that when I first started. And we made a lot of our own equipment and long story short we stumbled into the business of solving the problems of processing. And it's been a business from heaven. We love it. We feel very sympathetic with the people that are, you're doing it. We're on a mission to heal land and put better food in front of the, in front of people. And just everybody raising poultry wants to do. And so it's it's been a very gratifying journey. Lots of twists and turns and. And I had no idea I was ever going to do it, but I'm loving it.

  Jennifer: 2:09

  What kind of birds do you have?

  David: 2:11

  Right now I just have a small flock of Bielefelders that my wife bought. I never would have picked them out, but they're good birds. But I always I only had a few layers in my past life. This farm is, a hobby farm, obviously, the one I have now is just eight acres, but I've been on a couple of farms, grandparents 520 acre farm was where I started and cut my teeth and learn how city kid can make every mistake in the world, and then I moved after 20 years there to I did homestead, a farm, built a straw bale home off the grid, composting toilets, the whole thing. And there I was raising a thousand Cornish cross per year on pasture. And cause that was the legal limit. And all my customers wanted the birds sold out easiest. And we're in the market for some new layers. And I'm not exactly sure what kind, wifey's in charge of the layers. She picks them out. I'm sorry. Say again.

  Jennifer: 3:12

  What state are you in?

  David: 3:14

  We're in Florida now, central Florida. We've been here for two years. It's hot as can be right now. I don't know how people work all day. I really don't. I came in at 8:30 this morning dripping and I went back out for a little bit more, but it's rough. Maybe I'm soft, I don't know.

  Jennifer: 3:32

  No, Carey's in Alabama and I'm in Southern Middle Tennessee and it is just sweltering.

  David: 3:37

  Yeah. And

  Jennifer: 3:40

  where are you

  David: 3:40

  Carey?

  Carey: 3:41

  I'm right outside of Birmingham. I try to get the things that I need to get done. Before seven, eight o'clock in the morning.

  David: 3:48

  Exactly.

  Carey: 3:49

  And then I venture out again about five, four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Yep. Some days, not going to lie. I'll be out in my chicken yard with a headlamp because it's hot. Yeah, I get it.

  David: 4:02

  It got really hot in North Missouri, 107, 109. I just don't ever remember being this hot though. And consistently for so many days, there were only a few days of the year. In Missouri where it didn't get into the seventies at night. And we haven't had that yet here either, but still, it just I don't know.

  Carey: 4:22

  It's just, it's the humidity. Yes, it is. In, in the South, Florida, Alabama, our humidity is regularly 80 plus, even in Tennessee where Jennifer is. My father, he lives up in Missouri and their humidity is nowhere near that high. And to me, that's what really, that's what really hurts you. Is the humidity not so much the heat?

  David: 4:48

  Yeah, you can't cool. You can't cool.

  Jennifer: 4:51

  You did the thousand cornish

  Carey: 4:53

  All

  Jennifer: 4:55

  right, and you did not have processing equipment. How are you doing your processing?

  David: 5:00

  I was lucky enough in 1993 To go to the auction of Alice's poultry in Chilicothe, Missouri, and I bought Virtually all their stuff. And this was a little shop that, was engaged in commerce and people would bring in chickens and I don't know what they charged a buck and a quarter or something. And they put them in wonder bags and a wonder bread bags, so I bought a couple of big scald pots like 20 quart pots. I bought a drum roller plucker. So it was, it's about as big as a toaster with fingers sticking out that rolls and you hold the bird and feathers get all over you. And so I had my scalder, I had a pot, and I had the the plucker. and I had and I think I bought, yeah, I know I bought a, like a handful of really terrible old wood and wired crates, transportation crates. So that got me started. And what a painful start. Most people earn their stripes that way with a very unsophisticated set up and you can do it by hand. You can do it in a pot with a wood fire and you just you make mistake, you make more, you make a lot of mistakes and you have some birds that lose their skin. You have birds that you got to put cold feathers forever. And that, that's how I did it on a very cheap budget. And then I was involved in a farmers group, Green Hills Farm Project. They're still going on. We were all about grass farming and six of us went together and built a mobile processing unit and we got a grant. The first SARE grant, it was actually called LISA back then, Low Input Sustainable Agriculture, the very first series of grants. We won some money. We bought a 750 pick wick. Plucker, it was, I think, 48 inches in diameter. And we built our own dunking apparatus. We made a scalder out of a 55 gallon barrel and two, 3000 watt heat elements. We put a lot of effort into that, put it all on a trailer. We were going to move it around from farm to farm. It never moved. It was just big and clunky and awkward. I've got pictures of it, but it got the job done. Lots of mistakes. The biggest being that this plucker was designed for 15 birds and we were putting in four. And they were like kids on a merry go round. They were not rolling, and I'm rubbing my hands together for the people that don't have visual on this, which I guess is going to be everybody. It needs, plucking needs to have that action of the birds touching each other. That's why we tell people if they, the first question we ask, if somebody calls up Featherman and says Plucker's not working right! Feathers are all left on. And we said first question is, how many birds are you doing at a time? It's usually just one or two, and we tell them go ahead and put four in there and see how that works. And that usually solves their problem. Anyway we had to, we, it took us a long time to figure that out on that first big plucker. And finally, we did, and we decided to go from four to eight birds scalding. That over faced our scalder mechanism, our dunking apparatus. We did build a cage to hold eight birds and we could get them in there, but I had to help the darn thing go up and down, so it was like lifting weights. We did 160 birds a day and eight at a time. What is that, 20 batches of lifting weights for a minute each batch? Screwed up my back. I was, I couldn't get out of bed. And so then we went to see our Amish neighbor down the road, Ernie Kaufman and Ernie's family was doing birds, I think for a buck and a quarter. We helped them. They took 50 cents off for us helping out. And Ernie and I became great friends. And he after I'm throwing this all in at once on you, but Ernie and I went to see an auction old equipment not really old to us. It was new. But from a big outfit doing pheasants and quail in North Missouri. And it was, I bought a few transport coupes, but everything else was way too expensive. They had a giant stainless steel plucker and Ernie came home. He said, I do believe I could make one of those because Ernie was using one of these drum rollers, like I started out with too, and he was good at it. He could do a bird in 30 seconds. Darn if he didn't chop the ends off of a 55 gallon plastic drum set the fingers that he took off from his drum roller on a plate on one of the lids, the bottom of the, this, the plucker, the 55 gallon plastic drum, cut holes, put those fingers in there and made the first do it yourself homemade plucker. I've made plans, sold plans through Farm Show Magazine for, Five years, that was 1995. I said, somebody ought to develop this. This was 1995. I had no, no dreams, no interest in developing that, but I sold lots of plans for five bucks. And then one of those pluckers that from those plans was used with by Herrick Kimball, who wrote the anybody can build a mechanical chicken plucker, also known as the whiz bang book. Pluckers and a lot of people, I think you have one of those, Jennifer, I was just looking at you on Facebook, your blue pluckers.

  Jennifer: 10:00

  Yeah.

  David: 10:01

  Yeah, that's, that looks like a whizzbang pucker made from those plans. But you didn't know that The granddaddy of those was my Amish buddy, Ernie. Anyway, that was a really cool thing and that, that started me thinking about that and I know I've jumped off from the original question, but I'll tell you how we got an official start. The setup that we had that we used for the Greenhills Farm Project worked okay with eight, but like I said, I hurt my back, had to go through Ernie. And other people kept using the the machinery that we put together on a trailer, but I was going to Ernie for a while and Ernie made this other plucker and I developed plans for it. And then I'm not sure, I think it was about 99. Yeah, it was, must've been 1999 when I was on a trip to Asia at the Hong Kong farmers market. I saw all these vendors there, lots and lots of vendors selling their birds. They'd bring in live birds, they'd take them to this room on the first floor, giant three story, like a giant parking lot, this Hong Kong farmer's market was. And on the first floor, they had this room out of Dante's Inferno where they'd killed and scald the birds. And that was something else. They'd tie the chicken's feet together, five, five birds. And these all look like layers to me. And then they'd throw them in a big cauldron, like a pot you can cook a missionary in and stir them around with a paddle, like a rowboat paddle. And that guy. He knew exactly when they were done. The water looked nasty. He had two of those big pots, and I forget what kind of fire, I think he had some kind of coals underneath them. But Ernie, by the way, also scalded with a wood fire. And and then out of the scalder, they'd put him on this little like a cart, like a dolly that goes underneath the car, and then they'd, Pull those out and up some stairs and to their little stalls where they had one of these tiny pluckers, like I'd never seen before, about a foot and a half in diameter and little electric pluckers and they'd pluck them two at a time and then polish them up. Cause they didn't get a very good job done and polish them up. And I said, isn't that neat? And then we went on to my then in laws house in Bali. and stayed there for a week or two. And on the way to the airport the parents had to pick up something at the hardware store. And the hardware store was unlike any hardware store we have here. And right, right out in the front, it was about maybe 20 feet wide and a hundred feet deep, seemed and right out on the front steps were two beautiful cheap metal, but shiny steel pluckers, just like the ones I'd seen in Hong Kong. Like them, same size, tiny. And I said, look at that, and I got out and looked at it and turned it upside down and said, gee whiz, wouldn't that be great if I had a chance to get one of those? And what, I could have really used that. And I said to the guy, how much is it? And he told me, and man, I started thinking. I said how much for And he gave me a price. I don't remember what it was, but I thought about that all the way home on the airport and ended up getting my father in law to help shepherd a small container of those that I call the Featherman Jr. And that was either 1999 or 2000. And I put motors and belts in them. They were all belt driven fixed them in my shop and sold them all out within a year all right. So after I sold out of those imported Featherman juniors, two bird pluckers I got my friend Syl Graber, Amish buddy, to make one more like Ernie's, but a little more sophisticated. And I took it up to the McMurray Hatchery because at that time McMurray was selling the drum roller thing, but a little bit bigger one, as a kit on a stand. So That you put together and it was 795 and I thought, shoot, I can make this automatic one for, 400, I bet, and or, put a 100 motor in it and and sell it, have 500 in it and sell it for 8, like these guys are, and it'll be automatic four birds at a time. So we took the idea up to McMurray. That was a bold move for me and Sil I was nervous as a cat and he said, if you can make it look a little less farm shop, I know we'll, I know we can sell them. So we went back, happened to have, I had so many stars lined up for me happened to have a rotational mold company. One of these things where they have it looks like a carnival ride. It goes, turns in all directions. You pour a bucket of plastic BBs in and they melt, they put them in a 500 degree oven, they melt and they get flung out to the side slowly. And so it. It makes septic tanks and, hunting cabins and, deer, deer blinds and anything round anything that you can make a welded mold for, you can pour a, pour one of these rotational molds and make it. So that's what we did. We designed a base and a top. At that time, the only thing you could buy was a Pickwick junior for 3,600 brand new. And that would do four birds at a time. And that was just, a poultry budget. You guys know that you just, you can't spend that kind of money on your poultry. So that was the only thing out there at the time. And spent what seemed like to us a lot of money on making those first two molds. And it was a gamble. And I also, another one of the things that was really lucky for me was I had a buddy who was the Midwest sales rep for, oh gosh,. It was a major motor company and he gave me a multiplier as if I was doing 300,000 a business a year. He gave me a great price on motors, a motor that would have cost 700 cost me 180 back then, I think. And we introduced the Featherman at I think 795. And that was the only product we had for many years. I was a rep for Ashley equipment, so I could add a scalder. And then after several years and and the poultry man came along and made a cheap copy of the Ashley Scalar. I told Jim at Ashley that I'm sorry, but I gotta make, I gotta make a cheaper scalar than yours. And he said, that's business. And so anyway, we started making our own stainless stuff. We kept with the plastic pluck. That's how Feather man got off the ground for a long time. We, it was just a pluck. But now we have, yeah,

  Carey: 16:33

  I think a lot of businesses start. Out of some type of necessity. There's something missing and somebody has an idea, Hey, let me see what I can figure out. And then when you figure it out, other people are like, Hey, I want one too. I need that. And next thing you're making it instead of doing what you originally set out to do.

  David: 16:59

  Isn't that part of the joy of farming though? Discovering stuff on your own. There's so many needs when you're a, when you're a small farmer. And you can't go to the store every time you can't hire a, an electrician every time you can't,

  Carey: 17:14

  you just

  David: 17:14

  can't, you don't want to do it. You don't want to pay for it. And so you, it forces you to be creative. And my buddy Wilmer, who does some of the most sophisticated work that we do, he says, necessity, isn't the mother of invention. Desperation is

  Carey: 17:27

  that's right.

  David: 17:28

  Yeah. And There's no more desperate feel that I know of than when your equipment breaks down and you're processing birds. That is the worst. You spend all that time, raise them, give them the best life possible, take care of them during storms and get hung, getting hung up at processing is the pits and we, because we know that we design with that in mind, I see stuff on the market now that's going to break down for sure. That does break down and it's good in one sense. I know those cheap pluckers inside and out because I imported one, not too different from them. But I know what their limitations are. And I think it's great that people have a low ticket entry, a 300 tractor supply or 400, whatever it is. Entry with Yardbird and similar and I hope that they have a good experience with them and that they want to expand because that's when they're going to graduate to our level. So I have no grudge against all the imports. I knew they would happen. I had to decide whether I wanted to carry that or not, buy a container or two full of those little ones. We decided not to, and I don't regret that a bit. I'm glad those are out there, but it made me, it made Featherman go from like the cheap entry to a more high grade entry. And by, by the time the Chinese import started coming in. We already had 20 or 25 products and we were being pulled up into the stratosphere of bigger scalders and USDA inspection and stuff that I never would have dreamed of when I was raising chickens for. For sale at the farmer's market.

  Jennifer: 19:18

  So if you were talking to a newbie that didn't wanna do all of that stuff that you just talked about doing over the course of many years, So if they just wanted to do some Cornish for themselves and their friends or whatever and get started, what would be the first thing they would need?

  David: 19:39

  To do it yourself, a cone and a sharp knife and a big pot. And we have what we call a starter kit. And it's got the cone, the knife, and a shackles actually, because the shackles is you don't really have to have the shackles. It's a 35 luxury that keeps the bird off of a table or in a tray. Ernie used to have a, like a dish tray for each of his kids and they, each one was full of water and blessed his heart. Shackles keeps them from contaminating a flat surface, like a tray or a table a knife and a cone. I think a cone is essential. I have a lot of strong feelings about the way people dispatch birds. And I'm not a very good salesman because I'm vocal. about decapitation, stunning, shooting, pithing there's no reason for doing all those things that disconnect the brain of the chicken from the heart and the lungs. And I believe that when people understand that the normal brain function and heart lung function. really is essential for a good bleed out, then they don't go to all those extreme efforts of stunning. But unfortunately the animal welfare people have got in and managed to make stunning one of the tenets of organic or humane farming. And it's completely upside down. They're wrong about what they think their research is flawed, that they use to support it. And of course the industry loves them because Industry is all about stunning. If they couldn't stun, they couldn't have these blazing 175 birds per minute throughput, which is what they're all about. And so the humane people fell right into their sweet spot with saying, you need, you got to stun anyway. But I've got a better deal for the newbie than the starter kit. I think everybody should learn to do it. So I think everybody should have the starter kit and the cone, by the way, restrains the bird gently, like a hug. And this has proven our, one of our heroes, Temple Grandin, the autistic cattle pen designer when she was in college, she made herself a squeeze chute to calm herself. Have you guys seen Temple Grandin's documentary? Put it on your list. It's a great, it's a great Netflix. And Temple Grandin is one of the true heroes of the Of the small farm industry bringing her knowledge her understanding of how animals think and what they perceive as they go through these facilities. And a lot of people use her to design their facilities. Anyway, the cone is disoriented because the birds are upside down. It's like a gentle hug and there's nothing that compares to it for for restraining the bird during bleed out. That said the best deal going for start it for starters is to go to our rental page and featherman equipment where folks that have, you have our equipment. We post a, we post their equipment for rent for no charge. We have a map. You put in your put in your zip code and it'll show whoever's near you. And they'll rent you a 6, 000 set of equipment for a hundred bucks a day. That's what I do. That's what Courtney does. And our office gal, my niece in in outside of. Fort Worth and that's what Marie does at the shop in Jamesport, Missouri. We all have a set of rental equipment. We rent it out for a hundred bucks, our gamble. And we tell everybody bring it back better than you found it. Otherwise we'll keep a hundred dollar damage deposit. But and they always do. They, these are great people, of course. And they always honor that. And our gamble is if they get along well with it, and they can see an expansion in another income stream, they'll buy our equipment eventually. But it's a very cheap way to get great equipment. And,

  Jennifer: 23:32

  I'm on your map right now. You've got quite a few people doing that.

  David: 23:36

  We should have a lot more, Jennifer. And it's one of the, it's one of the campaigns I just haven't thrown my energy into. I really want to make a, an appeal for it because it just makes so much sense for you as an equipment owner. It's another income stream. We've had people buy an extra set of equipment. We have a I think it's a soil conservation service up in the Pacific Northwest. It's either Oregon or Washington State. They've bought three sets of equipment. Because they rent it out so much, and we love that. We love that. A small percentage of our owners do it. I think they are concerned that they're not gonna get it back in the condition it went out. And I get that, but I think there are ways to ensure, so anyway that's the easiest startup, and it really is super. Even if you just get a pluckers. Or you just get a scalder. Now you got to have a, but yeah. So learning the skill with crude equipment is good to know, no matter what, if the wheels fall off, that's a great skill. And you've got, if you've got chickens and they keep breeding, you've, you know how to feed your family. But. On a, on another level renting will show you who's close to you. You might be surprised probably make friends. You may help each other process and and you get to experience what we consider is the best equipment made just for what you want to do.

  Jennifer: 25:09

  So for a newbie getting started, obviously they need a knife. And the cone and you need a bucket. I'll just tell you that you need a bucket and

  David: 25:21

  Can't farm without buckets.

  Jennifer: 25:22

  No, I mean I do have that plucker now that was given to me by a friend that has gone now, but he gave me that and I don't know where he got it, honestly. But yeah, it works. It's a great little pucker.

  David: 25:36

  Yeah, it's one of the whiz bangs. It's a, it's got a belt drive, and you'll have to tighten up the belt every now and then, or replace the belt.

  Jennifer: 25:43

  I have to tell you, I have a trampoline spring holding it where it needs to be right now.

  David: 25:50

  Your idler pulley. Absolutely. The key with running one of those is you start it before and any plucker you started before you drop the birds in. You probably already figured that out. And the water. Yeah, if you started loaded, it will. it'll slip and it'll ruin your belt.

  Jennifer: 26:07

  You start it up and you have to have your hose going. And then you just drop the bird in there. And I think I've got 23 second videos, 23 seconds and they're done.

  David: 26:18

  I have. Plucking is really the easy part. Scalding is where the, where you have to really develop your skills.

  Jennifer: 26:25

  Yeah and it's the, so for people who are new to scalding, that is a trial and error thing. If you're at 150 degrees, it takes about 12, 14 seconds, 15 seconds, but if you start getting them too hot, it gets real messy real quick. You start. That's true, Jennifer,

  David: 26:46

  and when you say that, you have to also have a caveat that. you're, are you leaving them in the water for all that time? Or are they going up and down in and out of the water? So I do 150 degrees which is a little bit on the hot side to most people, 148 is how we set our scalders when they go out and we just tell people, even there, but if you go in and out of the water somehow, if you're holding them with your hands by the feet, or you're using shackles, which looks like you push h all the way under feet an jiggle it and then you li heads out of the water an for three seconds. Then y process to me is usually I think when you said 15 seconds, you were talking about just completely holding them down under water and jiggling them around for all that time. Is that right? I'm a swisher. I swish them in a swisher! I should have known you were a swisher. This is funny. Are you a one bird swisher or a two bird swisher?

  Jennifer: 27:54

  I'm a one bird swisher because we're old school. We use a turkey fryer pot. So there's only one bird going in there. But we have fluffy birds. So I swish them to get all those soft feathers on the underside.

  David: 28:07

  Yeah. Things I don't know. So you're talking about spent laying hens,

  Jennifer: 28:11

  we so I raise Cochins and Orpingtons for show, but then we have to eat the ones that make the cut.

  Carey: 28:18

  Yep.

  Jennifer: 28:19

  And so we actually pluck the heritage birds but we skin the Cornish, so go figure. So Cornish

  David: 28:28

  are easier to pluck, though.

  Jennifer: 28:30

  They are. I'm not dissing it at all, but just for the way we eat in our household, we just skin the Cornish, but the heritage birds, the broth that you get from the skin, the bones, and everything is so rich. We can't even compare it. We actually lug out the plucker when we go to do the roosters and stuff from the heritage birds.

  David: 28:52

  The main thing the newbie needs to know is that the age makes a huge difference, doesn't it? It does. So even in a Cornish, if you let them get older or like people say, redbirds pluck harder than whitebirds. It's not necessarily the breed, but those redbirds are 12 weeks old. The whitebirds were eight or seven. And so just those four weeks can make a difference in how those feathers are set. And on your spent hands or ones that didn't make the cut for whatever reason, those birds are quite old by then, a half a year at least, their feathers will be a lot harder to get out. Anybody who's plucked laying hands they've earned a stripe or two because it's a totally different, it's much harder than the Cornish. So

  Jennifer: 29:35

  how does your equipment do for ducks and turkeys?

  David: 29:39

  You just said a four letter word. God made ducks waterproof. Turkeys are no problem. Turkeys are no problem at all. But God made ducks waterproof. And the most important thing about plucking a duck is the molt. You have to hit the molt. You have to hit the molt. You have to hit the molt. Those are the three most important things about plucking a duck, or a goose. And the molts are at eight weeks and 12 weeks, but you'll know for sure when you see the little breast feathers getting pushed out by the new feather coming in. And I've never done it. I've not raised my own ducks. I've helped a couple of people pluck ducks, one with wax, one without. I've never felt really good about the job I did, but if you look in the store or at a fine restaurant, You're going to see, you're going to see hair follicles on all those ducks. And another secret to doing ducks, I think, is to use white ducks. Because if you use dark ducks it'll look like they're really hairy. White ducks won't show it. But they're so worth it. And let me give a plug for the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association. And the latest issue, I think it's the latest. No, this is March, April, is by probably one of the best duck men in the country, Ben Grimes. And he's, the article is demystifying ducks. There is so much great information in this magazine. Everybody, first of all, ought to have their animals on pasture, moving them every day. That's why we do the chicken shift. Put in the manure pinpoint precision where it should go instead of leaving yourself a chore and keeping the chickens cleaner and then yeah, like even ducks ducks, everything's discussed in this periodical, our newsletter, and I love it. People share information so freely and then online as well. It's a great resource. You guys are probably very aware of that. Appa. org best money you can spend.

  Jennifer: 31:49

  Carrie joined is part of the app thing. I'm not.

  Carey: 31:53

  Yeah, I like it. Yeah. I've definitely learned a lot from joining APA. They, I went to their show back in January and the different seminars that they had, I learned so much about pastured poultry, be it Cornish heritage birds, They had things set up all for all different stages of the bird's life to help teach people how to take care of them and how to manage it.

  David: 32:26

  Yep. It's getting more and more sophisticated every year, Kerry. I love that. I love the conference and The conference is, it just blows me away. The quality of people, the sophistication. My, my era was, we were feeding liver to try to keep the splayed legs from happening. And then Jeff Maddox and Fortrell came along. And that was history, so the problems I had are not the problems that the growers have today and they're, they're figuring out refrigeration and stuff like that.

  Carey: 33:01

  Yeah.

  David: 33:01

  They're so far down the road and so unafraid to do 5, 000 birds a year. Homesteaders don't need to do that. It's good to know there's very small scale people doing that. And chickens are the easiest thing to sell. They're the foot in the door for all the other meats you want to grow or vegetables or flowers or whatever, but Chickens are easy to sell. Eggs are easier.

  Jennifer: 33:26

  All right, so Let's see back to the newbie stuff So you have the chicken ships which would be how to move them around your field or yard in a controlled manner, controlled

  David: 33:39

  predator proof.

  Jennifer: 33:42

  So that canvas top is predator proof?

  David: 33:45

  Yes. Okay. A bear could get into it

  Jennifer: 33:49

  Okay.

  David: 33:50

  If I had to worry about bears, a raccoon could get into it, but I've never heard of one doing that. I haven't heard of a bear getting into one of these, but I've heard of bears getting into chicken pens. If I had to deal with bears I'd put a hot tape around the. A big piece and then just move within the big move within the hot tape.

  Carey: 34:09

  Oh, but yeah,

  David: 34:10

  no I do not tolerate any predation anymore. I've been involved. I've had so many predator attacks. I had eight Salatin pens and I lost a lot of birds in Salatin pens. I've had, I've been a part of an 8, 000 layer on pasture operation. I was a consultant for it, and we fought aerial predation. I started out I started out when I went to my, my homestead didn't have electricity there. We had eight solar panels, very small system. And I made a 20 by 40 foot PVC, called it the prairie schooner. That was the very first prairie schooner, covered with a big billboard tarp. It's cheap and I brooded in there and it worked. It worked great. I had to move my brooding into April late April instead of March or early April. But I got along fine with the little birds staying warm. The brooder kept them warm for three days and then it ran out of propane and they stayed fine on their own. Maybe I lucked out, but I'm a big advocate for brooding on pasture. Anyway Yeah, that model, the PVC prairie schooner, these folks with 8, 000 layers on pasture, built 22 of them, and they're great until they're not, they're gonna, they're gonna be destroyed sooner than later, sooner or later, and it's usually sooner, and yeah we fought predators, I fought predators in, in, in mine, owls and hawks, and I just decided didn't want to build a metal version of the prairie schooner because it was just too expensive. It was going to be 7, 000 or close to it. I actually built a smaller one that was about five and change. And but I decided that zero predation is the goal. And it's just no fun to, to do all the work we do and then have. Predators pick off your stock. So we went to we made the first movable chicken tractors, the Prairie schooners. That was about 2011 or 12 and two sizes. So I've been in that space for a while. And when the 10 by 12 aluminum coops came out, I'm looking out my window at two of them right now. I couldn't believe people would pay for that. And then. I talked to my friend, Rosanna Bauman at the conference, you were talking about Carey, but two years ago, and I said, Rosanna, did you see those Alumi-Coop and she said, yeah, can you believe how expensive they are? And I said, no. And she said, my sister bought one. Rosanna's a. I think she's a German Baptist. She's some plain plain folk group in Kansas. I visited their farm a couple times. Garnett, Kansas. Rosanna's the superstar. I met her when she was 18 years old and she's just set the world on fire with her own operations. She's got a beef plant and a poultry processing plant. Anyway, she said, yeah, my sister bought one and I went out and looked at it and you know what? I think it's worth it. I said, no kidding. And I just couldn't get out of my head. And so we became dealers. And as I said, it was good and not so good. We couldn't ship them and they're too expensive. So we made a less expensive version by. Instead of buying expensive pre made pipes, we took a sheet of aluminum and with a sophisticated program, it figures out where all your pieces go so that you have the least drop, the least waste on that sheet. And we cut it into C channel instead of a whole tube. And so our costs are a lot less to do that because we have this great how to write fabricator and not only are the costs less, but we're A lot lighter because of that as well. Same strength of aluminum members, but a lot less weight. Anyway, so yeah, I'm really excited about it because to me, it's the next step after you've had a coop and raised birds close to your house and fought predation, even with a stationary coop, everybody does. The, these things are. I guess weasels can get in there, but I don't hear of weasel attacks very often. I had one once, I think, but no, I've only had one predator attack on, on the aluma coop, and it was within the first two hours of when I put that out there one of the little babies was small enough to get her head through the So like the one inch screen and I know a hawk, a red shoulder, a red shouldered hawk got her and cause I just found a headless body. And then I had the hawk sitting on top of that little coop for a couple of days, it would come looking for heads poking out anyway yeah, virtually predator free put the manure where you want it. The chickens get a daily salad bar. In addition to their the ration that you give them. Oops. And and a clean bedding every night. It's just it's the highest level of stewardship husbandry. I think that you can do, and it takes a learning curve to get there and be willing to pay for it. It's still a lot of money, but it's not as much as anything else out there. So we've, at Featherman, we've always been extremely sympathetic because we've lived through. Homesteading and making a living out of selling pasture based animals. And we're not here get rich on, on our products. We're here to solve problems and help more people be on the land. And that's what really turns us on.

  Jennifer: 39:54

  So that's one thing that I am hearing and I like is that me and you are similar in the way that we promote the products that we use. We're just not somebody that's a businessman that sees a niche in the market and sits at his desk in New York and wants to fill it with. With imported stuff. We're actually out there using it. You're using your equipment out of necessity I have foam that I created for shipping eggs, and I use that And kerry has a need and found Feed and minerals and everything. And does that. So we're similar in that sense that we're actually using the materials and we know that they work and we're putting them out there on the market for other people.

  David: 40:42

  Yep. To me, that's, that's thrilling, isn't it? To identify a need, come up with an idea of your own that, that, that addresses it and then actually. make it happen for other folks as well. To me, it doesn't get better than that. I benefit from you. You benefit from me and the community. The community of small farmers is such a beautiful thing in this fractured, fragmented, crazy world we live in. We, we can we know, we can get online or get on the phone and talk to sane people like us

  Jennifer: 41:17

  We reach out to people, same crazy chicken

  David: 41:19

  people.

  Jennifer: 41:21

  We reach out to people who are actually doing it though. They know, and they know, hey, you can put a point on this thing to fix it, or you can shift it this way to, to fix this and tweak it, And

  David: 41:34

  We're still at the beginning stage, we really are. There's so much more that, that can happen. We're all still pioneers. I'm convinced of it. There's just a lot yet to be figured out. And feed, feed, by the way, Carrie, did you say Carrie was doing stuff with feed? Yeah, that see, that's always been a mystery to me and it still is right now because I only have a few birds I can't order in bulk and I know I don't keep it. I had it's too old by the time I'm using the last of it. I don't like it. And the only way I rationalize all that is that I move them every time I'm out there, sometimes four times a day.

  Carey: 42:14

  And I know

  David: 42:15

  they're, I know they're picking up stuff because they get excited every time I move them, but I'm, I feel pretty inferior about my feed management. If you can help me on a, the small scale the 20,

  Carey: 42:28

  do you know bergen Farms, he's down in Florida. He actually brings some feed down from Pennsylvania that is formulated by Jeff. Huh. So look them up. He sells it in his farm store and that, I don't know exactly where y'all are in relation to each other, but that's a feed that was designed by Jeff. And he feeds it, he does turkeys and broilers on his farm.

  David: 43:03

  Okay.

  Carey: 43:04

  Okay.

  David: 43:05

  I have some other folks, Dave and Ginger Shields. You probably remember them from, is it the, if it's the same feed that they do, cause they're, they deal with Jeff as well.

  Carey: 43:16

  Yep, it is.

  David: 43:18

  See, they're not, they're two hours for me. I actually am one of their customers. I drive 38 miles to their most southern point to, to buy meat from them. And it's not worth it for them to bring me a sack of feed too. But I'd like to ask them,

  Carey: 43:34

  If they're bringing you some chicken they can bring you a back or two of feed as well, don't you think? I'm sure I know both of them. They're great people.

  David: 43:41

  No, they are. They're wonderful. They're superstars. They're right up there with Polly face in my book. Yeah. Yeah.

  Carey: 43:48

  It was great to meet you today, David.

  David: 43:50

  Yeah. There's Ruby. She's the star. It's great to meet you too, Carrie. I've seen your, I've seen your name around and probably seen your byline on A few APPPA conversations. Maybe that's where

  Carey: 44:04

  yeah, I know I've seen you

  David: 44:05

  at the conference.

  Carey: 44:06

  Yep. Yep.

  David: 44:08

  Thanks for having me guys. I applaud your mission of helping the homesteaders start up It's a confusing amount of things to, place to juggle for the newbie. And I know it, I've been there and want to help however I can. And I support what you do. I think it's great. All the information exchange going on.

  Carey: 44:31

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Hybrid Chickens...

Hybrid chickens are a cross of two breeds to gain a specific result. They have their place but its important to know the pros and cons of them.

• Transcript

  Jennifer: 0:00

  Hi, and Welcome to Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Jennifer Bryant, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Carey Blackmon. And we're here to help you get all the information you need. To grow the healthiest, happiest, and best quality birds possible.

  0:16

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:23

  All right. So today we're going to talk about chickens. Imagine that we're going to talk about hybrids, how to make the crosses, what some of them, what some of the results you get, things like that. I know Jennifer has done a hybrid chicken. I have one that I've been messing with. And so we'll go from there. How are you doing Jennifer?

  Jennifer: 0:50

  I'm okay. It's been a couple years since I did a hybrid chicken, but I'm not opposed to doing them again.

  Carey: 0:58

  It's fun. That's actually what got hybrid chicken, doing stuff with chicken breeding is actually what got me into quail because I could see the results faster.

  Jennifer: 1:09

  Same.

  Carey: 1:11

  It's like the inner mad scientist in me. That, that was interesting.

  Jennifer: 1:18

  Let's define hybrid for people who are new to birds and may not understand what we're talking about, but that just simply means crossing the genetics. Could cross two different breeds, two different color varieties, or even if you had two distinct lines, Say of Orpingtons, you, and you cross those, then that would be an F1 hybrid. So each time you cross one should be for a reason. The reason could be for breeding purposes to get a show bird, to get more breeders, to fix a genetic flaw that you're working on, or it could just be simply, you want to see what you're going to get when you put these two birds together.

  Carey: 2:03

  Yeah,

  Jennifer: 2:05

  It's pretty simple. You do the Dela Rosa hybrids, right?

  Carey: 2:10

  Yep.

  Jennifer: 2:10

  Those are across of Rhode Island Red and Delaware?

  Carey: 2:15

  That is correct.

  Jennifer: 2:17

  Okay. Does it work both ways or only one way?

  Carey: 2:20

  My purpose behind that is I live in more metro than rural area. And I have a lot of people that live in downtown that want chickens, but they're not allowed to have roosters. So the whole thought process behind the Della Rosa was something that I could sex right out of the hatcher. And with that, I use a Rhode Island red rooster and a Delaware hen. The hens come out red. Roosters come out white and it works great. The birds, I know exactly what they are when they come out. The, it only, I haven't tried past three generations to see if it continues to be sex length like that. I'm guessing the answer is going to be no, because in theory it shouldn't. But it works and a lot of people really like buying. I can guarantee you it's a red pullet. So that was the reason why I started that. And I had the Delaware's for meat birds. I was raising them for that. And I had some Rhode Island Reds that were not show quality, but they were some really good roosters. Great personalities. The temperament was there. I could put three or four of these things in with 10 pullets and they would not fight each other. They would not fight over the hens, really good temperament. So I put them into that program and it does really, it works. It's cool. People like it. Those and some other. 5 chicks actually paid for my hatching time CT 180 incubator.

  Jennifer: 4:33

  Yeah. People who only can have pullets, girls, I mean that the sex, so what we're doing is we're using the sex linked genes to create a auto patch when we do something. So I do the same thing with quail. I put an Egyptian rooster over pharaoh hens and the offspring, The Egyptians are girls, and the pharaoh phenotype is males, because they're split. But you can't see that when you look at them. So the dark ones would be males, and the females would be Egyptian color, which I call blonde, but I think technically they're red. But they look blonde to me, so anyway, so hybrids. Chickens, they serve a purpose. And they're done on purpose by hatcheries. The reason why I wanted to talk about them today is because if you're new to chickens and you are thinking that you have to order from a hatchery to get your chicks, Started or you stop at tractor supply or whatever and get the impulse buy chicks

  Carey: 5:47

  A

  Jennifer: 5:49

  lot of those birds in there are not breeds They are hybrids so I was looking on some of the websites and The ones that look like a copper Maran because everybody wants those chocolate eggs They're calling them dominant coppers, rustic ramblers mystic Marans. Let's see, there's a few different hatcheries that do it, and they may look a lot like a CoppoMaran, but they are not. They might have the wrong skin color, they won't be feathered all the way down to their outer toe. They'll be brassy. They might have a purple sheen to them, which you don't want on any chicken breed. Honestly, you want the green sheen. They will probably lay a darker egg which is why people like them. And there's nothing wrong with them. We are not implying that there's anything wrong with them. We just want to explain that when you get these, Mystic Marans, I see them a lot. They are not Copper Marans. They are a cross between a Barred Rock and a Copper Maran.

  Carey: 7:11

  And

  Jennifer: 7:11

  when you breed them, there is no telling what is going to come out what it will look like. What it barnyard mix, but won't be a Copper Maran. So that's a soapbox of mine is people just don't understand. Now kudos to the hatchery that I'm looking at for calling them hybrids. Occasionally I will see them referred to as this is a hybrid breed, which I don't think is the correct terminology because it's not a breed. It's just a hybrid bird. The other one that I found was called an austral white Which is crossed between a black australarp and a white leghorn Again it's a hybrid it's meant for egg laying For its docile behavior I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm just saying that it's a cross and it won't breed true. You can't, they won't all come out uniform. So if I breed my Orpingtons, or you breed your Rhode Island Reds, I know that if I put these two together, And so do you. You're gonna get an Orpington or a Rhode Island Red out of them. There's no question. If you put a Mystic Maran with a Mystic Maran, could theoretically get some with Barim on them. You're gonna get a hot mess coming out of there.

  Carey: 8:47

  So

  Jennifer: 8:50

  if you think that you can buy a Mystic Maran and take it to a show, it's not going to work. Totally different animal than what you will see at a show.

  Carey: 9:00

  Yeah, it is. Those, I really hate it for people because a lot of times people order those birds from a hatchery. And, a lot of the hatcheries will even say exhibition quality. Bye. If you take a hatchery exhibition quality to a Black Copper Maran show you're going to notice a big difference between those birds and your bird. The same with the Rhode Island Red. If you, there's a hatchery out there that charges a beautiful, shiny penny for their exhibition line of Rhode Island Reds, but when you get those and you hatch them out or you get them as chicks, they, You can put them between, you can put them side by side with a standard red and notice the difference.

  Jennifer: 9:52

  Yeah and you could, in theory, if you had a long lifespan ahead of you, take those birds and breed them into something. magnificent through lots of selection, but I don't know anybody that has enough patience to do that.

  Rip Stavey: 10:09

  Hi there, fellow poultry enthusiasts. I'm Rip Stalvey 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 Carrie 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 Carrie and Jennifer.

  Carey: 10:38

  It's Mandelyn, she works with the American Bresse and when she got those, she's been working with them for eight or nine years now. And, she's been breeding for table traits. And so she's culled really hard throughout her period of time doing those. To be able to get the larger birds that she has. It's six, eight year process. Cause she, she told me that she has only gotten to that point. Within the last two years, which tells me five to six years is how long of heavy selection, heavy coaling, and everything else that it took to turn a bird that was essentially a hatchery bird into what it's supposed to be.

  Jennifer: 11:35

  And eating a lot of chicken. So when we say that we take a bird or a lawn and breed it. To what we want, like Mandelyn here in five or six years, don't think that you can hatch a dozen chicks. And move it along. I would, I've never asked her, but I would be willing to bet that she hatches hundreds of chicks per year to find next year's breeders.

  Carey: 12:05

  I know that she has a 1502 GQF and the whatever, the hatcher that compliments it, and in hatching season. She fills them up constantly. I mean she does she hatches out hundreds of birds a year

  Jennifer: 12:26

  Yeah, and you have to in order to pick the best ones so the other popular hybrid that We see A lot with newbies that go and they get them from tractor supply, the bins got mixed up and they didn't realize they got them is the infamous Cornish cross. Even in its name, it tells you it's a hybrid and that's a cross between a Cornish and a white rock. And that's in simplistic terms. It's, they, the breeders have been bred to a point. Purpose and to create that cross that we know the Cornish cross and nobody really knows exactly what those breeders. I've never seen the breeders. Have you seen the breeders?

  Carey: 13:15

  So at one point in time I wanted to find me a breeding set

  Jennifer: 13:21

  Because

  Carey: 13:23

  I know The Cornish cross that you see when you buy the day old chicks, that is not the parent stock and I wanted to get like a trio or four of those so I could hatch out my own Cornish cross, dang. I can't find anybody to sell that.

  Jennifer: 13:45

  No, I think you have to get a license and, get really business close with those breeders. And I don't even know where they are. I had

  Carey: 13:55

  somebody tell me that he could pull a favor if I really wanted it. But it, he said, you better be ready to spend money because people that when they do sell those breeder sets, he said six, 800 per bird.

  Jennifer: 14:14

  Wow. Wow.

  Carey: 14:17

  And I was like, Whoa,

  Jennifer: 14:19

  But you can, you can sell those chicks like hotcakes, too.

  Carey: 14:24

  Oh, yeah.

  Jennifer: 14:25

  Those particular Cornish Grasses, those are bred for meat production, to put on a large amount of meat very quickly. And it's a hybrid that is bred to do that on purpose. And it's the same concept as a mystic Maran to lay the dark egg, the Cornish cross to put on the meat. You have a purpose for doing that hybrid. You cannot keep a Cornish cross and breed them together and get more Cornish crosses. It does not work. I know there are a couple people that have tried to keep rangers and have gotten a couple eggs from them, but I've never heard of anybody hatching out any more rangers. I don't know anything about the ranger parent stock. Do you know anything about them?

  Carey: 15:19

  So I know that there is a Rhode Island Red in that mix, and I'm not 100 percent sure what else is in that mix, but yeah, it's, if you do, you're just going to get more Rangers. Now I know somebody that used the ISA Browns. The, for egg production and what they did because they wanted to hatch out more is they got a Rhode Island red and a white legger two roosters, threw them in the pen with about 40 ISA brown hens and they, those roosters were very active and they hatched out a lot of chickens. The rooster chickens that hatched out went off to go be table birds and the hens laid a lot of eggs and are still laying a lot of eggs today, two years, two years down the road from this science project.

  Jennifer: 16:33

  Interesting. I did the rangers last year, didn't care for them, didn't care for the personalities, didn't care for their size, didn't care for their taste, and, but I can say that I did it, I tried it, and I won't do it again.

  Carey: 16:47

  Yeah.

  Jennifer: 16:49

  All right, so here's the big question for all the animal rights activists, the vegans, and everybody else that wants to get on the bandwagon. Is what happens to all those male chicks? If all the people just want the girl chicks what happens to all the male chicks?

  Carey: 17:06

  Sell them.

  Jennifer: 17:07

  Yeah, we still sell them. They don't, I, I don't know of anybody that puts them in a grinder, at least not here in the States. Now that could be something that happens in other countries, but as far as I know, it doesn't happen here.

  Carey: 17:19

  Yeah, I don't know about that, but there's a large population of people they want those. Just regular barnyard chickens. They want the roosters. They want to grow them and they will process them because, in the Hispanic culture, they typically would rather have a rooster over a hen when it comes to putting it on the table. They say it tastes different. But I know there's a guy local to me that has a large Hispanic clientele and they actually want him to leave the head intact with the bird when it's processed, because They want to see that it was in fact, a rooster.

  Jennifer: 18:08

  Interesting. So I hatch out hundreds of birds a year to pick my show birds and my breeders and everything. And that leaves me with a lot of males. We do grow them out and eat them. I have found that canning a rooster makes the meat really tender. And so that's what we use them for. I do have a family that comes and buys extra roosters from me. He will take as many as I can provide to him, as long as they've never crowed. If they've crowed, he doesn't want them.

  Carey: 18:47

  So he wants them young.

  Jennifer: 18:48

  Yeah. So he'll come get them in three or four months, which is odd because, it's hard for me because, it's hard for me to do a selection at that point. So the only thing I could really do is You know, if they're too, they're the smallest ones or just for whatever that's a, you need to go back and listen to the selection video or podcast for that. But it's hard to select that young age. So sometimes he's not overly happy with that, but he doesn't want them if they've grown. So interesting. That's

  Carey: 19:24

  definitely a new one. Yeah, I haven't heard that.

  Jennifer: 19:28

  Yeah. Let's see. So I have a friend that manages a hatchery in Ohio, and I had emailed him in preparation for this podcast and asked him what they do. With all the little male babies that they end up with because people just want to order the females And he said luckily that they are able to sell them. They offer a rooster pack for people who want to just grow them out for the table the And then whatever they can't sell that way they have an amish community near them that takes them And grows them out for the same reason, but there's no grinding of chicks or anything like that. That the media wants you to think is happening, at least not as far as he is concerned.

  Carey: 20:24

  Yeah, now I do know that does happen with older birds like quail. A lot of people use that for feeding their animals. But it's no different than hamburger meat.

  Jennifer: 20:43

  No, you just grind it up. It's just meat is meat. Now my, when I do the sex link catch on the quail and I ship out, that was one of my best sellers was the quail. Hens that did leave me with a lot of males and that's where the reptile feeders came into play. So I actually was able to offload them to reptile people.

  Carey: 21:12

  Makes sense.

  Jennifer: 21:13

  We don't grind here at Brian's Roost either. Everything gets used.

  Carey: 21:18

  That's right. Everything gets used. At one point, didn't you cross an Orpington and a Cochin?

  Jennifer: 21:30

  I did. I had an extra Cochin cock bird and I had some yard Orpington hens. And so I just put them out in the yard together. So when I don't have any use for them in a breeding pen, I just throw them out in the yard. And so he got, his name was pretty boy at the time. And he has gone off to live with a lady about an hour from here. And I want to say he's probably pushing four years old at this point and he's still going good. But he was with some Orpington hens and all of the offspring came out blue. with gold flecks and they look like they had necklaces on and then they had gold flecks sometimes around their thighs And I call them black gold because they had all the fantastic qualities of an Orpington. Good mamas lay eggs regularly good size, they were heavy, and the poachin broodiness, which is just crazy how broody a poachin is. I don't even know how that breed exists, honestly, because they lay four eggs and they go broody for the rest of the summer. We get enough chicks out of them is crazy. But gosh, I sold those things like hotcakes, but the second generation, I'm sure, was just a hot mess. There's no telling what came out of those.

  Carey: 22:59

  And that happens a lot with a lot of different crosses like that. When you do something, make a hybrid cross, it's easy to know what F1 is going to be. But F2 or F3 is like a box of chocolates.

  Jennifer: 23:14

  Yeah. I saw a post this morning and I engaged with him and he didn't really understand. And it was a quail post, but it's going to apply to chickens. And what he did was he ordered jumbo eggs from four breeders. So he would create genetic diversity. And I was trying to explain to him that all he did was create a bunch of hybrids. And made a hot mess is what he did. And there was no reason to spend the money to buy from these breeders he was buying from. If he was just going to mix them up, because all he did was undo the work of the breeder. Now he never, as far as, I haven't checked in a little bit, but as far as I know, he still doesn't understand what I'm trying to tell him. I bet you

  Carey: 24:03

  he watched some videos on spiral breeding, and that's what he was trying to do. And that is not for.

  Jennifer: 24:13

  Actually, he breeds dogs and he was trying to apply his mammal breeding logic

  Carey: 24:20

  to it.

  Jennifer: 24:22

  Exactly. And but for the sake of this podcast, the reason why I bring it up is because what he was doing was creating hybrids.

  Carey: 24:31

  Because

  Jennifer: 24:32

  my line of jumbo browns, and Rebecca's line of jumbo browns, and your line of jumbo browns, they're all going to be different, because we all select for different things. Our, even if we say we're selecting for the same thing, our eye is different. And so the genetic makeup, will be different. And when we cross them, it's a hybrid. They're going to have hybrid vigor. They're going to look different. And you need to keep those separated from your main line.

  Carey: 25:06

  I would recommend to somebody that if they were wanting to do something like that in a bird, get them from the same person, find some that you like, get them from the same person and. Try it out before you mix in another gene pool.

  Jennifer: 25:32

  Yeah, that's subline.

  Carey: 25:33

  Yeah don't do that. Don't undo what that person spent years doing. Try it out. You probably going to be happy and it's going to save you a lot of time.

  Jennifer: 25:46

  Yeah because the breeders already put in all the time.

  Carey: 25:49

  That's right. That's why they charge so much for

  Jennifer: 25:52

  eggs. Yeah, exactly.

  Carey: 25:55

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.

Scammers on The Homestead

Scammers are all over and they try to take advantage of buyers and sellers. Join us as we talk about the different types of scams and how to spot them.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Intro: 0:14

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:23

  Today we're going to talk about what's getting to be more and more of a problem on the homestead. Scammers, people trying to scam the farmers and stuff like that. And all the scammers that are related and in the poultry industry, we're going to touch on some of those and some of the ways that you can protect yourself. How are you doing today, Jennifer?

  Jennifer: 0:44

  I'm good. I haven't been scammed yet this year. Have you?

  Carey: 0:50

  No. I've had some pretty colorful attempts. I have had. I've had all kinds of stuff. But no, I'm so most people don't know, but by day, my big boy job is I teach cybersecurity and networking at one of the local high schools. So I have a little bit of an advantage than what a lot of people do. And we'll talk about some of that stuff today. And, you and I talked, what this, when did we come up with this idea about three weeks ago, maybe?

  Jennifer: 1:25

  Yeah,

  Carey: 1:26

  We were comparing the different messages and stuff like that, that we had gotten. And we thought that it would be a good idea to share. So we'll let's share what are, what's one of the ones that, what was the one that you were telling me about when we originally. Started the conversation.

  Jennifer: 1:45

  So I had a pretty elaborate scam happened to me last week, actually, but I want to save that one for the end. So for, because that was, let's start at the easy ones and work up to these elaborate ones. The easy ones would just be, people convincing someone to Venmo them a hundred bucks for some eggs. And the buyer doesn't do their due diligence to make sure they're a legitimate seller, that they even exist, that there's even chickens. So in my opinion, that would be 50 percent the scammer and 50 percent the buyer's fault, in all honesty.

  Carey: 2:29

  Yeah, because a lot of times in a lot of the chicken groups, I see people They just ask, Hey, does anybody have such and such? They're looking for hatching eggs for, a green legged silky or whatever it is. And within the first couple of posts, you'll see, I bought such and such from so and doing business with them was absolutely amazing. Check them out at dah.

  Jennifer: 2:55

  Kindly inbox me.

  Carey: 2:58

  Yeah. Kindly inbox me.

  Jennifer: 3:01

  So if you say kindly inbox me, run away.

  Carey: 3:07

  We're all, we're, most of us are chicken people. And how many of us use the word kindly drop me an email. Kindly send me a text message.

  Jennifer: 3:16

  Yeah, that's

  Carey: 3:17

  definitely a red flag.

  Jennifer: 3:19

  I can't say that I've ever said that actually in my lifetime. I'm suspecting that is something through a translator that is doing that. Just a suspicion on my part though. So that would be just the quickest scam to get the most the most naive people out of their a hundred bucks. I think the next one would be where they then say, Hey, I need 50 more bucks for the shipping company.

  Carey: 3:51

  Yeah. Who uses a shipping company? Like that. I'm like a shipping company. Do you mean FedEx?

  Jennifer: 4:03

  So there is no shipping companies. Your choices for shipping live birds, you only have two choices. One would be express you post office express. And then the second one would be a private transport company. And there are, what, I don't know, maybe a dozen of those around I've dealt with one.

  Carey: 4:27

  They do exist.

  Jennifer: 4:30

  Yeah. You can get easily get references on them, but just general shipping company terms is no, that's not how that works.

  Carey: 4:41

  And I've even heard of people talk about. They've been sent to these websites and I was given a tracking number that, yeah, and I've seen screenshots of these ultra cheesy. shipping companies that, you put in any number and it gives you the same vague in route to stuck at your neighboring states border. needs additional funds to cross the border. I'm sorry, but if you're going from Alabama to Tennessee, there's nothing there at that state line, not the border, because that's not how we talk. So that should be another red flag. They have way stations for commercial vehicles to stop and weigh, but they don't have a place for you to stop with poultry to check them at the border. So You know if for some reason you do get hooked into something and somebody starts telling you they need additional money to get across the state border, let that be a red flag for sure.

  Jennifer: 5:53

  All right. So the next, so just don't randomly send people a hundred bucks and definitely don't send them 50 more for a shipping company. Just cut your losses at the a hundred bucks and move on. Now, the next thing would be. The most popular one out there is the Davis farm. Davis farm chickens. Davis farm quail. The Davis farm has been around, I don't know, two or three seasons now, and people are still sending them money. Yeah, you hear about that one a lot. Chickens near you. Anything like that. Birds near you. Those are all scammers. We don't talk like that.

  Carey: 6:36

  And When somebody I'm not saying that they can't be legitimate and not have a website or at least a corny website, if you're ordering birds from somebody that shipping you birds, do some homework. Usually if you're ordering from an individual like that, there's a lot of cases where it's a specific type a modeled seacrested Orpington or, something like that. And this particular breeder says that they have it. Check that person out. If they're a reputable breeder, maybe they're a APA member or they have a website that has their NPIP number on it. I'm not saying that you have to have an NPIP to be a reputable breeder, but if you look at the flip side, why would you not? Because technically speaking, if you want to legally ship eggs or birds across state lines, You've got to have one. So if the person doesn't have it, that should be a red flag.

  Jennifer: 7:49

  And that's a good starting point. NPIP. is not a secret. You can. Anybody can go to the NPIP database. Just Google it. It'll come up. You can search by state. You can put in the number. You can put in the person's name, the address and all of that stuff is public record. Eso if anybody tells you that their M. P. I. P. Number is A secret? It is not a secret. Mine is 63-1120. All of y'all can have one. I write it on every box. I write it on all my pamphlets. It's on everything. It goes with me to shows. It's just like your driver's license number. It's not a secret. And if you go to somebody's

  Carey: 8:33

  willing to act like it's a secret, I that, that gives you my personal information, then clearly they don't have a clue that you can Google NPIP top in any bit of the information that somebody put on their license application. And now you have it all.

  Jennifer: 8:52

  Yeah. So that would be, I think, step one. It's not the end all be all, but that is, somebody refuses to give you their NPIP number, then that's a red flag, you need to walk away from them. Then if you do get it, look it up. And see if it matches. And if it does Google Earth the address. And see if it's real. I saw one the other day, and they went to go pick up, and they were at an old decrepit furniture store out in the hills. East Tennessee. Maps is your friend. You can do all of this without leaving the couch. Okay. So if you're going to spend a hundred dollars, let's say you're going to spend a hundred dollars on eggs. My opinion is Figure out how long it takes you to earn a hundred dollars and spend at least that amount of time researching the breed, the breeder, and how they're shipping it to you, because. Yeah,

  Carey: 9:54

  because if they're a reputable breeder and they should be charging a hundred dollars for a dozen eggs, they should be at least remotely well known.

  Jennifer: 10:07

  Yes, but don't bother them 50 times. So just a side note here, don't ask for 50 gazillion pictures because you're just not even going to get the chance to buy the 100 eggs if they are legitimate. So you have to do some of this on your own, but then, so next step, you're going to look at the person's pages. Now you can't go buy followers anymore because a lot of people don't realize that you can just go on the internet and buy followers for a dollar. So if they have an even number of followers 1700 and you come back tomorrow and it's still 1700 probably not legitimate. And if they have 1700 followers, which a lot of them have 1700, I've noticed, I don't understand what the magic number of 1700 is. I

  Carey: 10:54

  wonder if that's the$9.99 starter pack when you buy followers.

  Jennifer: 10:59

  Maybe it is. And then goes to their posts. Just scroll down 10 posts, say, and first of all, you're looking for angry faces. So angry faces is our way of telling you that this is a scammer. So if you see the top 10 posts all have angry faces, then that's what's going on there. If they have 1700 followers, they should have more than two likes or thumbs up or whatever on their top 10 posts. I mean, it's what is it? Like 10 percent net followers or something. So 1, 700 followers, at least 17 likes, on their post or whatnot. That would be 1 percent wouldn't it?

  Carey: 11:44

  I was going to say that'd be 1%, but we're not mathematicians.

  Jennifer: 11:47

  Yeah, we're not, you get what I'm saying. You don't have 1700 followers and only two. And they would probably be foreign names to look and see who's commenting and posting,

  Carey: 11:57

  When you look at those comments and post to see who they are, see if it looks like a robot type them, look at the wording that they use. Is that how you talk?

  Jennifer: 12:10

  They shouldn't have. 47 different breeds with all of the variety of colors. And if somebody does have 47 breeds, you don't really want their birds anyway. I'm sorry if that offends anybody, but

  Carey: 12:27

  Somebody has that. If you have, a breeder that I'm gonna say more than five breeds. If they don't have at least a couple full time staff members and a decent chunk of land, then they're not breeders. They're hatchers.

  Jennifer: 12:53

  Yeah, you might as well just buy from a hatchery.

  Carey: 12:56

  Save yourself some money.

  Jennifer: 12:58

  Yeah, and know that it's not a scammer.

  Carey: 13:01

  Yeah.

  Jennifer: 13:01

  Because you just can't put that much effort into that many breeds and do a good job. You can keep them alive, and you can physically have 47 breeds,

  13:15

  but

  Jennifer: 13:15

  they're not going to be what's the word I'm looking for quality. SLP for sure not.

  Carey: 13:22

  And I can say that from experience because when I first started getting back into poultry, I had these and I had these that I liked, but I also wanted to have quite a few others. And as I, I got all that set up and got infrastructure set up. I found out that, I'm one person

  13:41

  and

  Carey: 13:42

  I can't work with all these birds and make the selection that I need to select and do the things that I need to do. So now I've withered it down to three and three is a stretch for me. But it's three that I'm passionate about continuing that bloodline of that bird. The rest of the ones that I had have since gone on to either greener pastures or tabletops.

  Jennifer: 14:13

  And how many pens do you have?

  Carey: 14:15

  I have 16 breeding pens and five grow out pens, but now, with the program that I have now with my breeders. I may have no more than three or four birds in a breeding pen because I'm targeting certain things. Like I have one beautiful bird that has a crooked comb on the rooster and on the hens, they have perfectly straight combs that they got the right number of points, everything's great. So I know when I breed those birds together, the offspring is going to have perfect combs because they're going to inherit that from the hen, not from the rooster. I'm doing that type thing with those and, yes, you can hatch at a 10 to one ratio or 15 to one ratio, but you can't breed to that big of a ratio because you don't know what the crap you're breeding.

  Jennifer: 15:17

  That would, you basically just made my point that you can't have 47 breeds and Right.

  Carey: 15:23

  And that I wanted to say that so people know, Hey, this is why we say you can't, and this is my experience when I tried, because I don't like for people to tell me I can't, I wanna, don't tell me. Yeah. I can't. You can't productively do that.

  Jennifer: 15:40

  I have 28 pens and I only have two breeds in. one color each. And at max capacity, I am using all 28 pens. This time of year, I'm not. But here in a little bit I will have even more out there because the grow outs will be going out here soon. So different, we've went down a rabbit hole. Me and you like rabbit holes, don't we? Imagine that.

  16:06

  Okay.

  Jennifer: 16:06

  So anyway, so stay away from the people with 47 breeds just because you might as well just buy from a hatchery because then you don't have to even worry about if they're a scammer. And no, none of their eggs are worth a hundred dollars a dozen anyway. And they're going to tell

  Carey: 16:21

  you they are.

  Jennifer: 16:23

  Yeah. Yeah. So let's see, what's next on. So after you do decide that they're worth going into chat mode with, so you vetted them, you, you're comfortable with their Facebook page and their reputation. And don't forget, you can use the search function on Facebook and look them up. You can also look in the good egg, bad egg. Which I love to be a spectator in there, but golly, I hope my name's never brought up in there. I'll

  Carey: 16:54

  read through, I'll read through some of the comments and I'm just like, man, I feel bad for that person. Yeah.

  Jennifer: 17:00

  Yeah. If you're in a bad mood and you just want to feel good about yourself, go in that group. So anyway, look in there. All right. So now you're going to instigate a chat with them. First of all, you're going to want to see how their English is. And if you expect a barrier, then that's fine. But if you don't expect, an English barrier, then, just be aware of that. And we talked about the word kindly. I've got some notes here. So we talked about the word kindly. That is just not an English slang term that we use. Pay attention to that. And then ask them a dumb question. Silkies are supposed to have five toes. So ask them, hey do they have all three of their toes? And see what they say. If they say, Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you only want the ones with three toes? Then you know, you've got a scammer

  Carey: 17:53

  and like I want to say this We're not saying that you have to be an English speaker to be a breeder but what we are saying is if you've been in America and you're selling birds you will know the language, you will know how, what we think and how we talk. And when she's talking about, do a chat, if you're not a hundred percent sure, or if you're wondering, ask them if they would do a video chat and show you the birds. That's going to let you see birds. That's going to let you hear birds. And it's going to let you know the condition that they raise their birds in. You can use those decisions to, you, you may have a great. And everything else may say it, but when you video chat, you look and see that their birds may have coccidia because the chicks are in five inches worth of poop because they don't clean anything out and you don't want to subject your farm to that. Don't get them. And if they won't, I would be willing to say that if they won't send you a selfie of them with a bird or a video or video chat with you, and they're asking you for 250 for a dozen eggs, don't do it.

  Jennifer: 19:15

  No. So yeah, that's a good, that's a good point. The FaceTime now, I personally probably wouldn't do that. I don't sell hatching eggs off of my orphans or coaches though. I sell chicks, but if somebody, if somebody would persist and they wanted to buy birds off of me and I liked them, then I probably would do a video chat.

  Carey: 19:37

  Yeah, if they said, hey, I've been scammed a few times. Can you do this even just for 30 seconds? When it got convenient, I would entertain it.

  Jennifer: 19:48

  Yeah, because you have to understand that we're busy. I work Burge probably six hours a day. So if I have to stop and video chat, Yeah, it takes time all that stuff takes time. All right, so stick with the dumb questions, silkies have dark skin black skin stretching my silky knowledge here. Do also keys have black skin? I'm pretty sure they do. So I ask them, do they have yellow skin and see what they say? Yeah. That's what

  Carey: 20:16

  color their legs are.

  Jennifer: 20:18

  Yeah. Yeah. But you have to know, don't let them try to trick you and convince you that it's okay that they don't have black skin or yellow skin or whatever it is that they're supposed to have. Let's see. And then if you finally you've decided that yes, is legitimate as you can. Reasonably think that they are and you decide to pay them. Credit card would be the first choice.

  20:45

  Yes, definitely.

  Jennifer: 20:47

  Then you can just call, you don't have to deal with them. You just call your credit card and dispute it. If you don't get the product never use your debit card. I don't even have a debit card. Don't even ever use a debit card. Because then you're just asking for trouble. So then you're left with PayPal or Venmo. I don't use cash apps. I'm not familiar with it, but I assume it's about the same pay the 3%. Use the business

  Carey: 21:12

  stuff. Don't do the friends and family. Cause if you do the friends and family cash out like PayPal, even PayPal and Venmo, if you do friends and family. They're not going to help you if you get scammed, period.

  Jennifer: 21:27

  Now, if I tell you something is a hundred dollars and you send it to me business. And only send a hundred dollars you have to understand that they docked me the three percent So the trust or the insurance or whatever you want to call it that is on you so you as the buyer need to pay that three percent

  Carey: 21:52

  And I mean What's what's 3 when we're talking about the possibility of losing a hundred.

  Jennifer: 21:57

  Exactly. Exactly. And I would highly encourage you to do it, to me, that's just insurance.

  Carey: 22:05

  Another thing is a lot of them. We're starting to see, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are too, a lot of posts where it says, this is Facebook and we're admins shutting your page down dah. Click this link to validate it. Don't click that link.

  Jennifer: 22:26

  No,

  Carey: 22:27

  because when you click that link, you're going to enter in your username password, and then they have it, which brings up some other suggestions on your, all your social media, you should have minimum 12 characters in your password and you should have uppercase letters. Special characters like exclamations, pound signs, dollar signs, something like that. But don't replace S's with dollar signs, the at signed or the one that's above the two. Don't use that to replace A's because a scammer will realize that dollar sign at sign is S C or dollar sign C at sign scam. Don't do that. Don't make your password. And enable the two step verification, even if it's as simple as using, a text message to your cell phone, or there's companies out there that have physical keys that you can stick into your USB port and tap it with your fingers, you use stuff to protect yourself when doing anything online. And like she was talking earlier with a credit card, A lot of people, especially farmers, don't like to use credit cards. We like to pay cash, but here's the fact of the matter. If you using a credit card company's money and that money gets tied up from a scam, they're going to do what they can to get their money back as quick as possible. If it's your money that came off of your debit card, your bank is going to tell you we have 10 days to figure this out. Meanwhile, you may get your money back in 10 days, most of us work hard for our money. And if we lose a hundred bucks, we want to find it quickly, not 10 to 14 business days. So use the credit card for that. It'll protect you. That's why I use one when I'm traveling on the road, I pay it off at the end of the month, but. If somebody snags on credit card information when I'm paying at the pump. They're going to fight for it quick because they want their money back.

  Jennifer: 24:44

  Okay, my scam story was a year and a half ago, so it was at Christmas time of 2022. Yes, the week of Christmas 2022, and my page was hacked, and I couldn't get in. I couldn't get it back. Now, you have to understand that my page is monetized. The scammers are after the monetized pages. So what they do is they go in there, they take them over and they change it to their bank account information and then they get the deposits for it. So I contacted Facebook the best I can because nobody actually works at Facebook and was of no help. I did everything that it told me to do, worked with it for about, I don't know, four or five days I worked on it, could not get my page back. I was so mad. And finally one of my kids said, hey, I've got a friend who could probably take care of this for you. And so I contacted him. And he tried to do it correctly, like Facebook wants you to, and he was not successful. He ended up having to hack my page back. And they were, I guess the scammers were really mad because like for a week after that, all I did was get emails from Facebook going, somebody's trying to attempt to get into your page. Cause I, by then I had turned on. Two factor authentication changed my passwords. He had locked up my page pretty good for me. And he said, nobody should be able to bother it again. So make sure that you have that on. And if you lose your page, you. It's near impossible to get it back. So I guess at this point now what we're talking about is the scammers coming after the monetized pages, not just trying to scam a hatching egg buyers or chicken buyers out of their money. So you have to watch them coming after your page. So is there anything else you want to add before I talk about this really elaborate scam that got ahold of me last week?

  Carey: 26:51

  No. Talk about that and we'll close out.

  Jennifer: 26:54

  Okay. So there's a lady in Florida, she's a breeder and she had a really large following and over 10, 000 followers. And about maybe two months ago, her page was hacked. She was unable to get it back. So I talked to her about that and then forgot all about it. Last week the same thing happened to me. I got the Notification. Hey, we want to place ads on your page Would you be interested in that? We'll pay you up to 600 per ad. Come on Who doesn't want to do that? So I But at the same time I had her words in the back of my head, be careful. So I went through the whole thing and just so you know, you're there, I guess they're bots. I'm not really sure if they're real people or not. But the name of the website is monetizer. com and it's spelled funny. M O N E T I S O R. And they'll tell you, Hey, we're going to pay you for these ads. We'll send you three ads to place on your page. You choose which one it is. And then we will pay you. Pay you either by bank draft or PayPal or Venmo. It's super easy and everybody's doing it. That's that's an issue right there. So anyway, I looked at the website. And it is a legitimate website. It looks good and it's owned by another large company that is a website host provider out of, I think it was Delaware. So I went a step further and I said, okay, you, send me some sample Facebook pages with your ads on them. And so I looked at those and they did, they looked real. Cool. Then I said, okay, I've seen them go ahead and send me the information. And she says we have to have your email address. And I said, why just send it to me on the chat? And she said, no, we're not able to send it on the chat. It has to be through email. Now, what do you have to send that can't be sent on a chat versus email? I was like, okay, the whole time now I'm screenshotting this. To the breeder in Florida, and she's yep, looks the same. Yep, looks the same and we're talking about it and so I made up an alias, which is really easy to do an email alias and Made one up to it to him and within seconds I had an email invite to be an admin on their META Business page. Now I screenshotted that to her and she said, yep, that's exactly it. Don't click on it. So what happens is this is the scam. So Carey and I are co admins on our business pages. Now, if I get mad at him, I can go in there and delete his privileges. And keep myself as admin on all of the pages, basically. I essentially lock him out of his pages, but he put me as admin on them. In the meta Facebook, what is that app? The business app. The business app, okay.

  Carey: 30:32

  Meta business, whatever it is. Yes. Meta Business Suite.

  Jennifer: 30:36

  So I could very simply lock him out of it. I could do it right now while we're talking. Now what this link was that they sent me was an invitation to be an admin on their business page. So as soon as I did that, then they would have deleted me as admin, which would have wiped out all of my pages would have wiped out all of Carey's pages and really put the hurting on both of us. So I immediately texted Carey when all of this happened and I said make sure you don't click on any of this crap, but That is the scam. So the breeder in Florida Her original page She was never able to get it back. Facebook is no help to you to do these things So she had to create a new Facebook page for her stuff And They are still making posts on the original page with these ads. And so those links that they sent me for the Facebook pages with ads on them, that's what those were. Those were pages they had taken over and had placed the ads on in order to entice more people like me to click on them and lose my pages. Because I think I have four pages now and admin of several groups and stuff and so I would have lost all of that.

  Carey: 32:09

  I mean it, it gets deep. It gets real deep.

  32:13

  Yes.

  Carey: 32:13

  When when you messaged me and said, do you have two factor on? I'm I laughed and I said yes. But then the curiosity made me like, what the heck, where did that question come from? And then he started telling me about the, what all was going on. And I was like, man, they're. These folks are getting real creative if they put that creativity towards the job. They might actually make some serious coin

  Jennifer: 32:39

  So I have to tell you even as of this morning I got yet another email because what they're doing is they are making themselves look legitimate By using Trustpilot. So if you go on Trustpilot and look up monetizer, don't forget it's the SOR. They have I'm looking at it right now, seven total reviews. None of them are names that I can pronounce. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that those are not American names at all. I'm I don't know. But anyway the reviews are obviously made up because the way that they're typed. One of them even uses the word kindly. But then I went in there and I said, scammer alert. This is this page is a scam, and they will attempt to take over your made a business page, and they actually challenged it. And made Trustpilot email me for more information. And I gave the more information, which irritated them further. And this was their answer, which is now posted on Trustpilot. So you can go in there and look at it. And it says, we regret the issues. Kindly contact us on our site and we will try to resolve your problem because, which is not even spelled right, you have not provided correct information when I applied request details from you here, so it doesn't even make any sense what they're saying. But they're trying to get that review taken down is what they're trying to do.

  34:23

  The

  Jennifer: 34:23

  other thing is they told me that they had been around for several years. Now you can go to domain age checker. This is another tool that you can easily use to see if somebody is somewhat legitimate and they just made this website in January. So it's not even an old website.

  Carey: 34:45

  Yeah. You can look up who owns domains and see where they are as well.

  Jennifer: 34:53

  Yeah. None of this stuff is hard. You just Google it and this stuff just comes up. So for people trying to get started in chickens, you got to watch through the scammers and once you're Even once you're more, I don't know, savvy, and you've got monetized pages and stuff, you've got to watch for the scammers.

  Carey: 35:14

  Yeah, once your page starts getting to a level where you are monetized, they're gonna really start coming after you.

  Jennifer: 35:21

  Oh, yeah, me and you get texts or messages, daily. Easily daily, if not several times a day trying to tell us that our page is going to be deleted or we need to click on this link to verify our Facebook information or whatever. Just delete all of that stuff. That is not Facebook.

  Carey: 35:45

  All right. It was good talking.

  Jennifer: 35:48

  Yeah. Is there

  Carey: 35:49

  anything else you got to share about your experiences?

  Jennifer: 35:53

  I would just like to say that just don't think everybody's a scammer. Because me and you sell on Facebook, and we're not scammers. And there's a lot of great people on there. Just do your homework and don't just make blanket statements like everybody on Facebook is a scammer. Because I would say it's only 50 50.

  Carey: 36:13

  And I'll say this too, if you are working with somebody and they, if you don't have proof that they're a scammer, don't just start telling everybody that they're a scammer,

  36:27

  because sometimes

  Carey: 36:28

  when you ask a million questions and they have five other customers or potential customers asking 10 million questions, it's going to take time to get back. And that's legit too. But by all means, once you find out that they're a scammer, expose them. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.

Incubating Hatching Eggs

Do you need help with incubating? Beginner or having problems? We have tons of incubating experience and ready to help out.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:00

  Welcome listeners to another exciting episode of the Poultry Nerds podcast, the show where we dive into the world of innovation, creativity, and all things cutting edge poultry. I'm your co host, Kerry Blackman, and joining me today is Jennifer Bryant, and we're going to discuss some of the things that have worked for us in incubating hatching eggs. So buckle up, get ready to incubate your curiosity. and join us on the journey of discovery. This is Poultry Nerds, and we're going to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Intro Music: 0:37

  Mhm.

  Jennifer: 0:45

  All righty, so when the breeder ships you the eggs, hopefully they have chosen good quality perfectly shaped eggs that are clean but not been washed, and they ship to you in foam, pointy side down, and we're going to give the post office a lot of credit there, that they're going to keep the boxes the correct orientation but just be aware that they're going to get jostled. They're going to get dropped, they're going to get thrown, just assume the worst with your shipped eggs. And so when you receive them, You need to set them out in your room, pointy side down, and let them rest. You are going to hear people suggest anywhere from 8 to 24 hours. My personal opinion is just as long as you can stand it. I have rested them for 2 hours, and I've rested them for a day. So just whatever works. for your situation. Then the idea behind that is just to get the air cell to orientate itself back up into the fat end of the, of the egg and kind of stabilize there. Now if you're talking about quail eggs, I would say just after a few hours just go for it. If you're talking about your three or four hundred dollar a dozen chicken eggs, your specialty chicken eggs, or your turkey eggs, something big like that. Go ahead and candle them and see if the air cell is detached. And you're going to be able to easily see that if the air cell moves when you gently rock the egg back and forth. If you've never seen a detached air cell, what I would suggest that you do is just take one of your eggs out of the nest. And just shake it. Shake it like you're playing the tambourine on your vacation in the Bahamas after a few margaritas. Just shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it. And then candle it. And you're going to see that air cell is all busted up in there and you're going to have bubbles. And you're going to see it floating around in there. And if your shipped eggs look like that, probably not going to hatch. But, but there's a caveat there. What you're going to want to do is let them rest for the full 24 hours. And then you're going to get either a paper towel, cardboard. This is going to depend on your incubator too. You're going to want to hatch them. standing up, pointy side down, without the turner on. And that's very important because we want the air cell to stay artificially stabilized in the fat end of the egg. So if your incubator puts them on their side. Like say you have a Nature Rite 360, I want you to take the turner out. I want you to either cut pieces of an egg carton or circles from a paper towel cardboard holder and I want you to set those eggs up in there. And for the first eight days or so, I want you to tilt them very gently. side to side, maybe four times a day. And that's all you're going to do. You're just gonna take it from leaning against one side to leaning against the other side. We're not messing with them any more than that. You don't want to candle them. You don't want to handle them. You don't want your toddlers around when you're doing this. Those eggs are only gonna hatch If you do what I'm saying and leave them alone. Now, if you receive the eggs and the air cell is attached and it is, it is how it's supposed to be, then go ahead and just incubate normally. You're probably going to be okay. Now, when you get to the end at lockdown, which is what people refer to when you take the turner out and you, and you increase the humidity a little bit. If you're dealing with detached air cells, continue leaving them upright. Don't lay them down. Just leave them in the position that they've been in until they hatch. You shouldn't need to help them. Leave them be, let them hatch. If you did incubate them normally because the air cells were okay, then just lay them on their side. Hatch them like you would hatch your own eggs. Now, if we're talking about quail eggs, those suckers are pretty well hatch no matter what you do to them. So just throw them in there, they'll hatch. It's not a big deal. You know, if I got some shipped eggs, what kind of incubator should I use? If I'm wanting to get an incubator, you know, let's, let's say I don't want to spend more than a couple of hundred bucks because I don't know if I'm going to incubate a whole lot or not. What should I look at? What would be a good incubator? Okay. So if you're in the market for an incubator, I am going to tell you to buy the best that you can buy. And the reason why I say that is. You will use it probably more than you think you will because chicken math is real and you don't want to pay 300 for specialty chicken eggs or For 18 dozen quail eggs and put them in a 39 incubator. I mean it don't just don't do it Not very smart Well, we're going to, we're going to be nice and we're going to say, let's just be smart about this. Well, I mean, as a, as a good, good rule of thumb, I think somebody should be prepared to spend as much money on their incubators. They spend on their eggs, right? At least because the incubator is going to be around a lot longer than the eggs are going to be. I mean, some of the incubators I'm using are. 15 years old probably. I mean, you just keep them. Try to have some foresight. Look on Facebook. Now I work off of exit strategies. So look on Facebook, see what's selling. You know, the Nature Rite is always selling, even though I don't like them, but they do sell and they, they hold their resale value. If you're scared of buying a$600 incubator, because you don't think you'll use it, but you can't afford it, Go ahead and buy it, because I promise you, you can sell it for$500. So basically, you only spent$100 on that incubator. If you really hate it, you don't want to use it anymore, sell it for$500 the next year, and you only lost$100. So, I would just buy the best one that you can afford. Makes sense. Yeah, so chicken math is real. I can't say this. So in the beginning, I'm somebody that was a breeder here, locally, and this lady for Nature Right? 360. And that's, that's what she was doing. She, she had some hatching every week. And she did that and she, she, one day they had an epiphany that, Hey, you know, that she likes the GQFs. So she purchased the 1502 after selling all of her NR 360s. And I'm, I'm thinking to myself, well, if I go into it with that in mind. Wouldn't it have been better to just spend the money to get the other one the first time? I don't know. I mean, for me, I started out with the 360 because, you know, that's, that's what everybody online said to get, you know, it wasn't until after I got one that I, that I discovered that regulating on the humidity is atrocious. and I did that, I spent$250 bucks for a dozen eggs and I put them in a$150 incubator and luckily. All but one of them hatched, but now hindsight, I feel like an idiot because probably shouldn't have done that. So instead of doing what other people do, where they have multiple of those so they could incubate, I was like, Oh, well, let's see, chicken math is a thing. So I went and I still have the 360 because I do use it to test fertility and stuff like that. Cause it's. If it'll hatch in a 360, it'll hatch anywhere. And I got a hatching time CT series. I love it. The to me, the biggest thing about it versus the other is the humidity. When you, when it goes time for lockdown, like you hit the up button and it goes up, boom, your humidity set. You know, I'm kind of, if I think about it now, I probably wish I would have bought one of those instead of the NR360 in the beginning. Right. Well, my first incubators were free and they are the plastic ones that sit down in the styrofoam tubs. Like you think, I don't even know if you can buy them anymore. I, I still have them. I don't use them for incubating, but if I run out of hatcher space, I use them for hatching. It's hard to argue with free. It really is. I have three of them out there. GQF still makes one that it's about a foot and a half square. And it's styrofoam. I know. I used it in the incubator experiment. I didn't have a very good hydrate. I have a funny story about my first 1502. Yeah, you're gonna appreciate this being from Alabama and I'm from Tennessee. So, you know, we're all being infiltrated right now from all the Westerners, you know, coming out to the South because, you know, life's better in the South. And so this incubator, the 1502 went up on Craigslist. I Don't know in the morning and I just happened to see it and I messaged the guy or texted him and he said, yeah He said I'll meet you at noon and he was about two and a half three hours away and I said, okay I said hold it for me. We're jumping in the truck right now. He wanted$500 for it. And So we jump in the truck and we drive all the way to Jackson, Tennessee it was about three hours and we met him in the parking lot of a Walmart and he had moved out here from California and he thought that Southerners were stupid and we didn't know how to do anything. And I'm holding on to David for dear life, trying to get him to not say anything. And, and he was so good. And he's loading this 1502 into the back of our truck and I just kind of stand back and I'm watching him and he's just having a fit. And he loads The water system, and the racks, and the emu trays, and, I mean, probably$1400 worth of stuff in the back of our truck, and I'm just standing there looking at him, and I'm listening to him just blather on about stupid, and I hand him$500 dollars. And I let go of David. That man turned tail and ran out of that Walmart parking lot. David just cut loose on him after I closed the tailgate and locked the door. Now you knew what kind of deal that was. You wanted to make sure that he didn't mess it up for you. I know. I let him load it. He had so much paraphernalia with that, that incubator. It filled up the entire bed of the truck. But his plan had been to move from California to Jackson, Tennessee And raise emus, and he was going to be a billionaire raising emus. I mean, so, I felt bad when I got my 1502 because, you know, I think I spent$700 for mine, but this lady, She had bought it because she was into Bob White Quail and she wanted to hatch out tons of them. She had a huge outdoor Aviary and by huge, I mean, it looks like a batting cage for baseball and you know, she, her husband is in the military and he was overseas a lot and she had a triple bypass. Really, really bad heart attack. And she just, she said that she couldn't do it anymore. And I was like, okay. And she, she was, you know, telling me about everything that she got with it. And I mean, I have the five gallon bucket on top reservoir system that they have probably got about 15 or 20 of those wick pads that drive you nuts. I got six quail egg trays, six chicken egg trays. Six trays that look like you put a football in there. So that's probably like the emu or the ostrich ones. And I'm like, are you sure this is all you want for it? She said, yeah, if I that, yeah, I'll be happy with that. And I'm like, okay. I mean, I show up, she's got the thing plugged up at temperature with the humidity going to show me that it works fine. And I'm just like. Okay, I get it home. This thing is so new. I pulled the plastic off the window in the middle. Yeah. So, and, and to be honest for incubating, I like it. Because here where I am, where I've had it set up, it gets about 50 to 55 percent humidity with none of those stupid pads in there. And it's, it's perfect. So what we didn't talk about when I was talking about incubating the shipped eggs is the, the humidity. So everybody's humidity is going to be a little bit different. I incubate at 40%. If I'm setting the hatching time incubators are set at 40 percent and I hatch at 55, the 1502s, I don't add any water and they stay in the 30s. And then when I move them to hatch, of course they, I run it up to in the 50s at that point. But it's perfectly fine to dry hatch if you can keep it. I would say minimum of what, 45 50 percent to do dry hatch? And you know, there's a lot of people out there that swear by dry hatching. And you know, if you're in the south and it's humid, and you know, it's, it's gonna be 35 45%. Do a dry hatch. Fine. If you live, I don't know, Northern California, Nevada, somewhere like that, where it's dry as a bone, you know, your regular humidity is maybe 5 percent probably, probably won't have a successful hatch or dry hatching. Mm. But there's, there's people, oh, I, I dry hatch. I never add water. I never do this. And I'm like, well, where are you located?'cause that's the side of your story that you're not telling. Right. You know, for me, I have to use humidity because, especially in the summertime, because I am in Alabama and I don't like humidity, I have dehumidifiers in my house to, to try to pull some of the humidity out because I like to keep my house 65 degrees year round. And in the summer with the humidity without a dehumidifier. That's a challenge. Mm hmm with two commercial grade dehumidifiers It's not really a challenge. So I don't recommend dry hatching unless your humidity level is what it should be Yeah, you need you need at least I Mean, I would say at least in the 40s for for the end The actual hatching period. But I would definitely not go any less than say 25, 30 percent for, for any of it. Well, I mean, have you ever thrown a quail egg? Have I ever thrown one? I throw them at the pigs all the time. So like you have one that that's not in a real humid area and you do that. They're hard. They're like little bricks. They're little rocks. And you know, quail are tiny. They're, they're not going to be able to pop out of that. You have to have the humidity to soften the shell up. That's the way I look at it. Yeah, so the only way I found out how to dry hatch was actually just messing up my days. And I went out there one day and there's a whole bunch of little babies looking at me at the floor of the 1502 and I was like, well, I mean, if they can hatch like that, then why am I even bother trying to fight with the humidity? So, honestly, I think a more consistent temperature and humidity is most important, more important than trying to necessarily pinpoint a number and keep it there. I agree consistency is definitely key because my, you know, I incubate in my 1502 and it's somewhere between 50 and 55 with no pad, just, just straight water going into the one tray. And that works good for me. I know it's, you know, in the, the range of what works, so I don't mess with it. And because of the wide variety of what I do hatch, when I use my hatching time as a hatcher, it's set on 65. A lot of people would say that's kind of high for quail. And it is a lot of people say that that may be a little high for some chickens and for other chickens, it's about right. But. You know, I get really good hatch rates at 65%. It's not broke, I'm not going to fix it. Alright, I run 55%, but yeah. But I think any, when it comes to hatching, depending on what you're hatching, anything over 50 works. Yeah. And I mean I would argue that some 40 to 45 would work too. Well here's another thing, I drop mine a degree too at hatch. You go down to 98? Yeah, 98. 5. Hmm, if it works, don't, don't fix it. I think I read that in the Hatching Time Incubator book and I started trying it and my hatch rates went up. So I just kind of left it at that. But it kind of makes sense. I mean, so if a chick is incubating at 99. 5 and you're supposed to keep them at 95 for the first week of their life, right? Literally makes sense. Okay, well, they're formed. Let's start working them down towards the 95. I mean, how would you like to be born in 70 percent humidity and a hundred degrees? I'd say put me back in the egg. Yeah, let me go back take me back that makes sense. Yeah, I'm gonna do that I'm gonna lower, lower my hatcher down a degree. Yeah, see what happens.

  Carey: 20:36

  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.

Poultry Shows from Egg to Champion's Row w/ Rip Stalvey p.1

Rip Stalvey is an APA judge and in the Hall of Champions. We are honored he shares with us how to get started in Exhibition Poultry. His dedication shines thru in this great discussion.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  I have asked many times, many questions about poultry shows, up a backyard flock, what breeding should look like, all that kind of stuff. And today with us, we have none other than the legendary Rip Stalvey. Oh, geez. And we're going to talk to him about Poultry Shows from Egg to Champion's Row.

  Intro: 0:31

  Mhm.

  Monica: 0:40

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of eggfoam dot com. Your trusted source to ship hatching eggs safely. They have several sizes available from small button quail to turkey size. Their shippers are cut to fit into United States Post Office complementary boxes to make your shipping a breeze. Check out eggfoam dot com

  Rip Stalvey: 1:01

  Hi, Rip. How you doing? It's good to be here with y'all and I'm looking forward to it. What I would like to share with your listeners is information that I wish I had known when I decided to get into showing. And back all those years ago I started when I was, about 17 and I'll be 73 this year. It was very different. There was no internet, there was no instant information. You had to read a book or write a letter or call somebody. And It was a slow learning process, but I think one of the first things that I asked myself when I wanted to show poultry, why did I want to do it? And my biggest reason was that I had realized that it would help me breed better birds long term and continually improve my flock. I knew that I would have to get good birds, that I would have to learn how to condition those birds, and I'd learn how to breed those birds because it's not simply go grab a hen outta the yard and take her down to a poultry show. Now you can do that, but you're setting yourself up for to be disappointed if you do that way.

  Carey: 2:32

  And I've seen some that it looks like that's what they did.

  Rip Stalvey: 2:36

  It is no doubt. I did that. Yeah. So I knew better and it was. It was very disappointing for me because I thought, I had to show winter there and I didn't need place.

  Jennifer Bryant: 2:48

  So what do you need to get started then if it's not a hen out of the backyard?

  Rip Stalvey: 2:53

  You gotta have good genetics. That's the bottom line. I remember somebody convincing me one time I could, but, Pay$5 for a bird and improve it through breeding. I probably could, but I soon lost patience with that because that's a very long term process. You, if you start with good genetics from what I like to call a foundational breeder, that's somebody who is working with a particular breed that you are years ahead. You cut years off your learning process.

  Jennifer Bryant: 3:32

  So that would be the difference between standard bread and hatchery or utility stock, right?

  Rip Stalvey: 3:37

  Oh, absolutely. Hatchery or utility stock never do well in an open poultry show. You've got to have and I, some of your listeners may not know the difference, but standard bred means that those birds are bred to meet a written standard as closely as possible. The big hatcheries don't, I don't have time to do that. And I get that. And I understand. And I don't want to come across as I'm being negative about. Hatchery birds, because I'm not, I bought an awful lot of hatchery it's the gateway to wanting better birds, or at least it was for me, and I know it has been for some other reasons, I found one of the things that I got the most out of showing birds was the camaraderie and the friendships that I've made. I, some of the, my dearest and long term friends I have met through showing poultry, and there's a great fellowship that goes on in that. That group of folks and I realized for some it's the competition aspect plays a heavy role Although, I enjoyed winning. I'm not gonna story to you about that It was nice and it was fun, but that's not really what I did it for I did it to make the birds better and that was as much my reward from showing poultry as any trophies or ribbons

  Jennifer Bryant: 5:11

  Okay, so you mentioned getting started with good genetics. What else do you need to get started?

  Rip Stalvey: 5:18

  I think, Jennifer, one of the most important things you can have is a good mentor.

  Jennifer Bryant: 5:24

  Absolutely.

  Rip Stalvey: 5:25

  Somebody you can bounce ideas off of. You know you can go to and get good information. You know that you can trust what they're going to tell you. They're not always going to tell you what you want to hear, and that's because they're being a good mentor. They're going to tell you what you need to hear. You're going to need to decide what breed you want, and good grief when, if you look in the APA standard of perfection, and if you're going to start breeding and showing, you need to have a standard of perfection because that's the standard you're breeding to, and that's the standard that the judges go by when they're judging your birds. Some folks invariably ask me, how do you choose a breed? I think. I've always been partial to large fowl. So I think I lean naturally towards some of the large fowl breeds, but with today's economy, they're not the most economical choice large fowl eat a lot more feed than do Banhams because Banhams are roughly 20 percent of the weight of a large fowl, 20 to 25%. You may want to go the waterfowl route, but they require some special infrastructure. They, a lot of the times they need ponds and waters and that kind of stuff to, to facilitate proper breeding, or maybe you want turkeys. Now those are the real chowhounds of the poultry show world. They can eat a lot of feed. Although they're recognized, you don't see as many turkeys in the shows as you used to. We, when I was a teenager, we used to have some pretty good large turkey classes and anymore, a lot of shows, if they have turkeys, they've got probably a half a dozen or less.

  Carey: 7:18

  I was going to say, this past year at the Ohio National, I saw turkeys in the sale barn. But there were very few that were actually in the show. That, that goes to what you said, there, there's not a lot of people showing them anymore.

  Rip Stalvey: 7:36

  And turkeys are not for everybody. Let's face it, they require special facilities. They require a lot of feed. They require a lot of high quality feed. And it's a knack to learning how to handle turkeys. If you've never done that before, because, turkeys are big enough. If they flog you with those wings, they can leave a mark on you.

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:00

  I don't know if but I have red bourbon turkeys And

  Rip Stalvey: 8:03

  my favorite variety

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:05

  in my NPIP tester She said she's always happy to come here because she says i'm the only one that knows how to handle them

  Rip Stalvey: 8:14

  So I agree with you. There's a knack to it.

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:17

  All of my scars on all of my on both of my arms are from turkeys

  Rip Stalvey: 8:22

  I can believe that I've judged birds. I got my judge's license back in 1994 I've got a lot of war wounds, but some of the most significant ones have been from turkeys and from geese.

  Jennifer Bryant: 8:39

  Yeah, I think if you're going to handle turkeys or guineas, that you need to wear denim sleeves.

  Rip Stalvey: 8:46

  And guineas are, a lot of folks don't realize that you can show guineas now. Didn't always, wasn't always that way. They were recognized back in the nineties. I think is when they were added to the standard. And when you're choosing a breed, consider your geographic location because some breeds do better in some locales than other breeds. Here in the South, we have a lot of hot, humid weather. And how does a bird cool itself? It's got two options. It can pant or it can use their comb and their waddles as a radiator. So if you're trying to take a bird that basically has these small low to the skull combs and very small, tiny waddles and breed them in the South, they have a hard time dealing with the heat and by the same token, birds that have these big single combs don't do well up in Vermont in those Northern areas because the cold will just. It'll freeze those the cold, freeze the combs, bad cases of frostbite. I

  Carey: 10:02

  said that I was thinking about John and his Chantecler. They Practically have no comb or waddle and one of those would, if you had one of those that survived in Florida or Alabama vigor on that bird would be huge. Yeah, it'd be the only way it would survive.

  Rip Stalvey: 10:29

  You're right. You're exactly right. I think it's important and the bottom line, choose a breed that appeals to you, something you like. There's so many different breeds and so many different varieties. You can find something out there that you really and you enjoy working with because if you enjoy it and you enjoy working with it, you're going to do much better with it. It's going to be a fun part of the hobby. It's not going to be a drudgery. I would also encourage folks to join the American Bantam Association or the American Poultry Association. And once you get a breed, join the breed club. That's where you're going to get most of your help for your birds when it comes to show it. It's because those are the people that work with those birds on a real regular basis. They're going to know more in many cases than the judges have to know. Because there's a knack to breeding each individual breed. They all require something a little bit different. And some of your best sources of information is breed clubs. And after you selected a breed, what variety of that breed do you want? And varieties can be separated usually by color or by comb types. For example, in old English games, I don't even, I can't keep up with how many different color varieties there are in old English games now. There's a bunch of them. And other breeds like leghorn, for example you have single comb and you have rose combs. So that's an example of those. You're going to have to decide whether you want to raise what I like to call self colored birds, they're solid colored, black or white. Or do you want a party colored bird? These are birds that have patterns on the feathers or they come in more than one color. It's like Rhode Island Reds. They're basically a dark red bodied bird with a beetle green tail. And somebody told me one time, that's an easy breed to raise. And I thought, you never tried to raise them, but I never got a great challenge to work with.

  Jennifer Bryant: 12:41

  So I work with buff orpingtons, and I, and then I was told buff is one of the most complex colors.

  Carey: 12:48

  Anybody can work with a white layer because it's white. It's pretty simple. It's, it either is or it isn't. The questions you have with that, are there feathers? At the right angle and is their body shape correct, with the birds, like the reds and the orbs, there's a lot more to it, is the black on the front feather or the backside of the feather? How much is it? How does it extend? It's pretty in depth.

  Rip Stalvey: 13:18

  Jennifer is exactly right about buff. The most important thing about a buff colored bird is that the color is even, from top of the bird to the bottom of the bird, one even shade. That's not easy to do. And then you throw in the problem that we have here in the South, is you put them out in the sunshine, and the color just goes to pot. You get uneven colors, you get lifeless, dead looking feathers, and you get some that are dark colored, and it's just It's a challenge. Blues are the same way. They have the same problem with sunshine. It dapples their color, so to speak. So all solid colored birds are not that easy.

  Jennifer Bryant: 14:05

  No.

  Carey: 14:06

  One of them. And two, the cochins, is it a green hue or a purple hue on their feathers? Because the purple is desirable and the green is. Yes. And that's just a hue. That's not even the color of the feathers. It's just the hue, the way it shines.

  Rip Stalvey: 14:24

  So in the showroom, we refer to that as feather sheen. Now the key to a good feather sheen is genetics, but nutrition can really enhance optimum nutrition. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this coming up, but optimum nutrition can really make or break the sheen on a bird.

  Jennifer Bryant: 14:56

  So I do the black cochins also in the South, which is also a problem. And the people are really shocked a lot of times because my chicks hatch out probably 70 percent cream color. And that cream colored chick will have the best fetal green sheen when it's older.

  Rip Stalvey: 15:19

  You know why that is?

  Jennifer Bryant: 15:21

  I don't know why it is. I just know that it is.

  Rip Stalvey: 15:25

  It's carrying gold. Real dark black sheen, green sheen on the black, comes from birds that are carrying the gold and not silver.

  Jennifer Bryant: 15:38

  Nice. Good to know.

  Rip Stalvey: 15:41

  I think the most important question I get, how do I find good birds? Where can I go to get good birds? They're not anywhere and everywhere. Good birds are hard to come by. And

  Carey: 15:58

  one

  Rip Stalvey: 16:03

  thing that I had a real problem with was I was, I still am a very impatient person. And when I decided I wanted to get good birds, I wanted them right then they weren't available when I wanted them. So you got to wait, or if you don't wait, then you wind up settling for second best. And then that sets you back on your timeline of being able to breed and have good birds because you got to improve what you got before you can get them into the showroom. If you're going out there, take your time. Don't rush in it. I realized today. Our society is very much of a instant gratification society, but that's not going to work in show poultry. It's really not.

  Jennifer Bryant: 16:53

  Especially large fowl. You're talking about your three years.

  Rip Stalvey: 16:57

  And the length of time it takes for some of these breeds to mature and you're working with one of the coachings

  Carey: 17:03

  or

  Rip Stalvey: 17:04

  Orpingtons are not real speedy when it comes to maturing either.

  Jennifer Bryant: 17:08

  And I'm not a patient person.

  Rip Stalvey: 17:10

  I can identify with that, Jennifer. Do your research. Find out, once you decide what breed and what variety you want, do your research and find out who is raising and showing high quality birds in your breed and your variety that you want. And you can do that if you join the APA or the ABA. They put out a, Yearbook each year, it's free to members and it lists everybody in there who's been winning, where they've been winning, how many shows they've been winning, the whole nine yards. And they do have some awards called Master Exhibitor and Master Breeder Awards. Although I don't put a lot of faith in those, I'm going to be honest with you because, like Master Exhibitor, you don't have to breed those birds to show those birds. You can buy them. That doesn't necessarily mean There's some that do. Oh yeah, absolutely they do. That means they're a good buyer. Doesn't mean they're a good breeder. And to a little bit, some of the same extent within Master Breeder Awards. Take your time, do your research, and look for a foundational breeder. Briefly mentioned that earlier, but a foundational breeder is someone that everybody goes to get breeding stock. Somebody has invested in years of their life working with one breed. And typically one variety. That's where you're going to get your best birds from. You can find them, again, by referring to the yearbook, looking at the awards they've won, where they've what shows they've been in. It's a real science to research in your bird, but it, oh, it'll save you so much time.

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:08

  I'm going to say it took me about eight months to finally land on a breeder to get my foundation stock from

  Rip Stalvey: 19:16

  once

  Jennifer Bryant: 19:16

  I started looking.

  Rip Stalvey: 19:18

  And really, That's not bad at all.

  Carey: 19:22

  I was going to say part of this, this discussion takes me back to my quest for Reds.

  Rip Stalvey: 19:30

  I remember

  Carey: 19:31

  that. That's actually how Rip and I originally met because I asked Jennifer questions about these birds. She said, I know a guy that you need to talk to. You need to find this guy. If it didn't work out good, Rip, it's her fault. I blame her for that. He didn't tell me what I wanted to hear. He told me what I needed to hear. And I accepted that and I started immediately hatching every egg I could because I knew this trait had to be corrected, this trait had to be corrected, so on and so forth. And the only way to do it, out of a hundred birds, you hatch with 10. And so that's what I started doing. And then, I was able to hit the proverbial bird lottery. And wind up with an amazing line of Reds that I was entrusted to take care of it. But, that, that took some months of cultivating, you don't just go to a poultry show and see some birds that look really nice. Look for ones that have some marks on their cards and find that and say, Hey, you want to sell your birds? Cause they're going to look at you like crazy.

  Rip Stalvey: 20:53

  It's really all about building a relationship with that breeder. That's what it boils down to. I can't tell you how many times people that have taken the time to build a relationship for me before asking me to sell them some birds many times as they've invested that time.

  Carey: 21:11

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.

  21:46

  Mhm.

Talking Ayam Cemani with Gina

The mysterious all black chicken! What to look for, the breed club and status with APA. Gina gives us all the details!

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Intro: 0:14

  Mhm.

  Duncan: 0:23

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of Show Pro. Show Pro is a revolutionary poultry feed supplement, supercharged with key ingredients like Cysteine the number 1 amino acid to make your Show Bird a Show Pro Champion! Check out show pro usa dot com for more information.

  Gina: 0:41

  I am Gina Wrather, and our farm is Wrather Farms, we're located in Columbia, Tennessee. We raise Heritage Rhode Island Reds, Bielefelder, Splash Americana, and Ayam Cemani.

  Carey: 0:56

  My kind of people

  Gina: 0:57

  We are www.wratherfarms.com and that's Wrather with W-R-A-T-H-E-R.

  Jennifer: 1:06

  And of course you're probably on Facebook.

  Gina: 1:08

  Of course. Wrather Farms columbia TN.

  Jennifer: 1:15

  So the biggest question I have is it I Ayam Cemani I am Seminis. What is it? How do you say it?

  Gina: 1:23

  Goodness, so I run a Facebook group for the zombie chickens and one of the questions To gain admittance to the group is, name two breeds that can be used to create a zombie. And everybody tries to spell Ayam Cemani. It is probably the most misspelled chicken breed I've ever seen. Maybe even more so than Orpington.

  Jennifer: 1:47

  Oh my God, that is like my huge pet peeve. There, listen viewers listeners, there's no H in Orpingtons.

  Carey: 1:55

  I keep it simple.

  Gina: 1:56

  The pronunciation is, I am Simani. I am Simani. In Indonesia, they will pronounce it, Ayam Cemani. Depending on where you're from, either pronunciation is correct.

  Jennifer: 2:15

  I'm gonna say the birds originated in Indonesia?

  Gina: 2:18

  Yes, they did.

  Jennifer: 2:20

  All right, why would they need a black bird? Like a solid, this is a solid black bird, there's nothing, right?

  Gina: 2:29

  There is, there should be no color, no pink skin, no pink toes, nothing, no color in this bird. This bird should be black through and through black comb, black feet, black legs, black eyes, black plumage, black organs, black meat. Everything is black. If you process an I. M. shimani, the only thing that you will find in that bird of a normal color will be the liver. And sometimes even it is tinted dark.

  Jennifer: 3:02

  Does the black have a sheen to it? Like the cochins have a green sheen. Yes,

  Gina: 3:09

  the blue green sheen is acceptable. The purple sheen is frowned upon. There's some debate as to whether that is just an optical illusion or if that has something to do with nutrition or if it has something to do with the bird hiding some pheomelanin or red pigment in its plumage.

  Jennifer: 3:31

  Interesting. All right, another myth buster. Do they lay black eggs? Oh

  Gina: 3:37

  no. Somebody asked me that just the other day. They were here visiting and looking at the birds and said, do they really lay black eggs? And this was a person that wanted to breed them themselves. No, they don't lay black eggs. They lay a tented egg. It's almost white. Some of our hens laid a nearly white egg. I got one of their eggs confused with a white legged pullet egg. One time and was shocked when the little black chick hatched, but he was, I am Shamani through and through.

  Jennifer: 4:09

  When they hatch, are they black or do they have white on them, cream color on them?

  Gina: 4:13

  They should be black from hatch to death. So everything on this chick, most black chicks, you think of your black Australorps, You think of some black Jersey Giants. Most of your black chicks are hatching with some white on their chest, white under belly, white under their throat, maybe some white around their eyes. Ayam Cemani should be black right from the get go. And one of the things that we do when we pull them out of the hatcher is, we're waiting. We start looking, we look in their mouth, even look at the pads of their toes. We inspect every little inch of that chick down and see if there is a little white feather anywhere. And then that continues throughout their maturation. And, we hope that we don't find any, what we'll call color leakage. We don't want any colored feathers, no silver, no gold. A lot of times you'll see that show up in the hackle, sometimes in the saddle. You'll look for, keep checking their mouth throughout their maturity. So the thing that makes the Ayam Chamani have the black skin, black comb, black beak, black waddles, everything is a genetic phenomenon called fibromelanism. You want them to be homozygous for fibromelanism. And fibromelanism is a funny little gene. It tends to increase in depth and quality as the bird matures to a point of about a year old, and then we'll start to reseed again. But your bird should never ever display any sort of pink skin inside or out.

  Jennifer: 6:01

  Carey has a question. I see it on his face.

  Carey: 6:04

  Okay, I really do. So earlier you mentioned the zombie chickens.

  Gina: 6:09

  Yeah.

  Carey: 6:10

  And so they are black and if you mix with a leghorn and who's white do they, if you take a male, Ayam Cemani and breed it to a female leghorn, will you get black females and white males?

  Gina: 6:32

  No, you will get. Okay. Ideally, your Ayam Cemani is a quality. I am Tmani. He's going to assess two copies of the fibromelanism gene, which means he's going to pass one copy of that gene to every one of his offspring.

  Jennifer: 6:49

  Right.

  Gina: 6:50

  So that's going to mean that all of your chicks are going to inherit that and have the potential to have the dark skin. Your Ayam Cemani should also be homozygous, virgin. At the E locus, the extension of black, that bird will, should pass the virgin allele to every one of its offspring. And therefore all of its offspring should be black at the E locus. Now your dominant white birds, your white legrons are homozygous for the dominant white gene. And so they're going to pass one dominant white gene to all of their offspring. And even though all the offspring from your Ayam Cemani are going to be basically black, the dominant white is going to trump that. And so think of it like throwing a piece of Swiss cheese on a piece of black construction paper. So one copy of dominant white will always cause some black or base coat leakage. through those holes in the Swiss cheese. And so what you end up with is a bird with fibromelanism that has black plumage, but it has been basically covered in white with the exception of a few black spots here and there.

  Jennifer: 8:18

  Now the

  Gina: 8:18

  funny thing about the exact cross that you mentioned, the Ayam Cemani cock over the white leghorn hen, is that the white leghorns possess Not one, but two sex linked genes that suppress fibromelanism. And what that ends up doing is creating sex linked chicks when you create zombies. So that white leghorn hen is going to pass, generally, one copy of the barring gene. You wouldn't know that they carry barring, but they generally carry barring, which is a huge suppressor of dermal melanin. They also carry the sex link inhibitor of dermal melanin. And so when their sons inherit both copies of those fibro inhibitors, they end up with pale combs, pale beaks, and pale legs. And conversely, your little pullet chicks will hatch with dark legs, dark combs, dark beaks. And if that's not a poultry nerd, I don't know what it is.

  Jennifer: 9:24

  Welcome to the club.

  Carey: 9:26

  Like I've, I feel amazing right now.

  Jennifer: 9:29

  Yeah,

  Carey: 9:32

  this is awesome. I've had a lot of fascination by that breed. Jennifer and I have talked about it several times. At one point in time, I wanted to get some just because they're neat. They're unique, and also with them being black, once they get full size, hawks might not come in my yard and try to take my quail out of my barn when the doors open.

  Gina: 10:00

  Now we know that's not true.

  Jennifer: 10:03

  Just how big do they get?

  Gina: 10:05

  The Ayam Cemani or the zombies?

  Jennifer: 10:07

  Let's hate both.

  Gina: 10:09

  The Ayam Cemani, they're a smaller breed. They're definitely smaller, on the smaller side of large fowl. Larger than a bantam, but they are on the smaller end of the large fowl.

  Jennifer: 10:21

  Okay. And then the zombies are

  Carey: 10:23

  They're cool. They are

  Gina: 10:25

  very cool. Yeah. And the zombies, the zombies can be created, they're like Easter Eggers or Olive Eggers, you can use a lot of different things to make a zombie. The only real requirement is that you cross the Ayam Cemani with something that carries that dominant white gene. Okay. So you can use the white leghorn right now. We are using cackles version of a Rhode Island white, which is not an actual Rhode Island white. They just stole the name. They're making some nice little zombie chicks. You can use the solid white ermine Americana's. You wouldn't want to use the APA accepted white Americana's because they're recessive white. Most people don't know there is a dominant white. There is a recessive white. Don't use the wrong one or else you'll get all black chicks out of your. hopeful zombie hatch. But, the zombies are a really good outlet to the next point that I want to talk about because the Ayam Sinani is such a high cull rate breed. It is extremely difficult to get this all black bird inside and out. The genetics have to be right. And even if you, even when you're sure that you have got your genetics right and this next hatch is going to be the one and they're all going to be rock stars, you're going to have chicks that hatch with full pink mouths that are going to mature to have some silver in the hackle. They're going to have white toes that hatch. It is really hard breed to get right. And you wouldn't think, you're just breeding a black bird. How hard can it be?

  Carey: 11:56

  I can say as somebody that was fascinated with it, when I would look on local groups for people that had those, look at, I looked several different places in surrounding states. I didn't find you, but now that I have, that'll be a conversation for later. I can say the, everybody has pure Ayam Cemani that look more purple than they do black or that have white or yellow toes or white or yellow feets or red in their mouth. And I'm like, I'm somewhat of a snob when it comes to Somebody saying they've got a pure animal. Yeah. And when I see then a picture of that and they want a hundred bucks for it on Facebook for that one bird and his tongue is red. I'm like, you're, no, that's not how it works.

  Gina: 12:53

  Yeah. Yeah. And part of that is part of it is greed. And part of it is honest to goodness. Yeah. ignorance of what Ayam Cemani is supposed to be. A lot of people see a black bird and they overlook the purple waddles, the mulberry in the

  Jennifer: 13:11

  waddles.

  Gina: 13:13

  They overlook the fact that it has a fifth toe, clearly not a purebred bird. They overlook the fact that it may have a few silver feathers in the hackle, or they don't mention to you that it had white toes at hatch or that it had a white patch on its throat at hatch. I always tell people, be really careful. If you want to buy these birds for the purposes of breeding, there are more pet quality birds out there than there are SOP quality birds out there by far. Most people that get into Ayam Cemani buy one of the dinks, one of the pet quality and learn from it. before they actually find something that is worthy of being bred forward. And we're one of them. We went into the Ayam Cemani through a friend and she was up front with us. She's they're really probably not pet or anything other than pet quality. So be prepared. And we hatched them out and we were all excited because everything was black except the inside of their mouth. And it was whitish. And so we grew them out and we grew to love them and we learned to love their personalities. They have amazing temperaments. And when they grew up, sure enough, they had some gold leakage and the hackles, and we opened up their mouths that, four or five months old and they were just glowing pink. And so we said, you know what? We figured out that we liked this breed. We want to upgrade. So yeah. But a lot of people start out there.

  Jennifer: 14:50

  So are they accepted in the APA?

  Gina: 14:53

  They are in the process. I believe we've had our first qualifying meet. And our second qualifying meet will be sometime this year, maybe. Don't quote me on that because I need to check with a couple friends. But yeah, we are working. We have a SOP, a proposed SOP. and working towards acceptance. So we hope it's right around the corner.

  Jennifer: 15:20

  Good. Because we're geared towards beginner information so if somebody wanted to get started in them, would you recommend full fledged SOP breeder like yourself? Or do like you did and buy the pet qualities and try them out and before they commit.

  Gina: 15:43

  The bad thing about starting out with a pet quality, if your eventual goal is to breed, is the temptation to say, let me just try to breed this bird and see if maybe by some chance I can produce something better than itself. And there are enough of those birds out there. So if you think that you will ever want to breed your Ayam Cemani, definitely go to a reputable breeder. If you are talking to someone about buying their Ayam Cemani, ask for a video, like a live video, that person picking up their bird, show you their mouth show you the bottoms of their feet, look at, get closeups of all the feathers and hackles. Look at the parent stock because if you, even if you say, okay, I'm interested in buying your 12 week old chicks, a lot can change, especially with the roosters. A lot can change between 12 weeks and six months. So when those mature feathers come in their full fibro doesn't come in until six months to a year old. So yeah, if you are considering breeding, the Ayam Cemani breeders association has a breeders directory. You can check there. It's not a guarantee of quality just like any other breeder directory, but it's a great place to start.

  Jennifer: 17:12

  What do you mean when you said their full fibro doesn't come in?

  Gina: 17:17

  So I talked about, when they hatch the fibromelanism, the fibro expression, the depth of the black pigment in their skin will begin to darken and deepen up until about six months to a year. So And it follows, interestingly, the color of your combs in a normal colored chicken. Your chicks hatch, they got these little yellow combs, and as they mature, the roosters especially, their combs gonna start to turn a little darker pink, and then by the time they've reached sexual maturity, they're bright red. So the fibro kind of follows that. At point of lay, our pullets will be about as dark as what they will ever be. Fibro expression wise, and then at about a year of age, you may start seeing a very gradual decline.

  Jennifer: 18:12

  What about after their first molt? Will you get eyeball feathers or colorings at that point?

  Gina: 18:19

  You should not. And I think there's, when I got into the Splash Americana, And I was growing out some chicks and I had one chick that presented with one little gold feather in her cheek and I freaked out, I'm talking on the Americana groups and somebody said just fuck it. I thought, Oh, that's deceitful. I can't do that. But I plucked it and it didn't come back. And I think for things like that, Sometimes you may have an anomaly. It's not necessarily genetic. Um, who knows, it may have had an injury. There is a chick or something odd. I know with horses, if they have an injury, their hair might grow back white and it might take a while for the pigment to come back in that spot. It's not a genetic thing. So my theory is if you have a Cemani that has a single gold or silver feather, pluck it, see if it comes back. But if your leakage that you're seeing is symmetrical or all the way around the neck or on both sides of the shoulders or, all the way, the full length of the back, you're sunk, that's peck quality for sure. But if you have just one odd feather, pluck that sucker, see if it comes back.

  Carey: 19:42

  I'm just in amazement because the mystery behind this bird and everything that it is something that, that I'd really like people to find out about and people to learn about. And I like what y'all are doing with the breed as far as getting it affiliated and accepted by the APA that I have read the process in their guideline that takes, and it's rather lengthy and there's a lot to it. And I can appreciate anybody that's willing to put that kind of work and dedication into it. One question I did have is you said something about culling. No. Me for my reds. I understand that I'm going to have to hatch a hundred to get maybe 10. Is the Cemani worse than that or better than that? Or is it about the same? 10 percent

  Gina: 20:38

  loaded

  Carey: 20:39

  question

  Gina: 20:41

  really depends on the quality that you're starting with. So starting with the quality that, that we started with when we got our first Cemani a hundred percent call rate. Sorry about you. Start from scratch. So if you

  Carey: 20:55

  bought them from a hatchery or somewhere like that's probably,

  Gina: 20:59

  that is the absolute worst place that you could buy your, Ayam Cemani.

  Carey: 21:03

  I can tell, I could look at a lot of pictures at a lot of different hatcheries that have them for sale for hatching eggs and exorbitant price. But a lot of them have undesirable traits, which is why I didn't buy any.

  Gina: 21:19

  Yeah. Yeah. And, something I should mention, the bird is more than just the outward color. Just like any other breed we are focusing on type. It should be a game bird type build with an upright stance. They should be long legged. There is a lookalike that a lot of people have passed off as an Ayam Cemani and that's the spark. How now it is a Swedish black hen. And other than frequently having the mulberry, red tinted comb and waddles, they look nearly identical to the lay person, to an Ayam Cemani, but they have a level top line and a layer type build. And. We see that in the Ayam Cemani that are offered for sale almost all the time. So the other thing that you want to look for when you're looking for an Ayam Cemani to buy for a breeder is that game bird type confirmation.

  Carey: 22:26

  Gotcha. Okay.

  Jennifer: 22:30

  All right. I have a question. These zombies. So you can't just take any old Ayam Cemani and put it over any old Leghorn. and get a zombie. It's a very specific genetic makeup that creates the zombie.

  Gina: 22:47

  Ideally. You're going to get a smaller percentage of good zombie chicks if you use a pet quality Ayam Cemani.

  Jennifer: 22:56

  Okay. And then just because and then you have the zombie, but that is only going to breed true on that generation. The second generation will not breed true. At that point, you just have a barnyard mix, basically, right?

  Gina: 23:11

  Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna get some pretty wild chicks come out of that, and they, about 12 and a half percent of chicks from the F1 to F1 cross are going to be the zombie look that you're looking for.

  Jennifer: 23:27

  Wow.

  Gina: 23:28

  Okay. So 12 out of 100 chicks. It's better to take your Ayam Cemani pullet back to the Ayam Cemani sire.

  Jennifer: 23:37

  All right, so what I'm hearing for our listeners who are new and thinking about getting them, is they need to check out the Ayam Cemani Breeders Club to find hopefully a reputable breeder and not to order from just anybody. And if they can only have pullets, they do need to order from somebody who knows how to make the zombie cross correctly.

  Gina: 24:05

  Yeah.

  Jennifer: 24:07

  All right, anything else they need to know?

  Gina: 24:12

  Feed requirements. Okay. There is some discussion that, the feather quality in the Ayam Semani, we noticed as the quality of the fibromelanism goes up. So when you get into the realm of a full black tongue Ayam Cemani, it is an interesting phenomenon that we also see the feather quality decline. Okay. It reminds me of the self blue or lavender feather quality issues. You start getting the frayed feathers or bottle brush. Ayam Cemani or hard feather, iron feather. You'll hear a lot of different terms bandied about. But the interesting thing about that is those birds tend to have a higher quality of fibro. Better black mouth, fully black comb and waddles. No, no hint of mulberry, no hint of purple. Those are nice birds. So we're, we've got breeders that are working on feather quality, and I'm interested to see if we can strike a balance between quality feathers and deep fibro. Or if they're just going to go hand in hand, the deeper fibro is. It's going to remain a fact of life with the poorer feather quality. There's also some suggestion that maybe these birds have a higher riboflavin requirement. And I would refute that and say that I don't think that's probably true. We have an incidence of clubbed down. in some Ayam Cemani chicks. It's common and it's been blamed on a riboflavin deficiency in the hens. But I have hatched clubbed down Ayam Cemani crosses from an Ayam Cemani rooster. So I don't think that it came from the hen. The hen was a cream legged bar. I think it's genetic. So I haven't found anybody that's fed a higher riboflavin diet and eliminated those issues. And Carey, there's also the discussion lately about the amino acids and cysteine and feather quality. And I'm interested in maybe playing with that and see what happens because the birds that we're growing out now, have the feather quality issues that come along with the nice black tongues. So I might be interested in doing some experiments in the next year or so do some side by sides and see if extra cysteine would be helpful.

  Carey: 27:00

  Okay. The I've done a lot of studying on cysteine and methionine and the effects that they have on the feather quality. So far the things that I have seen and the testing that I have seen really does make a noticeable effect.

  Gina: 27:19

  Interesting. And

  Carey: 27:21

  it, I mean it, it's even to the point that it can help a bird recover from molt extremely fast.

  Gina: 27:27

  Yeah, that might be really helpful for us to know. So the APA. is frowning on the poor feather quality that comes with these higher quality fibro birds. So we're caught in a catch 22 here, do we take our lesser quality fibro birds to the show where we have it written into the SOP that they should have, good fibro expression even within the mouth, or do we take our good fibro expression birds with our terrible feather quality and get docked for condition?

  Carey: 28:03

  That's it's being tested. I can say that.

  Gina: 28:06

  Interesting.

  Carey: 28:08

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.

The Tennessee Whitney w/ Rebecca Lynch

Find out all the insider info on Rebecca’s new project, the Tennessee Whitney. Find out how and why and all the details on getting them in the APA.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:01

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.

  Intro: 0:14

  Mhm.

  Duncan: 0:23

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of Show Pro. Show Pro is a revolutionary poultry feed supplement, supercharged with key ingredients like Cysteine the number 1 amino acid to make your Show Bird a Show Pro Champion! Check out show pro usa dot com for more information.

  Jennifer: 0:41

  All right we're here today with Rebecca Lynch of Thieving Otter Farm to talk about her new chicken breed, the Tennessee Whitneys. Hello, Rebecca. Hello. Tell us about your farm and what you do.

  Rebecca: 0:56

  So I'm primarily known for raising quail. I'm a quail addict like

  1:01

  Jennifer and Carey and,

  Rebecca: 1:04

  but I started out in chickens and I'm somebody that likes genetics and likes to play around with things. And so a while back I decided it would be really cool to, to create my own chicken breed. And cause I like a good challenge. And so that's where the Tennessee Whitney's came about. I actually, so this is a silly reason to correct, try to create your own chicken breed. But right now there's only one chicken breed in the APA that was developed by a woman. And that's the Buckeyes. And do you know what? I decided I was going to be number two. I was going to have the second chicken breed. So yeah, that that's my silly little goal with that.

  Jennifer: 1:46

  Hey, we all have to have our reasons. How long have you been working on them?

  Rebecca: 1:52

  I've been working on them for about five years now. And I got into them by accident. So I'm going to admit something. I had a friend, this was way back before I was super concerned about biosecurity and stuff. I had a friend that wanted me to raise a bunch of chicks for her. She didn't have a brooder and she didn't, want to do the whole chick thing, but wanted the chickens. So she ordered a bunch of chicks and he'd ordered some Wheaton Morans and there was a chick in this box of Wheaton Morans that looked different. And as I grew these chicks out for her, I went, okay, this is not a Wheaton Morans. I don't know what this is. But it's not a Wheaton Morans. And she didn't want it because it wasn't a Wheaton Morans and so I thought, okay, cool, I'll take this chick. And it turned out being this gorgeous silver Wheaton chicken that looks body style, type, looks like a Brahma. And so I went to that hatchery and I looked at all their chick pics and there's nothing there's nothing that looked like this chicken and when she grew out, they have no adults pictured that look like this chicken. So I emailed them and I went, what is this? And they went, Oh, it's a Wheaton Brahma. I was like, Okay. And or no. I take it back. I'm sorry. They said it was a light Brahma and it wasn't. But it looks like a silver Wheaton Brahma. And so I went, okay. And didn't really know what it was. And they, the hatchery couldn't tell me. And so I started doing some research and looking around and looking at pictures all over the place. And I've been in chickens for over a decade and I'd never seen anything that looked like her. So I thought I'm going to see if I can make more of her. I I started getting in some groups on Facebook for like chicken projects and colors and stuff. And I came across a breeder in upstate New York who was working on salmon brahmas. And I thought this is close to the type. Of this particular bird. I liked her type and confirmation and those salmon Brahman's Brahmas were close enough. And I thought I'm going to get a rooster from her and see if I can continue on with these silver Wheaton, whatever this thing is. And I purchased, I made at the time, my most expensive rooster purchase ever of 150 for this beautiful rooster. And had him. Mailed to me and you know what? That was like the best thing I've ever done. She breeds for temperament and this rooster, I named him Russell Crowe. And he was the start of the line and I could not have picked a better foundation for this line with that rooster. Being salmon, he wasn't quite, the coloring I was looking for, but it was the closest I could come to. So the next problem was Silver Wheaton. Everything that I've read says it's not really a thing. Silver is, Silver and Wheaton are, they're not really compatible together. So without going into major genetics and stuff. So that led me down the path of trying to go, okay is it actually going to be possible to recreate this bird? Or am I just going to be wasting a whole lot of time? And I came across an article somewhere from Grant Brereton I think I said his name in the UK. And he was saying that there's a specific gene that can make silver wheat impossible. And I'm like, okay let's cross our fingers. Hope I have that gene because I really like this bird. And that's how it got started. I paired them up and sure enough, I started getting silver wheat and offspring. And so I have been breeding, I think I'm on my fourth generation. I'm producing the fifth generation now. And they're not yet breeding true. So I'm still getting there. It looks like there's some recessive white in there and a little modeling in some of them. So it's going to, it's going to take work. I'm starting with birds that who knows what the first one was and the second one was a cross as well. So I've got a lot of genetic soup going on. And then in the meantime, not only am I working on color, but I'm working on confirmation, effects, temperament, production, all of those other things that are really important as well.

  Jennifer: 6:27

  So would it be a new color Brahma or is it completely separate breed?

  Rebecca: 6:31

  Completely separate breed. So I used, we don't know what the hen originally was. She could have been a Brahma something. Could have been some sort of mix that occurred by accident at the hatchery. Who knows? And then while the male was Brahma, he was actually, because it was a project line that she was working on, in order to make the salmon Brahmas, she had done a Fabarol's Brahma cross. So there's salmon favaroles in there as well. My goal is to make something unique. I don't, while I like brahmas, I'm not super, I like, the type is not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going my own avenue with them. What are some of the characteristics you're breeding for? So as far as looks definitely the color, the silver Wheaton color. So what I mean by that is it's a bird with a Wheaton colored body. And it's got a dark neck and tail has, I'm going for a peak home right now. The, so it'll be a while before I get all the straight comb out of that. That's not super easy. Going for feathered legs. And the size along the lines of a Brahma, I'm looking for a dual purpose bird. And then. temperament. So my original name for this line, before I started calling them the Tennessee Whitney's was gentle giants. And that was an unofficial name, but these birds are just as sweet as can be. My roosters, I've never had to watch my back with my roosters and they're big. They're really big. They're not as big as your coaches, but they're big. But yeah, I want a nice docile bird that people can have as, As a family, chicken dual purpose and not have to worry about their kids getting mauled by the rooster. So that's important. And then as far as, as far as laying eggs, they, they laid a just normal light brown egg. And about average for a dual purpose line. They're not the best layers in the world, but they're not the worst either. So I'll be focusing on trying to get up the production of the eggs a little bit more. What about skin color? They've got yellow legs and normal skin tone.

  Jennifer: 8:50

  Got it. Okay, so for people who aren't familiar, the pea comb is dominant and the single comb would be recessive. In order for single comb to show up, you have to have two copies of it. Now, on a kind of a tangent here, my understanding is on the buckeyes, they still see the single comb every once in a while. Because it's really hard to breed out. It is.

  Rebecca: 9:14

  Yeah, and the hard thing when you're starting from scratch, and you're making your own line there's so much you have to pay attention to. I need to make sure that I'm not accidentally breeding a defect into my line, that's going to become part of that line and hard to get rid of, or, impossible. I actually had that happen. I was working on a line. I wanted to create a super like iridescent, shiny black chicken that was almost like a blue purple color. And I was working on that and working on that. And somehow. White showed, started showing up in the tail feathers of my roosters. And of course it didn't show up until they were like, Oh, six to eight months old. So I'd throw them out. I'd be looking at, Oh, these are great. These are beautiful. What is that tail feather? And I finally just realized that no matter what I did, I couldn't remove it. And no matter what I did, that was going to be a fault.

  Carey: 10:12

  Let me ask this. Yeah. When they come in as a still a juvenile with the white feathering in the tails, does it go away when they molt?

  Rebecca: 10:23

  No. No, it just

  Carey: 10:25

  comes back after the molt.

  Rebecca: 10:26

  Yeah. It actually shows up when they were hitting full maturity.

  Carey: 10:30

  So yeah,

  Rebecca: 10:31

  I'd grow them all out. They'd hit that full maturity and you'd start seeing the white feather and after the molt, it would be even more apparent. And so it was, and I didn't have a single one without it. And I kinda, I went back to my very first cock bird and was like, Oh, there it is. Oops. So that's the thing, when you're creating a breed you really have to be careful and select there's so many different things to select. People right now are asking me, what do you, what are you doing? Why are you still getting straight combs? And it's I'm not worried about combs right now. I got to worry about everything else.

  Carey: 11:12

  It's pretty easy to fix.

  Rebecca: 11:14

  Yeah. Yeah. I can worry about that later. Or, if it comes down to it, I could go, Ooh, you know what? I like straight comb. And that's the cool thing about creating your own breed. You can make it up as you go along, originally when I started some of mine, since the rooster was part fab rolls some of my birds were hatching with a beard and muffs. And I was like, Oh, cool. I could, and then I was like no, I really liked the clean face better, but it's my breed. I can decide that.

  Carey: 11:43

  Do whatever you want.

  Rebecca: 11:44

  Yep. Are they auto auto sexing by chance? So they're not auto sexing per se that would be, sexable at hatch. But the cool thing about them is as soon as their adult feathers start to grow in particularly, you can start seeing it in the wings when the wing feathers, start growing in you can tell the males from the females. So you can tell fairly early on the males are going to be a dark color and the females are going to be weak. Do you have to double breed them? Not so far. No. And if it turns into, I need to do that to be able to maintain this line, then I will probably just give up the line. I double mating is not something I want to get into. No. Explain double mating to people who don't know what it is. Double mating is where in order to maintain a line and you see this a lot in show birds, okay? You have to have a line where you breed towards your ideal rooster, and you have to use hens for that line that may not be ideal in order to make your ideal rooster, and then you have to have another line to make your ideal hen. And the roosters you might use to make that ideal hen line aren't necessarily your ideal rooster. You have to have two different lines going to try to make what you want. Does that sound about right?

  Jennifer: 13:13

  Yeah, that's right. And I'm trying, is it the well simmers that have to be double mated? Yeah, I believe that's one. And I think

  Rebecca: 13:20

  anything that is what are those like red, there's certain red breeds and I'm not talking about like Rhode Island reds, but what are those? All of my brain chicken information has been replaced by quail information. I used to know so much about chicken genetics, but There's certain red lines of birds.

  Jennifer: 13:40

  I don't know. I just knew the Wellsumers had to be ed. Yeah. And that takes up just, for people who dunno what that is it's twice as much breeding as you wanna do. If you're just getting started, that's like an advanced thing.

  Rebecca: 13:54

  Yeah. Yeah it's rough. I've been breeding for a couple of decades and I don't think I'd ever want to get into double mating. Props to anybody who does it. And I understand, the reasons behind it. But I think that if it came down to that with this particular breed that I'm working on, I would try to steer it in a different direction.

  Jennifer: 14:16

  So going forward you have to get a new breed put into the APA, they have to breed true. What other requirements do you have to do?

  Rebecca: 14:26

  Oh boy, I just looked at it not so long ago, but a lot of it has escaped my brain, so I might have to pull it up and look at it again. But, I believe you have to have at least five different people breeding that breed for five different years. And you also have to show the birds and you have to have, I think all four, you have to have young birds and old birds of both sexes shown, I think, is it four times?

  Carey: 15:01

  Yeah, so you got, they got to be shown at least four times. I think that's the only four in the mix.

  Rebecca: 15:08

  Okay.

  Carey: 15:08

  The five breeders that breed them for five years also have to be APA members for those five years while they're doing it.

  Rebecca: 15:17

  Okay. Yep. That's a good point. Am I missing anything? I know there I'll have to have a standard for them.

  Carey: 15:24

  There's some like minute things, but the most difficult ones are the ones that we talked about. The others are like technicalities and the way the paperwork is filled out and stuff like that. Got

  Jennifer: 15:37

  it. And it's still not a guarantee. We don't want people to think, Oh, we're just making this new breed over here and we're just going to sign a piece of paper and it goes into the APA. It's a very lengthy process. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah,

  Carey: 15:51

  because you have to get that to a board meeting, and once you get your paperwork to the board meeting, if one person don't like it, it's not happening.

  Rebecca: 16:02

  Yeah, and I think the other, I think one of the other things that you have to have is the bird to have a certain number of attributes that are different from, that make it stand out from other breeds. So that, that would be another thing. I think, what is it? Four different things that are different. I'd have to look that up. But basically you have to make sure that you're not just going, Oh, here's a slightly different color from totally, I'm going to call this gray leghorn jambalaya.

  Carey: 16:33

  See, the APA must also inspect the flock on the premises and the inspector must visually inspect all the birds and physically inspect at least 20 percent of the entire flock. That's a, that is probably The toughest thing to get to happen usually takes 10 years or more to complete the steps

  Rebecca: 16:59

  and you know that's an awesome challenge, you know to me that's part of it And if I can do that will be a huge goal, you know that huge success and I know that it's going to be difficult So that's part of, if I can actually meet that goal, that'd be amazing. My first step is getting them to breed true. And that's a fun challenge for me since I love genetics and I, I love that kind of challenge. So right now I had a huge setback last year. The first rooster that I selected was not as closely related to the group. Is the one I ended up using and The first bunch of chickens, or chicks that I hatched out were none of them were the right colors. I wasn't. Yeah, so I had to cull him. And he went to a really nice home. And went and chose another another rooster that was close, more closely related. That had more of the genes that I was looking for. And that's the generation I'm working on now. I'm actually right now back crossing him his daughters to him to try to get, a little bit more tight genetics and get them to breed true. So I'm getting about 75% the color that I want.

  Jennifer: 18:18

  And you're never going to, even my lines that are old lines, you're never, you're not going to get just showbird after showbird going out. You're just not going to. So you have to, you constantly have to pay attention to those genetics in order to, Like above Orpington, technically, yes. Everything that hatches is above Orpington, but is it the buff color that you're after? No, none of them are the buff color that you really want to see.

  Carey: 18:49

  And for me, the thing that I like about quail is when you make some changes, you can find out, a month and a half, six, eight weeks, you'll know with a chicken you're six, eight months.

  Rebecca: 19:03

  Absolutely.

  Carey: 19:04

  because the, that first set of feathers is not going to be what grows back after the molt. It'll give you a really good idea. But until it hits that first molt, you're not going to know a hundred percent.

  Jennifer: 19:20

  I think you're lucky at six to eight months. I've got a coaching up here. She is two years old and I put her in a breeding pen a month ago. And when I put her in there, she was solid black. She's not solid black anymore. I'm going to have some gray hairs woman. I am decided I'm old out here. And I went out there one day and I was like looking at her. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's I just dyed my hair last night. She's got white. She looks modeled. And I'm like, you were solid black a month ago. What are you thinking?

  Rebecca: 19:51

  And I imagine with your really large birds, it takes a couple of years for them to fully mature. It takes two years. And that's the same with these guys. They're the, especially the roosters, they're not fully mature and filled out until they're about two years old. So when you're, you're trying to select breeders very carefully because I don't have anybody else to choose from. I can't just, contact somebody. Somewhere else in the country and go, Hey, can I get some eggs from you? I need some new roosters. I need to freshen my lines or anything like, Nope, this is what I have. I make a mistake and I use the wrong bird for breeding. Like Carrie said, I may not know for a long time.

  Carey: 20:41

  Six months is very optimistic.

  Rebecca: 20:43

  Yeah.

  Carey: 20:44

  Six months is like your best chance. You're feeding that bird for a hot little minute before you figure out. Yeah,

  Jennifer: 20:52

  it's April now, and I was kicking myself a couple weeks ago. I'm like, man, I'm so late hatching chicks this year. I should have had them all on the ground by now. And then one day I sat down and I was like, but I won't even know what they look like for two more years. So what's an extra month? What difference does it make?

  Carey: 21:09

  Yeah. And they'll be well acclimated by wintertime.

  Jennifer: 21:12

  Yeah, they're going to start hatching next week, but still, I was like, you're just being too hard on yourself. You're good. You got two years.

  Rebecca: 21:21

  Yep.

  Jennifer: 21:21

  Well,

  Rebecca: 21:23

  and I had a set, I was going to start fairly early this year. I'm trying to do things differently, space out my hatches a little bit more. And I've got breeding pens that have doors in between them. Somehow one of the doors got open in between two pens and one of my other project roosters ended up in my Tennessee Whitney pen. So that sent me back another, six weeks

  Jennifer: 21:54

  of your other projects. So just give us a brief like recap of the mop tops. How are they doing?

  Rebecca: 22:00

  They're doing well. So the mom tops so that's another project. That's another breed that I'm working on. It's it's number two. It's my B game. The Tennessee Whitney's are my favorite. And I keep thinking about maybe discontinuing the mop tops and then I'll go out and I'll look at them and go, no, I love you. The story with those is again, because I can't do anything like normal people. I, it, Back a few years ago, I don't know, five, six years ago. Again, before I was concerned about biosecurity and super, worried about where I got my birds from. I answered an ad on like Facebook or something. Somebody was selling a bunch of their chickens. And it was basically come to my yard, pick out what you want. They're free ranging. We ran around with nets. I caught a couple of crested birds. Okay. They were just like barnyard mixed breeds. So I brought him home, stuck him in my barnyard mix. It was before I was really, considering breeding anything for reels and happened to get some hens that went broody and they hatched out some chicks. And I was like, these are really nice looking chicks. I like these guys. Again, the whole, Let's play with genetics bug bit me and I started seeing what I could do with them and start playing around. So yeah, these guys are not even close to breeding true. There's such genetic soup. It's not funny, but basically I am working on a crested line, not a super I like my birds to be able to see. So that's never going to be a crest like a polish or a silky where their, site is inhibited. This is just like a little eighties hairdo puff, like a leg bar. Yeah. Yeah. Like a leg bar. And I recently split my colors. So I'm working on a like a silver penciled and a gold penciled. So I've got two different, I'm starting to hone in on color. So with my Tennessee Whitney's color was the main focus. Color was what started the whole thing. Because I like that silver Wheaton with these guys. It was more like let's see if I can create a really friendly, good egg production line. And I this crest and Oh, look, that color looks cool. Let's add that in there. So we're just having fun with those really. What

  Carey: 24:29

  color eggs do they like?

  Rebecca: 24:30

  Medium brown. They're boring. Yeah.

  Jennifer: 24:35

  Sometimes the fun colors are just fine. I like to put a Buff Orpington over a Black Cochin and it comes out with they're black or they're like a grayish blue color, but then they have gold flecks in them. And so I call them black gold. For a couple of reasons partly because they looked like black and gold And partly because they were so pretty people really wanted to buy them you can cut that part out, too

  Carey: 25:02

  So Somebody wants to buy them. That's an important part.

  Jennifer: 25:05

  Yeah, and they're good broody mamas, orpingtons are great birds All right. What else can we talk about? with your birds How many pens do you have to do all this breeding?

  Rebecca: 25:17

  So right now I'm still in the beginning stages. So I, I don't want a huge amount of genetic diversity because I'm trying to refine my lines and trying to get, very specific things. So I have two pens right now of each of the mop tops and the Tennessee with these. And that's a rooster and four hens for each

  Jennifer: 25:41

  pen. Okay. So for new people listening, take this from as a cue that you don't need new blood every year. Then it actually sets you backwards. So in my case with the Orpingtons and the Cochins, I have never brought in new blood and my lines are very old. I think the Cochins are like 35 years old. and the Orpingtons are like 18 ish years old, I think. So you want to tighten the genetics. If you keep bringing new blood in, like in Rebecca's case, She kept bringing new blood in. She'd never make any headway in what she's trying to do.

  Carey: 26:19

  And mess it up.

  Jennifer: 26:21

  Yeah.

  Rebecca: 26:21

  It would make my genetic soup even soupier. The

  Carey: 26:26

  line of reds that I have is around 90 years old.

  Rebecca: 26:29

  Yeah. That's amazing.

  Carey: 26:30

  They've been line bred that long.

  Rebecca: 26:32

  Wow.

  Carey: 26:34

  None of them have popped out with two heads or three legs. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.

Tasty Snacks you can grow for your Little Raptors

Mealworms! Stop buying those imported skins and feed your birds nutritious, homegrown worms. Find out how easy they are!

• 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.

  Duncan: 0:16

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of Show Pro. Show Pro is a revolutionary poultry feed supplement, supercharged with key ingredients like Cysteine the number 1 amino acid to make your Show Bird a Show Pro Champion! Check out show pro usa dot com for more information.

  Carey: 0:40

  All right, so today we're going to talk about mealworms. Now I know you don't anymore. But you used to have a rather ridiculously large millworm farm.

  Jennifer: 0:54

  I did. It was stupid large, actually.

  Carey: 0:58

  That's about it. Because a lot of people want natural, healthy treats for their birds. And mealworms are great.

  Jennifer: 1:08

  So I just started the mealworms because I wanted to give treats to my ducks. And then mealworms became so easy to farm, actually. You can do it inside, you can do it in a chair, you can do it, listening to music with a glass of wine. Mealworm farming is actually really relaxing. A little tedious, but fairly relaxing. And and why not? And then I didn't fully understand. I just was going through the motions at the beginning. And I was like, eventually this should make sense. I'm going to grasp it. And about the time that it made sense, I had 200,000 mealworms. And I know that's hard to hear, but they multiply pretty darn quickly. So you have to get your start from somewhere. A mealworm is simply the larva of the darkling beetle. So if you have darkling beetles in your feed or in your barn, just, Pick them up and throw them in a bin and you'll have a mealworm farm in about a month or so. But if you don't have any darkling beetles laying around, then you just can order some eBay, Midwest mealworms, just several different locations you can order a starter pack from. and then you just throw them in a bin with some, I used wheat bran because it's easy to sift and it's really inexpensive. I assume it's still an inexpensive. But if you don't have any, I mean you can use oatmeal, you can use chick starter, you can use lots of stuff. And then

  Carey: 2:50

  wheat brand, I want to say the last 50 pound bag I bought was like 16 bucks.

  Jennifer: 2:56

  Yeah. And in a huge mealworm farm, a 50 pound bag is gonna last you a long time. It lasted me months. So what the premise of the farm is the darkling beetle lays an egg. And that egg grows to become the mealworm, which is really the larva of the darkling beetle. And then once it's mature, it'll pupate. And it looks like these little white aliens, basically, and they wiggle around. And After about seven to 10 days, they turn into a beetle. They emerge like the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, same concept. So when the beetle first emerges, it'll be white, like the pupa is white. And then as the shell hardens, it gets darker and darker, goes through brown shades. And then it's black in about four days or so. And the shell is hard and that's when you can move it. So it lays eggs in the wheat bran. And you can put pieces of cardboard in there, egg crates or toilet paper, cardboard, paper towel, cardboard, anything like that for them just to hide in and they lay their eggs on it. And they eat and get their moisture from like banana peels or carrots or a piece of potato. Else? Celery, they like cantaloupe rinds. Pretty much anything that you're fixing to get rid of. They're like pigs in miniature form. And you just put them in there and they like the dark and they like it warm, say 70 to 85 degrees. And. And they just multiply, and about every two weeks or so, you just move the beetles to the next bin, and you start over. And the first bin has all the eggs and the babies in it, which of course are microscopic, you can't see them unless you know what you're looking for. But they look like little specks, and you just wait. And What I would do is every few days, because I'm really impatient is every few days I would just drag my fingers through it. And then you put your head down and you look at it really closely and you wait to see if you can see the wheat brand moving around on the top. Once you can start seeing that movement, that's when you start feeding them, the carrots or the potatoes or whatever. And then you just let them grow. And meanwhile, every two weeks, you're moving the beetle around. So by the time the first ones are full size, which takes, 60 days or so, the beetles have been moved, eight times maybe. And now you've got eight bins and, and a beetle lays, I can't really remember the number off the top of my head, but it's like 20, 000 eggs in her lifetime or something. Something ridiculous. Yeah. It's this stupid number. And so before you know it, by the time you have your first set of full size mealworms, you've got a hundred thousand mealworms.

  Carey: 6:04

  I decided that I was going to start that. Because, like everybody they're good animals and I ordered, I think it was like two or 3, 000 mealworms off of eBay or Amazon, one or the other. And, I did that. I put them in a bin and I even got one of those reptile heater pads and put underneath it. So they would stay warm and cozy. And I let them go for weeks and weeks, and nothing ever happened. I'm like, I'm doing something wrong. I ask you about it, and you're just like, no, it'll come. And so I just kept going, and I had the wheat middling in there. And occasionally I would put some chick starter in there. It has to be the real fine stuff, but it's really high in protein. And then I went away for a couple of weeks and I come home and I've got black beetles at the top of all four bins. And I'm like, no, three weeks ago, I separated y'all. How did this happen? But apparently they were all at different stages of their replication. I have a ridiculous amount of them. So this weekend I'm planning on sorting them all again, and I'm gonna put all the black beetles in a bigger container by themselves and let that process start all over and, sift through the rest of them and see where it goes. But it's, for me, When you compare it to other animals to farm, if you will, it's very cheap to get started with the mealworms. People are selling them, like a thousand for 15 bucks, free shipping, something crazy like that. And now the sifters and stuff, that was expensive, not. Really expensive. Like how much does a new set of those costs? Like for the ones for the five gallon pails, like a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks.

  Jennifer: 8:14

  Yeah. Yeah. And that

  Carey: 8:15

  was,

  Jennifer: 8:16

  yeah.

  Carey: 8:17

  Yeah. And that's a complete set. That's not bad.

  Jennifer: 8:20

  No they're, when you go looking for them, they're not mealworm sifters, they're called gold mining sifters and they'll have different grades of them, but you want all of them. So you but now to get started just for the newbie. You don't need sifters. You can do all of this by hand Until you figure it out and then once you get Going and you decide it's for you What I did was went to the dollar tree and got different size colanders And then I quickly outgrew that and then I bought the sifters. But now let's talk about the tubs for just a second. Now when you get super, super serious, there's specialty type tubs for it. All I did was You know those rubber made drawer systems and it's the plastic frame and the plastic drawers And everybody I

  Carey: 9:11

  got one that I came across the other day is three drawers high and My wife said she wasn't going to use it anymore. And I said, I'll take it. She looked at me and said, what are you going to do? That said nothing.

  Jennifer: 9:25

  So

  Carey: 9:26

  when I sift through them, that's what they're moving into.

  Jennifer: 9:29

  So the, those are great for the mealworms. Now the darkling beetles. Do you know the rolling carts that have like the 10, two or three inch drawers in it? That's perfect for the beetles. They can't fly. They can't get out of it. That's all the space they need. You just have a drawer system of beetles because it becomes an issue and you don't want to, those Rubbermaid drawers are like 10 inches, right? Or eight inches. So those are good for the mealworms cause they like to dig down in there and eat stuff. But the darkling beetles, they just need, like a half an inch of substrate and then put the beetles in there and they can't get out.

  Carey: 10:17

  That is a lot of beetles to take up eight trays of those.

  Jennifer: 10:23

  But you're only going to put 50 or 60 in each one. But then you got to label them and like how old they are. Cause they only live like three to four months. If they're happy and so you got to keep a constant rotation of pupa going into the darkling beetles and, but then you don't want the mealworms to pupate too early. Once you find your rhythm, you learn your environment and figure out how quickly they're doing stuff. But those plastic drawers, you can write on them with permanent marker Or dry erase board marker, and then wipe it off later. The dates, you'll want to write your dates and stuff on there, so you know how old those bins are.

  Carey: 11:05

  I'd have to do it with a permanent marker, and then use something like Bright Fluid to wipe it off.

  Jennifer: 11:11

  Nah, just exit out, and then just right below it.

  Carey: 11:14

  That works too.

  Jennifer: 11:15

  Yeah so we jumped around there. So the darkling beetle lays an egg, becomes the mealworm, goes into the pupa, and goes back into the beetle. So the concept here is you're just moving the beetles to a fresh one, a fresh bin of substrate, which in this case is wheat bran, and allowing them to lay more eggs. And so the first bin has enough eggs in it to become the mealworms. So if you're using one of those Rubbermaid drawers and you have five beetles, then you can leave them in there longer. But when you're running hundreds of beetles, that's, let's say a hundred beetles. That's 200, 000 eggs. So you may only want to leave them in there for a week. Do you see where I'm saying about how often to move?

  Carey: 12:08

  That could get ridiculous really quick.

  Jennifer: 12:11

  Exactly. But that's the concept behind it. How many. beetles you have determines how quickly you're going to move them. If you're just going to keep a few worms for yourself, you could theoretically leave them in one tub forever and just let them to do their own thing, and then just reach in there and get the worms out that you want. Now the darkling beetles don't fly. The mealworms don't bite. The pupa don't even have a mouth or eyes or anything. They just wiggle around. There's no real drawback to them. They're great for fishing. Bait stores will buy them. Ducks love them. They're good protein. I think they're like 45 percent protein. They're pretty high in protein. Let's see what else.

  Carey: 12:53

  I

  Jennifer: 12:56

  have never, I never even got into that. So I think you have to, I think you have to freeze them and then you freeze dry them because you have to kill them somehow before you put them in the freeze dryer. But I never did get into any of that. If you just want to store them and not get them to pupate say you have enough beetles and you don't want more, then you just put them in a container and put them in the bottom of your refrigerator, just like where you would keep your fishing bait. And that, that coolness. We'll hibernate them essentially.

  Carey: 13:30

  Just save them for later.

  Jennifer: 13:31

  Exactly. They, and then you just bring them out like once a week or so. Warm them up, feed them, put them back in there.

  Carey: 13:37

  That's crazy to me. I know. It's

  Jennifer: 13:40

  really silly, really. I mean I grew them in those tubs that I found for free on the corner or on marketplace or whatever and Back when I had that farm Wheat bran was fourteen dollars a fifty. Oh, there's some more information. Don't forget to bake your substrate

  Carey: 13:58

  Can I ask you about that?

  Jennifer: 14:01

  Wheat bran will have mites in it when you bring it home from the feed store. So you need to, first of all, keep it outside. Don't bring it in your house. And second of all, you can freeze it in a deep freeze, but that takes a few weeks to kill everything. Or you microwave it, or you can just put it in the oven and cook it on low, like 200, 250 for an hour or so. And then that will kill the mites. and then just store it in Ziploc bags. So just keep that in mind. That was really the only hard part about the whole thing. But then you've got frass, which is great for your garden. Frass is just the manure from the mealworms. You put it in your garden.

  Carey: 14:43

  Yeah, the first time I sifted through, the FRAs is what comes out of the finest screen. Down in the very bottom of the bucket. And I was like, what is this Because it looked a lot like the wheat middling same color, which, makes sense. That's what they've been eating. But it was just very powdery.

  Jennifer: 15:05

  Yeah. It's like a sand consistency.

  Carey: 15:08

  And, I put it, so I'm fixing to start some tomatoes and peppers and some really hot peppers and stuff like that. So the the broiler chickens, the Cornish that I had brooding in peat moss, I got, cleaned out the brooders. And I've had it sitting in a wheelbarrow outside and it gets turned around every few days, but I'm going to take, I also mixed in the frass from my worms. I put that in there. And I'm going to mix that with some soil, just regular dirt. And I feel like I'm going to have pretty nutritious base for my plants. So peat moss that's had chicks in it for a couple of weeks, some worm frass, and then I'll feed some of the worms to my chickens and start the process all over.

  Jennifer: 16:09

  Yeah you'll have hundreds of thousands of worms before you realize it. So

  Carey: 16:14

  it

  Jennifer: 16:18

  is, but it's not. I used, because I sold them on eBay. Cause this is before my website and I would you count them every so often because your size worms are going to be different than somebody else's. And so I would count out every so often how many, how much I would put 500 in a bowl. And then I would weigh it and I want to say, I still have it written out there. I want to say 500 worms was a thousand grams or something. It's written on my wall in my incubator room. And I can't remember now, but anyway, so I would just, the rule of thumb, when you order worms from somebody is you add, 10 percent just to make the customer happy. And so they ordered a thousand worms say, then I would figure out how much that weighed and send them that, and then add, a handful more in there or something, but they you have so many of them that you can do that. And so many people buy them for so many different reasons. And now, they're trying to push this insect protein powder. People are starting to eat them. So it's not just for chickens, everything. My biggest buyers, believe it or not, were monkey people.

  Carey: 17:37

  You lost me with people eating them.

  Jennifer: 17:41

  I'm not eating them. They're clean and I see what they eat and I can understand it, but, and maybe they taste good. They're supposed to taste a little nutty almost, but I have not ever tried one.

  Carey: 17:55

  Okay.

  Jennifer: 17:56

  Yeah, but my, my, my standard buyers were people who had monkeys. So think outside of the box with the poultry people. Yeah,

  Carey: 18:09

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna get into that. In your spare

  Jennifer: 18:11

  time?

  Carey: 18:12

  Yeah, in all my spare time. Yeah. Anything else that you can add about your experience as a worm farmer?

  Jennifer: 18:20

  I will tell you a little known fact about me is I like opera music and I would blast opera while I was sorting the worms and they were more active with the opera music than without.

  Carey: 18:34

  And that brings up another topic that I have, I'm curious at the amount of research because I have been researching poultry more and did not realize even lighting people have broke that down to a science. And I'm curious if there's, or what studies there are out there that talk about different types of music and how it affects animals. That's a rabbit hole I'm going to go down and see what I can come up with.

  Jennifer: 19:09

  When I am in the incubator room messing with the chicks, I do blast 70s rock. I will. You that the chicks are really active and loud. So I'm not sure if they're opposing the music or just singing at the top of their lungs. Like I am.

  Carey: 19:28

  So are we talking like hairband music?

  Jennifer: 19:31

  Yes.

  Carey: 19:35

  Like white snake, deaf leopard, Aerosmith, those people.

  Jennifer: 19:39

  That's eighties. But yeah.

  Carey: 19:41

  It is eighties. That's about the best I've got. I grew up on that. All right, cool deal. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

  20:17

Water Systems with Jeff Mattocks

Water may be the most important item for your birds, but few of us think about it. What’s in your water?

• 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.

  Monica: 0:16

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of eggfoam dot com. Your trusted source to ship hatching eggs safely. They have several sizes available from small button quail to turkey size. Their shippers are cut to fit into United States Post Office complementary boxes to make your shipping a breeze. Check out eggfoam dot com

  0:37

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:45

  I have been out in the chicken yard at night and hear a loud crashing sound where they've been messing around inside. And they slam that bail up against the metal or that happened. But none of'em are broke, so why would they break? They're built for chickens. Why would the cups break? They're built for chickens too, but they do. I'm not a Cup fan. I'm not a Nipple fan. I'm not a Cup fan either. I'm a Cup fan, I'm not a, the nipples I can get them to work with quail, but even with quail, if there's a cup in there, they're going for it. And I've never had quail break a cup, but I have had nipples fail or airlock the system. With if there's nothing but nipples in the tube, I've had them airlock and none of them be able to drink until I stuck my finger in there. If there's a cup in the line, it won't airlock, but I don't know that a cup with a bell water would be practical for quail.

  Jeff Mattocks: 1:56

  I don't know. Okay. So I'm going to admit I'm not I'm on the learning curve for quail. I'm at the mercy of you experts. I'm not,

  Carey: 2:05

  I don't think a bell water would be Unless you've got just a lot, but I will say this in my most recent brooder experience when I had to pull old faithful out because those a hundred chicks multiply quickly I get my a hundred gallon stock tank out, put me a couple inches of peat moss in it. And I started thinking, okay, I need to put like 30 birds in here. I don't have any little waterers. I'm not drilling a hole in the side of this metal tank. I think I had some bell waterers delivered today. So I go looking for a two by. Set that over the lid. Hang the bell waterer from it. Get it right above the ground because these things are barely a week old at this point. Take me a five gallon bucket, which I've been doing this a lot. I'll take the five gallon bucket. Pull a cup out of it. Coincidentally, the hole is the same size for the quarter inch barbed fitting that needs to go in there to hook up to the quarter inch line that feeds the bell water. Set that on top of the table in the barn, stick the water, stick the quarter inch hose that comes with the bell water up. Screw it onto the water, fill it up. They love it. They went nuts. And as they grew, at one point I had to get some boxes that I used to mail hatching eggs and raise the two by set the boxes in there as a spacer to raise the water up higher, worked really well.

  Jeff Mattocks: 3:47

  But yeah, you need to adjust that water, that water lip or that water height and and when they have to reach for it, they drink more. I feel that way. And I think that's why the commercial industry has gone to nipples, right? Cause they have to reach for it.

  Carey: 4:01

  They can raise them.

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:02

  Right.

  Carey: 4:03

  Yeah.

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:03

  But that's a whole other system. It's way more efficient for them to do that in their mind. It's more, I

  Carey: 4:11

  mean, if I'm raising 50, 000 birds at a time in a house, you're going to do that. I can see that.

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:17

  Because when they leave and you do clean out day and all that, and say, okay, they're all connected to cables. You can raise and lower them all

  Carey: 4:24

  at the same

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:24

  time.

  Carey: 4:25

  Clean your floor out. Do all that. Lower them. Pressure wash them. When you pressure wash the floor, you're ready. As soon as it dries, you're ready for the next batch. Now, me personally,

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:36

  if somebody asked me about water, I want large volume water, right? So I want a water trough. I want a water tub. I want and the reason, okay, let me explain why I want it this way. It is. Most people work away, right? Yeah, they do their chores morning and evening, but they're gone throughout the day. So if you have a supply line, whether it's your bucket, whether it's pressurized Whether it's whatever it is if you have water failure What is your water reserve capacity? How long will those birds last based on what? Okay, let's just use your bell water, for instance, right? How much water is in that bell water? I tipped it out. Is there even a cup?

  Carey: 5:24

  Probably not. Okay. It's probably maybe four or five ounces. And everybody

  Jeff Mattocks: 5:30

  wants to put 60 to 100 birds on one cup or on one bell water, which is wrong. Should be 40, 40 to 50 max. But you have no backup. You and I were talking earlier about redundancy. Yeah, having a backup plan. With all the modern systems of watering, whether it's cup, nipple, bell water, I have no, there's no backup plan. There's no Redundancy. There's a failure, there's a problem. You get a hundred degree day in Alabama or anywhere else in the world

  Carey: 6:02

  And

  Jeff Mattocks: 6:02

  you don't have water.

  Carey: 6:04

  See, that's why I like the bellwaters in the breeding pens, because if they hit that and splash some water out, it's fixing to refill. If they break one of those cups and their five gallon bucket empties out until I get home, which is after the heat of the day, they're not seeing it. And what I do is I feed mine with the five gallon bucket. I have a five gallon bucket at the beginning of the water line. And it's got a barb that's a couple inches up from the bottom. I put a couple of half inch copper elbows in it. Guy I know told me that. Copper will help keep your water clean. And on the, towards the top side of the bucket, I have a float valve that's hooked to a hose pipe that stays on. Because in Alabama, it doesn't get below freezing a whole lot, but it does get above 90 a lot. I've got that float valve always on so they don't run out as long as nothing breaks. I'm good. If somebody accidentally cuts the water off, there's at least five gallons worth. So that'll last them a couple of hours. So for that, I like it.

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:24

  So one of the neatest tricks, and I learned this from a guy in New Jersey, this is not my bright idea, any more than the copper in the water reservoir, is heat, and this was before plastics went crazy, but he would go to Walmart or other discount store and he would get like a 20 quart cooler, right? Holds five gallons, right? Or he'd even get one slightly bigger, 36, doesn't matter. He figured out how to mount that at the right position for his pens whether it was cold or whether it was hot, he could put tempered water in that cooler, and most of them have a drain plug, and he adapted that drain plug to his feed line to supply his bell waters. Even if he, so middle of the summer, hotter than you know what, and, he would put cold water in there. And then, if that wasn't enough, he could freeze blocks of ice to put in there. To continue to keep that water cool, right? And in the winter time, you can put hot water. You can run hot water out of the tap. You put it in there. He was good for hours, just simply by using, what used to be a 1995, cheap 24 quart cooler, and yeah, he just plumbed that thing up and figured out how to mount it in his chicken coops. So

  Carey: 8:49

  I use, in the winter months, I use black buckets because obviously algae grows a lot slower if at all in a black bucket because it doesn't get any sunlight. That works great, but the black attracts the heat. So when it is 20s and 30s, I don't have any freeze ups. Comes in pretty handy. It's not great in the summertime. But what I have found is the cheap bottles of water, the ones that rattle a lot, gets your animal's attention because it rattles. You take that straight out of the pack, put it in the freezer. They don't bust. They'll swell up. They won't bust. Put you about four or five of them in your five gallon bucket in the morning. You're good. You're good. They love it.

  Jeff Mattocks: 9:42

  The reason I like the cooler is it had the lid, right? So there's no leaves blowing in there. There's no possible debris. There's no.

  Carey: 9:50

  Let's see, I've got snap lids on my buckets for that reason, because I don't want anything clogging up my water line. But you also have a million buckets for other purposes. So not a million, but yeah, I do get a couple thousand at a time. You have a surplus of buckets. Yes, I do. While we're talking about water, let's talk about What should the water look like? What should the pH be? What are some ways that we can check it? What are some ways that we can make them drink more? And what are some ways that we can get the water to where it needs to be? I

  Jeff Mattocks: 10:23

  think everybody should make the investment for their family's health, their bird's health, and everything. People need to get their water tested, right? So you're testing it for bacteria E. coli and coliform. So you want to make sure that it's a Negative bacteria, negative, colony farming units, but then you also want to get the, I don't want to say regular water test, but you want to get another comprehensive test that gives you pH hardness. What are the dissolved minerals in your water? Is it calcium? Is it iron? Is it manganese? Is it whatever? You need to know these things, right? And then, a good nutritionist or whoever, so either you correct the water or you make adjustments for the feed to, to compliment or go along with that water. But in a lot of cases, consider, fixing the water. So now if the water is close to good, I'm a big fan of apple cider vinegar. I think it does a lot for gut health. I think it does a lot for cleaning up the bloodstream circulatory system. The birds like it. I think it aids in feed digestion. So I think you get more miles out of the feed eaten. Um, if the water's really off, if it's extremely hard, then we got to look at ways of softening that water. I've seen some really good plans out there of catching rainwater and trying to use that as much as possible because rainwater is naturally soft. So if you put in a water collection system, you should be able to use rainwater a fair amount of the time. And people say I'm on municipal water, right? And they think their government or their township or their county or their water supply people actually are providing them good water. No. It we they send out a, where they test it every year. They do test it every year.

  Carey: 12:18

  Okay.

  Jeff Mattocks: 12:19

  They don't tell

  Carey: 12:20

  you what to look for in the test? No.

  Jeff Mattocks: 12:22

  All their te all they have to test for. In the past this is changing because of, dissolved plastics and P FOAs and all that other stuff. But in the past, all they had to check do was a bacteria test. They could still serve you hard water, they could still serve you high sulfur water, they could still serve you whatever. As long as it was, Under the guidance of potable drinkable drinking water which is primarily bacteria. That's why they put a bunch of bacteria, or they put a bunch of chlorine in most municipal water. Yep. And that's what they're serving.

  Carey: 13:02

  And chlorine is not good for you. In the other thing that I have a lot of buckets for, I use sodium hypochlorite, twelve and a half percent. What I use it for is an additive for a cleaner that I make. But there's several times a year where it's on allotment and when I find out why, it's because municipalities have priority because they use it for treating water. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're using a level of bleach that is high enough to where if it comes in contact with your bare skin, it's going to cause burns. You're mixing that with my water for me to drink. Yeah, I don't like that. So with that, I I just checked the pH of mine at home using a pool test kit from a hot tub and it's barely six. In

  Jeff Mattocks: 14:01

  your region, that's, I would expect five and a half to six and that's, it's okay. So for a chicken, it's not horrible. But it's still not, we're not getting everything out of the feed. The health is not going to be a hundred percent. So if we could adjust that water, good, pure, clean water. Out in nature somewhere that hasn't been disturbed by human beings wants to be roughly between 6, 8, and 7. But 7 is where water wants to be. 7 pH.

  Carey: 14:37

  If your water is 6 or 5, that's where the apple cider vinegar comes

  Jeff Mattocks: 14:43

  in. Apple cider vinegar is still acidic. Depending on what's causing that pH to be low, Already, you could make that worse. See, this is where having that water test and knowing what you're drinking, what your family's drinking and what your chickens are drinking is really important. And then talk to a water professional and figure out how to get it, Corrected.

  Carey: 15:07

  Because I don't drink my water at my house and a lot of people don't, there have been times that I have turned the faucet on. And had a tan hue to my water. Yeah. What I have done is the, they make a water filter for RV. Screws right in line with the hose pipe. And when you got hose pipes running all over your chicken yard, it comes in very handy. So I come off of the spigot with a four foot leader, hook it into one side of the filter. Then I hook a couple of splitters up on the other side to send the water everywhere it needs to go. So I do filter it. Now I know that's not getting it like a bottle water. It's better, but it is a lot better than what they have. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Feed Quality and Pecking Order with Jeff Mattocks

Jeff is the authority on nutrition, join us as we discuss feed and pecking order

• 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.

  Monica: 0:16

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of eggfoam dot com. Your trusted source to ship hatching eggs safely. They have several sizes available from small button quail to turkey size. Their shippers are cut to fit into United States Post Office complementary boxes to make your shipping a breeze. Check out eggfoam dot com

  0:37

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:45

  And based on the calculator that you put in the groups this past week, You'd be spending three cents less per chicken when you're feeding them and saving yourself a lot

  Jeff Mattocks: 0:57

  of time. And what we're not even calculating into this is the length of time for grow up. So by feeding a really nutrient dense, high quality feed with no fillers, no BS, no nothing in it, right? Just really good, wholesome feed, right? You're going to shave off almost 20 percent of your grow out time. Yes. If you count your labor for anything, then you have to count that too.

  Carey: 1:29

  Daily chores. Daily chores. With mine, I was getting ready to go out of town, and managing a hundred baby chicks in a brooder is rough, especially for somebody that's babysitting a farm that's never lived on a farm. Before I went out of town, I put these hundred chicks out on the ground. 30 degrees the night before I got in my truck and left. I didn't lose a single chick. We shouldn't. Now, granted, at three weeks, some of them weighed 630 grams because of the feed that they were getting. It wasn't 15 a bag broiler feed. No. You add it up and it's probably 35, 36 a bag. Yep. And you were complaining about it just like everybody else until you saw the difference. I am a numbers person and I am a results person. And, yeah, you can take a$15,$20 a bag feed and add a whole lot of crap to it and spend hours doing it. Or you can save yourself time, money, and effort by getting the$35 bag. I've discovered that the hard way. Back to breeding. In your book, half a square foot per chick. Quarter. Quarter,

  Jeff Mattocks: 2:56

  quarter square foot. For the first week, you want one quarter of a square foot per chick per. One quarter square foot per chick per. Each week that you have that chick in a brooder, you will increase by one, you start with a quarter, you increase by a quarter. So if they're in there for four weeks, they need one square foot thing. You do that with a hundred, it gets a lot of space quick. But if you don't, your bedding is going to get away from you. I don't care what bedding you're using and your air quality is going to get away from you. You're going to end up with a stinking mess. You're going to end up with sick chicks, right? Just something that I've observed is if I give them one quarter square foot and I keep gradually increasing that each week. So it's important to neck them down to that quarter square foot because I gotta have them find feed and water in that first 24 to 48 hours. They learn in their brain there's a receptor that sets their eating habit. As to whether they're going to grow or they're going to be a run, right? So if they do not find feed in that first, really it's the first 24 hours you're stretching it to go up 48 hours. They, so really when you put them in the brooder and you put them in there tight, I don't want them to go more than six inches without either running into food or water.

  Carey: 4:22

  Okay.

  Jeff Mattocks: 4:23

  So laying down, the brown, the unsurfaced brown, paper, the rough like crap paper or what I refer to as open face cardboard where it doesn't have the flat facing on it, it only has the corrugation. You lay that down and put feed on that. Put your feeders there, but you also spill feed around it. Okay, so you're getting them close to it, but they can't help but, find feed. So they learn what it looks like, they learn what it smells like. Yeah, a lot of people don't spend enough time in their brooder. Which is really amazing to me, right? Because who doesn't like looking at baby chicks? If you don't like looking at baby chicks, why are you raising, why are you raising chickens? Okay. So yeah, going in there every hour or two. And if you run your finger through the feed and you run your finger through the water, they're curious, right? They're going to run over and look and it doesn't matter whether this is ducks, chickens, turkeys. I don't care what it is. Just simply going in there, right? And doing something. And doing something. with what you want

  Carey: 5:26

  them to find. It's just like a potato chip bag and a dog. It builds their curiosity and they want it. The quicker they find the feed, the quicker they eat it, the quicker they grow, the quicker they're ready to be put out on pasture or whatever you're putting them out on. And as they grow and everything, you get to Feederspace. Other than the first two weeks when it needs to be everywhere, what, how much feeder space do you recommend for, say, a four or eight week old chicken all the way up to an

  Jeff Mattocks: 6:00

  adult bird? I like to start out with one inch of feeder space per chicken. So even like day one, so let's say after day three, you remove all the feed off the ground, which is fine, right? Usually we go three or four days, feed feed everywhere. You're gradually removing that as it gets, manured on or messed up or whatever. So really I want a chick to have one inch of feeder space per chick. Okay. Every chick should be able to eat at exactly the same time. Because if you go in there and you flip your huck bucket over and you sit there for a little while, you don't watch, right? So they have major feeding times when they all feel like they need to eat. And we want them to be able to do that. And people say they'll take turns. Or shit on that. That doesn't really that, I don't like to go down that road. So you remember when you were a kid and you went to Christmas dinner, you had to sit over on a card table or something else, or, you're sitting around. You don't get to sit at the big table with the big people.

  Carey: 7:00

  Yeah. Nobody likes that.

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:01

  Okay. So they don't like it. They don't like it that way either. Yeah, everybody gets room at the table. Think of it that way. So then you increase by a quarter of an inch of feeder space each week that you own the bird. So by the time they're eight weeks old, you should have three inches of feeder space. So at eight weeks, three inches. Because you started at one, right? And then if you go eight times one quarter, that's two. So now you have a total of three by the time you hit eight weeks. What about an adult? Still, I'm working at three to four inches. So once they hit that three to four inches at eight weeks, that's a good place to stay.

  Carey: 7:44

  Yeah,

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:44

  You know that I'm looking at Cornish cross numbers. When I come up with that three inches. So most of our heritage breeds unless you got new hamps or something really huge, right? Now, you know if you've got really if you're doing a really large fowl Then think about five or six inches, right? Yeah. Like a, like an orping 10 or something like that. Yeah. So you need to go out there and you need to look again, flipping over your huck bucket, spending a little bit of time observing your birds right after you feed them is perfect. You go out, you fill the feed troughs or whatever you do, please don't feed full time, all the time, every time. I do not, I am not a fan of. Once they're adults or once they get past puberty and they're hitting that adult stage, I really want them to clean up the feed that you give them every day and have some limitations on it.

  Carey: 8:38

  Okay. With that is there a particular time of day?

  Jeff Mattocks: 8:43

  So sitting on my bucket, watching my chickens in the backyard and paying attention, I noticed that the feeders were packed one hour before the sun went down. One hour before sunset, I would watch, it didn't matter that when we fed them, right? I could have fed them three hours earlier, two hours earlier, whatever, but on their own, their normal habit, they would circle and fill that feeder and everybody wanted to fill up, right? And they got a big old crop that's bulging, they want to go to bed with a full, for the full belly. Is the bottom. Me too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So who doesn't and then so they'll fill up at that one hour before sunset. Then they stand there, they wander around, they do their socializing that, they go see each other and whatever they want to do. And they do some grooming and some preening and some dust bathing or whatever. But actually after that one hour before sunset, they just in an open range or free range environment, they just gradually do their thing, but they're migrating back to the roost. So when that sun goes down they're already there. Yeah. They want to be on the roost. And then I noticed with our Americanas. They went to roost first. You know why? They wanted the highest spot on the roost. They fought horribly. They were, I'm not a fan of Americanas. I like how they look. I'm not a fan, I won't own Americanas ever again, because they're ornery assholes. They had to be at the top rung of the roost. Learning from that, I actually decided my roost would no longer be a ladder roost, my roost would be level. I socialized my chickens. I took a social, a socialist view on my chickens and they all had level roosting. So I eliminated the fighting for the top spot.

  Carey: 10:49

  See, I have some of mine they like to be high and I have some dog kennels that are five by 10. They have an A frame roof on them. And in them, as the chicks, as they were growing, I put, you can fit a 2x4 in there perfectly. So I put it up about a foot and a half, and then the next one I put about two and a half feet, a little staggered over. And as they grew and kept going higher and higher, I just moved them higher and higher. I there's only four or five birds in one of these breeding pens, but every night when I look out there, they're six feet high. You can, but they all need

  Jeff Mattocks: 11:32

  to be at the same level. They are all. So that, because there's. Because if they have to fight for that top position.

  Carey: 11:39

  Yeah.

  Jeff Mattocks: 11:39

  We, before I had chickens, we would use the term pecking order. As a punchline or something. There is a pecking order. It's real obvious. And especially when it comes time to roost. And I found it hilarious that hens, once they establish their pattern that this hen will sleep beside this hen and don't you let another hen come in there and try and take that spot. Right? There again. So they have socialized and they have paired themselves and, like this one's okay with this one, but don't let this one try and get in that spot. And funny story

  Carey: 12:20

  about that. I had a couple of chickens get out of one of my breeding pens. I opened the door and they ran. I don't know what had been going on, but they did. And I finished doing what I had to do. I was able to catch one of them, put her back in there. Everything was fine. The other one, she wasn't having it. I chased her for a few minutes, wasn't having it. That night, 1130, 12 o'clock. I look out the window, six feet up in the air, on the part of the two by four that's hanging out the side. That hen, the rooster, on the inside of the pen, right beside her. I said, man, they're crazy. She had a chance to run, but she's right there. So I walked outside, walked up behind her, like she knew what I was doing. She stood up, I put my hands right up underneath her, took her around, walked inside the coop. The rooster had already started moving the other ones over. I set her up there, not a squawk, not a nothing. It was like my wife was like, what are you doing? And I told her and she said, you've got to be kidding me. And I said, no, it was in like, there was no tears for them to climb to get up there. This was a Delaware. She weighed over six pounds, flew straight up six feet. So I believe in that. And I believe that they like to be in the correct order side by side at night. Ever since I saw that. There's a social

  Jeff Mattocks: 14:09

  order. And, they want, they can tell, even we, we don't think they care. But they care. And they are very fussy about who they go to bed with and who they wake up with. And it's I'm, listen, talking to breeders like yourself and Rip and others, right? And they're talking about moving birds around and, going from this pen to this pen. And I cringe every time I hear this. If you want to move a bird, You do it at night, right? After it's dark, everybody's gone to the roost, you move them over in the dark, you wear your headlamp with the infrared, right? So nobody can see it, and you place that hen or that rooster, in that pen on the roost. The, this, it's funny, but it's not funny, but I have figured out that it's not okay to go to bed with a stranger. But it's okay to wake up with one. So

  Carey: 15:03

  I can see how it's less frowned upon. Yeah. I have a green head, headlamp that I use as rechargeable and my backyard, which is where I have all my breeding pens. at night. And when I go b green light, it doesn't s you know, it's just like a lot easier to find beca the infrared green i All the new hunting

  Jeff Mattocks: 15:36

  lights have gone to the greens. Yeah. You don't see the reds like you used to. Yeah. For that same reason. Evidently the green is not detectable. It's not frightening to the wildlife. And so it just works better.

  Carey: 15:49

  With us talking about feeder space and all that good stuff, is there a certain height? How high do you want the feeder or water off the ground? What makes it important?

  Jeff Mattocks: 16:03

  Look, again, we've known this for a hundred years. The lip of the feeder whatever the bird has to reach over, needs to be level. Or at the same height as the average bird's back. Okay, where the neck meets the rest of the body. And the reason we do this, both for feed and water, is we reduce spillage. If you ever actually, again, flip your bucket over and actually watch your birds, Okay? They've got to pick the feet up, but then they have to straighten their head. They have to straighten their neck and look up to the sky to actually get the water in. The further the distance from where she gets the water to where she can tip her head, is only a spilling hazard. So if you like to replace your bedding and you like wet bedding, You just keep it on the ground, right? For the rest of us who want to save money and time, because you're going to waste almost 30 percent of your water by keeping your water on the ground versus having it at the appropriate height. The same is true with feed. I can't tell you how many folks like yourself and not you, but how many breeding folks or how many chicken folks I talked to. And they're like, there's feed all over the place. They're wasting it, right? If you have it too low, they're going to bury their head in that feed. They're going to sling it side to side. And what they're looking for is that giant nugget of corn because they know there's one in there. They're going to sling them until they find it. Instead of adapting by getting your feeder height where it needs to be to feed a grain feed like a mash feed or coarse textured feed, people went to pellets. They all look the same. So now there's no sorting, there's no slinging, there's no looking around, right? So now you've taken away the chicken's ability to select. Or, so

  Carey: 17:59

  I look at that as taking away their foraging because when they forge in the woods and look for stuff, they're looking for a particular thing. And I think that activity is important to maintain the quality of the bird, just my opinion,

  Jeff Mattocks: 18:18

  it all goes together for proper mental health and well being. And that's the way I look at it. The bird. Just like you said, we all of us creatures, if I go to a buffet, I'm looking for certain things, right? When that chicken comes up to the feeder. Now, when you first put the feed in, if the feed if you let the feed run down to that residual 5 or 10%, like you should, when you come in and refill the feeder, they're not sorting. They're not looking. Right now, they just want to get their food. They just want to eat. They're going to fill their beaks. They're going to fill their crop. Now, people that like to have free choice, 24 7, all the feed you want to eat, you are encouraging that buffet eating. Now, what I mean by buffet eating is not the sorting and selection. What I mean by that buffet eating is, how many times have you gone to a buffet, you see somebody who fills a plate, and They only eat half of it because it didn't like it and they leave it there for the waitress to carry it away. Okay, so now you're encouraging waste. Yep. By leaving a feeder full again. So then you switch over to pellets because they all look the same. The birds don't have the ability to self select.

  Carey: 19:34

  I'm not a huge fan of pellets because of that. But I've found since feeding the better feed that chickens like the greens.

  Jeff Mattocks: 19:45

  Actually, given time. So I would challenge anybody who's sold on pellets to offer a combination of, 50, 30, 40 percent grain or pellet, and then the rest is in grains, properly processed grains. And if you watch give it a month and then pay attention. When you fill the feeder, what did they eat first? And

  Carey: 20:09

  you flip your Huck

  Jeff Mattocks: 20:10

  bucket over and you watch, right? They're eating the grains. Yeah. They're going to eat the grains first. Yeah. Candy every time. Right now, if you're feeding the grain feed a good, properly processed grain mashed feed, and all of a sudden you run out, you gotta run down their tractor supply and all they got is pellets. You bring that home, your hens are going to look at you like you got three heads. They're going to look at you like you're stupid. What do you want us to do with this? Okay. My cousin called me one day because he couldn't get his regular layer feed. And he said, all I had was these pellets. I brought them home. He goes, my hens haven't eaten in two days. He goes, what do I do? Hurry up and get what they've been getting. I give him a, I give him a Band Aid, on a gunshot wound, but we got past it. Them through the blender? Just wet them. Turn them into a wet mash and, they'll eat them as a wet mash.

  Carey: 21:02

  Yeah.

  Jeff Mattocks: 21:02

  And break them down a little bit. The other thing you can do is just go buy some wild bird seed somewhere, anywhere and just toss some of that in there to get them started eating. Then they'll accidentally eat a pellet. Then they'll realize it's not as bad as it looks. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Don't even look at their pellet feeds and the last few ingredients are flavor additives, but there's molasses in there. There's other flavor additives in there. So the bird can smell it, right? So there they have to entice. It's like putting icing on the cake. They got to entice the bird to eat the stupid pellet to begin with.

  Carey: 21:39

  Right. With the water height again, for science, I used to cut waters in buckets. That was my thing for the longest. I was a huge fan. And what I did, I had to make a new one for a pen. And I had a couple of pullets that were younger that were really well with some older pullets. And the the cockerel that I put in there, he was 14 ish months old, we'll say. So they're different sizes. And I put three cups, one about three inches off the bottom of the bucket. And then I come over a couple inches and up a couple inches. And so if you look at the side of the bucket, it looks like stair steps until the tallest cup was, the top of the cup was about level with the waddles on his chin. And I was like, man, I got that a little too high. That one probably will never get used. But from what I saw, it's they almost preferred to reach up and get a drink. then lean their head over and get a drink. And, I remember Rip saying you need it level with the top of their back. And if you put it level with the top of their back, they do reach up a little bit to get it. And since then, I still use the buckets. The cups get on my nerves because when they get to horsing around in there they'll pop one of the cups off. And if you can't find the spring, you got to chunk the whole thing, put a new one in. It's frustrating and gets expensive after a while. So what I've started doing with my breeding pens and having 16 of them, I know this is not going to be the cheapest solution, but in the long run, it will be. I started swapping over to Bellwaters. Now I understand the bell water for five birds is a bit overkill. Not hardly. They don't spill it. They haven't broke one of them yet. Now a lot of my breeding pens are the bottom four feet is solid roofing metal and then the top four feet of them is two by four wire all the way around. And then they have metal roof on top.

Pine Shavings or Peat Moss in the Brooder with Jeff Mattocks

Jeff Mattocks with Ferrell is seen as an expert in poultry in many areas, Find out what bedding he prefers in brooders and why.

• 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.

  Monica: 0:16

  The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of eggfoam dot com. Your trusted source to ship hatching eggs safely. They have several sizes available from small button quail to turkey size. Their shippers are cut to fit into United States Post Office complementary boxes to make your shipping a breeze. Check out eggfoam dot com

  0:37

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:45

  So in your book, the, I've got the fifth edition in the very beginning of it, you talk about air quality. Yes, sir. Can you elaborate on that? Like how does somebody check it? What are they looking for? What levels? of what should they be searching for in the air quality for their chickens? So the

  Jeff Mattocks: 1:07

  simple answer is if it stinks, it's bad. So what are you checking for? Look, if you walk into your chicken coop and you can't stand to be in there for more than 10 minutes to do your chores and leave, your chickens don't want to be in there either. They're not enjoying their life. So, statistically what we know is that the human nose cannot detect ammonia smell until you hit 25 parts per million, right? And we know through years and years of research and study and observation, That a chicken's respiratory tract starts to deteriorate, have scar tissue and not function efficiently at anything above 10 parts per minute. So the bottom line is by the time a human nose can detect this, we're already at two and a half times the tolerance level of a chicken. And if people sit back and think about what is the most important thing to sustaining life, it's. oxygen or air quality. You actually have to have air before you have to worry about food and water. So, I always, in, in every presentation I ever give or in any situation, when somebody lets me say it. The three key factors to any creature are air, water, and then feed. And it's always in that order, right? So if the air quality is bad, they're not going to drink enough. If they don't drink enough, they're not going to eat enough. So air is everything. In my opinion.

  Carey: 2:48

  All right. And we're going to talk about food and water in a little bit. Cause what I'm going to do is. As I read the book for, I think the third time I read it, I started taking notes on things that questions that I had and things that had I ever got the chance to sit down with you, I wanted to talk about. So we're going to go through it. Pretty much in order. The first part of the book, also you talk about brooder bedding and that your favorite was peat moss and you've done some comparisons I've heard you talk about before with peat moss and shavings. And other different things. Can you talk about that a little bit?

  Jeff Mattocks: 3:31

  By accident, actually, if you want the background story on peat moss, I had a bale here when we had chickens in our backyard. And every day, when, it was chore time, you go out and you're looking around, and there was this one black bantam hen. Who was missing and I was like, I couldn't find any feathers. I couldn't find any dead bodies. There was no nothing, right? So it was really puzzling me. And I'd look around, but every day she would be missing from somewhere around lunchtime till chore time in the evening, four or five o'clock. So sitting beside the chicken coop outside where she wasn't supposed to be was a bale of peat moss. And it had a small enough opening to reach in there with a scoop and get some out. And one day I looked in there because this bale of peat moss that was 80 percent full when we put it there was now only 30 percent full. Looked down inside the bag and there she was she had found and discovered the bale of peat moss and She was buried all the way to her waddles in peat moss So I learned two things one the chicken really liked the peat moss and that began that adventure So then we experimented with using peat moss as brooder bedding, right? And we found the same thing the chicks loved it, right? They way preferred peat moss over anything else Just in that, and we compared it to pine shavings, large flake, small flake, medium flake, whatever. But, we Cornish cross chickens, which are stupid, were already expressing chicken ness by dust bathing in it, in that peat moss, where they're not doing that in pine shavings, right? They're not doing that in any other kind of bedding. They're not, digging in, fluffing themselves, having a good time, doing their dust bath. What we also noticed was we didn't have to add anywhere close to the same amount to control that ammonia smell or to control the smell period, right? It always smelled like peat moss, you know. And we were able to go all the way through brooding 50 chicks. for a field trial on one bale of peat moss, one 3. 4 cubic foot, whatever they sell at the local, hardware store. So then curiosity got us because everybody was, complaining about peat moss and dusty and cost and everything else. So we did a side by side field trial, brooding trial, and we did two groups of birds, exact same size coop, exact same room, exact same Everything, so that hundred chickens showed up and we split them evenly 50 50 on day one. One side was pine shavings, the other side was peat moss. Yeah, we brooded the entire four week period on peat moss. And the same bale. The same bale. Okay. Alright. Now this was an 8 foot by 8 foot brooder. Okay, just to give you a space, 60 square foot. We used one bale of peat moss. And on the other side, exactly the same, 8 foot by 8 foot. For the other chicks, we went through five and a half bales of pine shavings to manage the odor control. Alright, they're in the exact same room, they're side by side, split brooder. Okay, exact same size, exact same height, exact same brooder, heating lamp. Everything was exactly the same. I couldn't have duplicated it any better if I tried.

  Carey: 7:13

  For me, in Alabama, peat moss is about$25 a bale. And it has gone up a lot in the last few years. A bundle of pine shavings At my local box store is like$7.50 ish, a bale, but if you compare one$25 bale to the six bales that you're going to need to get the five and a half, just round it down

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:46

  and

  Carey: 7:46

  call it five.

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:47

  Even at that you're at$37. 50.

  Carey: 7:50

  Yeah.

  Jeff Mattocks: 7:51

  So, when you're done brooding. When you clean the brewer out, if you are using pine shavings, you need to take it to the compost pile and let it finish.

  Carey: 8:01

  Yeah, you're gonna have to

  Jeff Mattocks: 8:02

  throw it away or let it finish composting or something. When you finish with peat mos, you can go right to the garden, right to the flower bed, wherever you want to use it. You can spread it on your yard and it disappears, and it's more beneficial to whatever is next. I don't care if you bag it up, box it up, and sell it to your neighbors, right? But you have something of much higher value for the next, after, for the after, for the next step on, on that video.

  Carey: 8:32

  Essentially, using peat moss, which is better for controlling bacteria and a whole lot of other stuff, and it gets chickens to doing chicken stuff faster.

  Jeff Mattocks: 8:43

  We didn't even talk about this. The peat moss is naturally, right out of the, right out of the peat bogs, is somewhere around 4, 4 and a half percent, 4, 4 to 4. 5 pH. And, what's really mind boggling, considering where it comes from, It is sterile. So further research as I continued down this pathway with the peat moss and, I stumbled upon some other information. Peat moss is actually, if you're in the woods, you have a major gash or a wound, peat moss is a natural bandage, right? You can rinse off the wound, pack it, wrap it with peat moss. And you've got a sterile bandage at this point. It's highly absorbent. Right. So with shavings you got a place to grow bacteria, right? You know the coccidiosis the bacteria and all that other stuff does not want to grow in that peat moss because it's naturally sterile It wants to go back to that low pH just because of its decaying organic matter It wants to hold it'll continue to do that, you know You do not have to go in and stir it and rake it and fiddle with it nearly as much as you do with pine shavings or other types of bedding, right? It stays loose and friable for the most part. Unless you really screw up peat moss, because the chickens are constantly digging in it and they're always dust bathing in it. They're stirring it up for you. Yeah, the only. Complaint that I really get is from the chicken owners is all the dust, right? And people have heard it before. Jennifer Bryant said the same thing. I had dust everywhere, right? The cobwebs were black, the everything was black. And that is a truthful statement. It is, right? And people worry about it. Is it going to be a respiratory hazard or a respiratory irritant or whatever? I have never, ever seen that be. So for science,

  Carey: 10:48

  for science, I recently made the dive. I ordered a hundred, a hundred corners cross. And instead of, getting the shavings habit, I went for peat moss. And I think I put about three inches worth in my brooder, which is probably too much, way too much. I probably could have gotten away with two inches, inch and a half inch and a half is usually enough. So, I overkill, but I packed this brooder full of chicks and in one of them, I have a automatic watering cups in my brooder and one of the cups busted and about two gallons of water leaked out inside of it. The only way I knew it is because I saw water dripping out the bottom of the brooder, because when I opened it to look in there, the dirt's dry, which tells me it's doing its job. Fixed the problem and no longer had that issue. And I was able to not have any issues with my chicks had I been using pine shavings and two gallons of water escape as young as those chicks were, that'd probably be dead and that'd probably got too cold.

  Jeff Mattocks: 12:14

  And it wouldn't have worked out for him, so Pine shavings do not have the same absorbency quality. If you want to prove it to yourself, get yourself a cup, or a pint jar, or whatever you want, of pine shavings and peat moss. And start adding measured amounts of water. And you'll quickly see which one can, has a higher holding capacity for moisture, pine shavings or peat moss.

  Carey: 12:41

  Yeah. And so with these Cornish, I had them in the brooder for three weeks. And normally when I'm brooding a hundred chickens inside my barn, even with my 20 inch fan pulling air out, it gets rough quick. Because you take a hundred chicks. Couple hundred quail that live in the barn, whatever chickens that I've got, that's not quite old enough in my grow out over here to go outside because I raise chickens year round. I had probably a couple hundred quail, 20 chickens that were four to six weeks old, but I was still seeing 20 degrees outside. So it wasn't time to put them out. I needed them to get a couple more weeks. I brought these hundred broilers in there. It didn't stink. The ammonia never hit, obviously it never hit the 25 parts per million because I didn't smell it. You shouldn't. And the couple times that I did go in there and smell the manure, I kick my fan on, and in about a minute it was back to smelling just peachy. There's definitely a lot of truth in that. I'm, I've been learning a lot over the past year, and I'm seeing that everybody talks about the money, I'm. The peat moss costs 25 bucks, shavings cost 7. 50, same way with feed. Oh, I can get feed for$15 a bag. You can, but by the time you feed them twice the amount of feed, cause that's what they're going to eat at least. And by the time you add stuff to it to get it to the nutrition level, you could have spent$35 on a bag of food. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Bob White Quail with Aaron Guidroz

Thinking about bobwhite quail? Get the low down from Aaron! Guidroz Family Farm is a great resource.

• 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.

  Aaron Guidroz: 0:24

  Hey everyone, this is Aaron with Geatro's Family Farm. We're a small homestead farm based out of South Louisiana, and we raise quail and chickens. Thanks for having me today, hope you guys enjoy. Yeah that's how I am. Like, so for Quail Con my big thing is I like to help like small people homesteaders that are raising quail on making a profit or, okay, so my, I'm going to tell y'all my title for Quail Con for my speech is homesteading with quail. breaking even and beyond. So it's basically just to try to help the small homesteader, with a few birds that wants to pay for their feed and have their own meat and stuff like that. And that's where I started. It was just as a homesteader, my wife and I were 18, 19 years old, got married and Neither one of us came from a farming background and we're like, we don't like what's going on with the meat in the store. And let's start raising our own stuff. And here we are. Everybody thought we were crazy, but here we are. And then our goal when we first started our business was if we could pay for all the feed and then provide meat for us, we were doing great.

  Jennifer: 1:36

  And

  Aaron Guidroz: 1:36

  then it started well. Let's build this barn. Let's build this and let's have the birds pay for it. And now I got dump trucks dumping dirt in my yard right now to build another building. The birds paid for it, so it's fine. Yeah.

  Jennifer: 1:52

  Let's talk Bob White today because we, I get a lot of questions about Bob White's and I don't really know anything about him other than what I've heard. So do you have a lot of Bob Whites?

  Aaron Guidroz: 2:03

  I have a few Bob Whites. I kinda transitioned over from Bob Whites to more Coturnix because of the meat. I still enjoy Bob Whites. Bob Whites are a beautiful bird. Their song is unmatched. Actually I have a video on YouTube I done maybe two years ago on the for meat Bob Whites versus Coturnix. And Coturnix beat them hands down, but they're still a valuable bird. It's still fun to shoot. I still like the Bob Whites hunt. We don't have any Bob Whites native here, even though Louisiana wildlife and fisheries says we do. I've been hunting and fishing is the swamp. So I've been hunting and fishing in the swamp since I was a child. And I've never ran across a wild Bob White and I raise them. We like to. Shoot them. We like to eat them, just a fun bird to have around.

  Jennifer: 3:01

  Why don't you explain to us the beginning process, like their life cycle and how long to incubate and how long it takes them to grow and lay and all of that good stuff. So our podcast is more geared towards beginners, like that don't know anything. So talk that way.

  Aaron Guidroz: 3:18

  So as far as incubation on Bob White their eggs are going to be slightly smaller than a Coturnix. It'll be like a standard sized Coturnix egg. You're going to do the same incubation temperature, 99. 5. Except for it's a 23 day incubation period on day 20, you're going to lock them down. I dry hatch. So I have, I had no humidity. It stays around 15 to 20 percent with adding no humidity. And then on day 20, I, after day 20, I had 75 percent humidity, same temperature, 99. 5 degrees. And I find with Bob White and like pheasants and stuff, more of the wild game birds, I I'll let them go longer than I would a coturnix egg hatching. Sometimes I'll let them go to that 24, 25 days because, you'll have more hatch out. Coturnix, I don't go 24 hours past. Brooding is substantially different with Bob White and Coturnix. Just first off your length, you're going to be brooding Bob White for six weeks, depending your climate as compared to Coturnix. When you know, Bob White, you're pulling them out of the brooder when Coturnix are laying just about

  Jennifer: 4:32

  wow.

  Aaron Guidroz: 4:33

  So I do for Bob White in the brooder. We're looking around one bird per half a foot, half a square foot. So two birds per square foot for the brooding for the first three weeks. Then after the first three weeks, then I go one bird per square foot. And that helps with aggression. Because they are more of a wild bird and, it's not like a coturnix where you can select for temperament. It isn't. They're not. They're just a wild bird. And if you, and one big tip I'll give anybody that's wanting to get into Bob Whites, they will be aggressive in the brooder. I would definitely like if you're starting to see like mass aggression, lower your temperature by three or four degrees. And it'll calm them down. I know it, it's like against everything we know as far as brooding, but that I found that works for me just fine. I

  Carey: 5:31

  understand that. Cause when I get hot, I get it. I get irritated.

  Aaron Guidroz: 5:35

  I'm a big southern

  Carey: 5:36

  boy.

  Aaron Guidroz: 5:36

  When I started to get agitated,

  Carey: 5:38

  when

  Aaron Guidroz: 5:40

  I start the brooding from the incubator, I'll put my brooders at 98 degrees. And I'll be looking to decrease about five degrees a week. Now, if you end up with an aggression situation and you just lowered your temperature by five degrees, go ahead and lower it, three or four more degrees and keep it at that. And then when it comes to the next week, then you're going to drop it back down. Another five don't ever go back up. And they are super busy birds, Jennifer, you raise button quail. What button quail look like in a brooder Bob Whites, Same thing, except for bigger.

  Jennifer: 6:15

  About

  Aaron Guidroz: 6:18

  two weeks old these suckers could fly like

  Jennifer: 6:21

  really

  Aaron Guidroz: 6:22

  yeah Not a glorified flight, like you don't want to have a topless brooder These things are so fast. They really made her

  Jennifer: 6:33

  wire.

  Aaron Guidroz: 6:35

  I have wire bottom brooders

  Jennifer: 6:37

  Okay,

  Aaron Guidroz: 6:38

  and wire top brooders.

  Jennifer: 6:41

  All right, and they're the same feed 30 percent protein feed

  Aaron Guidroz: 6:46

  Yeah, so I use the game bird Starter That's the, 28 to 30 percent for the first 12 weeks. Then after that, I'll go down to a, like a 24, 26 percent because Bob White's, my personal opinion from my experiences, cause I really never had anyone sit down and explain to me, Hey, this is how you take care of a Bob White. This is I've done online reading, but. That could go in multiple different directions, the information you could find out there. I found that if you try to keep them on a higher protein, when they are starting to lay, you end up with a lot more egg bound hens, you have a lot more prolapses, and Bobwies typically have a short laying season, so if you lose a hen or, you got an egg bound hen that she's not gonna lay for a while, and you don't want her to lay for a while you wanna try to eliminate as many possible problems you can. You know that you could control because they have their own problems on their own

  Jennifer: 7:46

  Okay, so let's go back to the brooding. So you've got them under heat for six weeks. You've got them on high protein Though so at six weeks, where do you put them

  Aaron Guidroz: 7:55

  at six weeks? I'll go to a mid level I do things a little differently because I do everything outdoors unheated because I live in South Louisiana. We're 85 degrees today Nice and warm. I go, it's like a, I call it a mid level grow out cage. It's no egg roll outs. It, I use same one as my Bob whites and my Coturnix and I'll keep them in there. Bob whites will live in a colony when it's not breeding season, that's when they'll start with the aggression, hens will kill hens. You want to pair them up when it comes to laying season. One to one.

  Jennifer: 8:33

  So a lot of buttons.

  Aaron Guidroz: 8:36

  Unless you have a bigger aviary where you can have, one bird for every four to five square feet. With several hides and, things to do like that, then you can have multiple, but they are super aggressive in mating season after that, like in the wild Bob Whites. So like in the wintertime, they'll come together and form their covey and they live together for winter time. And in the spring, when laying season comes, they'll start to spread out and pair off.

  Jennifer: 9:04

  Okay, so how old are they? When they start to lay,

  Aaron Guidroz: 9:09

  they'll start to lay around 14 to 16 week. But it's seasonal so like right now what i'm doing right now is i'm preparing for next spring I use a shortened version of the Bob White season So the birds i'ma hatch out now are gonna be for next spring breeders. They'll start laying for me They'll start laying here in the february beginning of march and they'll lay through May and start tapering off like the second or third week of may and usually by middle of june there they're done laying You

  Jennifer: 9:43

  So how big do they get?

  Aaron Guidroz: 9:46

  So for a mature bobwhite, it'll vary anywhere between five to seven ounces for a mature Bob White

  Jennifer: 9:54

  okay, so you've got a small egg, a small bird, a short laying season. They take up more space. They're aggressive. What's the pro to keeping these birds? I enjoy listening to

  Aaron Guidroz: 10:10

  their noises, their sounds they make. They just, I wouldn't recommend someone just starting out for Bob White's,

  Jennifer: 10:21

  right?

  Aaron Guidroz: 10:21

  And I'll get people to, they'll call me up and then I want to get started with queer on one Bob White's. I'm like how about you try this instead? Cause I have some of my Coturnix said I could just get, I could put them in my pocket and just walk around and they'll just stay in my pocket and just look around with a Bob White.

  Jennifer: 10:42

  So do you have them in cages or in we hear people talk about putting them in flight pins. You got to teach them to fly. That kind of stuff.

  Aaron Guidroz: 10:51

  Yes. Flight pins are recommended. I do keep some in cages. The cages are like 14 inches tall. It, you have to be very quick to grab the eggs. I don't trust egg outs with Bob whites. And because when they fly, most of the time they're not coming back, you lose them. Coturnix, I find Coturnix, sometimes I'll get some out, they come out because I'm clumsy a lot of times and I forget to close the door

  Jennifer: 11:17

  to the

  Aaron Guidroz: 11:17

  cage. And, but they just stick around

  Jennifer: 11:21

  and they're like, what do we do now?

  Aaron Guidroz: 11:25

  Yeah, they want to get out so bad to get on the ground and they're just like, Hey, let me back in with my friends.

  Jennifer: 11:31

  Okay. So did Bob White eggs taste better? Are they worth more?

  Aaron Guidroz: 11:37

  If you're going to sell them to customers, they're worth more. The average price for a Bob White hatching egg is around 2 a piece, here locally. Which, caternix eggs, depending on who you ask anywhere between 50 cents and a dollar for a coturnix egg, around here, where I live at, in South Louisiana. But Bob White are around$2, and adult birds Coturnix adult hens here will sell for Six to seven dollars bob whites will sell for nine to ten dollars a piece. You can make more money It's just gonna take you a longer time

  Jennifer: 12:17

  You have more money invested in them and yeah And space Huh interesting

  Aaron Guidroz: 12:24

  Lifespan I'm going to say recycle Bob Whites. So I don't really keep anything over a year. So like the birds this year are going to replace the bird from last year, and so on and so forth. So I don't really keep them, but. They'll lay consistently for three to four years

  Jennifer: 12:48

  So your order of operations would be to harvest your layers when they quit laying Say june 1st Yes, all of those eggs And basically start again.

  Aaron Guidroz: 13:00

  Yes

  Jennifer: 13:02

  Interesting.

  Aaron Guidroz: 13:03

  I don't really sell my whites much anymore years ago I did and then I had tennessee reds and They were very aggressive.

  Jennifer: 13:14

  Tennessee Reds, are they like a variety of Bobwhite or something totally different?

  Aaron Guidroz: 13:19

  The color mutation of the Northern Bobwhite.

  Jennifer: 13:22

  Okay, so everything to raise them is the same?

  Aaron Guidroz: 13:26

  Yes. Like when they came and like For the biosecurity stuff. I was like I do this rather than this, which I am totally biosecure. I don't bring anything here from the outside. I don't allow visitors. And on occasion, when I do have a friend, which I don't probably that's more friends than I have when they do come over. Everything's sanitized. I don't, I just, I have too much money invested and that's my birds at the end of the day, if I don't sell anything, I'm still keeping my birds because they are my birds. So I don't want anything to happen to them because they're my pets. My turkeys are my babies. My emus are my babies.

  Jennifer: 14:08

  Chickens, they can go, right?

  Aaron Guidroz: 14:10

  My wife has silkies and she loves silkies. Now I can tell you a good part about the silkies. So like usually our first few rounds of turkey eggs will incubate them. They will incubate. We have some to sell because we sell chicks locally. But like after that, when I'm tired of incubating them, I give the eggs to silkies hatch them out and they raise these suckers out and then come November, I go in there and I collect my turkeys. And I really didn't have to do anything. The silkie hatched them out, the silkie brooded them, the silkie did everything with them and I have dinner.

  Jennifer: 14:51

  Yep. So the bob whites are more just a variety for you to have variety in the freezer as far as you're concerned.

  Aaron Guidroz: 15:02

  For me, it's more of the experience of it,

  Jennifer: 15:05

  the

  Aaron Guidroz: 15:06

  sound. I'll just stop and sit. If I'm feeling a certain spot, I'll just stop and sit and enjoy a few minutes of peace. And the Bob Whites add that extra sound. It's also sporting to shoot, have, get a couple of dogs, working them in some bushes and have a little fun like that. And then we eat them. We don't waste them. Of course. I just like to live by myself.

  Jennifer: 15:34

  So what is the theory behind? The legality of the permit. Why are they trying to govern the Bob Whites?

  Aaron Guidroz: 15:44

  I'm not sure. And I know there's special buyback programs. I can more than the northern part of state that they'll buy Bob Whites to release back into the wild because the population is going down substantially. Yeah. Bob White in the wild averages about a year of lifespan. Same thing like fraternities. They are the bottom of the food chain. There's they don't prey on anything aside from a few insects and seeds in the ground Everything preys on them, everything bigger than them is bob whites food So their lifespan in the wild is not well poor guys and I think they're a beautiful bird I think we should have more but I don't know if it's more of a government thing one of the key tabs on What everybody has I'm not one of those tinfoil hat wearing people, but

  Jennifer: 16:42

  I am.

  Aaron Guidroz: 16:44

  Yeah. I wouldn't recommend starting with Bob Whites just for the simple fact of a little bit more difficult to care for. You have a lot more money invested to realize that. This is not working out for me. My, my whole thing is I'm a homesteader. That's where my roots lie is being a homesteader. So everything is cutting costs and what's the most cost effective way to do this. What's the most cost effective way to experiment and try this, what, without costing a ton of money, because. The people that have endless supply of money are not worried about raising a quail. Most people, I don't want to generalize here. Most people are raising quail to cut costs at home and, separate themselves from the grocery store. And Bobhiteiss is just not an answer for that. All you Bobwhite breeders listening to this, you know exactly what I'm saying. Unless, if you have 10, 000 Bob White and you're selling chicks and selling eggs like crazy, you're not worried about the cost because you're making double the profit as a Coturnix. You're raising this and you're a homesteader and you think you're going to have a good meat source, you're better off raising a chicken. As much as that hurts me to say. It's going to grow out the same amount as a white American Bresse.

  Jennifer: 18:02

  Yeah. If you're talking about a seven ounce live weight bird, you're only talking about three ounces of meat, maybe. That's, we just took my grandson to Sonic and he ate a bigger hamburger than three ounces. So yeah.

  Aaron Guidroz: 18:17

  When you look at a Coturnix, when you look at the, like on a butchered bird, I should have rewatched my video. I can't watch myself on YouTube. And, but if you look at like the skin bird side by side, the legs are big on our Coturnix, the breasts are bigger on our Coturnix. You could stick a Bob White inside of a Coturnix.

  Jennifer: 18:38

  Oh, wow.

  Aaron Guidroz: 18:39

  That'd be like a turducken, but with bobwhite inside of Coturnix.

  Jennifer: 18:44

  Do you raise any other game birds just out of curiosity?

  Aaron Guidroz: 18:48

  I raised rain neck pheasants and I stopped about a year ago because I wanted to make a quail aviary. So their enclosure is now a quail aviary.

  Jennifer: 19:00

  Okay. Did you eat those?

  Aaron Guidroz: 19:03

  Yes.

  Jennifer: 19:04

  What do they taste like?

  Aaron Guidroz: 19:08

  Like the Bob White and the pheasants and Coturnixary taste the same. It's a dark meat. It's they don't take long to cook. Don't get crazy on your temperature when you're cooking those guys. It's red a little bit more reddish like when you I scan most of my stuff. If I'm doing it here, I'm skinning it because time is valuable. And I'm trying to remember the weight on the pheasants. Pheasants were just a hair over a pound. I would say around the 18 to 20 ounce range.

  Jennifer: 19:44

  Do they lay year round?

  Aaron Guidroz: 19:45

  No, they're also seasonal layers in the spring.

  Jennifer: 19:49

  Okay. And how big are their eggs?

  Aaron Guidroz: 19:53

  Like a silky somewhere in the say in the 30 to 40 gram range

  Jennifer: 20:01

  So they're more an ornamental bird kind of akin to maybe a peacock.

  Aaron Guidroz: 20:06

  Yeah.

  Jennifer: 20:07

  Okay,

  Aaron Guidroz: 20:07

  but it's useful as a peacock I love quail

  Jennifer: 20:11

  do you have

  Aaron Guidroz: 20:13

  Standard Browns had some bourbon reds and wasn't in love with them. So ended up with settled on Standard Browns a few years ago, and they grow big enough for me to eat really don't cause me problems. They don't eat a whole bunch of food there. They live in with the Silky Bachelors right now because I need I needed a place for Silky Bachelors. So I was like They can't beat up a turkey, so they're living together.

  Jennifer: 20:48

  You would think the turkey would stomp on the silkies.

  Aaron Guidroz: 20:51

  No when I feed the silkies, eat first and then the turkeys go eat.

  Jennifer: 20:56

  Interesting. Anything else you want to say about Bob Whites? And then I want to talk about Coturnix for a minute.

  Aaron Guidroz: 21:02

  I'm done with Bob Whites.

  Jennifer: 21:04

  Okay, good. So what are you not happy about with the Browns?

  Aaron Guidroz: 21:09

  I just, I think they should be bigger. The, and I haven't really put as much focus in the Browns as I do with my Egyptians and my Whites. And then I've been fooling with my celadons a lot lately. So I just let them go and it's getting close to time to replace them. I think I actually, I have some that I'm satisfied with, but it's only like 30. So on my website, I pulled out for like math, the larger quantities because my breeders, the big breeder cage I have, I just, I don't sell those eggs. As hatching eggs.

  Jennifer: 21:48

  So how big are your birds?

  Aaron Guidroz: 21:51

  They are staying more around the 13 ounce, like 12 to 13 ounce range. So they're a little smaller and they were bigger.

  Jennifer: 22:00

  Oh yeah. How big are your eggs?

  Aaron Guidroz: 22:05

  My eggs are around 15 to 17 grams.

  Carey: 22:09

  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@gmail.com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it exciting. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

BioSecurity Protect Your Flock

Biosecurity is important because your dirt is different than my dirt. Find out what this means and why its important.

• Transcript

  Jennifer: 0:00

  Hi, and Welcome to Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Jennifer Bryant, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Carey Blackmon. And we're here to help you get all the information you need. To grow the healthiest, happiest, and best quality birds possible.

  0:16

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:19

  Let's talk about a general overview of biosecurity Okay, so Generally what we're talking about with biosecurity for people who may be new to poultry is just another good word for it might be cross contamination. Think in your kitchen if you're dealing with raw chicken in your kitchen, you're not going to walk around touching all the doorknobs. It's the same thing. If you're dealing with a sick chicken, you don't want to walk around and feed and handle your good chickens or your new chickens or your baby chicks you want to be mindful of essentially cross contamination. That's a good analogy, don't you think? Yeah, so for me I don't let people come to my farm. And when you're dealing with poultry people, whether it be chicken or quail or whatever a lot of them want to go places and want to see stuff. And unless I know the person, they're not going to come to my place and look at my birds. I just, to me, it's not worth the risk. Cause I don't know what they have at their house. I don't know if they're birds, if they have sick birds and that's why they want more, I don't know what's going on. True. But it's more than that. It's just, it's like going to the feed store. It's, it could be some talking to somebody at Walmart checkout. You have to have your barn shoes. And they only stay at your barn. You don't want to wear your same sneakers to Walmart or Tractor Supply and then go into your barn. Especially the feed store. Because, there's no telling what you're going to pick up there. I was going to say, people that come to the feed store and don't have barn shoes, they've walked in that store and all through it with everything on their shoes. There's going to be different degrees of biosecurity. You don't let people come to your farm, but I do. But I show, and so I, I have an element of risk at shows also. And And so I just find a middle ground that makes me happy. It just works in general for my business. Now I don't allow people in the barn anymore. I used to do that. I used to do workshops and stuff. I don't do that anymore. But they can come to the farm and do their pickups and stuff. If somebody wanted to pull up in my driveway, I'd be okay with that. But, they want to come look at your pens and all that kind of stuff. And I'm just not comfortable with that. I know that when you show birds, the person that shows birds takes really good care of their animals. They are up to date with all the latest and greatest nutrition stuff and they're feeding supplements and vitamins and minerals to their birds. And their birds are in great health, so they probably have rock solid immune systems, but a lot of people don't do that. The person that wants the cheapest bag of food probably is not thinking or feeding minerals and vitamins and stuff like that to their birds. So you don't know what they're susceptible for. And if you go to the show and you really just people watch for just a minute, a lot of people wear their barn clothes in there, their muck boots in there. Not necessarily the exhibitors, but maybe people that just wanted to come see the chickens. Or they put their fingers in and try to touch the birds. So, you're still getting that, that lack of biosecurity, I guess would say. And of course, you've got the airflow, so anything airborne is flying around in there. Yeah. And you told me one time that often you will take birds to a show to show that are already sold. Yes. Yes. A lot of times that's how I don't, I come home without any birds. That's a good plan. Yeah. So I go in street clothes and I come home with nothing and we can stop and have dinner on the way home and don't have to worry about birds in the van or anything. So works out. That would work out pretty good. Yep, but if I do bring birds home, now I have outdoor pens on the side of my barn, and we don't have to go in there to feed and water them. We can do it all from the outside. And so put them in there and they stay in there for a couple of weeks and then we'll assess them after that. But on it, to be honest, I've never brought home a problem to other long term show people. And one person told me that one time he brought home lice. He was pretty sure he brought home lice from the show. But other than that, he's been showing for 15 or 16 years, and that was it. Just one time he brought home some lice. If that's all that happens in 15 or 16 years, I think we're doing pretty good. For me, I'm not really worried about the show. I feel confident that people that shows, even the spectators, the vast majority of them probably keep pretty decent birds. What really gets me is I see people go into these auctions and these sale barns and. I don't do that because that makes me really nervous and gives me a lot of anxiety about what's floating around the air and what's on the poo on the ground in those places. But I have seen pictures of some of the stuff online that people take. And the condition that they're, even their cages are in doesn't look like they're well taken care of. So I myself have never been to an auction for poultry and, but I have seen it, they'll do them live on Facebook or whatnot. There's a local one. And one time I had somebody coming up from Alabama, wanted to come get some quail from me. And he said, we're going to go to the auction and I'm going to come pick up from you afterwards. And I said, Nope, just buy whatever you need at the auction. I don't even need you at the front gate. And you're not coming any closer than that. I know a guy that flips birds. And he flat out told me that he cannot keep anything. He can't hatch anything out on his property. He has asked me to hatch birds for him and raise them up for a few weeks before he got them. Because anything young that comes on his property Within 24 hours of stepping on the ground, it dies. And he buys huge bottles of antibiotics to mix in with his waters. And I'm like, dude, you've obviously got a problem. You need to address that before you flip all these chickens, because you take in a thousand chickens. They touch the ground at your place, get sick. You send those chickens off somewhere else. They're going to get sick and that's how crap spreads. And he was like, I don't know how to fix it. So we've talked about some situations and some options to mitigate, but from what experts say, even if you put an atrocious amount of lime in the dirt, till it in, go over and plant grass. It's still going to be months before any disease is gone. And that's when no animals on it. Yeah. Cause well say Merrick's that is, is in the dander that they shed and my understanding is, that can be in the ground for a long time and mycoplasma the same way. Mites, mites will just hang out in the wood until, till something comes along that they need to latch on to. So there's always something there's always worms. There's always, the chance for blackhead if it's on your property. There's a lot of stuff out there. Just lurking and waiting for the opportune moment to come up. And if you bring in an immunocompromised bird, like this flipper that, you know those birds are stressed, they're being moved around by the bulk load and they're stressed out and when their immune systems are stressed, that's when they're going to get sick on sick ground. That's just a recipe really for disaster. So, but so now that we've talked about what could happen, let's talk about what you can do to mitigate the possibility of it happening. You can't ever control it a hundred percent, but you could mitigate it. And the first thing you should do is just not wear your street clothes out there. You've designated barn shoes or yard shoes. So for me, I've got a pair of, they call'em boat shoes. They're designed for like deep sea fishing, so they're non-slip. They come up above my ankles a little bit. They're made outta rubber. And anytime that pair of shoes let's say if I was going to go to somebody's barn and walk around and do that, I would take that pair of shoes, put them in my tub with a gallon of bleach and some water, and I would let them sit overnight. And with that, I know that anything that came off of my property after I scrubbed them and they sit in that bleach solution, I know that they're sanitized and I'll take them and I'll wear them. And then when I bring them back. They go straight in the house, straight into the bleach water, and they'll sit overnight, and I'll repeat the process. And if I do go to a farm, when I come home, I go straight in the house, take my clothes off, put on clean clothes after taking a shower and put the ones that I took off straight into the washing machine. That's how I protect myself. If I go to a show and I come home, I take those clothes off, I take a shower, I put on different set of clothes, my barn clothes. And then I'll go take 10 to my animals. Is that, do you think that would work? Is there something else I should be doing? No, I would say that is sufficient. I don't know what else you could possibly do there. I know of a breeder that requires three days of not exposure. To a bird before he'll let you on his property, which to a degree, is really just a way of saying, no, you can't come to the property because who can do that if you have birds? So yeah, if you can go to that extreme and it's practical for you, the safer your birds are going to be, but I still don't think a hundred percent. You can't because you go through all that trouble, but you can't control the sparrows flying over your property. And I can't roll the 2000 Canadian geese that live at the lake next to me, that fly over all the time. To be somewhat practical at the same time. And I just, I would rather enjoy my birds instead of sterilizing myself out of my enjoyment. I think that there's degrees, I think, as long as you're aware of what could happen, and then What you could do to prevent it and then make the decision for what works for you. But ignorance is not bliss in this subject matter. No, definitely not. Because if you go to an auction, even if you don't buy anything and you come home and you go out and sit with your goats and you play with your chickens and stuff, and then you're on Facebook two days later, wondering why in the world your animals are sick. Let's back up and retrace your steps for just a second, so, sometimes like I won't go to an auction and I don't want to talk to anybody that's just been to an auction and I don't even buy cows from auctions if I buy them off of people I know. So I just, I will say that my son buys a lot of cattle from auctions. They require the better auctions. And that's, he, there are some that he won't buy from, but the more reputable ones, they actually require vet testing. You gotta bring your, you gotta bring your cattle there. At least a day ahead of time and they have a vet to test every single one of them for a whole slew of stuff and you have to pay that whether your cow sells or not. Okay, and that's great and everything, but in the, it's not a hundred percent. The cows here for a second. So I know of some people that have Had still births and had complications and they got the cow back up and stitched her back up and sent her to auction. So you're not just buying potential disease. You are buying potential problems. And the same thing will go for goat and a sheep. I've seen those things happen also. And I've heard about those things. The chickens, same thing, people I know somebody who purposely doses her sick birds up on antibiotics. And once their eyes are clean, she sends them to auction. So you don't know what you're buying and here's the other thing. If you're going to the auction and you are just buying birds, you want to take home to eat. You don't know what you're getting. You can be buying the birds from that lady. I know that doses hers up on high doses, the antibiotics and going home. The whole point to me and raising your own chicken is to know what goes into your chicken and. You know everything There's no way I would eat a bird that I just bought from an auction that is just crazy to me You might as well eat, but we're gonna go down a rabbit hole I was gonna say I was going to say you may as well go to a bargain grocery store And buy a chicken. I wasn't gonna name any particular But I mean it is what it is. There's a lot of people That have started raising their own for a reason. It is what it is. It is. Let's see, what else can we do about biosecurity? You want to touch on AI at all since because it's rearing up right now? While we're at it, we can talk about AI. I know that's a very meh subject, and there's a lot of rabbit holes that you can go down. Um, a lot of people say it's not airborne. If you do research it's only through their liquid, their juices of some sort, their saliva or whatever, and their poo. And that is true, but somehow or another, it still makes its way into houses. Which tells me that even commercial places have biosecurity issues or else it should not happen, but it's stuff that we have to, you get, that's another thing when you're walking around in your chicken yard, be aware if all your chickens are in pens and you don't have anything free range. and you see some poo, probably shouldn't step in it. Yeah, that would be a good one. Here's a good example of me trying to do something cheap and fun for the chickens. Cheap for me, fun for the chickens. I collected leaves. one fall about three years ago from where people bagged them up on the side of the road, I would just drive around and picking them up. And then I would dump them in my chicken coops. And I didn't think anything about it. I had collected leaves on my own property for years, but out here we don't have a lot of trees. And so I thought I'll just collect them. And I put them in the chicken pens and for them to play in and, have some entertainment or whatever during the winter. I got lice and every one of those pens that I had put the leaves in, I got lice on those birds and ended up having to treat the pens and the birds. So you, and those came from the wild birds living in the trees who had lice on them and got on the birds from the leaves. Is what I think, because I didn't have it in any other pens. And I'm not going to test that in any kind of experiments or anything. I don't want to deal with that again. Is this another experiment coming up? No. That 2024 is experiments already set up. So I'm not doing lice. I don't want to deal with it. Biosecurity, it can whack you in the face when you're not expecting it. It never would have occurred to me that leaves would have been a problem. I can see that. Yeah. What are some other tips that somebody could do to try to maintain a clean I guess I think a clean environment would be the biggest thing, maybe. What would you suggest for somebody who's trying to be biosecure and, AI is becoming a big thing as we're seeing it in the news, trying to stay away from that as well. What would be something that people could do? If I had to choose the top thing to do would be have good nutrition on your birds. So they have the best immune system possible. But you don't want them to live in a bubble, either. They need to be on dirt, and they need to have fresh air, and they need to have sunshine. And then the second thing, I would do, would just be aware of my surroundings and watch AI follows the migratory patterns of waterfowl. So you can actually watch it coming up from South America and work its way up north. And it, Those patterns are pretty well set and you can look up online and see where those patterns are. And they usually follow waterways. They're going to follow like the East coast of the United States, because they need to stop for the night and rest and they're going to need water. Their waterfowl, the Mississippi river channel that way. And so you get a lot of Canadian geese that nest in Missouri and. Iowa anything along the Ohio river and then goes north. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the out west, but it should follow the coastline out there also. But so when you see it to start coming up and it seems that flock that's coming north right then is carrying it. Then that would be a good time to put your birds under cover until they go on by. We're not talking about years here. We're talking about weeks. So. There was a lot of outbreak in South Alabama several months back. And I've got some keep stalls in my barn. And I know that it's better for them to be outside and have the natural daylight and all that good stuff. But when you have. exhibition poultry, having them is more important. So I brought my breeders in my barn. And I did it a year and a half ago. It was real bad and they were, it was getting closer and closer here. They found some in Nashville. And I brought everybody in until it, it seemed to go away. And we're only talking about three weeks here, about forever. Now I think the people over in the UK now they've been battling it for several years at this point. Yeah. I want to say in a lot of the countries on that side of the world, now it's to the point where you're supposed to register your birds. period. So they can track stuff, which I have my own opinions over that, that we should not discuss on the show, but it's a bit extreme. I don't got no birds. No, I don't. Yeah. I just talk about them on the show. All so basically what I'm gathering is feed your birds a quality feed with all the nutrients and vitamins and all the good stuff that they need. Take good care of them. Keep their environment clean. Keep yourself clean when you go take care of them and don't bring in any outside anything. Now, if you, let's say you've got, you find a bird that's just perfect. And it's one that would compliment your flock perfectly. What do you do when you bring them home? You quarantine them at least 30 feet away from your nearest bird for 30 days. Yeah. And then you go from there. I saw where you posted the other day you were giving away some dog crates, the big ones. They're like, I want to say four feet by four feet or something like that. They're big. Yeah. Yeah. I have three of those and their sole purpose is to, I call them my little prisons. And I have, let's see, Koops and more I believe make some ones that, some waters that'll go on the outside, and they have the little cup that goes through. And I have those for all three of the ones that I have. And I also have feeders that will connect. I use like cups. That'll latch onto the wire. And I put them about a hundred feet away from my chicken yard downwind. So anything airborne won't blow into my chicken yard. And they're the last ones to get fed and watered. And, I call them my little prisons because I'm going to isolate you for 30 days. Even when I take, even when I take a bird to a show, when I bring them back, unfortunately, they're going to have to live. Out there by themselves. Yeah, mine stay, over, we call them the condos on the side of the barn, those pens. I don't personally buy birds. I got my starter flock and I have never brought birds in again. So that's not something I do, but when I sell birds. Especially to people who don't know they've never bought a quality bird before they don't know what they're looking for. If they're interested in a lesson I will stress the bird a little bit. You can cover their nostrils for 10 or 15 seconds and see if bubbles come up in their eyes. That can be indicative of mycoplasma. You want to feel their breastbone, make sure it's straight. And there's some meat there. You don't want a light feeling, thin feeling bird. You always check feather quality, lift up the feathers, look for lice, nits. or lice walking around. On my birds, you would be able to see them on the comb because, the white on the red comb. You get the tail feathers, you to look for mites you look at their legs for scaly leg mites you listen to them breathing. Are they wheezing? Are they sneezing? Do they seem lethargic? Don't buy a bird to take home and hospitalize, don't do it. If you know it's one, I would, I haven't done it in a while. The last one I did was Houdini and that is my Rhode Island Red. Him and um, his two ladies, the trio. I brought them home. I quarantined them. And I told my wife, I said, I'm not buying any more birds. She said, you're kidding. And I said, no, I'm serious. I didn't say anything about hatching. I have, cause I have those and I have my Bresse, my American Bresse. I have my Delaware's and I've got a couple others and now I have, I will say I've gotten rid of a lot, but. I haven't bought any new ones. And it works. So I'm going to tell you a story about a lady and she's a repeat buyer of mine. She buys from me quite a bit. I send her lots of eggs. She's up North, never met her in person. She bought, I used to have Marans and I sent her some hatching eggs and she hatched them out and she just was, she's just in love with the Marans. As far as I know, she still has those birds to this day. So she had quail, she had bobwhite, she had turkeys. She had just some regular old layer chickens running around in the yard. And one Saturday, they went to an auction and she fell in love with this cage of pigeons and just had to have these pigeons. And she brought them home. And about four days later, all of her birds started dying. She first lost her turkeys and then she started losing her chickens. And she was texting me just in a panic. She was losing all her birds and these turkeys were to be raised for sale for Thanksgiving dinner and she's losing them and she wanted to know, could she still harvest them and eat them. And what she had brought home was mycoplasma. And her birds had never been exposed to it. And it was just too much for them. And it killed them. And, but the mycoplasma is just a virus. It's not, you can't get it from the birds. So I told her just to go ahead and harvest the turkeys. And they were safe to consume. But she lost every bird on her property because of those pigeons. Luckily at the time, the Morans were still in a brooder, but mycoplasma lives in the ground and she ended up having to burn her coop is what she decided to do. And she rebuilt coops on the far side of her house away from there. Yeah. And she's just now getting eggs again. She started over with quail and she's just now starting to get eggs again. The person that was telling me about tilling the dirt and throwing lime, another thing that I forgot to mention earlier is they said you need to burn it. That's just, that's a lot. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just not worth it. If you want to keep sick animals by all means, do just shut us off right now and go do your thing. But if you want to keep good, healthy animals. Then, pay attention to what you're doing. Think about what you're doing. Yeah, that's true. Coming up in the next few weeks or so, we're going to do a series where we start talking a lot about poultry nutrition. I'm going to use that to lead into that. I have, we're going to have Jeff Mattocks with the Fertrell Company who authored the book Niche Poultry. We're going to take a dive into that book. We're going to go through it. We're going to look at some setup options, different nutritions. We'll have some sample feed rations that we'll be posting on our Facebook. And also I am in the process of taking a class called commercial poultry nutrition. So we will, we'll dive into that. And we'll talk a whole lot more about keeping your birds healthy and happy. I have my own guest online. I have one for crim legbars and silkies. Ooh, we're going to talk about silkies. We have to bring her on so I can make fun of her. I'm going to tell you my, our, we're both, we both know RIP Stalvey from the Poultry Keepers 360 podcast. Yeah, he is going to be so excited. When we start talking to the silky lady they're just one of his favorites. Are you being sarcastic? I'm being very sarcastic. But I will say this, he and I both agree that there is a, there is silkies do have a really good spot. They are a lot of people ask about incubators. Silkies make great incubators. I don't really know what else though. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

Poultry Nerds on Brooding Part 3

The conclusion of Brooding, Thanks for sticking with us, it is a giant subject and we want you to be successful.

• Transcript

  Carey: 0:00

  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@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.

  0:28

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:44

  Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Kerry 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.

  Jennifer: 1:08

  Yes. And I realized people treat them like pets, but you and I both show. So probably not very many people are going to pamper their chickens as much as we do. And mine don't get any kind of treats like what anybody is thinking about when we say that. Mine get pieces of old

  Carey: 1:31

  bread. I was going to say, I don't give mine apple pie.

  Jennifer: 1:37

  Spaghetti noodles, potato chips, pizza. I saw one this morning. Oh my word. I almost just passed out. She said every Saturday mine gets pizza crusts. And you know what, pizza crust might not be so bad, but they don't need all that oil that's on it. And the size of the chunks that she was fixing to throw out there was a whole nother story. So a lot of this has to do with how you keep your chickens too. Are you keeping them cooped all day? Are they out on fresh grass? Are they free ranging? So if we're going back to feed, let's just say When I was a kid, ours got a coffee can, and it was a small coffee can, like a 12 ounce coffee can, of cracked corn. That's it. That's all they got all day. I don't care if we had 100 running out there or 12 running out there. We got one 12 ounce can of cracked corn. Now, if I had posted that on Facebook this morning, people would have a coronary. However,

  Carey: 2:45

  my, I bet you had some hearty chickens too.

  Jennifer: 2:48

  And they had 50 acres to run around and get whatever they wanted to. But they didn't need supplemental feed. That was just to get'em to come back into the cup at night.

  Carey: 2:59

  Yep. they hear that corn, there's probably a metal or a glass cup, metal coffee. They hear that rattle. Yeah, they can hear that. We do that with the cows. You can open the grain bin and get you about three, four inches worth of corn inside of a five gallon bucket and start shaking that. And I'm talking on 125 acre property. You can shake that thing about 10, 15 times. Open the chute when you're trying to get them corralled up, open the chute, set the bucket in the middle of it, tie a string to it, and you just go sit on the bucket of the tractor and wait. And they'll all come running in.

  Jennifer: 3:49

  That's right. And then, but now today we keep, we like to coupes and, with signs on the side of it and flower beds and stuff. And that's not. natural for a chicken to be cooped like that all day. So you do need to feed them a complete feed because they can't go out and forage for what they need. One of the biggest I guess controversial posts that I made last spring was right out about a year ago. was that you can put grass in your runs. People talk about, sand, mulch, gravel pea gravel, concrete, all these things to put because it's muddy and it's inconvenient for you to walk in when it's muddy. Now my coops have 42 foot runs on them and they have grass that I have to mow. Like I have to mow it right now today. And I don't wanna because it's still too chilly outside. But anyway, I made a post about the grass in my runs needed to be mowed and I am not kidding you. 5, 000 people thought that was insanity.

  Carey: 5:03

  A minute wait, here I am. You got goats.

  Jennifer: 5:08

  No, I'm talking about in the breeder pens over here on the side.

  Carey: 5:11

  I understand. So what we need, what you need to do is on your others, you got the pigs going in there to aerate the soil. So let's just get the, put you a goat in there with your ginormous chicken. It's not going to mess with each other. Yes, and let

  Jennifer: 5:28

  eat all the grass. So actually yes, you, it's, I do have chickens and goats together in the back, but sometimes they squabble and the chickens always lose. I lost one the other day. She got stepped on and it broke her back. Oh, that ain't good. No. Maybe if I got any, the little bitty tiny baby goats maybe, but not my full size goats. No, you'd have to move them around. Yeah. So the. It's okay to put grass in your runs. I actually encourage you to do it is possible. Just because you have chickens doesn't mean you can't have a yard.

  Carey: 6:05

  But don't put hay or straw in there. And don't

  Jennifer: 6:08

  put 50 chickens in. When I have grass in my runs, I might have eight chickens in there.

  Carey: 6:14

  And what is this mess that I see people doing about buying toys? I understand there's get something where you can stick a head of lettuce on it and hang it or stick a pallet in there for them to play on that. But I've started seeing chicken toys that are like kid toys,

  Jennifer: 6:36

  waste of money.

  Carey: 6:37

  And I'm just like, what's stuffed animals? Like, why are you giving your chicken a stuffed animal? They're going to do like a dog. They're going to eventually destroy it. And when they do, that fuzz is going to get caught in their gizzard and you're going to walk out there and your beautiful pet chicken that you bought that fuzzy toy for is going to be laying right beside it.

  Jennifer: 7:09

  Yep. Impacted crop. Yeah.

  Carey: 7:12

  Yeah. Impacted. That's why. A lot of people will want to put straw inside of a run because the straw does not mold like hay will when it gets wet. So they do that. But I'm here to tell you, straw will also, chickens like to chew on it and they'll get impacted crop and die from it. Grass cliffs. Yeah. That's when you. When I give grass clippings to mine I actually bought a battery powered mulching lawnmower with a bagger. So it cuts it up small. And then I'll dump the bag inside chicken pens for them to go through and do whatever with. If you're just giving them regular big old pieces of grass, that's not going to do good for them. It can cause problems. Now it may not. There's probably somebody going to say, Oh, they're lying. I've had chickens for 30 years and it never happened. I had one get an impacted crop. It was a chocolate Orpington a few months ago. Two of them impacted crop on straw and I felt like absolute garbage because they were beautiful. I looked for them for a while. I finally found them. And it was a nice pair and that was the only thing wrong with them. And when I physically opened their mouth and looked in it, I saw a piece of straw and I felt horrible and I'll never buy it again. Some other issues that you can see when having chicks and I'm going to put a couple of these together. Splay leg, curled toes, and rye necks. For me, if I see that. You got 24 hours. Maybe if I'm busy at that moment, you got 24 hours because it could be you hadn't had a drink of water yet or something. I don't know, which usually it's not. But if I see that in a brooder, after they hatch out like when I take them out of the hatching basket put them in the brooder if I come back 12 to 24 hours later, and I still see that same chick it is going to become a hawk feeder

  Jennifer: 9:43

  Yeah, we don't keep them here either They're gone.

  Carey: 9:46

  I have seen people that have spent weeks nursing those and that bird, they never thrive. And it's, to me, it's doing a disservice to the bird. It is.

  Jennifer: 10:03

  There's why in nature the strongest survive. And there's a reason, and other things have to eat too. Dying isn't the worst thing in the world. Living in pain would be terrible. Anyway. We don't keep them here either. We have outlets for them that we use them for.

  Carey: 10:20

  What about, let's see. And I feel confident when I say what about coccidiosis. What do you give your animals when they come up with that? And you're going to probably say, I never have a problem with that because I keep my runs clean.

  Jennifer: 10:38

  I never have a problem with that because I keep my brooders clean. Yes.

  Carey: 10:42

  And your brooders clean and you don't throw your feed on the ground where your animals go to the bathroom. A lot of, a lot of people they don't, they just throw the feed down on the ground and they're like chickens eat all kinds of stuff off the ground. Yeah, but when you have chickens in a pen or in a run or in a coop, that's where they go to the bathroom and until people start eating out of a toilet. That doesn't mean that chickens should do it either, so Put their feet in a feeder. Don't make them eat it off the ground. And keep the pens clean and you won't have coccidiosis.

  Jennifer: 11:22

  So let's explain coccidiosis here for a second. So it's not a bacteria. It is a protozoa. And so you have to introduce it into the environment. It doesn't just come out of the air. So if you let's just go through my theory here. So I have my brooders inside my barn and I in between each batch, I sanitize. I clean the brooder with soapy water, and then I sanitize it. And then I use clean puppy pads, brand new puppy pads. I lay down on that. And then they get clean waterers and clean feeders. Now these waterers and feeders have never cleaned the brooder. left my incubation room. They don't get used outside. They don't get used in the main part of the barn. So this is it. And then we take care of the chicks first when we go out there. So our hands are clean. First thing we do that day there's very little chance. I'm not going to say no chance, but we have minimized all the chances of contamination, bringing in. the protozoa from outside. And so I do not have a problem with coccidiosis in my brooders. Okay. That being said, now there are some breeders who throw fresh dirt in their brooders to weed out the weak immune systems instantly. And that is another method. I do not do that, but there is some merits to that I think is worth maybe exploring a little bit, but right now I'm happy with what I'm doing. So I was going

  Carey: 13:20

  to say I can see that, but also I feel confident that you should give a bird every chance you can in the beginning and, I don't try to, I'm not going to throw a wrench in it, but if I see it, it is what it is. So for me that's how. I take care of it. You do the same thing. It's one of those things. If you handle your chicks first, because it is outside, your adult birds have it. They have all kinds of stuff when you feed them quality feed that has all the nutrients in it that they need. their bodies fight, all kinds of stuff. Stuff that's airborne and everything. Just like ours. Yeah, just like ours, but not the chicks. A lot of things that, we talked earlier about brooding. And so let's also talk a little bit about when chickens can go outside. And for me, there's two things, two things that I look at on when a chick can go outside. Number one, that is a un unconditional thing is do they have all their real feathers if they've got all their feathers and I say feathers? I told my son when he was little, he says daddy, what's the difference? And I said son, you got peach fuzz and you got your feathers. Once that peach fuzz comes off and they actually have feathers. then it's usually safe for them to go outside if it's above 40 to 50 degrees. Now, for me in Alabama, I have put Rhode Island Reds, all the dirt, outside at five weeks. And it actually after they were out for a couple of days, it dipped down below 40 and I did not lose a single bird there again. They were all, they are on really good feeds hatcher and they had full, they were fully feathered and they look really well. So I think that's important is to make sure they're fully feathered. Regardless of what it is,

  Jennifer: 15:43

  right? So if we're hatching in January, and you're probably not going to be putting them out till sometime in March, but if your hand, if you're hatching in March, it would not be. a big deal to put them out at five or six weeks in April. Just dependent on the weather.

  Carey: 16:03

  Now I will say this if you hatch them out in October and you put them out at six to eight weeks, you will have some very hardy birds.

  Jennifer: 16:16

  But I don't find they grow big enough in the

  Carey: 16:18

  fall. They don't usually, if it's if it is a large fowl I have done it, but for that, I will say that it is extremely important to have wind breaks in place. Birds can handle cold temperatures. They cannot handle the wind chill.

  Jennifer: 16:41

  I can agree with that. Let's see, what else? I'm going to talk a little bit about vaccinated birds versus unvaccinated birds. I'm going to say this. All my birds are unvaccinated. I don't believe in vaccinating them. I eat my birds. So therefore I don't want any of that stuff in there. And I don't know a whole lot about them other than once you keep vaccinated birds, you always have to keep vaccinated birds. You can't mix. So make sure you do your homework there before deciding if you want to do it or not.

  Carey: 17:18

  Yeah. I don't do it. I understand That's another thing that floats around in the air, but there again, like Jeff's told me that if you feed them right and you take care of them, you don't need it. A proper diet for any animal can keep them safe. Of a lot of stuff, Hey, look at people if we ate properly, we probably wouldn't have 90 percent of the health issues that we have. Right. Yeah.

  Jennifer: 17:52

  So let's see. And then I guess the, we'll just end on once you do put them outside, don't put roost over your head. Think about you, you're important too. And I'm not reaching way up over my head to deal with birds. And don't overcrowd your coops. If you only have enough space for three birds, then only have three birds. And for the love of everything, sleeping in the nesting boxes is not okay.

  Carey: 18:24

  No, let me tell you this though about the roost. I got to say this because this is hilarious to me. I have most of my breeding pens are four foot wide, eight foot long and eight foot tall. Some of them are five foot wide. eight foot tall and 10 foot long. So I used two by four wire, which is great because you slide a two by four in there and boom, you got a roost. When they're young, I'll start, I start out with a couple of feet up. I'll slide two by four in there. And then I will offset it a couple of feet and, over and up. I'll stick another one in there and I'll make stepping where they can go back and forth because a lot of mine have metal roofs and it's really weird late at night. I will look outside and I will see. Chickens, seven and a half feet up in the air, hunched up under the metal roof of whatever shed, whichever breeding pen they're in. fighting to get up that high because they want to be up there. Now, obviously the don't do this with a young bird because of, if one of my adults fall off, they're going to catch themselves and fly out of it and have a soft landing. But if a bird can't do that, they could get seriously hurt. They, I don't know why they just like going real high. Even this, what really. Was awkward to me the other night and I'll end with this I have some Delawares that are about eight pounds, and they will get up that high. I put the two by four almost at the top of that breeding pin for support because I anchor mine to the ground, so it is attached to the uprights, the wooden post at the back, which is why it's so high. They, the nearest one is about three and a half feet down from there. And two of them were up on top of it.

  Jennifer: 21:00

  Oh, so my roost are two feet.

  Carey: 21:03

  And where my reds are. There I have one that's about two feet off the ground and I have another one that's about three feet off the ground. The one that's two feet, I have it there. All the pens have that way they can get on a roost, which is natural for them to sleep. And they're totally, they have all the wind blocked because I have a four foot piece of metal at the bottom. And then the next one is just above that piece of metal. So when it's hot, they can get up there and enjoy the wind. So that's the main design behind that. The other pieces were put to use for anchor points. And I've just recently seen that they like getting up that high. And when I saw the Delaware's up there, it was hilarious.

  Jennifer: 21:54

  Yeah. My birds are so heavy that if they could get up that high yeah, they would probably break something on the way down. I did have a coach in that thought he needed to be up on the turkey, turkey roost one time, and I ended up having to move him because the only way he could figure out how to get down was just to fly straight until he hit the wall and then fall down. Wow. So I had to move him. Yeah,

  Carey: 22:24

  that's a lot.

  Jennifer: 22:27

  Now the turkeys, now turkeys like to roost high too. Naturally they're gonna roost in trees, right? Logistically, when you need to go in there and do something, you don't want a 40 pound turkey above your head that you have to do something with. So my turkey roosts are four feet. And that allows them to see out through the hardware cloth that's around the top of all my pens. That's plenty high enough for them. And it's easy for me to catch them. So when I go in there and I have to catch them for the, like the MPIP or just sorting for whatever reason I have a lower roost at two feet that I call the bounce board. And then they'll get up on that and then they'll hop up to the higher one. They're two by eight boards is what they are. And what I do is I just encourage them to go up and they'll get on that bounce board and then I'll just touch their tail feathers and they'll hop up on the four foot board right when they land that split second of teetering I'm getting my bearings is when you can snatch them without arguments. So that's how I have learned how to catch them. But I'm short. I'm just barely over five feet tall. So a four foot roost is about all I can handle.

  Carey: 23:51

  Yeah. Now, one thing that I'll say also about roost. is, I said a while ago that I used the two by four wire around the top so I can slide a two by four in there for them to use. And it makes it easy. One thing that I have that I do that I have found mine really is I'll take five and a quarter deck board and I'll cut that in sections that's almost as wide as the interior of my coop. I'll slide my two by four in there. I'll screw that to the top of it. And they can, that's, they're really comfortable. They have plenty of room to lay there. That's almost six inches wide. So that works out pretty good. Yeah.

  Jennifer: 24:40

  Mine are on two by fours, but the turkeys are on two by eights.

  Carey: 24:45

  I can see that because turkeys are, even though your Orpington is what, 13, 14 pounds, that would be a small turkey. 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@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.

  25:26

  Mhm.

Poultry Nerds on Brooding Part 2

Part 2 of Brooding, it’s a big subject and we had to break it up!

• Transcript

  Jennifer: 0:24

  And that's what you want. So those turkeys are like watching those chicks act like crazy people. And they want to go see if they need to act like crazy people too. Yes. And they can eat the same thing. So don't stress that. Just put them on chick starter, non medicated, which we're going to get to that in just a minute, but put them on chick starter, But now when you move the chicks out and you're down to just turkeys in the brooder, that's when you really want to do the game bird starter, but you don't have to. Again, don't stress it. chick starter, game bird starter, it, they're going to eat their fill. They'll grow better on a game bird starter, but they're not going to die on a chick starter. And then ducks need a lower. percentage of protein. Otherwise, you can get something called Angel Wing, which is a whole nother podcast. But so you want them, I use Chick Starter with them. Never feed them the high protein game starter. So you want a non medicated good quality chick starter like an 18 And leave them on that and you might even start mixing in some scratch with it just to lower that protein just a little bit more Don't go any lower than say 15 percent But I highly encourage you not to over protein a duckling and they're nasty So let me tell you a secret that I was told. I have, I asked a question to Jeff. I said, how do I know when I'm giving too much protein to a chick of any kind? and he said, your nose will tell you. I said, huh? He said, when your brooder starts smelling like your quail cages that you haven't emptied out in two weeks, the protein is way too high. You need to cut back quick. You'll mess them up. And so that's like for me, I start a lot of quail and I use a very high protein quail starter when, and I'll give it to chicks the first few days of their life too. And when I start smelling that smell, I cut it down to chick starter and they grow quick and they get, it helps them get a faster growth. But. People, a lot of people say I like to do this. Here's the thing. If it says game bird starter and it's a quail, give it that. But if it's a chicken. It's best to feed it chicken feed. Yeah, if you're completely new Do not know Just follow the bags. Don't listen to facebook. Don't listen to the clerk attractor supply. Sorry people just the bag if it's got a chicken on it and you have chickens then that's the one you want if it has duck on it Then that's the one you want. And please shop somewhere else too. Open your horizons a little bit. There's other places to get feed, but that's a whole nother soapbox. I like local feed stores. Yeah, those work really well. All right, so in, what are we going to brood in? Now, I know what I brood mine in, I brood in tubs. You have boxes, right? I've got a couple of boxes that are custom made out of wood for brooding. I have my overflow that's the 100 gallon water trough. My main brooding is done in the hatching time boxes. and I like them because they're off the ground. Which is something you told me was extremely important for all of them was to keep them off the ground because cold concrete will make their feet cold and you won't get it warm. I like it because they're stackable in the space. I can put, I can brood a lot of birds in a small amount of space. Being a hatchery, that's important. And I like the heat being adjustable. I can have chickens in one and have it set to one temperature. I can have quail in another and have it set to one temperature. And after my first week, I can start dialing it down a few degrees every week until it gets to where the heat only comes on if my barn heat fails. That is pretty handy. But I will say for a very long time, I use plastic storage containers that were sitting about a foot off the ground and some of those plates, the heat plates that you have on your website. I bought a few of them from you and use them. They work really well. I like the ones that you have because they're idiot proof. They do not have a temperature setting on them. All you can do is raise and lower them and plug them up. And that works out really well. So for people that are just starting with it being hatching season and then wanting some chicks, I would recommend the kit. I know you have one. and it has the plate. It's got everything you need. Find something like that, something that doesn't have a lot of settings, because when you start messing with settings, that's, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So let's talk about keeping them off the ground, what we're talking about there. Like in my barn, I have a concrete floor. And when winter time that concrete gets cold and when you set a brooder on cold that coldness just seeps in So all I simply do now I use furniture dollies from northern tool or what's that other one Harbor freight. Oh, yeah Ten dollars you can't buy anything with wheels for less than ten dollars anyway, and so you can move those brooders around So that's what I like. And then the air can circulate underneath of it. And so you get the ambient temperature of the room underneath of the floor. So I've had a lot of people contact me saying, Hey, my chicks are dying and I don't understand. And I say, send me a picture. And the very first thing I tell them is to get that brooder up off the floor and that fixes it 99 of the time. Stick your hand on the concrete if it's the least bit cold that cold is radiating all the way through your brooder. Yes Now I brood. I don't use the hatching time brooders. I like tubs I like to be able to see down in them. I like it's just more my style works better for my setup and for me You I brood I have, I think they're like 14 inches by, say, 24 inches, and then maybe about 18 inches deep, and my heat plates sit down in them, and these are small batches. I like to brood in smaller batches. It just works for what I've got going on here. And and they're set up almost hip high, so I don't have to bend over to the floor or anything. And and I, but now I run, people laugh. I'm going to run about 13 to 15 brooders at any given time, all the time. How many are you running? Right now eight. It adds up, doesn't it? I will say this though. I had a shocking moment. A very shocking moment. My incubator is empty. Oh, I had to get a fifth one. Only one of them is empty, but I was like I pulled some tray, some trays out and I was like, put them in the hatcher and I'm like, there's nothing in here. I need to fill it. Oh no, wait, I need to sanitize you. I haven't done that in a very long time. I need to sanitize you. And then I need to refill you. I'm sending your eggs out tomorrow. That's when you wanted them. Yeah. That'll actually, that'll be perfect because you'll send them out tomorrow. I'll have them in a few days. That's plenty of time to get that thing sanitized. You know what? Every day before the day before, are you talking about when I put them pointy side down in my hatching my incubator room so they can sit there for a few hours? No, after that, while I'm actually doing that, starting that process is when I'll be sanitizing it. I think you're lucky. Probably. Yeah. All right, so you're brooding in the hatching time, so they're up on wire, basically, and I'm brooding in tubs. Now, I use a puppy pad for the first week, but after that, my, the quail go up on wire. The chickens, turkeys, and ducks, I have barn pens inside on the concrete and I put them on shavings. At that point, if the concrete to me, if it's a little early in the year, I might lay some cardboard down just to insulate against the concrete underneath of the shavings. But right now I'm not doing that. Just putting a thick layer of shavings in and that's what I'm using. Make sure you use fine. I see a lot of misinformation on social media to make sure you use the large ones. I highly encourage fine ones. Information on social media. I got to say this when it comes to braider material, if it's something going in one of my hats and time boxes, they're going to be on wire. I have recently discovered peat moss. Oh yeah, I went through that phase, yeah. When I was, when I went to Mandolin's place and looked around at what she has concrete slab peat moss inside her barn, and she said that she does that and she does it for brooding and it goes straight to the garden. And I was like, hey, So when I started bringing these corners crosses, I got some peat moss and I put it in there and I'm It absorbs a lot. Yeah, I order it by the palate. And it doesn't smell near as bad as shavings that need to be swapped out. And so what I'm thinking, I was told that if I'm brooding like with a Cornish, they only need to be in there two to three weeks. If I put those in there for two to three weeks, I can take that, mix it up, and grow some monstrous vegetables out of it. So that's my plan. That's what I'm doing. I really like the fact that it does not smell near as bad. And when they get in there, brooders. and the ones that don't have the bale waters and when they start horsing around and spilling that all over the place, the peat moss just absorbs it quick. So the peat moss is fantastic. I order it by the pallet. I use a lot of it. I did use it in my barn one year. It was fantastic. Until you stand back in May and all the brooding is relatively done for the year and you think, Oh, I'm going to clean the barn before it gets to be 400 degrees outside. And you look around and your entire barn is black. Every cobweb is black. Every surface is black. Every buff colored chicken is black. Everything is black. I have noticed that some of my Cornish and some of my bresse that are white. are more gray color. And that's okay. I, if I, look, this is, this, we're going back to the wet chicken conversation a while ago. I actually took one of them, I freaked out because I'd never seen it before. I didn't even take time to Google it. I grabbed one of them, went into the kitchen sink, put the water on really warm, and held that sucker up underneath it to clean it off so I could see if it was the dirt or what was wrong with it. And then dried it with a towel and a hairdryer. I didn't want it to be wet when I put it back in the brooder and get, hawk feed. I wanted to eat it. I didn't want the bird to eat it. But I was like, my wife said, I thought you only did that to one of your reds when it was getting showtime or something like that. Why in the world are you drying a chick? I said I don't want to get sick. All right. We're jumping all over the place here, but I'm going to tell you a secret. And then when I do it on my Facebook page, it really does get a huge following and when people will trust me on it, it works really well. So in your coops. Once they're outside, off heat, they're grown, they're ready to go outside. You don't need shavings in your coop. You need to take one bag of stall pellets to one bag of peat moss. Yes, it's like a, was it a cubic yard you buy it from at Lowe's? Yeah. and one, yeah that's it. So a bag of stall pellets and a bag of peat moss. And you go out to your coop. Now mine are clay bottomed, hard clay bottom in the coops because I believe in dirt because it's free and I own it. And so it's already there. And then you put a bag of the stall pellets down just like a one pellet coating. And then you dump the bag of peat moss over the top of it. And then if you want clean eggs, you can put some shavings down over the top of that. And that's it. That's it, and then leave it. The chickens love it. They will break it up for you. It will absorb any moisture and keep them dry, and my main coop, which you've seen is what, 14 by 30 feet, I think? I did it in 2020, so this will be the fourth year. Saw pellets and peat moss. One time. Four years. Going strong. Yeah. That's it. I'm planning on using, and I'm, I've got 16 breeding pens, and I'm swapping out a lot of my breeders as I swap them out. I'm actually going in and tilling up the ground that's in there and throwing some lime in it. And then I'm putting some stall pellets, some peat moss, and I'm going to put a pallet in there. If it's in a low spot, just to give them something to play on. I got that idea from John Gutterman. He said that his love it. And I have a ridiculous amount of pallets. So I'm gonna put some of them to use. Yeah, we put our hay rolls on our pallets. That's a good idea. Now, I do barn lime too if I feel like, that I've had rats in there, or I've got something else going on. Barn lime, so we need to talk about barn lime real quick. There's two different kinds. You want the cheap kind. The cheap kind is Ag Lime. It's crushed limestone. It's perfectly safe. It's just crushed up rock. It should run you four dollars for 50 pounds. You don't have to buy the brand name stuff. I don't think we need to get into name calling, but you don't have to buy the 26 for a half a pound stuff off of Amazon. It's the same thing. 4 for 50 pounds at the co op, at the tractor supply, wherever it is that you shop is the same thing. Another soap box. The cool thing about that is when you're getting the straight up crushed lime, When they do find that it's just extra grit Oyster shell. It's all the same thing. It's just another place to make money Yeah but if you put that down first that all that does Is change the ph of the soil Which makes it inhospitable to other organisms AKA worms, protozoas like coccine any kind of bacteria, yes, mites, you're making it inhospitable and that's what you want. You want them to go away from your birds. All right, so we've talked about. Brooders, and tubs, and bedding, and okay, let's talk about water. That seems to be something else. I wouldn't have thought water would have been so controversial on social media for chicks, or for brooding. Me, I just give mine room temperature water twice a day. Do you do anything elaborate to yours? Do people do something other than room temperature water? Oh, yeah, they do probiotics and rooster booster and apple cider vinegar and honey. There's a crazy amount of stuff out there. So I do know that there's a lot with apple cider vinegar that helps the gut health of the bird. And stuff like that. But, some people, they get really funny. They'll measure it. One ounce, one gallon, one ounce. Or whatever they do. And, no. My when I go this morning before I came to work, I went to my watering tanks that are not automated, which are the only ones are in the barn. And that's just because the plumbing is not done in the barn yet. And I went in there with the hose pot that set outside my front yard all night, picked it up off the ground, walked in, filled them up. Boom. Yeah, now I will say, In the summertime, I will, in the summer, I'll get the, I call them the cheap water bottles, the ones that you get like the great value that are like, have the ridges on the side, the plastics real thin, the ones that you can freeze and they won't blow up, they'll just swell. On days that it's going to be over 100, I will have those frozen and put a couple of them in my five gallon pails. That I use to feed my water lines outside. I will do that to cool the water off because I do use black buckets and black lines, water lines, to keep algae out, but yeah that's about it. It's amazing chickens survive for so long without all that extra stuff. So if you're feeding a quality feed, They don't need anything else, right? If you contact me and say, Hey, your chickens, my chickens don't look good. And you tell me that you've bought the cheapest feed in the universe, but you're putting rooster booster in their water. I'm going to tell you to do it the other way around. To fresh water and by expensive feed. It does make a difference. So yeah, I've I've learned a lot about animal nutrition in the past year and I've learned how to read tags and what byproduct means and what filler is and all that good stuff. And it's gotten to the point where when people say my chickens that I got from you two weeks ago, they just. They're not moving around and stuff like they were when I first got them from you. What are you feeding them? How much do you pay for that bag of feed? Because in my area, I know a lot about the different feed here, and if I've never heard of what they're feeding them, I ask because I know to make a quality feed, how much it costs, and I know that if they say, Oh, I got them this from the such and such places, 1499 a bag. There's your problem, feed tag and look at how many times the word byproduct is in there that literally is in there because they can sweep the floor and put the trash inside your feed. And get away with it, still go about, still have an accurate feed tag. Feed them quality feed and give them water that comes out of the hosepipe. Okay. And then treats. I see a lot of commentary about treats. So this is how I equate treats to a chick. If you have a newborn baby, which you guys do, on formula, are you going to feed it Twinkies just because it's cute? No, because you want the baby to take up all the nutrients from the formula, so it starts off as healthy as possible. It's the same principle with the chicks. You want it to eat as much of that quality food we just told you to go ahead and spend the money on. You don't want to be filling it up with Twinkies, aka mealworms. Like for me, A treat or a chicken is appropriate in the summertime when they're outside and you have watermelon or cantaloupe, give them that because you are going to feed them, you're going to really hydrate them, and you're going to give them a little bit of extra sugar. Those are all things that are really good for chickens. But, They're, even people that have them as pets, I've seen stuff in some of the things that people sell as chicken treats that are, they're only good in moderation according to what the directions say on the bag, but they still want to, let me get a handful. Here you go. Let me get you another handful. They're feeding three, four handfuls at a time and that is not moderation. It's a. Yes. And I realized people treat them like pets, but you and I both show. So probably not very many people are going to pamper their chickens as much as we do. And mine don't get any kind of treats like what anybody is thinking about when we say that.

  Carey: 24:38

  Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

  25:06

  Mhm.

Poultry Nerds on Brooding Part 1

Getting birds started on the right foot takes knowledge and experience. Get the knowledge here and then tweak it to fit your individual circumstances. This works for all poultry.

• Transcript

  Tony: 0:00

  Welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast, where feathers meet fun. Your podcast hosts are Carey Blackmon and Jennifer Bryant. Together, they work hard to bring you the latest news and information from the world of poultry. So get ready for eggciting interviews, foul facts, and more. Now here's Carey and Jennifer.

  0:17

  Mhm.

  Jennifer: 0:25

  So today we're going to be talking about brooding. We've talked about where to get your eggs from, where to get your starter chicks from, and how to incubate them. So now we're going to move into brooding. And the definition of brooding is just simply the timeline between when the chick hatches until when you put it into its incubator. permanent enclosure. Usually that does include a heat source or at least at the end a temperature controlled space where they don't get a chill, where they're out of a draft. And the timeline for brooding for quail is three to four weeks. Chickens are six to eight weeks. Turkeys are eight to twelve weeks. And ducks do their own thing, but typically I find mine do three to five weeks, maybe. It just depends on the outside temperature. Next question. By brooding, most people think about brooding that they have to have them on heat that whole time. So let's back up just a second. With quail, you said brooding is three to four weeks. How long do you actually put them on heat though? Mine now, of course, a lot of that's going to be weather dependent. I'm in a year in Alabama, so maybe Canadians might run a little bit longer, but me here this time of year, it's March. It's nice outside. I'm taking the heat away from them at 10 to 12 days. See for me, I brood indoors and my barn is heated as well, and when I have young ones in my barn, I usually bump the heat up to about 75 ish, and I start cutting my heat down inside the brooder box. My hatching time units, they have the thermometer on them. I start cutting them down after the first week. And I, like you said, 10 days to two weeks and or no heat. Yeah. So you have to understand where me and you are coming from. We want the strongest to survive the hardiest to survive. We are not going to go out there. We're not hospitalizing. We're not coddling the ones that are falling behind or whatnot. Just for example, I moved some out onto wire in the main part of the barn yesterday, and they were hatched on the 26th, so they are 14 days old today. They are off heat, they are on their own in a wire cage wire sides. They're protected from the draft if the wind were to blow into the barn, but they're just at barn temperature, which is probably in the sixties today. And there's going to be a few fatalities, but again, I'm breeding for hardiness and those are the genetics that I want to continue. Yeah. When you're going for hardiness and you need that vigor and you really want that 16 ounce quail. Only the strong survive and that's I've had people from one of my daughters was in the barn with me the other day. She was like, dad, what are you going to do with those? Those that didn't make it? What happened to him? I said those that bunch right there hatched out 2 weeks ago. It's 70 degrees in here. They're inside that box together. Those didn't make it. They weren't strong. She says what are you going to do? And I said, you know how when you come home sometimes from work and you see those hawks in the field next to us I feed them. We have pigs. Yeah, it is what it is. Yeah. They got to eat too. Yeah. And if if I'm feeding them, the ones that don't survive. Then I don't have to worry about them trying to get into my chicken pens. And we need to explain to people who may be new to this, that we see a lot of posts like on Facebook, social media, that, what caused this chick to die or what did I do wrong? There's a possibility that yes, you did do something wrong, but there are so many possibilities. that it wasn't born correctly. You don't know what's going on inside the system of that bird. It could have twisted up intestines, it could have been born without a stomach, or or not a stomach, but a gizzard. You just don't know. People are born with deformities, and to think that you can save every chick is not a reasonable expectation. So anyway, so when I say I'm putting them out, I'm not saying I'm throwing them out in a blizzard. We're just simply removing a heat source and causing them to pull their big boy britches on a little bit. Now chickens. Again, I have giant birds. They're going to be moving a whole lot faster. I have some Orpingtons out there that are, were hatched on February 2nd. So what are they like at five weeks now? And they are probably standing 10 inches tall right now. Man, those things are probably already asking for a two cheeseburger meal for McDonald's. They are. They, when they have a dog food bowl and we're having to fill it up twice, that's two scoops of feed twice a day. There's only five of them in there and they will literally jump up into the dog food bowl while I'm holding it. Now they have a heat plate. Now they're out in a barn pen on shavings on concrete. They do have a heat plate, but they don't get under it. They might at night, maybe I'm not out there, but during the day, they're up and active and they don't need any heat and if the wind were to blow through there, they're going to get the brunt force of it. So right now I've got some Cornish that are brooding and I'm. I was going to kick them out at two weeks, but it's getting below the fifties at night. And I've got a camera inside there and I can still see them. I've got a heat, my heat plate after the first week on a cornish, I turn that sucker up sideways. So you know, freeze up room in the floor. And if they're cold, they can huddle up and get each other warm. If they're not, they have plenty of room to get away from it. I went in there the other day and there was a couple of them that was up against it. And I was like, man it's chilly in here. And I looked at my heater and one of my kids had turned the heater down. I'm like, why are y'all in the barn? I can never get y'all to come in here and help me do anything. So why are y'all messing with the heat? But so I turned it back up to 70, but like those things this coming weekend, there'll be three weeks and they're out. They're going to be out of the barn. I've been feeding them. I made some feed specifically for. growth on a meat bird and I am seeing some ridiculous growth out of them. So just to give you an example of the ones that I weighed last night. I do my weigh ins on Sundays, 303 grams, 333 grams, 290, 250, 305, 339, I'm seeing the lowest percentage of gains in one week was 167%, the highest was at 233. Those things are growing like crazy. Two weeks old? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, like they, today, two weeks ago, I picked them up from the post office. The I got a grower recipe that I'm feeding them, and it's working out really well. All right, so Cornish are a little bit different. I got into an argument with a guy on Facebook the other day. He's Cornish shouldn't be treated any different than any other chicken, and that's just simply not true. I'll tell you right now, if you have a heater on a Cornish at two weeks old, they're gonna die of a heat stroke. Yes, they are. If you've never picked up a Cornish before, I mean if you ever had cold hands, just go out there and pick up a Cornish. They are on fire. Like I have I don't always call them muffin fans, but like the computer case fans that are four inches. I have one of those. In each of my brooders that have the cornishes like at the top of it to pull fresh air in and I have them on all day because I went in there one day and my barn was like 75 and I looked over into one of the brooders that had cornish in it and they're like soaking wet. What's, did y'all. I know you're using a bell waterer son, you didn't bust it. Touch the ground around the water, and it's not wet. Picked up one of the chickens, and I was like, oh my God. So they're definitely different. They're very wet. I I think brooding them on stall pellets would be ideal. That's what I'm going to do this year. I did half and half last year. And this year I'm going to do a hundred percent stall pellets. So stall pellets would absorb all of that moisture, but until you have experienced Cornish You don't understand what we're talking about when we say wet. It's very similar to brooding ducklings. And they stank like ducks. They're wet like ducks. They're hot like ducks. Very similar. Yeah. So if you've got a chicken that. Is not intelligent and it'll set out on your porch while it's pouring down rain. That's what a Cornish looks like. Yeah. Regular chickens. On the other hand you do need to keep doing some heat for, what? Three weeks, four weeks. At least offer it to them. And a better place for them. Now, okay, we need to back up just a minute. Now you have two different kinds of heat sources available. You can do plates, brooder plates, which is what I do. And then you can do heat lamps and you can do regular light bulbs in there, reptile heaters, heat bulbs, all kinds of different kind of light bulbs in there. I use brooder plates, but you use lamps, right? I have a lamp that I use, so I call it my overflow brooder. The very first brooder that I used was a hundred gallon stock tank. And I have a lamp that clamps to the top of it where there is no way that anything could ever hit it. And I'm not a huge fan of it because I know that number one, it's very important to get a quality heat lamp. because a regular bulb, they like to bust and catch on fire really easily. And so I only use that in extreme situations. And, I posted a picture on social media the other day of my overflow brooder, because accidentally put. A bunch of Bresse and a bunch of Rhode Island Reds in my incubator about the same time I would be brooding these Cornishes. And, me being partial to the Bresse and really partial to the Reds, they get to stay at the Holiday Inn Express and the Cornish they're staying at the Quality Inn. So they're in the overflow brooder. And I use a heater for that because the brooder plates that I use, by the time I put a feeder, a bell waterer, and a brooder plate, they couldn't move around anywhere in there. And I'm, I know it sounds like a lot having a bell waterer inside of a brooder box, but in that particular brooder, there's 20 Cornish crosses. And they're drinking a couple gallons a day. Oh, yeah, my now when mine come in they'll be in next week the Cornish and I brewed mine in right in the barn pens, so I have an automatic water system and they wear it out. I think mine is 60 gallons and we will be filling it every day. They wear it out. So I I'm lazy on that. People have asked me for pictures recently and I've started sending pictures of my setup. So I use the five gallon bucket in my breeding pens. I feed those with a 5 gallon bucket. I don't care if it's 3 bellwaters or actually 6 on one line that are supporting 30 chickens or 50 chickens. I'm fixing to put 100 Cornish crosses on 2 bellwaters, which is more than enough. And I'm going to feed it with a 5 gallon bucket. But inside that five gallon bucket, there's a float valve that's hooked to a garden hose. Yeah, I never fill it up. All I do is crack the lid, dump in some apple cider vinegar about once a week, and then let it go for another week. It's really nice. I have that automated. That way when I go out of town, I know I can get somebody to throw some food in, but getting somebody to take a bucket out, fill it up, put it back, refilling all your waters, it's hard to find people to do that, but they'll throw some food in for you. So all my waterings automated. I like it. Yes. Yeah. Oh, it's a game changer. All we got off a little bit on our own little things, but back to the quail. So we're going to be pulling the heat. If you're mean like us, we're going to 10 to 12 days. If you're normal person, pull them at definitely by three weeks. Do not have quail on heat after three weeks, unless you like live in Canada and you're trying to brood them outside or something. Chicken six to eight weeks similar You want to have heat available, but really they shouldn't be using it unless it's like chilly at night after six weeks Turkeys there are a thousand different opinions on how to brew turkeys. Now, I'm obviously, this is our podcast, so I'm going to tell you how I do it, and I do it every year, and I do hundreds a year, and I'm very successful at it. So I'm going to tell you how you do it. First off, you make sure you hatch a couple chicks. to brood with the turkeys. And we're only talking about the first batch for, say, a week. And after that, you're going to start mixing the different batches of turkeys, if you're going to do multiple batches, that is. Say you have some three week olds and some two week olds, put them together. But the reason being is turkeys are lazy. They want that brooder hot and dry. So don't feel like you're overcooking them because they like it. And they are, what happens when you're hot and dry, you want to take a nap. So that's what they want to do. They want to sleep all the time. Whereas the chicks, They're in there going, Woohoo! Let's go run over here! Nope, that piece over there is better. Woohoo! So they get the turkeys up and active.

The American Bresse w/Mandelyn Royal Part 2

The rest of the story…..Mandelyn Royal, one of the founding breeders of the Bresse in the USA, finishes her interview.

• Transcript

  Mandy: 0:00

  Part of that is because if you have one hen who's going to lay 150, eggs, whatever her rate of lay is, that is her potential offspring for an entire season. And in contrast, if you have one cow, one horse, how many offspring are you getting a year from that one? Female animal you're getting. And so you don't want to take any chances whatsoever. You want to do it right because you don't get many chances with poultry. You also want to do it right, but you also have some grace there to find the best offspring from a pair or the trio that you're breeding from, because when you do breed tightly, you want to keep those groups real small and that way you can better document the results you're seeing and the percentages of what traits you're seeing. And you can really. Hone it in and clean things up while finding what your problems are and eliminating them just from the sheer quantity of offspring that they're capable of having.

  Rip Stalvey: 0:58

  Hi there, fellow poultry enthusiasts. I'm Rip Stalvey 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.

  Mandy: 1:38

  Just my thoughts though. Now, the American Bresse is not currently recognized by the APA for its standards. But it's my understanding that there are standards that some breeders are out there looking for or looking towards. Is that, anything about that? There's a standard in France and the proposed US standard is based off of the French Standard, but the main difference there is an extra pound added to the weight because the French standard is calling for birds for the mature males to be six and a half pounds. And when you're trying to market a table bird, if you say adults at six and a half pounds, then that means you're probably going to see a dress weight from a cockerel that's significantly less than that. Because as the mature weights are for one year old birds. So if it takes that chicken a full year to reach six and a half pounds, that's really not that meaningful for the freezer. And the genetics are capable of adding much more weight, so we added a little bit more weight to it, but still kept the description of the body there, because the terminology, like when the standard mentions the breadth, the width of the Bresse how wide is too wide versus narrow and relatively useless for the shrink bag presentation. So the verbiage of the standard works with the size increase and we were able to keep everything else accurate in the proposed standard, but we're going to need a lot of time before we even have hope of APA recognition because we have to have breed consistency first, if we're going to go into that. Yeah. And breed consistency. That is to me, that would be important for not only the show aspects or getting accepted into the standard. But breed consistency is also important for table presentation too, right? Oh, absolutely. You have to have a consistent product if you want to be able to compete in a retail market. So what one grower is finishing out in Alabama needs to be the same spectrum of harvest time, yield, meat to bone ratio. That all needs to be consistent in all of the regional markets. For the market side, for the table sides, you even have a shot at being meaningful. Gotcha. Because without it, it's just sloppy and that's not marketable. Jennifer, do you have any questions? No, not really. No, I'm just trying to envision a six and a half pound bird. I just can't imagine that. Sounds small, doesn't it? It does. When you compare it to your dinosaurs. Yeah, the one I'm hauling to the show on Saturday, I haven't weighed him recently, but if I had to guess, I'd say 13 ish pounds. So the most meaningful male that I had grow up last season, he was eight pounds before he was six months old. I put him on the scale and he was eight pounds, three ounces at about 18 weeks. And I was like, wow, where did you even come from? And he's on that extreme side to where I questioned even using him for breeding because you're not supposed to breed your extremes, but I was like, I think he could actually do me some favors on growth rate and fleshing if I pulled him with the right girls. So I went ahead and did that. And a lot of those offspring were actually exactly what I was looking for. And then I ate the rest of them that weren't. You still got the 20 weeks on his offspring? Yeah, I still have him and I still have three really viable sons from him and I'm working on offspring from those sons to see what they do. Interesting. They have to prove longevity too, because it's all fine and dandy to have a really fast growing large bird, but did he make it till he was two? Did he make it till he was three? What's the longevity like? Because I know the best offspring are going to come from those two year old females after they've done, survived everything that nature can throw at a chicken to take it out. I want those girls who never had a problem a day in their lives. And to give them that time to prove it and then put them with the right mail. Okay, that makes sense. I bet you keep a lot of notes, don't you? It's in my head. I am so bad at notes. I have notes. I have them. But they're not what I would call complete. Hey, at least you have some. I have painter's tape notes. I have a scattering of notebooks and a scattering of note taking pads, and I have some spreadsheets that don't relate to each other. And I am armed with 1, 000 wing bands that I haven't used yet, but I'm going to start soon, like next hatch. And I haven't done it with my most recent hatches because they were so small, I didn't think it was worth it. And I haven't reorganized my pens the way I want to. Whiteboards. So I breed with my hands and my eyes. I put more stock in the bird in front of me. And I don't really care how they're related. I care about what they do, what's their health, what's their vigor and who's their best mate. Outside of that, just details. That does keep it simple. That definitely keeps it simple. It's a good chicken or it's not. And if it's not, get it out of the flock and move on and focus on your better ones. For the sake of people listening that are kinda new to more than just your pet chicken. When we start as breeders, we start culling at the egg. So let's recap there for a second. We re, we don't. except any eggs that aren't the right size, the right shape or the right even shell hardness. If it's a soft shell, we don't try to hatch it. Or if it has a lot of strange markings on it, we don't try to hatch it. And then in the brooder I'll cull out of the brooder too if they're weak. Or if they're small, or if their heads aren't wide enough. What are some things that you cull for out of the brooder? So I do that same thing, but the one exception is I won't cull any pathetic ones that very moment. I'll put them in their own brooder, or I'll tag their leg with a zip band, or some other indicator that lets me know not to even consider that bird later in case it comes out. Marginally better later on, I don't want to keep them mixed in unknowingly, just in case they do sprout off as something neat later on because they'll never be as good as the other birds are. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to reach freezer age at about 14, 16 weeks, because I do have meat buyers. And I do have market going on there. Plus we recently went keto and now we eat more chicken than ever. So I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to at least reach calling age. Okay. So you're quasi hospital brooder type birds. You would never put them in your breeder program. Oh no, absolutely not. Okay so for those people that are new and want to be a little choosier this year first of all, we encourage you never to medicate or not to feed medicated feed. I think all three of us agree on that. I have never bought a bottle of Corid in my life. I used to and now I don't. Just let them go. You can do the milk and the yogurt and get that good gut bacteria going in order to prevent coccidia, but in all honesty, that just starts with the person's cleanliness more so than anything else, I think. That's my opinion. So after we've culled out of the brooder, when is the next age that you do a cull? As they go through their growth milestones, I'm looking. So when they come out of the hatcher, I make notes of any that were a straggler. Like I don't help them hatch either to go all the way back to the beginning of culling if they need assistance, then I already know I don't need them for breeding. Agreed. And then when I weigh at two weeks old, I look for the underperformers and the bottom of that group. I tag as known culls for not being able to keep up with the rest of them. And I do that with every single way in so that I can better tighten and narrow who grew how and when for those notes in later breeding selection. And I track a lot of it by pen performance and I'll weigh the whole batch and get my average and then just pull out the bottom performers. Okay. So let me ask you this. Can you sex these Bresse at hatch? No, I give it till three, four weeks. Really obvious with their, the males grow exponentially faster than the females, but every once in a while I'll find a big girl in the boy pen. Yeah. So when you are culling out the smallest one, are you by chance culling out just females at that point? They've been male, but that's why I gave them the benefit of further growth to. To see that, was it a closet male that was a late bloomer? Was it a really undersized pullet? Was it this or that by retaining them? If they're able to keep growing. And to let me know more about themselves, then I go ahead and I do that just for the sake of my poor notes. I'm laughing because we call them faoux roosters. F A O U X, faoux roosters. Yeah, were they tricky into thinking they were female until about 12 weeks old or so? Yep, yep. When we were getting ready to move We decided to cull out all of the Orpington males, put them in the freezer. So we'd have less birds to move. And we called them all and the next morning, in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, we hear a rooster and we're like, what in the world? And we go out there and he's just standing there proud as can be. And I'm like, where were you yesterday? So we called him FDR, foe to rooster. You got to watch. First to get in there and start sneaking around their genetics too. But you know what? He turned out to be an awesome rooster because he didn't I, I guess he didn't get all those hormones and he put more energy into growing. He was giant. We just thought he was a giant hen, but yeah, he came in overnight with his comb and waddles and everything. It was funny. Did you hang on to him long enough to see what his fertility was going to be like? Cause I've had, Hit or miss fertility with those later blooming later blooming males that actually did turn out decent They didn't end up always having the good pen coverage for fertility because they were so chill. This was back when I still had a mixed flock and I had Orpingtons and he was a lemon cuckoo. And I know he had good genetics because last year out of my layer flock, I still had cuckoo coming out. And we're talking about 2018 here. Oh, goodness. So yeah, he's still hanging around a little bit and to go into the more complex topics of when to select for what traits and. Which ones you really want to be picking from? We almost need a whole other episode for that stuff. There's a lot of variables to consider and we can't cover it all in one session. Yeah. It's time to think about getting started. It's scaring me because of how many people are jumping in and selling pullet and even some of the better known producers are selling complete garbage, junk birds. Tiny filthy pullet eggs, and they're not helping. They're hindering potential. I'm not selling eggs. I don't even sell eggs anymore. My, but now I have the fluffiest butts in the universe, and I can't get my fertility up, so I don't even sell eggs. I just sell chicks. I don't sell chicks, but I started doing eggs just to help people. put a gate in your driveway. I was real firm on started stock only. Let me get my growth data such as it is. Let me get my hands on them. And only the better 40% is leaving. I'm gonna eat the rest or breed the rest and I'm only gonna breed from 10%.

  Carey: 14:45

  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.

The American Bresse w/Mandelyn Royal Part 1

The American Bresse Chicken is the new meat bird. It naturally reproduces and lays super well. Growth rate is phenomenal and will replace the Cornish X for many homesteaders.

• 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. All right, so here we are. We're here with Mandelyn Royal and my co host Jennifer Bryant, and we're going to talk a little bit today about the Bresse Chicken and what it does and what the benefits are. So fire away, Mandy. The American Bresse is a relatively recent addition to the United States. Their first import was Back in, was it 2011 or 2013? I'll have to confirm that since Greenfire changed some of their verbiage on their website. Greenfire Farms was the original importer. They ended up bringing in three different batches of imported birds. And then the rest of us got to thinking that they tasted pretty good. And we all got rolling on breeding them and now they're a lot more accessible than what they used to be. But what I see in my flock is harvestable table birds at 16 weeks with an average of a four pound carcass. And the females follow right behind them by starting their active laying anywheres from 18 weeks to 22 weeks old. And then of course there's sometimes outliers who begin a little later or even a little earlier and the growth rate depending on the breeding program that can be in a lot of different places, but If you come up with a strategized breeding program, you can pretty well reign them in and get them doing what you want. And sometimes there's a propensity for them to be broody. Technically, they're not supposed to be broody. But that's still floating around in the flock, so they're genetically viable enough to steer them and select them the way that you want them to be. Which is actually neat. So you said Sorry. Go ahead, Jennifer. So they originated in France, right? Yeah, they originated in France, and the white variety was a later addition in the Later 1800s, and then it was almost lost to the world wars and they had to go into some salvage breeding work in the 1920s and they decided to do a more table focused end retail table bird result from those flocks. And so they refined it into specifically the Bresse region. And technically in France, you only call them Bresse if they're coming from the Bresse region. Everything else is called a Galloway. And there's a couple of different varieties in other color patterns. And those each have their own distinct name over there, over here in the U S we have blue, black splash whites, and we call them American Bresse to put that distinction. On there in the U S and they're not in the Bresse region of France. So we like to keep it simple with our names. Yeah. We like to keep it simple. You said it's 16 weeks of four pound carcass. Is that right? Yeah. That's what I like to see. Some will do it. Some will do better. Some will do worse. It's a varied. gene pool right now. Now, what are, what's some of the unique characteristics? Why would someone want the Bresse versus A Cornish, or a Delaware, or a Red. All of those are very different from each other. And for us, what did it was we tried a long list of dual purpose birds and I needed a really solid cockerel management program. Cause as when you hatch eggs, you're going to get about half male. But you don't need to keep half of them going forward. You only need one for about every 10 hens. So what do you do with the other nine boys that hatched with those girls? And a lot of what we tried needed 20 weeks, 24 weeks going all the way towards nine months of grow time to get them to be like a reasonable table size with enough fleshing to make processing worth it. And we weren't seeing earlier harvest times, but then on the flip side of that, you have your commercial hybrids and you can bring those into the freezer at six, seven, eight weeks old for the Cornish cross. But you can't breed those. They're a hybrid. You have to buy new ones every time and I needed a breeding solution where it was something I could breed at home but then still have that benefit of a reasonable time into the freezer. So for flock management, out of everything we tried, the American Bresse were the first ones that did everything reasonably. See for me that's one thing that made it real appealing to the Bresse and a couple of other, or the American Bresse. Sorry, I'll be correct. And some of the other breeds is, Jennifer and I talked about on one of their previous shows, what makes up the Cornish Cross. And that seems to be the biggest kept secret in poultry. Poultry people will tell you how they do everything. Except for how they make a Cornish Cross. The four way terminal hybrid. It's complicated. Yeah, it is. And for me, I like that. It produces chicken every two months or less. But, I don't want to have to pay somebody two, three dollars every time I get one. I want something that's self sustainable. That's why, me personally, that's why I like the Bresse. Because, I had a chance to come to your farm and to see some of the birds that you have. And, the, these things are huge and I know I, I saw your feed barrels. I know what you're feeding them and it's not antibiotics and it's not steroids. In fact, if I remember you saying correctly, that's an absolute no for you. That kind of resonated because that talks about a bird's vigor. And how they are on the ground and a natural forager as well. I like that aspect of it too, but for me to be able to not have to depend on somebody else. To send me birds is a huge thing. I'd like to just stick some trays in my incubator and call it a day. I'm a hatch addict. I have a problem where if I see eggs, I want to put them in the incubator. That's where they need to go. Useful. We're here to enable you. Oh, I appreciate that. I'm sorry, Jennifer, how many incubators do you have? I have, I only have four cabinets. I have two. So definitely that's a huge thing. There's, hatching is an addiction and I understand that. And I'm in tune with that, but my family agrees that there could be worse addictions. So one thing that I would like to hear from you is let's say. Here we go. This is, this would be a good example. In the state of Alabama, you can process a thousand birds a year and sell them to people. No questions asked, no permits, no nothing. In Ohio, we're at 999. They don't give us that extra one. You they say anything over 1, 000 for us. I have also heard that poor record keeping could play a factor in it as well. So in the State of Alabama, it's a thousand birds. In Ohio, it's 999. And by all means, I highly encourage all of our listeners to stay within the laws and verify for themselves what the laws are, because if you start asking people, you will get different answers from everybody. This is true. One of the first things we did when we moved in was read painstakingly through all of our local ordinances and we're within a foot of all of our parameters on where and how we can keep livestock. We had a visit our first week here from the township guys, and they were like, what do you guys build and what are you up to? And we explained everything and we explained our knowledge of the regulations and they were like, cool. We'll see you if we ever have a problem. And I haven't seen him since. Yep. That's the best way to handle it. But my question is whether it's 999 or 1,000, let's say that I want to sustainably breed Bresse to process my 999 or whatever the legal limit is. You know what that means, right? You know what that means for your flock development and how you could manage that? That's what I need you to tell me. Okay. So if you're allowed to process and sell 1000, that's going to be 1000 cockerels that didn't make the breeding cut. So that means in theory, you could be producing 2000 chicks a season because you need to be looking for females as your replacement layers and maybe some supplemental layers to go elsewhere. So of the 1, 000 that end up in a shrink bag, that's another 1, 000 that hatched with them that are serviceable for eggs. All right. How big of a breeding flock do I need to get that? Oh, I'm not doing math right now. But Supposing that a good laying Bresse female, she's putting out five or six eggs a week through her first year of active lay. Yeah. Eggs come up in size that can vary by bloodline, but I like to personally wait until the birds are about a year old before I start really seriously hatching from them. Let's look at her weekly output and then all of her sisters too. You can just do some math and work out what you could expect and then maybe add 10 percent of what might candle as infertile or what might start and quit. I always set more than I need, obviously. All right, let's stop right there for just a second because people always don't understand why we don't set pullet eggs. So if you set pullet eggs. Over time, your flock will reduce in size. We want to set mature hen eggs. in order to keep our birds going bigger. Now, Mandy, I believe at one point, I can't remember where it was, I heard you talk about the size eggs that you like to set. Sixty grams. It's what I'm looking for. 60 grams. So anything 60 grams are better. That's what you're putting in your incubator. 60 grams are lower. That's what you're putting on your table? Correct. Or pig snacks. Yeah, Jennifer knows all about pig snacks with eggs. By bucketfuls of eggs going to the pigs. And they love it. They do. Now, have you figured out the weight? Where, say, your average double yoker is on the Bresse? Usually 80 grams or more. Okay, so between 60 and how many grams of an egg would you set in order to maintain that large bird? I have to give some tolerance to my older hens because once they get past 2 years old, I might be seeing their average egg size be 74, 78 grams. because the eggs do get bigger as the birds mature. And in my younger birds that are a year and a half, I want to see 60 grams, not really exceeding 70 grams. Cause if the eggs get too big, then you can see some hatching ramifications there, but it doesn't seem to affect the older ladies making the bigger eggs. And I'm not sure why, just. My own experience tells me something you can't find in a book usually. And you want properly shaped eggs, too. I look at egg shape. Do you? Oh, absolutely. Because they have to have enough room inside to be able to turn, to be able to pip and zip and get all the way out on their own. Anything that's too narrow, too long, too pointy, too short, too outside of a Because when you look at a day chick that has just hatched from that egg picture what that little baby had to go through being inside of that egg And based on egg shape, sometimes you can tell if they have problems yeah, I probably shouldn't set that egg because it's not shaped well enough to help them get out on their own Okay so How would it look, let's say I was working up to getting those 2000 birds. What kind of infrastructure would I need? How would somebody get started? What would you recommend them do? Jennifer and I have talked about. The birds that we have, but what would you do if you were starting, if you were recommending to somebody to start out with their birds? So I always recommend to start out slow and watch them grow and really get into measuring their growth rate, especially in those earlier weeks, because I've noticed that there is genetic variation to how they grow and when they fill in. And you want to avoid retaining birds that. Go through that almost heritage turkey like growth rate where they get real long leggy and they lean out and then they flesh back in later on because you miss those earlier harvest windows if they grow that way. So I always looked for medium sized birds with a medium leg length because those tended to hang onto their fleshing for the duration of growth. And for the table side of it and when you want to be able to process that proof to be really important, but to also don't be so rigid on them that you cull yourself out of a flock and pay attention to what you're bringing in and what you want your retention rate to be because like, for example, if you bring in 20 chicks. Chances are you're going to come out of that with a pretty decent trio to breed from because you've got to be hard on your breeders and really pick good birds because any weakness they have, they're going to pass forward and it's going to complicate things later on down the line and you want your strongest, best growing, healthiest, most vigorous contenders to be the ones that end up in the breeding pen. So if you order in 20, don't bank on keeping all 20 for breeding. Are you saying don't medicate and don't hospitalize? I didn't say it, but maybe I implied it and it's a good implication to put in there to whatever you do to pamper them. Remember that you're saving your weakest, and do you really even want to be doing that? Oh, I'm not going to, I'm not going to mince words. I'll just be blunt. Y'all need to quit medicating and hospitalizing. I don't use madicated to feed. I don't use cord. I don't worm them on a blanket schedule. I don't, if they have to go in a hospital pen they're better off in the freezer. For me my, I do have a hospital pen. Oh, dear Lord. Oh, why? Hang on. It's not for sick birds. If I take a bird, if I get a bird from a show when he comes back, he's not going to get, yeah, it's a quarantine chickening. It's not a sick bay. Then it's not a hospital. Yeah, that's a quarantine pen. That's a quarantine pen. I have a quarantine pen. I just ordered me a few of them. I got a couple of 5x6 pens coming that I plan on putting in the front yard. road. That's risky. My road's too busy to do that. I wouldn't find my birds there the next day. I'm gonna put birds in there that I don't think people would get. And these pens actually have a way to padlock the door. It's gonna be for some purpose, I don't know. Alright, so what's different about the Bresse meat than, say my Orpington meat? Intramuscular fat. Really? Marbling? It's not marbling in the sense that beef is. You can't, it's not visible, but it's notable if your taste buds are open for the eating experience to notice. Various levels of juiciness to the meat and their genetic propensity to layer on fat while not 100 percent consistent within the available us stock. It is floating around out there and I have processed 16 week old carcasses of cockerels that had every bit as much fat as A two year old hen, and then that translates to a self buttering bird when you go and you cook it, especially if you put it in the smoker on level with the back down so that all of those juices stay inside the bird and keep the meat lubricated during the cooking process, it's. It's incredible. When it's right, it's really right. And if it's wrong, you don't notice any difference between them and any other bird. So what kind of feed do they require? So for the finishing, some folks do it for two weeks, some people do it for four weeks. I've dabbled all the way into six weeks and that put on too much fat, which you can actually, you can cut out the fat and cook with that separately. If you have so much on the bird that it's excessive, you can cut it out and use it elsewhere. But I prefer a four week finish. And I prefer to process between 16 and 18 weeks old. So I can start figuring out who's going into the finishing pens. around 12 14 weeks old. And that helps save on the feed bill because I'm not growing them a whole other month, or two, or three. I'm figuring out pretty quick who's viable and who's not. So what's a finishing ration look like for you? I'm still experimenting, and I've done the milk soaked corn, I've Added a little bit of wheat. I've done one third cracked corn, one third wheat, one third of their regular ration. And I haven't honed in on my exact favorite yet. But I think I prefer the timeline of four weeks. And it takes about that long anyways for dietary changes to be apparent in the flock. I don't know that the two week finish really does a whole lot for them. Does the milk really do anything? It seems to soften the fat and make it melt easier. None of it's, have you ever had a Cornish Cross with that globby fat on either end that never melts and never does anything, just sits there being chewy and terrible? They never get that. And it seems like the milk finishing helps ensure that. Do you have fresh milk on your property? I wish. We have a Jersey, we have a Jersey farm two miles up the road, though. Oh, okay, got it. I love it when she needs me to empty her tanks out for her. Some people are using goat milk. In France, they're not using cow milk. They're actually using mare milk. So the next closest substitute to mare milk would be goat's milk. Do we milk horses here in the country, in this country? Only for estrogen. I feel like it's a whole other rabbit hole that we don't even need to go in. I feel like some group would have an issue with that. Yeah. Some people here would have an issue with that. I have a herd share, but I also have milk cows here on the property. But I usually give the way to the baby pigs for them. Yeah, the pigs enjoy it too. And I heard from some people that they were starting chicks with some milk. And I've never heard of that. And I don't know where it's coming from. I've not, I give my milk to little baby chicks. Yeah. Oh yeah. They love it. I'll give mine anything. If it looks like it might work, man, I'll try it and just see what happens. But they grow good on it. So my slogan for that is for science. Yeah, there you go. It would be interesting though. You should try like a batch of your Bresse with some fresh milk and see what happens. I actually found a good use for yogurt. I mix yogurt with starter and feed it to my baby chicks every couple of days. Yeah, that's for coccidiosis and luckily that's something I don't have a problem with. I don't either because Resistance. I don't either because I keep stuff pretty clean But I have found that number one. They like it number two. It rapidly increases their growth like I had I grew some Bresse I hatched them out and I had a 520 gram bird at four weeks old. You put probiotics in there and gave them some good gut bacteria to give them a good start in order to process all of that nutrition. The genetics were available for that to happen. Yeah, I know a lady that has done an extensive amount of work with the Bresse. And she has a good set of genetics. I heard she likes to hide and that she never has anything available. Good things come to those who wait, sometimes you have really good genetics. And I see this a lot in the show world. If you have really good genetics, you really don't want to just give them to anybody because you don't know what they're going to do with them. Yeah. And a lot of people, for whatever reason, tend to think they need to jump out and line cross it. And before they know it, that really good line they had got wrecked by the line they introduced them to. Yep. And I have heard several people talk about crossing and bringing in new blood and how often you need to do that. And there's a bloodline of Reds that has not had new blood introduced in well over 70 years. And those, when they hatch out, they pretty much look like clones. They You get just what they look like every single time it's the genetics are there. They're solid. They don't mess up There's nothing hidden. It's there and it's that tighter breeding that can help you eliminate those Variables and to get that sort of cookie cutter consistency and that takes nothing but time and effective culling And strategize breeding selection to even hope for results like that. There's a friend of mine who lives out in the Pacific Northwest. He has pigeon genetics that haven't been out crossing over 250 years. Like these are legacy birds that get passed down. And they're not readily available and they are exact replicas of each other. Every generation exact as their parents and their parents before them for hundreds of years at this point. So I'm guessing that's one of the things that makes poultry different than a lot of other animals out there is that, a lot of people think, Oh let's, we can't have inbreeding. We've got to bring in new, we've got to bring in new. But I'm hearing that's not the case with poultry.