Nov. 6, 2023
From Newbie to Expert: Essential Chicken Keeping Tips and Strategies Part 2
Ready to enhance your knowledge about poultry keeping? This episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast promises to equip you with practical tips and valuable insights. We're talking about line breeding, the spiral clan mating system, and the importance of selecting the right birds. Our focus is on the essentials of breeding and incubation, with an emphasis on ethical considerations when dealing with birds that don't make the cut.
We share firsthand experiences with space needs, housing scenarios, and catch methods for both commercial hybrid birds and dual-purpose standard-bred birds. As we navigate through the complexities of flock care, we also delve into nutrition. How do you know if your feed has the right vitamins and minerals? What's the difference between a layer ration and a breeder ration? We uncover these and more, including tips on extending the shelf life of feed and the benefits of a coarse mash for chickens. So whether you're an amateur poultry keeper or you're already into commercial breeding, this episode is sure to pique your interest. Tune in now!
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00:00 - Breeding and Incubation Considerations
10:05 - Flock Care
18:07 - Importance of Proper Nutrition for Poultry
WEBVTT
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Hi and welcome to the Poultry Keepers podcast.
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I'm Mandelyn Royle and I'm here together with Rip Stalvey and John Gunterman, and we're your co-host for this show and it's our mission to help you have happy, healthy and a productive flock.
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I wish I would have known what it meant to really breed, because historically I've had matched a lot of eggs but I wasn't really breeding, I was just putting fertile eggs in an incubator and to me now that's a different distinction of what breeding means.
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So as soon as we got to this property and I'm looking at the space available and I was looking at this beat-up, tore-up, fallen-down barn and we decided you know what, let's make that the chicken coop.
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If it falls in on birds they'll probably survive, but we can't use it for storing expensive equipment, we can't use it for large animals.
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So we started working on this barn and converting it and the first thing I did was go and order enough different breeds to put a different breed in each pen.
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And turns out that's not how you breed, it's just how you get hatching eggs.
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And once I started seeing what it really took, what it really meant, what was really required, I started systematically dropping off the other breeds that I didn't like as much as some others.
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Well, I really did drop us down to one single variety, which got a little boring.
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So I have side science projects going on, but had I known then would I know now.
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You got down to one variety of one breed, or one breed.
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One breed, one variety.
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Okay, okay, same color.
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Because you haven't gotten any of the splash breasts yet.
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I started out with three trios and I built it up to what it was, but I am convinced, based on what I learned from my mentor and what I experienced in myself, that if you line breed three trios properly, you can go on forever and ever, and ever and ever without having to use the outcross word yes.
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That's what I've heard and I've been putting it into practice and so far it's true.
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A lot of folks refer to it as the spiral clan mating system where basically you have a core group of females and you rotate your males.
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Is that correct?
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The clincher to that, though, is your selection.
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Yeah.
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Well, that selection is always.
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Well, that selection is always.
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You're vitally important, no matter whether you have three trios or 300 trios.
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If you're not selecting your birds right, if you're not mating them right, if you're not used compensation mating, you're just spinning your wheel.
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You're a multiplier, not a breeder?
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Yes, if you're not selecting you're a multiplier.
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Exactly so.
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We've talked about breeding.
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What about grow out space?
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The rule I've been following the last three years is 30% of my space is for adults and 70% is for grow outs.
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That's about right.
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I think the field right and that's something.
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It's given me what I need to see at the rate of occurrence I need to see it.
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So so far, I'm going to say that it works.
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I think that new people starting out underestimate how much grow out space it's going to take.
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Well, I sure, as heck did, I didn't even think about grow out space.
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And when we first get started, collie Bum, we get all those fertile eggs and they just seem to be magically drawn to the incubator.
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We never consider eating one.
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But you can certainly hatch too many.
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You can hatch yourself into a major, major space problem.
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See around here, I've got a stale window that I try to hit.
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Everybody wants to have either newly hatched chicks right at the beginning of April or point of lay pullets at the beginning of April.
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That's when spring happens.
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Here in Vermont, where people start thinking about spring.
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We can sometimes see the ground again by then.
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Well, on the most valuable ones, are there ones getting ready to lay?
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No one hardly has that in the spring.
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So if I'm hatching out January, february, march and brooding out in the high tunnel all the while I'm doing my selections, who's going and then everybody goes and who stays is the champions that have a shot at moving up to the big house.
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Another thing that I know I didn't plan for and, Mandy, I think you've done a really good job with it, and John, I know you have too and I've taken mine up multiple notches since then but I didn't plan for adequate incubation space.
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I went overboard.
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I thought by doubling what I thought I needed I'd be good.
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And it's actually quadrupling Because even setting, if I set, 100 eggs at a 75 to 80% fertility rate, we're already down to 75.
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That's some simple math, let's say.
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And then hatchability and survivability.
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You know that 100 eggs that I set we're probably going to have in the mid-50s, low-60s for viable chicks that are two to three weeks old.
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If I account for how many I know I'm probably going to call out as non-viable breeding stock for every 100 eggs I set.
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I'm lucky to come back with five birds to keep forever.
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That's about the numbers.
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If I'm doing 10% keeper for breeding, that's great.
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That's a lot of numbers in my opinion, but that takes 100 chicks to hatch out.
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You know, maybe 10 that are worth keeping.
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That gets expensive.
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It requires a lot of infrastructure.
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You've got to feed them.
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You've got to water them.
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you've got to house them and then you have to ethically dispose of everything that you're not keeping, which is where I'm trying to hit my sales window in early spring.
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You know I have a pretty scientific approach to you know who I select at that point, even just straight run, I choose the center of my hatch window.
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Everything on either end is automatically considered out of breeding contention, so they can go.
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There may be fantastic birds in there, but they weren't in the middle of my hatch window and I'm breeding for heterogeneity amongst the flock.
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You know, and we're talking about considering incubation, we're talking about artificial incubation or using incubators.
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If you opt to go with the broody hand situation, to do it right you're going to have to have even more infrastructure, because each hen ideally should have her own coop to hatch and brood up until at least two weeks.
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A bunch of chicks and if you're having a yeah with the rate of error that a broody has.
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They do perform the best in their own space.
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If you keep them in the communal flock she might change nests and what she was working on hatching got abandoned and too cold, or other hens will try to lay over top of her and smash eggs.
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Ideally, a broody should be in her own space and if I was going to rely on broodies to hatch us into the quantity I like to have annually, I would need an entire other barn of girls working on chick-making.
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Yeah, and that's a natural process.
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Some breeds.
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You can induce them to be broody.
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But right now I've got a hen laying on some eggs and we're in October 26th, and I've got another hen that just hatched out.
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She went broody and I collected all her eggs so I gave her back some eggs and she hatched them out and they're about three weeks old and we're October 26th.
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They decide they want to be broody in October here.
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But, it seems like.
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No, I was just going to say seems like for me I never had a broody hen when I needed a broody hen.
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That's been the same for me Whenever.
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Iso, my favorite kind of broody and I've not met very many of them, but my favorites areif I introduce the sound of peeping chicks.
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She's ready to go.
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She doesn't even have to set the eggs to take the chicks.
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And then it doesn't happen very often, but when you find one like that.
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There's a few in between.
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That's my favorite.
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But that's also a critical component.
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There's been some breeds which the broody tendency has just been bred out of them.
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So I don't consider them self-sustaining or self-sufficient because they won't reproduce on their own.
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They require some level of human intervention in the incubation process.
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So so the breed I have is considered non-setting and I've seen three birdies in seven years.
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So they're gold.
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So two of them are really good and one of them was bad at it.
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But I always give them the benefit of the doubt by setting her up in her own space, seeing if she sticks to the eggs, seeing what kind of mother she is and if she makes it to about five to six weeks with them, because some of them quit too soon.
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They still need a little bit of heat at two weeks and I've had broodies abandon them right when they still needed her, so I prefer that they stick with it all the way through to about five, six weeks old.
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Some people keep a silky around.
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Just for that I say they're setting machines.
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Oh yeah, the silkies can be one of the breeds where, if they even hear the peep, they'll take the babies.
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I never.
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You were talking about the broody abandoning and her chicks.
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I never had much of any problem with that, as long as I had them individually housed.
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In other words, they had their own area.
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Where I seemed to run into more issues than that where I had multiple broodies in one area.
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I've had some that were bad at it and I don't know if they were trying to help the chicks and then got distracted, but they were killing them as they hatched.
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I had a hen.
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I gave her a bunch of eggs because she decided she wanted to be broody and I had some extras.
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I'm like let's give them to her as they were hatching.
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There was a mixture of Chanticleer and Buckeye eggs that I gave her and she was killing all the Buckeye chicks Soon.
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As she saw, it wasn't a white chick, it was out.
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That's weird.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So she didn't survive much longer after that.
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Let's talk about flock care and especially the difference between caring for commercial hybrid birds as opposed to the dual purpose standard bred birds that so many of us work with.
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Maddie, you touched on this and I think you probably had as much experience recently as any of us, but tell us about what you found about space needs between commercial birds and standard bred birds.
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So when we were doing commercial meat type birds they were lower in their requirements, mostly because they were lazier, they didn't have that drive to get up and go and do all the chicken things and we were able to have more of a condensed footprint with them.
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But when we got into the larger birds that had that desire to go range, we had to change a lot.
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So our tractor design when we do pasture tractors they're a walk in height so I can get in there with them and that matters more for catch day, if that makes sense, like if you know you're going to eat these males and you put the males off into a tractor and you cruise them around for another 10 weeks to get them up to like 16 weeks older.
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So when you go in there to catch them those birds have wings and they're going to use them, versus the commercial types that'll just kind of run as far as they can and then you can just snatch them pretty easy.
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So I'm not sure how those lower the ground tractors would work for the bigger birds that can fly.
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But I just foresee like when you open up the top of that lid they're just going to fly up, and maybe it's my experience with quail showing.
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And then they're everywhere.
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And then they're everywhere and it turns into an entire day of trying to catch all these birds and hopefully you weren't trying to process on the same day.
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A walk in height really made a big difference, and all my pens are walk in height because I don't want to stoop, I don't want to crawl, I'm not chasing them while I'm on my knees.
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The ease of care was a lot easier when I could actually get in with the birds and every housing scenario, with the exception of brooders.
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I like those to be like waist height, chest height, so I can pop right in.
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They're right in front of my face.
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I can see them smaller the bird, if they're down at floor level.
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How often do you want to be on the ground trying to catch them?
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And I gave up crawling around a long time ago.
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Yeah, doesn't work well for me.
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The pens that I like, have you know it's two by four, or, excuse me, two two by two, and eight feet long and they have a hinged lid so I can set food and water in or out, but it also has a door at the end.
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I can let them out to day range or on collection day.
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I can just put a catch pen on the other side of that door and they'll just walk down into the box at the other end and then I close the door on them.
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Years are long and skinny to make that a viable catch method.
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Yeah, it's two feet tall, two feet wide and eight feet long.
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That's a good consideration.
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But I also from raising quail, and they're actually a little too tall for quail.
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They're in the death zone.
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You can have less than 12 inches of head height or more than four feet of head height, because when they take off they take off with such velocity that anything between one foot and four or five feet they get enough velocity to hit the roof and kill themselves by breaking their neck.
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And I haven't experienced that.
00:13:37.875 --> 00:13:39.381
And large follow can do the same thing.
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So that's a consideration.
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You don't want them.
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You either need full height or reduced height, and the in between is kind of a danger zone.
00:13:48.615 --> 00:14:01.403
I find that, comparing modern hybrid birds to my standard bred birds, the standard bred birds can flat out run one of those junkie.
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And they know how to use their wings for extra momentum while they're running Really cute, oh yeah, absolutely.
00:14:08.654 --> 00:14:15.607
But I try to allow more space for standard bred birds than is recommended for the commercial hybrid.
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They require a lot less space.
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The other thing that I see a difference in is feed requirements for commercial birds versus standard bred birds, and one thing that I want to encourage folks to do is to make sure that you're feeding an age appropriate diet for your birds.
00:14:34.443 --> 00:14:39.544
You know, like we always like to say, make sure you're giving them grit too.
00:14:39.544 --> 00:14:45.167
I like to do starter up until they are about eight weeks old.
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Then I'll transition them over to grower and keep my birds on the grower ration until they start laying eggs and at that point I'll switch them over to a layer of me.
00:14:55.897 --> 00:14:56.480
It saves money.
00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:59.302
I like you're not overfeeding or underfeeding.
00:15:00.695 --> 00:15:10.470
But I'd say standard bred birds need more, slightly more protein than the modern hybrid.
00:15:11.498 --> 00:15:12.259
Well, they were made.
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They were designed when we had a lot more off all in meat protein products in our feed than we do now, and they're missing some of those critical components that are only available from a meat type protein Standard bred birds need less protein to do what they do, but it seems like they require more feed in the end to get to that harvest weight or to get them into egg production and to maintain that egg production Just a little bit more, it seems like, than standard bred birds do.
00:15:44.304 --> 00:15:46.822
And those are some of the things you got to take into account.
00:15:46.822 --> 00:15:59.360
Now, on my ChickStarter, I use a 22% ChickStarter, no-transcript and it has a good bit of fish meal in it and I get phenomenal rates of growth and development.
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After that, when I transition over to a grower, I drop the protein content back down to about 18% and that'll take them all the way through.
00:16:11.999 --> 00:16:16.163
It'll grow the frame, the fleshing, the feathers, perfect.
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When they start laying.
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Then I'll drop it back to a 16% to 18% layer, probably closer to 16%.
00:16:25.513 --> 00:16:30.942
But the key to those feeds is really the key to any poultry feed.
00:16:30.942 --> 00:16:39.210
You've got to have good levels of amino acid and honestly, that is so lacking in many of the feeds on the market today.
00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:49.230
The big brand name feeds are lacking in amino acids and the bargain basement price feeds are lacking big time in amino acids.
00:16:49.230 --> 00:16:51.230
There's not nearly enough amino acids in there.
00:16:51.230 --> 00:17:14.800
I like to shoot for a level of about 1% lysine and about 0.5% mycyne and as long as you can get real close to that, you're going to have the best developing birds on the block, and those are amino acids that are only available from a meat type protein, so we can turn to fish meal for that, if you source a good, high quality.
00:17:15.911 --> 00:17:21.143
It's very difficult to get good amino acid levels on an all vegetable diet.
00:17:21.349 --> 00:17:23.476
Well, there's no such thing as a vegetarian chicken.
00:17:24.259 --> 00:17:28.578
We've been down that Well, I've seen a meat you just can't do it.
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That's a sick chicken.
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They need this stuff.
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If they don't get it, they're going to start getting it from each other.
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They're going to cannibalize each other, and that's never a good.
00:17:37.386 --> 00:17:38.210
Yeah, that's a problem.
00:17:38.791 --> 00:17:39.776
That's never a good thing.
00:17:40.711 --> 00:17:45.230
We talked about the different feed requirements for the different ages.
00:17:45.230 --> 00:17:50.230
One thing that and we just kind of touched on it real quick.
00:17:50.230 --> 00:17:56.376
John mentioned managing the molt and what you do when you manage a molt.
00:17:56.376 --> 00:17:59.222
Most folks think you're just trying to get them to regrow feathers.
00:17:59.222 --> 00:18:00.776
Well, that's part of it.
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That's like the last stage of molt Okay, we're done with molting.
00:18:05.685 --> 00:18:06.088
Now we can repub.
00:18:07.492 --> 00:18:10.862
I like to get my females as close as I can get them.
00:18:10.862 --> 00:18:29.048
They don't always do it, but if I can get them down to what they should be, what their weight was supposed to be when they were one year old, if I can drop them down, I get much better egg production and I get much better fertility out of those females in years two, three.
00:18:29.048 --> 00:18:37.080
Well, you're shedding that internal fat, you're clearing up body cavity space, as my grandfather would have said, like to get them down to their fighting weight.
00:18:37.972 --> 00:18:46.373
Well, that's why they have the, the pull-it-weights listed and the hand-weights listed in the and it doesn't take During the molt.
00:18:46.934 --> 00:18:59.803
It doesn't take a high protein level to feed, but it does take good levels of amino acids and there's a really good video that we did live stream on that on Poultry Keepers 360 on our YouTube channel.
00:18:59.803 --> 00:19:09.230
I think it's called Don't Fear the Mote Managing, and Jeff Maddox goes into great detail on how to do that in that video.
00:19:09.671 --> 00:19:14.816
So I would highly encourage you to refer to it, and then we you also need to talk about.
00:19:14.816 --> 00:19:29.762
So one of the stages of growth that, since we're going to be breeding them, is bringing the nutrition up to appropriate breeder levels, because building an egg for hatching is very, very different than just building an egg for eating.
00:19:30.570 --> 00:19:37.123
I'm pretty well convinced at this point that a 16% layer ration is not for breeding hatching.
00:19:38.290 --> 00:19:39.435
That's for table eggs.
00:19:39.435 --> 00:19:43.262
You're giving them the bare minimum they need to put out an egg.
00:19:43.262 --> 00:19:44.930
I think you're actually depriving them.
00:19:45.009 --> 00:19:50.742
I'm talking about the breeder hens, I prefer ours to be on a 20% during hatch season.
00:19:51.571 --> 00:19:59.855
Yeah, and again, you've got to have those increased levels of amino acids and you've got to have for good breeder ration.
00:19:59.855 --> 00:20:02.461
You've got to have higher levels of vitamins and minerals.
00:20:03.852 --> 00:20:08.362
I started mixing my own because I can't trust what's out there in the bags on the shelves anymore.
00:20:08.930 --> 00:20:09.411
I agree with you.
00:20:09.411 --> 00:20:15.122
I'm fortunate enough to have access to a feed that Jeff Maddox formulated.
00:20:16.932 --> 00:20:17.555
It's good stuff.
00:20:17.555 --> 00:20:21.930
Yeah, it looks better than my breakfast Difference between Probably smells about.
00:20:22.009 --> 00:20:35.685
Smells good enough to eat, but you can really tell the difference between a feed with optimal levels of vitamins and minerals and amino acids and proteins and fats and all this other stuff.
00:20:35.685 --> 00:20:38.920
Big difference between the stuff you get in the store.
00:20:38.920 --> 00:20:44.843
Part of the problem with the stuff you get in the store has been manufactured so long that it had nowhere close to print.
00:20:44.950 --> 00:20:48.298
I figure out what can I feed in 30 days, and that's how much I mix.
00:20:49.260 --> 00:20:54.236
Yeah Well, and one thing that's different now with the bagged commercial feeds is some brands.
00:20:54.236 --> 00:21:01.505
They did start removing the used by dates and they are allowing for a one year shelf life of the bag feeds.
00:21:02.570 --> 00:21:05.095
But, my feed guide from our local mill.
00:21:05.095 --> 00:21:23.890
I asked him because there was a season there where I was having problems with vitamin deficiencies and I had hoarded up on feed that was pre-manufactured and I stored it for probably three or four months and after the tail end of that was when I started running into some problems that were new and I figured it had to be a feed.
00:21:23.890 --> 00:21:38.489
So I went to have a heart-to-heart discussion with him about shelf life and he said from the very moment it is milled, the very moment it becomes a crumble, the very moment it gets cracked, you're on borrowed time.
00:21:38.489 --> 00:21:44.501
From that point on, and in the summertime you can expect 30 days, in the wintertime you can expect three months.
00:21:44.501 --> 00:21:48.930
Outside of that, the vitamins and the nutrients start degrading.
00:21:48.930 --> 00:21:52.930
It's the first thing that breaks down is the actual nutrients.
00:21:53.951 --> 00:22:01.930
The last time I bought a bag of feed a national brand bag of feed I manned that point got driven home.
00:22:01.930 --> 00:22:08.482
It was one that still had the manufactured date on it and that feed was seven months old.
00:22:08.482 --> 00:22:14.740
And you don't know how it's been stored, if it's stored in a hot, humid condition it's hot and humid.
00:22:14.740 --> 00:22:20.420
You can kiss the nutritional levels of that feed, but whole grains can store for years until they're cracked.
00:22:22.031 --> 00:22:27.720
And all my feed now even my smallest, like new hatched quail.
00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:30.203
Their grain is not ground.
00:22:30.203 --> 00:22:37.502
I'll run it through the cracker once just to break it for the new hatchlings, but they don't need a powder.
00:22:37.502 --> 00:22:53.243
There's many scientific studies out there that show the benefits of a large particle size in the way that it scrapes the biliy in the intestines, and filling the gizzard with a coarse material and grit is very beneficial, even on day one.
00:22:54.030 --> 00:22:59.719
Well, it goes back to me of what Jeff Maddox says about mash, and he prefers a good, coarse mash.
00:22:59.719 --> 00:23:03.681
He said you should be able to identify what's in that feed.
00:23:03.681 --> 00:23:10.778
You should be able to identify corn, you should be able to identify the pieces of soybean, you should be able to identify wheat and oats.
00:23:10.778 --> 00:23:15.461
But when it gets ground up into all this powder, I can't tell what it is.
00:23:15.461 --> 00:23:16.372
And they will.
00:23:16.372 --> 00:23:17.616
They will tend to pick.
00:23:17.930 --> 00:23:20.799
They'll go for the corn first and then I will watch what they go after.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:27.837
In my case they go for corn and then barley, in that order, and in the process they pick up all the other stuff.
00:23:27.837 --> 00:23:28.259
That's with it.
00:23:29.130 --> 00:23:38.923
Now, even with that coarse ground mash, okay, there's still going to be some fines in there, because that's going to be your vitamins and minerals, and if they've added amino, acid.
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