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Hi, I'm Mandelyn Royal and I would like to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast.
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Joining me are John Gunterman and Rip Stalvey, the rest of our podcast team and we're looking forward to visiting with you and talking poultry from feathers to function.
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Another thing I think a lot of people don't do, and they should be doing, is weigh your birds.
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I see a lot of birds in shows that are too big and some that are too small.
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And I've also seen birds that I thought looked great.
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And I picked them up and like, where is this thing?
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It's all fluff and feather.
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I've seen as much as three to four pounds discrepancies from bird to bird within the same breed, same age, same environment with huge discrepancies.
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The standard specifies weights for cockerels.
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Weights for pullets, weights for cockbirds, and weights for hens.
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Now, you're allowed 20 percent over or under, okay?
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But anything outside of that disqualifies that bird from competition.
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Yeah.
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I thought it was one pound up or down, but it's 20%?.
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If you do the math, it's pretty close.
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We talked about wings and tails.
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We also need to address feather quality, and Mandy, you Almost got there when you were talking about the shape of the feathers in the wings.
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Now, isn't it like, for example, with a wing feather, you want as much feather material on both sides of the shaft of the feather, right?
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You shouldn't see no,
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the leading edge of the primaries will be naturally narrower.
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Then the following edge, or the back edge, the edge closest to the body.
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Oh, okay.
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Now, secondaries are much more even, but on the primaries you get this variation.
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But, the standard will prescribe feather quality to an extent.
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It's, they'll say it should be broad, some will say narrow, and some of it depends on the breed, like your harder feathered birds that carry those feathers closer to the body tend to have a slightly narrower feather structure than birds like Asiatics, Orpingtons and some of those.
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Oh, that makes sense.
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And then you add in that fluff factor and how fluffy they are or are not and the length of the feathers.
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Stop picking on my birds, Mandy.
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I didn't.
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I didn't even say your name.
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I know.
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I know I'm just sensitive about my fluff factor, but that is specified in the standard and it actually has pictures of how far up the shaft the fluff should extend.
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And your breed is going to be specific though.
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The more fluff you have on a feather, the more loosely feathered it makes them look, just because it provides that.
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Extra little bit of loft to physically lift and separate those feathers a little bit.
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Yeah, and it prevents them from being able to tighten it down.
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Yeah.
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And that's how you can achieve type through feathers.
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I want a really nice hard outer shell to ward off wind and any potential snow in my case, or rain.
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I'll actually look at feathers from the breast area or the very top of the back up between the hackles and the saddle feathers and get an idea for feather width, feather shape and feather quality.
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If you'll take the back of your hand and start at the bird's hackle and just slide it down on top of the feathers from the neck to the tail.
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You can really feel the feather quality, if it feels very slick and smooth, like silk cloth, that's good feather quality.
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If it feels rough, not so much.
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And you can also pluck a feather out and hold it up to the light.
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If you can see through it, you don't have a very substantial feather.
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That makes sense.
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And that all goes back to genetics and nutrition.
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Yes, exactly.
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Should it be thick?
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And if it's not, why not?
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And I noticed new this year in some of my pullets, they're developing a cushion.
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And when you see a cushion on a female, that's where it's real fluffy and bouncing up off the back in front of the tail.
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And the saddle area and it, there's varying degrees.
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Cause normally my birds are pretty well tightly feathered and it's all smooth.
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There's no jumped up fluff or what do you call it?
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Volume.
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They don't have any volume, but some of these that I'm seeing this year are getting a pretty well defined cushion, which is weird.
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I don't even know where that's coming from.
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So I tell you what you do, pull out a feather.
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From that cushion area on a bird that has it, and you pull out a feather from the same location on a bird that doesn't have it.
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Look at the amount of fluff between the two.
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Ah, is where that extra volume's coming from.
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So somehow I added more fluff than what they had before.
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And how much of that can be a response to local environment and just epigenetic development.
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I wonder if for the time of year they were hatched.
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I don't think so.
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I'm seeing cushions on Rhode Island Reds that I never saw before.
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It's just not paying attention to the fine details.
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When you're evaluating your birds.
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You've got a lot more ratio of fluff to web of the feather.
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In some instances, you have a longer feather, which will give you a looser look.
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I'll go back through my adults again for the 1, 000th time and see if I find somebody with a long saddle feather on a female that may be producing cushion.
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So if you've got three or four birds lined up next to each other and they're all of equal conformation and you're looking at those finer points, feather quality is for sure one of them.
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It's on the list just not the top of the list.
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Feather quality is also directly related to the sheen of a bird, the shininess of the feathers, and when you start losing your feather quality the feather surface begins to take on a slightly duller look and not as shiny.
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When you described that feel earlier, Rip, that's something that you're not going to be able to change for a show by putting a show sheen or shine or whatever they call it on your bird.
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You'll, even if the feather is shiny you'll still be able to feel that.
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Little roughness of the feather versus the silky quality underneath.
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And you'll probably be able to feel that it was sprayed with this juice.
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Anyways, you have to go wipe your hands.
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I have literally seen people put so much of that stuff on the birds.
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It's hard to hold them.
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I've nearly dropped birds before because they were so slick from having that show sheen sprayed on them.
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And then it's on your hands the rest of the day.
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Yeah.
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Hand wipes.
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I've had to go stop what I was doing and go wash my hands.
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And when they're spraying it, particularly on concrete floors, it gets on the floor and it makes the floor slick.
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It's like being on ice.
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You can put a great shine on a bird with nothing more complicated than a silk cloth, just rubbing the feathers with it.
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Or a garden hose on a nice warm sunny day.
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Yeah, it doesn't hurt your birds to get wet.
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I think the birds that have access to the environment and get rained on regularly look better naturally.
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They also learn to preen take care of themselves, I believe, versus a just a coop kept
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bird.
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I know one Sumatra breeder.
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That he would regularly go out there and spray his males down with a water hose.
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And he had some of the best sheen and best quality on those birds I've ever seen.
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I've been definitely guilty of, I would call it rinsing my birds.
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I don't wash them cause any natural oils that are there.
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I don't want to.
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Take away by using anything that's detergent based.
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Just a light misting is all it takes.
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Yeah, garden hose, spray'em down and on hot days, my Chantecleres definitely appreciate a nice little misting with a garden hose or just a sprinkler going back and forth.
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Oh my gosh.
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There.
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If you want some entertainment on a hot day, put a sprinkler out and put it on oscillation back and forth, and watch your chickens chase the water.
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It's really quite fun.
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I've done it for ducks, but I've never done it for chickens.
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Oh yeah, they love it.
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Mine will actually walk under it and hold their wings out as it sweeps back and forth.
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It's like the undercarriage wash on a car wash.
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And then after it goes by, they shake like a dog.
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I think it's funny and cute, if you're not out there observing your birds and just getting joy and, having fun with them that don't bother keeping them.
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And that's part of chickening is just watching your birds and knowing them.
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I can just based on the way they walk or run, I can tell which one of my birds is which one of my permanent birds.
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If I've got a big grow out of, 60 or 80 birds on the ground, that's not happening, but the big ones.
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It doesn't take me very long to find my individuals and be able to find them again, without any sort of.
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ID or label, like I have this one pullet right now, and she, I will spot her out of a flock of 100.
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The way she moves and the way she interacts, you're like, there she is.
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She's a door greeter, she comes running up to the front of the pen and stands there.
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And I could just reach down and pick her up.
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And I don't raise them to be that way.
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We're a dual purpose flock.
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I'm not trying to have them be that way.
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But she has decided, you know what?
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I'm special and you're going to treat me like I am special.
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So I'll give her a little handful of a snack.
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So now she does it reliably.
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It's those birds that are the first ones out and want to go explore.
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They're the natural leader of the cohort where everybody will be like, okay, no, you go, he'll go.
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And then, they'll go and they'll check it out and be like, okay, it's cool.
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And then everybody will run over.
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They're the special birds.
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She's first or second out the door every morning.
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And it's either the cockerel ahead of her or behind her.
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You guys were.
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Just lead me into my next thing that I want to talk about and you're doing it naturally and you may be doing it with intent or it may just be what you learned to do.
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But when you're evaluating birds, to me, one of the easiest things to do is to compare one bird to another bird.
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Bird A and bird B.
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Is bird B better overall?
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Then the other one set him aside till you find one better than him.
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And you can sort through a lot of birds in a hurry like that.
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Sometimes it's real helpful to have somebody who doesn't even know anything about chickens come by because they're like, Ooh, what, that, that bird right there what's going on with that bird?
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Or if the, or if, visitors compliment you on your turkeys.
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A question that I get from a lot of people is if they've never really thought about doing breeding selection, they'll ask, how do you even start?
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Let's say I have 20 birds in front of me.
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How do I even begin?
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And I'm like, we'll start by catching one.
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Don't think about who it is.
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Just the first one you can put your hands on, bring that bird out, evaluate it, and every single bird after that is going to be better or worse in different things, different qualities.
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And that's where you develop your goals from is what you're finding, what you have, and what you want them to do what the standard wants them to do and going through them systematically.
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But you begin just by picking one.
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It doesn't even matter which one.
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You have your notebook and you score them.
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If you try to sort through a whole flock of birds as a group, you're going to wind up making mistakes.
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You got to take them one at a time.
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And just like Mandy says, compare the next bird to the one you just looked at.
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Is he better or worse?
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And go through them that way, much faster process.
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Cause then you end up with a much smaller group of who was better and you can ignore everybody else and do it again with what was better.
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Thanks for watching!
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Hi there, poultry keepers.
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This is Mandelyn Royal, one of the voices behind the Poultry Keepers podcast.
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We're on a mission to create a larger, more vibrant community of poultry enthusiasts, and we need your help.
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If you enjoy our poultry conversations and insights, here's a simple way to support us.
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Just spread the word and share the Poultry Keepers podcast with your fellow poultry lovers, friends, and family.
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So hit that share button, post it to your socials, or tell your chicken loving friends about us.
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Let's grow a larger community together.
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Thanks for being a part of the Poultry Keeper's family.
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Now, back to our show.
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Thanks for watching!
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Yeah.
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I know you and Karen Johnston, especially put a ton of work in on the poultry keepers 360 selection tool, where you can have all the different categories that you're looking for and weigh them.
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Against each other and have a, change your scale on the fly.
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You know what this year breast width is more important to me.
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And you change that and it changes your selection criteria for your birds.
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So it takes, it puts a lot of objectivity into the selection process.
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It takes a lot of subjectivity out of it.
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Once, once you come up with in your mind, what a 10 out of 10 is for fleshing, then you can input that score for each bird.
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And add them up and your natural winners are going to be the ones with the highest scores, so to speak.
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And if somebody wants to get a copy of that spreadsheet, if they're members of Poultry Keepers 360 on Facebook, it's in the file section.
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If you're not a member, join and go to the file section and you will find the selection tool in there.
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And it's simply a spreadsheet.
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And it's just scoring for different kind of qualities, is what it amounts to.
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High score wins.
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Yeah, but you can change the weight of each individual score overall, which is really helpful for when, if you want to focus on two or three traits this year and not, maintain the other traits you can do that, or not.
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You can do whatever you want, but I find I get overwhelmed easily if I don't have a very good inventory and tracking system.
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So all my birds get wing banded no later than day three.
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And their permanent record starts actually well before hatch.
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Their permanent record starts with the date, time, and temperature that I collected their egg.
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That's a lot.
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I just write right on the shell when I take it out of the box.
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At times I've got infrared thermometer.
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It's cold.
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records temperature.
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If it's 72 out and the egg is, still above 70, it's irrelevant.
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But if it's negative 30 out, if that egg is under really 40 degrees for a shell temperature by the time I collect it, I'm not gonna consider setting it.
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Yeah, that reduces the chances pretty far underneath those refrigerator temperatures, I guess you could call it.
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Guys, we've talked a lot about body shape, body form, which we should because type is far more important than color.
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Type is everything.
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Build the barn, then paint it, you say all the time, right?
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We do need to address color, and It's hard to do on a podcast because each parti colored breed or variety, and parti colors means more than one color
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P A R T I.
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Yeah, P A R T I.
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But the standard will tell you what that color should be, where it should be on the individual feathers.
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Some standards will even tell you Laced breeds.
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It's a let's take a silver laced bird, which is, it's a white feather with a black edging around it.
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It'll tell you whether it's supposed to be oval shaped or is it supposed to be almond shaped.
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They can get that specific.
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Patterns are tricky.
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I dabbled in patterns and realized, you know what, I think I want my birds to be white.
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My old English pheasant fowl had a silver spangled pattern, which was just So intricate and delicate and gorgeous, I thought.
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And I'm really glad that somebody who had better resources than I took over that project, because they are very special and rare here in the States.
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I did try some double silver lace barn welders, and those were fun.
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And that pattern, it was so pretty, but so tricky too.
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Yes.
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I only kept them for about two years and then I moved on to birchen, black silvers, and some other simpler patterns that still carried their own complexities.
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That's where attention to detail and having an eye is really going to pay off.
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And why I ended up with whitebirds.
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Y'all, Mandy was talking about she wanted all her birds to be white.
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But there's even problems in white color varieties, am I not right?
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Yeah, but it's a little easier to worry about removing like yellowing and finding all the different contributors to that and that can go all the way back to the base color that's underneath the white because the white is always covering something.
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And what it's covering is what you might be up against, especially if there's anything red in there that's going to come out as yellow.
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I'm always selecting silver downed chicks.
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My chicks come out gold, but they'll have a silver down, and those are the ones I
00:17:49.590 --> 00:17:49.891
want.
00:17:50.510 --> 00:17:51.750
Oh yeah, you bet.
00:17:52.550 --> 00:17:55.401
The standard doesn't refer to it as yellowing.
00:17:55.401 --> 00:17:59.101
If you're looking it up in the standard, it's going to refer to it as brassiness.
00:17:59.901 --> 00:18:00.451
That makes sense.
00:18:00.451 --> 00:18:02.500
The light color of brass.
00:18:03.300 --> 00:18:04.891
Other solid colors.
00:18:05.421 --> 00:18:06.431
Buff, for example.
00:18:07.230 --> 00:18:09.780
You would think, pretty straightforward, right?
00:18:10.141 --> 00:18:10.540
No.
00:18:11.260 --> 00:18:16.810
Because it should be the same shade of buff in each section of the bird.
00:18:17.530 --> 00:18:21.671
Hackles should match the tail should match the breast should match the wings should match the back.
00:18:22.046 --> 00:18:23.155
That's not easy to do.
00:18:23.955 --> 00:18:27.905
And then you throw into the fact that they are sensitive to sunlight.