Sept. 18, 2023
How To Begin A Successful Journey With Poultry: Part 1
Get ready for an invigorating journey into the world of poultry, as we unravel the intricacies of laying cycles, bird selection, and egg production. Our expert guides are seasoned veterans in the poultry hobby. We'll draw on their wealth of knowledge to delve into the impact of various factors on the laying cycle, from lighting to regional variances. They reveal golden strategies for keeping track of the best eggs and spotting poot quality hens, emphasizing the importance of selecting for vigor when breeding for production qualities.
In our exploration of egg production, we put the spotlight on persistent layers, a critical cog in any thriving poultry operation. We dissect the cycle of egg laying, and how understanding a hen's productivity timings can provide key insights. Plus, we tackle the lifespan of egg-laying hens and the strategic thinning of the flock to improve it's performance.
Don’t miss the next episode where we dive deeper into poultry operations and breeding techniques. A successful poultry operation isn't just a dream, it's potential reality. Are you ready to turn that potential into action? Tune in and get started on your poultry operation journey today!
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00:00 - Improving Poultry Operation and Breeding Techniques
08:18 - Improving Egg Production and Managing Molting
16:41 - Optimizing Egg and Meat Production
31:33 - Identifying and Selecting Exceptional Birds
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Understanding how and why things happen will help you find your groove and develop practice and systems that will lead to a successful poultry operation Coming up.
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We're going to help begin this journey to real accomplishment.
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The laying cycle is pretty much square one of the beginning of what you can grow your flock from.
00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:38.049
It's probably one of the most important things when it comes to poultry, because you're not going to get very far if those girls aren't laying good.
00:00:38.049 --> 00:00:56.631
So we're going to talk a little bit about how they lay, the variations of laying between the varieties and how to select for those laying traits, especially with how lighting can affect the cycle and the regional variances you might encounter with your different climates and how that could also affect the laying cycle.
00:00:56.631 --> 00:01:05.832
You want to have reasonable goals when breeding for the production improvement with the laying and you also want to have good record keeping.
00:01:05.832 --> 00:01:13.912
That can be very important as well, and John has some thoughts on how he keeps his records and I want to know how he does it.
00:01:15.043 --> 00:01:18.777
Ideally my record keeping starts the minute the egg is collected.
00:01:18.777 --> 00:01:37.560
Literally I write the time down on the egg as well as the hen and, if known, the rooster, and that gets set in the collection tray and I just stack my eggs by date and when it comes time to set the best eggs, they invariably come from very specific hens.
00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:45.500
Now the sorting process is pretty easy when you look at a tray and go that's a winner, that's a winner, that's a winner, that's a winner, and they're all from the same hen.
00:01:45.500 --> 00:01:47.543
It makes it easy.
00:01:47.543 --> 00:02:04.939
Now when you start getting 200 layers in a laying flock, we had the luxury of only selecting eggs that were laid before 9 am, under the premise that we were selecting for better production by that initial toll gate in the collection process.
00:02:06.162 --> 00:02:13.383
See, and I give my girls up until like 2 o'clock to lay and if they lay later than that they take the next day off.
00:02:13.383 --> 00:02:21.727
So I'm always out there looking at who's laying when and figuring out the feel for that particular hen's schedule.
00:02:21.727 --> 00:02:30.217
And then once you see the hen lay her egg and you can identify what she lays, because there is a lot of consistency from egg to egg.
00:02:30.217 --> 00:02:35.834
If they're not having any problems then they may lay the perfect egg every single day.
00:02:35.834 --> 00:02:50.705
Some of them will have their own variations and then off that egg variation you can figure out who was laying it and how often they lay the luxury of having five laying hens and two roosters right now, set up in a couple of mating clans.
00:02:51.045 --> 00:02:53.794
it's really easy to identify which hen laid which egg.
00:02:53.794 --> 00:02:58.129
When you start getting into dozens, it gets a little more difficult, for me at least.
00:02:58.129 --> 00:03:11.413
Yeah, that makes sense Now, Rick, you had some notes here, crazy hen that goes over the fence to lay somewhere in the yard every day that I need to track those are always a challenge to keep up with, aren't they?
00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:11.967
They are.
00:03:11.967 --> 00:03:14.070
And when I find those eggs, those are the first ones.
00:03:14.070 --> 00:03:21.461
I crack and mix them with their feed and feed back to the flock because they have the highest immunoglobulin properties to build flock immunity.
00:03:22.585 --> 00:03:23.266
Oh, that's true.
00:03:23.266 --> 00:03:25.734
I've read about that, but I've never practiced it.
00:03:26.817 --> 00:03:32.211
Yeah, find that rogue hen and collect her eggs and crack them open, feed them back in the feed.
00:03:32.211 --> 00:03:44.201
That's how scientists in laboratories make vaccines, so why can't the farmer inoculate against the pathogens the same way?
00:03:44.387 --> 00:03:55.989
Getting back to the record keeping saying most of my breeding was done by family, so I would have multiple females and one male in each breeding pen.
00:03:55.989 --> 00:03:58.554
All the females were related.
00:03:58.554 --> 00:04:09.584
They were either moms, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandparents, but all the females were related in that one family.
00:04:09.584 --> 00:04:42.274
So I just simply wrote the pen number on the egg and the date that it was laid and then went from there later on, as I began to become more aware of the need for improving production in my bird, and so I was tuned in to I need to know exactly which hen laid which egg and which rooster she was mated with, and I switched over to small individual pens.
00:04:43.439 --> 00:04:46.005
The other option is to pat nesting.
00:04:46.005 --> 00:04:56.853
But I was working, I was leaving the house before daylight and getting home after dark, so it wasn't possible for me to check pat nesting on a periodic basis.
00:04:56.853 --> 00:05:06.389
You need to check those every hour and a half at least throughout the day, because once that hen is in that nest she can't get out.
00:05:06.389 --> 00:05:15.211
So you know which hen laid which egg and you can get a pretty good handle on what time of day that egg was laid.
00:05:16.315 --> 00:05:22.595
I should be doing that with how much time available I have and get down to pair hatching out of my little clan groups.
00:05:22.595 --> 00:05:28.672
I don't have large groups, I've only averaged about six hens per male per pen.
00:05:28.672 --> 00:05:34.629
But I could be a lot more organized with trap nests, since I am here to go and check them.
00:05:35.490 --> 00:05:38.841
Well, a little bit different than what you're talking about.
00:05:38.841 --> 00:05:41.447
I didn't do pair matings.
00:05:41.447 --> 00:05:54.103
I would have three or four females all mated to one male, and then I would just rotate the male from pen to pen to pen every day, day and a half two days, something like that.
00:05:55.045 --> 00:06:02.793
I did that earlier this season because I had a male that was a big fan of the idea to where, when I opened up his pen door, he'd walk right out.
00:06:02.793 --> 00:06:04.461
We'd walk down to the other pen together.
00:06:04.461 --> 00:06:07.600
I'd open the door, he'd hop in, do his thing and I could put him back on the other pen.
00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:10.889
An hour later he had what I call vigor.
00:06:12.093 --> 00:06:12.615
Yes, indeed.
00:06:12.615 --> 00:06:17.970
Well, you know, speaking of vigor, I think that's one thing that kind of gets overlooked in breeding.
00:06:17.970 --> 00:06:25.129
They forget the importance of vigor in birds, and when you lose vigor you lose so much.
00:06:25.129 --> 00:06:30.548
I mean you lose feed conversion, you lose meat production, you lose egg production.
00:06:31.050 --> 00:06:32.716
Poor vigor affects everything.
00:06:32.716 --> 00:06:35.685
You can almost lose your entire flock if you've lost the vigor in it.
00:06:36.146 --> 00:06:37.992
Absolutely.
00:06:37.992 --> 00:06:47.031
I kind of digress there, but we were talking about breeding for production qualities or leading up to talking about that.
00:06:47.031 --> 00:06:58.884
The first thing that I look for when I'm doing that sort of a meeting program, like I said, is vigor, and then I look for the proper confirmation.
00:06:58.884 --> 00:07:10.595
I want to be sure that the females, and the males too, have the body structure, skeletal structure and the body structure they need to be good productive birds.
00:07:10.595 --> 00:07:16.348
If they don't have the right body capacity, you're pretty much just spending your wheel.
00:07:16.348 --> 00:07:21.769
So proper bodies, and then I would fine tune it.
00:07:21.769 --> 00:07:22.595
For egg production.
00:07:22.595 --> 00:07:27.403
I looked at things like the rate of feathering.
00:07:27.403 --> 00:07:33.595
The faster bird feathers used to, the faster they mature and start laying eggs.
00:07:34.055 --> 00:07:40.574
That's one of the earliest indicators to a vigorous bird is selecting their feathering rate.
00:07:40.574 --> 00:07:42.543
Who comes in the fastest?
00:07:44.937 --> 00:07:54.571
I looked at the day to hen laid her first egg, because I tracked those females and those special breeding fans for a year.
00:07:54.571 --> 00:07:59.940
I tracked their production for a year, so I knew how many eggs they laid in a year.
00:07:59.940 --> 00:08:10.966
But I wanted to track their lengths of persistency, and by that I mean how many eggs did that of hen lay for how long?
00:08:10.966 --> 00:08:16.201
Of course she took a pause, right, and the pause is the other thing that I looked at.
00:08:17.276 --> 00:08:18.819
Well, I think that's a good topic.
00:08:18.819 --> 00:08:22.166
Is the schedule that hen lay eggs on?
00:08:23.615 --> 00:08:35.071
If you have a hen that's laid five or six eggs and then pauses for one day and then starts laying again, that old gal's a keeper.
00:08:36.418 --> 00:08:39.381
That's what I look, for I look for those five to six eggs a week.
00:08:39.381 --> 00:08:41.962
They take a day off, they get right back to it.
00:08:41.962 --> 00:08:48.846
So that persistency then is week by week and month into month, and how many months are they going to carry that on with?
00:08:49.615 --> 00:09:01.066
Because I've had girls before where they were persistent layers for a good six months and then they took a five month break and that's not going to work for keeping your eggs supply up.
00:09:01.066 --> 00:09:08.268
You want the most persistent girls and sometimes you might get better longevity if they're doing four eggs a week.
00:09:08.268 --> 00:09:19.995
They'll keep at it for a longer period of time, but the amount of variation I've seen in laying that was eye opening Once.
00:09:20.056 --> 00:09:24.881
I started building the flock into a quantity and I started to see the real range that was in there.
00:09:24.881 --> 00:09:35.554
Then it let me know how I needed to select for that persistency and watch them when they take a break and how long that break is for.
00:09:35.554 --> 00:09:51.587
Because if she's going to take all the space and the resources but then sit there and not be productive for more than what do you guys think is a good length of break, like when they go through a molt or when they take a pause, or maybe they don't lay that great in the winter.
00:09:51.587 --> 00:09:55.044
How much time do you give them for a break?
00:09:56.297 --> 00:09:59.125
Are you talking about applause or are you talking about the break from molting?
00:10:00.238 --> 00:10:00.599
A break.
00:10:01.895 --> 00:10:02.779
Just the weekly break.
00:10:02.779 --> 00:10:12.509
I think that ties back into me selecting eggs that are laid earlier in the morning, because the chicken doesn't lay on a 24 hour cycle.
00:10:12.509 --> 00:10:14.761
She lays on a 25 or 26 hour cycle.
00:10:14.761 --> 00:10:34.548
And then she'll get to a point later and later in the day where she no longer feels safe and comfortable laying her egg, and she'll hold it until the next sunrise and then start laying really early in the morning again, hopefully, and that's why, selecting earlier in the morning, I believe you're selecting for a more productive hen.
00:10:35.758 --> 00:10:38.184
I've been talking about mandage break.
00:10:38.184 --> 00:10:42.595
I knew what my goals were to increase production.
00:10:42.595 --> 00:10:51.567
I knew where my birds were at, where I started from, and I was only getting about 130 to 150 eggs per.
00:10:52.118 --> 00:10:55.554
Did they do it all at once, or did they do it for a while and then take a long break?
00:10:55.554 --> 00:10:57.265
What did that look like?
00:10:57.265 --> 00:10:58.595
For that, 150 eggs.
00:10:59.302 --> 00:11:04.466
I wasn't tracking that at that point, I just knew what the average block production was.
00:11:04.466 --> 00:11:20.035
But ideally, the more eggs you get in a row, followed by just a one day break, those are the kinds of birds you want to look at for starting a foundation program for egg production.
00:11:20.035 --> 00:11:29.075
Okay, if you've got a hen that lays three eggs and takes a break for two days or three days, that's an automatic.
00:11:29.075 --> 00:11:30.697
You had your chance, you're out.
00:11:30.697 --> 00:11:32.599
Yeah, at least for me.
00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:33.780
Agreed.
00:11:34.986 --> 00:11:40.298
The longer the persistence he is and the shorter the pause is is what you're looking for.
00:11:40.298 --> 00:11:51.499
You may not have that at first, so you have to sort of establish some baseline data going into this thing once you start this kind of program.
00:11:51.499 --> 00:11:58.649
You got to know where you started and you got to know where you want to go and by where you want to go.
00:11:58.649 --> 00:12:03.217
I want to encourage folks to be reasonable in their expectation.
00:12:03.217 --> 00:12:16.432
If you've got a dual purpose bird and you're trying to get it up to what today's modern hybrid slate 300 plus eggs a year you're not going to make it.
00:12:16.432 --> 00:12:18.009
That's the bottom line.
00:12:18.009 --> 00:12:27.339
I think a reasonable goal is is 200 to maybe 230, 40 eggs a year for a dual purpose bird.
00:12:28.446 --> 00:12:38.565
I haven't done the math yet, but I've got a bird who I think is my rock star, who will lay between four and five eggs and then take a day pause and start up again 3732.
00:12:38.565 --> 00:12:42.635
And she just is consistent like that all the way through.
00:12:42.635 --> 00:12:47.895
Other birds will take longer pauses and they usually lay later in the day.
00:12:49.024 --> 00:12:58.058
Now, when they mention the eggs per year for certain breed, when you look up a breed and it says they'll lay 250 or 150.
00:12:58.058 --> 00:13:04.658
When they're saying that, how many years of that bird's life are they going to do that?
00:13:04.658 --> 00:13:10.715
Because that can vary tremendously as well and I think most of that's based off of first year performance.
00:13:10.945 --> 00:13:11.746
I just started to say.
00:13:11.746 --> 00:13:17.398
Most of those numbers are based off of their pull it year, their first year of laying production.
00:13:18.306 --> 00:13:19.866
And after that it'll dwindle down.
00:13:19.866 --> 00:13:30.700
And it's a matter of how much it dwindles, because sometimes your best, best offspring come from the two year old hands rather than the one year old hands.
00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:33.710
I agree, they're much stronger, more vigorous chicks.
00:13:34.351 --> 00:13:35.676
Yeah, the eggs, I think.
00:13:36.546 --> 00:13:47.804
But knowing what a pull it lays in their first year is important, because then you know to expect about 85% in her second year Of lay.
00:13:47.804 --> 00:13:50.624
You know she's laying 200 eggs a year.
00:13:50.624 --> 00:13:55.784
You can expect 85% of that in her second year of lay.
00:13:55.784 --> 00:14:01.784
And then the next year it drops a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more.
00:14:01.784 --> 00:14:07.764
But another thing to look at is how long are your hands productive for?
00:14:08.889 --> 00:14:17.716
Yeah, because some of those production breeds, especially in the hybrids, they'll have a steep Some of you can't even get to go to two years for a decent production rate.
00:14:18.447 --> 00:14:19.028
Commercially?
00:14:19.028 --> 00:14:21.235
Don't they cycle them out at like 18 months old?
00:14:22.365 --> 00:14:33.418
When we had our commercial leg, leg and flock, we'd bring in a flock of pull it and in 12 months we'd bring in another group of pull it and just replace the original flock.
00:14:34.546 --> 00:14:41.056
I know I usually grow my favorites up to their first year than after that.
00:14:41.056 --> 00:14:43.720
Every six months I'm thinning them out some more.
00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:53.775
So if I have roughly 30 birds at one year old, by the time they're two, I've got 15 of them left Because those are the ones that still have good performance going on.
00:14:54.527 --> 00:14:56.533
And then I hatch everything they lay.
00:14:56.533 --> 00:15:06.019
So you have that luxury to sort and patch out and see what they throw and then really focus in on your selection.
00:15:07.105 --> 00:15:12.577
Next season is going to be a good season because I've got a pretty healthy batch that'll be coming two years old then.
00:15:12.577 --> 00:15:15.232
That incubator is going to be busy.
00:15:16.370 --> 00:15:17.804
You're going to need a bigger incubator.
00:15:18.047 --> 00:15:19.784
That's about I'm going to need another bar.
00:15:21.087 --> 00:15:28.804
Another thing I want to tell folks to be mindful of when they're trying to improve production is their molting rate.
00:15:28.804 --> 00:15:33.221
In other words, how fast does a mol and get back to lay it?
00:15:33.221 --> 00:15:39.303
And I know by the looks on your face you're gonna ask me how long is that?
00:15:39.303 --> 00:15:45.918
Well, it's gonna vary from breed to breed and it's gonna vary with the quality of the stock that she started with.
00:15:45.918 --> 00:15:49.001
So there's not a hard and fast rule.
00:15:49.001 --> 00:15:55.624
But if you've got a female, that man, and just two or three days she's dropping tons of feathers.
00:15:55.624 --> 00:15:57.378
She grows them back.
00:15:57.378 --> 00:15:59.283
She's ready to go back and start laying again.
00:15:59.283 --> 00:16:00.980
That's the kind of females you want.
00:16:00.980 --> 00:16:06.958
You don't want birds start dropping a few feathers here and a few feathers there.
00:16:06.958 --> 00:16:10.124
They may mold all of their wing feathers at one time.
00:16:10.124 --> 00:16:10.898
They may not.
00:16:10.898 --> 00:16:12.563
And they may drop all of their tail feathers.
00:16:12.563 --> 00:16:14.601
That bird goes down the road.
00:16:14.601 --> 00:16:23.283
They're not gonna do you any good because they're dragging that out and the longer that molding process goes, the fewer eggs he's gonna lay.
00:16:24.455 --> 00:16:40.620
Well, we've already talked about managing our molt in the previous episode, so we should be there and watching our birds very carefully and managing them through the mold and again making a decision as to who's gonna carry on and be our breeding stock and who's gonna head to noodle camp.
00:16:41.434 --> 00:16:46.600
Another thing to look at is your total cost to produce a dozen eggs.
00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:49.562
I'm not talking just feed cost.
00:16:49.562 --> 00:16:58.759
You got a factory in labor and all of those other associated costs To really know what that dozen eggs cost you and it's gonna surprise you.
00:16:58.759 --> 00:17:02.504
So I'm gonna be, about flipped out when I saw it.
00:17:03.115 --> 00:17:04.420
And I try to avoid that kind of man.
00:17:05.634 --> 00:17:15.140
There was a page of it in Jeff's book and I just I looked at it and I went, yeah, let's just tear that out, Nobody needs to see that.
00:17:16.634 --> 00:17:19.002
Some of those things make my eyes cross, I would admit.
00:17:19.615 --> 00:17:27.201
I mean what I should be charging for a dozen eggs at farmers market, what it cost me to produce a dozen eggs I couldn't sell.
00:17:28.483 --> 00:17:32.712
One, especially if some of those eggs are coming from some prime breeding.
00:17:32.712 --> 00:17:36.766
Examples too I've had some very, very expensive omelets.
00:17:36.766 --> 00:17:40.204
Yes probably should have been chickens.
00:17:40.204 --> 00:17:46.144
We get hungry, so I'm not above eating prime hatching eggs if I have to.
00:17:47.344 --> 00:17:47.973
I've been there, done that.
00:17:48.779 --> 00:17:55.494
I'm not gonna go buy eggs at the store, that's for sure they can taste a little fishy, though, if you're on a breeder supplemented diet.
00:17:55.494 --> 00:18:03.243
I'm just saying Only if it exceeds 10% for that fish meal I can do that at lower levels, honestly.
00:18:03.295 --> 00:18:03.536
Can you?
00:18:04.434 --> 00:18:05.157
He's sensitive.
00:18:05.157 --> 00:18:07.067
Yes, I am sensitive, that's true.
00:18:07.815 --> 00:18:08.858
And I'm not a super dexter.
00:18:08.900 --> 00:18:09.481
I was tested.
00:18:10.895 --> 00:18:16.022
Another thing I think we need to track when we're working on production quality.
00:18:16.022 --> 00:18:20.241
Really, you need to track it whether you're working on production quality or not.
00:18:20.241 --> 00:18:25.000
But that's the rate of fertility and the rate of hatchability.
00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:28.824
Getting a hen to lay an egg, that's spectacular.
00:18:28.824 --> 00:18:34.386
Getting a hen to lay a fertile egg is even better.
00:18:34.386 --> 00:18:36.342
That's sort of the icing on the cake.
00:18:36.342 --> 00:18:38.761
I've had hens that laid eggs.
00:18:38.761 --> 00:18:41.381
Tell her hens that I really wanted chicks from.
00:18:41.381 --> 00:18:45.746
Never got a fertile egg from those gals the whole time I had them.
00:18:46.714 --> 00:18:58.180
I haven't counted that before, and sometimes it was the boy, sometimes it was the female, and how she didn't want to be around the boy I picked for, yes, and other times they'd be fertile.
00:18:58.180 --> 00:19:00.182
They just would not do a gosh dang thing.
00:19:00.182 --> 00:19:13.363
I had an entire flock of really rare birds and I had a male and five females and I set every single egg those birds laid and I got one scrawny, pathetic cockerel out of it and I tried probably a year and a half or two years.
00:19:13.363 --> 00:19:16.182
I changed the diet, I changed everything.
00:19:16.403 --> 00:19:16.624
Mm-hmm.
00:19:17.174 --> 00:19:19.797
And nothing hatched, so I had to cycle them out.
00:19:19.917 --> 00:19:32.964
It can be so frustrating when that happened and that's another thing that we need to be tracking on our birds Not only what the percentage of fertility is, but what's the percentage of strong, healthy chicks hatched.
00:19:33.474 --> 00:19:39.163
Yes, very important stuff I've called out birds based on their hatch results Mm-hmm.
00:19:39.704 --> 00:19:41.659
Okay, do you find the best meat?
00:19:41.659 --> 00:19:44.720
Producing flocks produce the best chicks.
00:19:45.974 --> 00:19:46.256
Yes.
00:19:47.200 --> 00:19:47.602
I should.
00:19:48.739 --> 00:19:52.019
Okay, just checking, because we haven't gotten into that yet.
00:19:52.019 --> 00:19:54.821
I don't know where, when or how it happened.
00:19:55.394 --> 00:20:13.446
But there's some sort of a like when folks say that they have a egg bred flock and then you get in there and you start handling the hens and they are very lean, lean lean, lean and that makes, you know, typically a productive layer.
00:20:14.474 --> 00:20:26.781
But some of my best layers are also very stacked in the fleshing department and I have to be careful on obesity and make sure that it's meat, not fat, because fat hens don't lay that well.
00:20:26.781 --> 00:20:33.663
But I've had really meaty birds that laid every bit, as well as a leaner, lighter weight bird.
00:20:35.154 --> 00:20:49.259
I had a set of silver lace bramas that were a project variety from a pretty well-known breeder, and it took every bit of nine months before they started laying, and when they did, the eggs were very small and they only came three days a week.
00:20:50.798 --> 00:20:51.661
And it stayed that way.
00:20:52.315 --> 00:20:53.359
The eggs never got bigger.
00:20:53.359 --> 00:20:56.443
They were fantastic broodies, though I'll give them a hand.
00:20:56.875 --> 00:20:56.974
Which.
00:20:56.974 --> 00:21:00.001
Talking about bigger eggs, that's another thing you should be tracking.
00:21:00.001 --> 00:21:01.460
What is the egg size?
00:21:01.460 --> 00:21:06.861
What is the average egg size of that female, if it's mediums or smalls?
00:21:06.861 --> 00:21:08.625
She's not doing you any good.
00:21:08.625 --> 00:21:13.338
You want large, mostly large and then extra large.
00:21:14.403 --> 00:21:14.604
Yeah.
00:21:15.821 --> 00:21:20.212
I know some folks are selecting it for the big jumbos and they love the double jokers.
00:21:20.212 --> 00:21:27.807
I know one breeder who ran into a problem with the block of Delaware's because he was selecting based on egg size.
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:29.384
And they were a bunch of double yolks.
00:21:29.726 --> 00:21:36.673
Yep, he finally got them to where they were laying a bunch of double yolk eggs and his hatchability hit rock bottom.
00:21:36.673 --> 00:21:40.848
So you know it's case that too much of a thing is bad for you.
00:21:42.220 --> 00:21:56.968
Normally my girls have a couple of weeks where they change their egg size from the small politics and then they balloon up into a double yolk and then they level off after that and do a nice solid 60 gram, 65 gram.
00:21:56.968 --> 00:22:09.250
But I'm not surprised when I see new layers popping out 96 grams, 100 grams for double yolks, and they go in the breakfast basket until they figure out their system.
00:22:10.681 --> 00:22:12.066
You know we've been go ahead.
00:22:12.859 --> 00:22:12.960
It's.
00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:16.150
One thing I won't do for science is to try to hatch double yolks.
00:22:16.150 --> 00:22:17.542
It's not.
00:22:17.542 --> 00:22:30.031
It's not a novelty to me to even mess around with that it's a waste of effort and resources to do that I know some folks have hatched them, but those Y'all aren't great.
00:22:30.441 --> 00:22:31.644
No, I just started to say.
00:22:31.644 --> 00:22:33.348
Those hatches come few and far between.
00:22:34.500 --> 00:22:36.887
There was somebody that hatched one by accident.
00:22:36.887 --> 00:22:43.490
I counted 11 eggs and there was 12 chicks and they were about half size when she weighed them.
00:22:43.490 --> 00:22:44.772
Yeah, it happened.
00:22:44.772 --> 00:22:50.830
I wonder how they're doing now, because it's very rare to actually get twins to hatch and to live.
00:22:51.451 --> 00:22:53.644
Yes, let's talk.
00:22:53.644 --> 00:22:55.048
We've been talking about egg production.
00:22:55.048 --> 00:23:02.443
Let's talk about what those folks that want to focus on meat production should be looking at and their breeders.
00:23:02.443 --> 00:23:14.326
I think you want to track your breeders so you can identify how many days it took them to go from hatch to market weight that varies a lot by individual.
00:23:14.787 --> 00:23:15.548
It does Sometimes.
00:23:16.009 --> 00:23:21.189
It does Then track what their average daily gain was.
00:23:21.189 --> 00:23:26.407
That's good to know, well, even weekly would be good to have.
00:23:26.407 --> 00:23:27.082
Yeah, oh yeah.
00:23:27.819 --> 00:23:30.145
Just a weekly flock weight, if nothing else.
00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:41.061
We can get caught up into this rapid grizzly rate For meat production in a way.
00:23:41.061 --> 00:23:50.971
That's good, but with a long term success of the flock you may not want that extreme rate of maturity.
00:23:51.561 --> 00:23:53.567
Well, there's some breeds of skeletons can't handle it.
00:23:54.819 --> 00:24:06.951
The bottom line is the longer that goes, excuse me, the shorter the period to maturity, those birds tend to burn out and the longevity is just not there.
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