July 22, 2024
Reducing Costs Can Cost You Money-Part 2
In this episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast, Mandelyn Royal, John Gunterman, and Rip Stalvey discuss various aspects of poultry feeding and management. Key topics include adhering to weight standards for birds, the importance of regulating feed quantities, and the cost-efficiency of high-quality feeds versus lower-quality alternatives.
The hosts emphasize the significant benefits of high-quality feed, such as improved egg production, better hatch rates, and overall healthier birds. They also talk about the use of supplements, the role of grit in digestion, feed types, and feeder designs to minimize waste. Additional highlights include the advantages of free-ranging for nutrient intake and the importance of culling unproductive birds.
The episode concludes with the hosts sharing their experiences, tips, and the overall goal of saving time and money while maintaining a healthy and productive flock.
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WEBVTT
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:05.780
Hi, I'm Mandelyn Royal, and I would like to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast.
00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:16.910
Joining me in the studio 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.
00:00:27.507 --> 00:00:29.417
And when I say, weigh your birds.
00:00:29.716 --> 00:00:39.286
The standard dictates the weight for every breed and try to keep within those rate weight parameters within 20%, one way or the other, you'll be fine.
00:00:39.936 --> 00:00:45.686
But once you start going over that 20 percent too much in weight, you've got a problem going on.
00:00:46.317 --> 00:00:52.027
And that tells you, you need to regulate the amount of feed your birds are consuming.
00:00:52.067 --> 00:00:58.926
And the only way that I know I have to do that effectively is that you limit the amount of feed you're feeding your birds.
00:00:59.726 --> 00:01:03.817
Average bird, whatever the average bird is, I'm not real sure at this point anymore.
00:01:04.617 --> 00:01:10.927
But, usually you can allow four ounces of feed per bird per day.
00:01:11.727 --> 00:01:14.897
And that, here again, that depends on the quality of your feed.
00:01:14.906 --> 00:01:16.647
I feed a real high quality feed.
00:01:17.447 --> 00:01:22.087
And I started mine out at four ounces per day once they matured.
00:01:22.887 --> 00:01:25.996
And it didn't take long before I realized, hey, this is too much feed.
00:01:25.996 --> 00:01:26.846
I got to cut them back.
00:01:27.647 --> 00:01:35.477
And I'm down to the point now to where I'm feeding a little bit less than, Three ounces of feed per bird per day.
00:01:36.277 --> 00:01:37.447
It's about where I am now.
00:01:38.037 --> 00:01:42.197
I judge it by when they go to bed, I look at how much is left.
00:01:42.996 --> 00:01:43.917
I put enough out.
00:01:43.956 --> 00:01:45.736
So it's gone by the middle of the day.
00:01:46.066 --> 00:01:50.387
And then I put some out for the end of the day, just to fill their crops before they go to roost for the night.
00:01:50.936 --> 00:01:54.266
I think it's important though, that we should mention, this is all after grow out.
00:01:54.277 --> 00:01:59.917
This is post 16, 18, 20 weeks for that first minimum 16 weeks.
00:01:59.956 --> 00:02:02.087
I want to keep food and grit in front of them.
00:02:02.481 --> 00:02:08.072
And water at all times, as much as they can possibly get down whenever they want it.
00:02:08.872 --> 00:02:09.092
Yeah.
00:02:09.092 --> 00:02:12.042
I generally pre feed all the way up until I get an egg.
00:02:12.051 --> 00:02:18.692
And then once I start seeing the egg, then I start I've come around to the idea of limiting their feed.
00:02:18.692 --> 00:02:27.542
I used to free choice feed everything all the time until I started running into that pickle when those girls get to be one year old, they're not laying when they should be.
00:02:27.542 --> 00:02:28.592
I start picking them up.
00:02:28.611 --> 00:02:32.032
They're obese, they're fat, they're not productive.
00:02:32.787 --> 00:02:41.497
And that's where I did start to see that value and monitor their condition and keep them a little on the lean side.
00:02:41.507 --> 00:02:45.597
Not bony or anything, but don't let them get fat.
00:02:46.396 --> 00:02:48.276
And keep them interested in foraging.
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They're like, Oh, we're out over here in the feeder.
00:02:50.586 --> 00:02:52.407
Let's go look for bugs and worms.
00:02:53.206 --> 00:03:12.546
One ounce of feed doesn't sound like very much when you talk about savings, but when you figure you've got a bunch of mouths to feed, like 10 or plus feet, and Mandy, I don't know how many birds you've got, but that one ounce would be a substantial savings for you.
00:03:13.347 --> 00:03:15.137
Yeah, it adds up pretty quick.
00:03:15.336 --> 00:03:18.977
And right now when I'm in peak growth season, I have birds of all ages.
00:03:18.977 --> 00:03:22.986
I might be blowing through 1200 pounds a month.
00:03:23.787 --> 00:03:26.127
Yeah, that's a lot of ounces.
00:03:26.926 --> 00:03:28.016
That's a lot of ounces.
00:03:28.016 --> 00:03:29.097
You're exactly right.
00:03:29.306 --> 00:03:30.347
That's a lot of dollars.
00:03:31.146 --> 00:03:44.287
I was pretty excited to see the drop in consumption just by changing the quality of our feed, because the cost wasn't that much more because I was spending anywhere from 19.
00:03:44.287 --> 00:03:48.276
99 a bag up to 23 a bag.
00:03:48.757 --> 00:03:51.937
And that was for, mid tier crumble feeds.
00:03:52.711 --> 00:04:01.991
And then when I switched over to Jeff's formulas and I started getting it as a milled feed, it took the cost up to, what, like 26.
00:04:01.991 --> 00:04:03.431
50 a bag.
00:04:03.961 --> 00:04:08.072
But I'm saving more money by spending a little more initially.
00:04:08.151 --> 00:04:10.512
It shows in the drop of consumption.
00:04:11.312 --> 00:04:12.771
And then the birds are better on it.
00:04:12.891 --> 00:04:15.151
They have a different contentment to them.
00:04:15.151 --> 00:04:15.512
They don't.
00:04:16.067 --> 00:04:19.117
Look at me like they're still starving after eating half a feeder.
00:04:19.916 --> 00:04:27.877
And you probably get more eggs, better quality eggs that hatch easier, stronger chicks, better fertility.
00:04:28.677 --> 00:04:32.177
So it's not just cost much more, just a couple of bucks.
00:04:32.437 --> 00:04:32.766
I, yeah.
00:04:33.567 --> 00:04:34.726
I did some figuring on that.
00:04:34.726 --> 00:04:35.947
You're talking about how much it costs.
00:04:36.336 --> 00:04:49.706
And I compared my high end feed, which I'm paying the same thing you are about 2650 a bag, 50 pound bag to one over here at our local big box farm supply.
00:04:50.507 --> 00:04:52.206
That was I got the numbers right here.
00:04:52.216 --> 00:04:52.536
Hang on.
00:04:53.336 --> 00:04:54.586
23 a bag.
00:04:55.216 --> 00:04:55.567
Okay.
00:04:56.107 --> 00:05:05.187
So initially my feed cost me 3 more, roughly a bag, a little over 3 more a bag than the big box brand name.
00:05:05.797 --> 00:05:22.117
But when you figure out that your birds on this high quality feed are going to eat easily 20 to 25 percent less feed than when you're feeding those lesser quality feeds, they feel like they have to eat more because they're not getting the nutrition they need.
00:05:22.716 --> 00:05:34.836
But when you use a feed that is nutritionally dense, it's well formulated, it's balanced for their needs, it has the proper levels of amino acids, the proper levels of vitamins and minerals, They don't need to eat as much feed.
00:05:35.286 --> 00:05:37.637
And it's fresh and delicious and nutritious.
00:05:38.437 --> 00:05:49.586
But when I factored all of that in, okay, you know how much more it cost me to feed a bird than on the feed I'm using versus what I could get in the store?
00:05:49.677 --> 00:05:50.276
Oh, the other way.
00:05:51.076 --> 00:05:54.096
Cost me about a penny more per day.
00:05:54.896 --> 00:05:56.266
To use a high quality feed.
00:05:57.067 --> 00:06:04.987
But then with the improved hatch rates and the improved quality, that turns into additional gain.
00:06:04.987 --> 00:06:05.576
Additional revenue.
00:06:05.726 --> 00:06:06.656
Yeah, sure.
00:06:06.916 --> 00:06:07.706
Better egg production.
00:06:07.956 --> 00:06:10.666
10 percent bump in your hatch rate by feeding better.
00:06:11.216 --> 00:06:12.976
And you're getting 10 percent more chicks.
00:06:13.336 --> 00:06:15.867
That makes that little penny more totally worth it.
00:06:16.507 --> 00:06:19.857
And, people who are, they have hens to lay eggs.
00:06:19.857 --> 00:06:27.826
Higher quality feed is going to give you not only more nutritious eggs, it's going to give you more eggs in the long run, because you're going to see your production bump up.
00:06:28.627 --> 00:06:35.057
If you go from a lower quality feed to a high quality feed, the notice and the changes will be pretty dramatic.
00:06:35.797 --> 00:06:47.447
Especially on grow out, because naturally the body cavity is going to develop better and stronger and More appropriate to the laying the bird's just going to be bigger and healthier and better developed.
00:06:48.057 --> 00:07:00.976
And Mandy, you've been doing, although I think you've about wrapped up your feed study right now, basically Mandy can tell you, she can reaffirm what we're just talking about, that you get more growth, more body development.
00:07:01.776 --> 00:07:02.607
I'm so excited.
00:07:02.607 --> 00:07:03.877
I'm doing a second trial.
00:07:04.026 --> 00:07:06.266
I just put the eggs in the incubator yesterday.
00:07:06.567 --> 00:07:07.286
Oh, good for you.
00:07:07.396 --> 00:07:08.276
I knew that was coming.
00:07:08.586 --> 00:07:10.927
I only said 106 eggs though.
00:07:11.516 --> 00:07:11.947
Okay.
00:07:12.747 --> 00:07:13.177
Only.
00:07:13.976 --> 00:07:14.387
Only.
00:07:14.466 --> 00:07:14.906
Only.
00:07:15.266 --> 00:07:15.807
Hey, you know what?
00:07:15.817 --> 00:07:16.656
That's a smaller number.
00:07:16.656 --> 00:07:21.137
You should try my little experiment about weighing all the chicks every day for the first three weeks.
00:07:21.726 --> 00:07:22.656
Oh, that sounds tedious.
00:07:23.382 --> 00:07:36.552
It is, but there is so much valuable information in a friend of mine was weighing her chicks daily, and it was really neat to see just how big of gains they can actually do in a single day.
00:07:36.711 --> 00:07:37.232
Yes.
00:07:37.382 --> 00:07:42.961
When they're eating good and they're getting everything they need, daily gains.
00:07:43.242 --> 00:07:45.081
They're like little balloons filling up.
00:07:45.382 --> 00:07:47.732
It's almost scary how fast they can grow.
00:07:47.752 --> 00:07:48.141
Yeah.
00:07:48.432 --> 00:07:49.732
And then if you look at them.
00:07:49.841 --> 00:07:57.622
Across their cohort, by the end of three weeks, you can tell who your rock stars are and who can be sold off as a, still a very good, started chick.
00:07:58.172 --> 00:08:00.141
More suitable to just do breakfast eggs.
00:08:00.841 --> 00:08:01.362
Yeah.
00:08:02.151 --> 00:08:02.622
Yeah.
00:08:03.422 --> 00:08:07.422
Mandy, have you gotten to the point yet where you've totaled any numbers?
00:08:07.422 --> 00:08:12.492
For example, I know you try to process your birds about 16 weeks, if I remember correctly.
00:08:12.997 --> 00:08:20.326
Yeah, and I still need to weigh all of our carcasses and get everything in front of me in the spreadsheet.
00:08:20.586 --> 00:08:21.906
I still have my scribbles.
00:08:22.706 --> 00:08:23.416
I understand that.
00:08:23.567 --> 00:08:31.877
I was just wondering, are you seeing better fleshing at 16 weeks on this new feed or are they attaining better fleshing in less than 16 weeks?
00:08:32.677 --> 00:08:36.866
There was a lot of variation because the genetics were so diverse.
00:08:36.866 --> 00:08:41.017
I use there was like four different genetic families involved.
00:08:41.236 --> 00:08:41.496
Total.
00:08:42.297 --> 00:08:47.606
And the birds that normally grow well, grew better.
00:08:48.086 --> 00:08:52.917
And the others, I didn't have experience with them before, so I don't know what they were doing before.
00:08:53.346 --> 00:08:57.937
So that's why I'm immediately jumping right back into a trial using just one family of genetics.
00:08:58.736 --> 00:09:06.817
And then I can compare the new data with the old data and then also see how this batch does from birds that I'm a lot more familiar with.
00:09:07.616 --> 00:09:09.096
I know they've done it in the past.
00:09:09.177 --> 00:09:10.966
That will be the telling study, I think.
00:09:11.076 --> 00:09:11.667
Yeah.
00:09:12.466 --> 00:09:16.817
Because then you're comparing apples to apples, not apples and oranges.
00:09:17.616 --> 00:09:23.136
But it, that first trial did let me work all the kinks out and figure out how to do it better.
00:09:23.937 --> 00:09:29.966
We always learn and we always realize that no matter how much we know, we didn't know as much as we thought we knew.
00:09:30.767 --> 00:09:32.557
That's my profound statement for the day.
00:09:33.356 --> 00:09:37.067
We talked about high quality feed and low quality feed, bargain feeds.
00:09:37.726 --> 00:09:43.106
And if you're unsure that if you're looking at one, look at the feed tag, you can learn a lot from the feed tag.
00:09:43.907 --> 00:09:47.927
And don't just stop at the protein, and the fat, and the fiber.
00:09:48.177 --> 00:09:50.187
Read the entire tag.
00:09:50.986 --> 00:09:52.407
Especially those ingredients.
00:09:52.586 --> 00:09:53.447
Oh, yeah.
00:09:54.246 --> 00:10:08.096
It's just as important, sometimes I think it's probably a little bit more important, than the total amount of protein is the levels of the amino acids lysine and methionine.
00:10:08.897 --> 00:10:13.807
If there's not enough lysine and mycyanine, you're not going to get good growth on your birds.
00:10:14.356 --> 00:10:15.826
Just absolutely no way.
00:10:16.567 --> 00:10:18.356
You're not going to get healthy chicks out of the egg.
00:10:19.157 --> 00:10:25.386
And it affects not only the body growth, but it affects the feathers, feathers are protein, let's face it.
00:10:25.517 --> 00:10:26.246
What are proteins?
00:10:26.297 --> 00:10:27.197
Amino acids.
00:10:27.807 --> 00:10:29.206
It's going to in fact, excuse me.
00:10:29.417 --> 00:10:41.116
It's going to impact not only the bodies and the feathers, but like John was saying, the health, and you're going to get more hatchability, more vigorous chicks that hatch.
00:10:41.917 --> 00:10:44.277
It's just a snowball effect.
00:10:44.277 --> 00:10:46.177
It doesn't just start here and stop.
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It just keeps, it's one of those things that just keeps going and going and going in so many areas.
00:10:51.537 --> 00:10:53.866
It's, it was amazing to me.
00:10:54.506 --> 00:11:02.626
When I've said this before, it's when I stopped trying to save money on feed is when I actually started saving money on feed.
00:11:03.226 --> 00:11:04.447
I'm glad you brought that up.
00:11:04.476 --> 00:11:16.897
I started sprinkling this magic Fertrell breeder supplement powder over my, all flock starter crumbles and all of a sudden I'm going, wow, these chicks are very different.
00:11:17.346 --> 00:11:31.476
Then the chicks two weeks ago in the previous batch, there's something going on here and then the grit we got, we have not brought up grit yet, except once that is so important.
00:11:31.476 --> 00:11:48.397
Yeah, I know, but there's no way you're putting all this beautiful nutrition down into your chickens and without grit in the gizzard and proper gizzard function to grind and masticate and extract all this goodness, it's just going out the back end.
00:11:49.017 --> 00:11:57.907
We say 10 percent more are savings just from adding grit that would just otherwise be going right out the back end of your chicken.
00:11:58.366 --> 00:12:04.697
I saw a report fairly recently that they did on broilers where they didn't get 10%.
00:12:05.496 --> 00:12:08.422
They had a 15 percent improvement in feed efficiency.
00:12:09.221 --> 00:12:11.451
Just from feeding grit.
00:12:12.251 --> 00:12:14.211
Grit's cheap and it works wonders.
00:12:15.011 --> 00:12:20.432
Even, they say sometimes on the internet that if you feed a crumble you don't need grit and that's not true.
00:12:20.432 --> 00:12:20.851
Malarkey.
00:12:21.652 --> 00:12:22.721
Not true at all.
00:12:22.731 --> 00:12:25.971
We need to do a chicken myth busting episode.
00:12:26.022 --> 00:12:28.881
There's a few things I just want to smash apart.
00:12:29.682 --> 00:12:30.022
Next time.
00:12:30.081 --> 00:12:31.091
That would be fun.
00:12:31.351 --> 00:12:33.642
Oyster shell can be substituted for grit.
00:12:33.991 --> 00:12:34.831
Wrong answer.
00:12:35.631 --> 00:12:36.042
Not even.
00:12:36.172 --> 00:12:36.682
Not true.
00:12:37.481 --> 00:12:41.761
And I had someone contact me the other day that was wanting to know about limestone grit.
00:12:42.562 --> 00:12:46.562
No! No, that's just about as bad as oyster shells.
00:12:46.572 --> 00:12:49.601
Almost as bad, just a notch in between.
00:12:49.892 --> 00:12:54.022
And the reason we say they're not good, those are fairly soft materials.
00:12:54.022 --> 00:12:55.932
What we're talking about is granite.
00:12:56.692 --> 00:12:59.601
Good old, hard as my head, granite.
00:13:00.402 --> 00:13:05.331
And you may not know this from right here in Berry, Vermont, beautiful.
00:13:05.331 --> 00:13:07.272
The color of the grit can make a difference too.
00:13:08.072 --> 00:13:14.471
I learned this from Jeff that most chickens don't like to eat red grit, not cherry stone grit.
00:13:15.272 --> 00:13:17.131
They much prefer the white grit.
00:13:17.932 --> 00:13:18.172
Yeah.
00:13:18.231 --> 00:13:24.152
And somebody came on and verified, said, my birds will not eat cherry grit.
00:13:24.951 --> 00:13:31.062
They'll go without it, but it's chickens are funny and the more I learn about them, the funnier it gets sometimes.
00:13:31.721 --> 00:13:40.032
But and it's the little things that can improve the efficiency, that can improve the overall health and welfare of our birds and the production long term.
00:13:40.392 --> 00:14:08.111
We're not just telling you, we're not, we're telling you folks, this kind of stuff to save you time, to save you money, to save you effort, because trust me, I have made every single error and every single mistake we're going over today, at least twice, usually multiple times, but yeah, I thought that was impressive where they were saving or getting 15 percent better feed efficiency, feeding the birds grit.
00:14:08.912 --> 00:14:10.951
Don't wait till they are mature.
00:14:11.022 --> 00:14:11.491
Heck no.
00:14:12.292 --> 00:14:14.792
You want to start immediately.
00:14:14.831 --> 00:14:16.552
Day old chicks, give them grit.
00:14:16.721 --> 00:14:18.101
Sprinkle it on top of their feed.
00:14:18.451 --> 00:14:25.871
I am mixing chick grit into the, my starter feed, which literally putting inside my hatcher.
00:14:26.631 --> 00:14:30.692
So the chicks are coming out of the eggs and they're falling into a pile of food and grit.
00:14:31.491 --> 00:14:32.371
And there's a water.
00:14:32.402 --> 00:14:34.091
I've tried top dressing with chick grit.
00:14:34.892 --> 00:14:37.142
The first day I just sprinkle it right on top.
00:14:37.162 --> 00:14:38.292
So it's the first thing they see.
00:14:38.892 --> 00:14:45.042
I read a study where it said that if it was mixed into the feed, it was like a certain percentage more efficient.
00:14:45.101 --> 00:14:52.672
And since I'm mixing my own feed anyways I'm buying my grains whole, weighing them out, cracking them or grinding them and doing the whole thing.
00:14:53.192 --> 00:14:54.861
I can mix it in at the same time.
00:14:54.861 --> 00:14:58.062
It is real easy for me to say, Oh, I need, 10 percent grit.
00:14:58.121 --> 00:14:59.491
And this is a hundred pound batch.
00:14:59.491 --> 00:15:01.761
So 10 pounds of grit gets thrown in.
00:15:02.562 --> 00:15:04.272
And grit is not expensive.
00:15:04.461 --> 00:15:05.121
It's not.
00:15:05.211 --> 00:15:10.751
And what it brings, it's the easiest way to save money on your food bill and make healthier chickens.
00:15:10.802 --> 00:15:11.162
Yes.
00:15:11.961 --> 00:15:14.251
And if you're not doing it, I'm going to quote Jeff.
00:15:14.272 --> 00:15:15.841
You're just being cruel to your birds.
00:15:16.642 --> 00:15:17.542
They really are.
00:15:18.001 --> 00:15:20.552
It, do they have a gizzard for a reason?
00:15:21.351 --> 00:15:21.782
Use it.
00:15:22.486 --> 00:15:26.616
We got sidetracked, but we were talking about what's in your feed.
00:15:26.886 --> 00:15:27.246
All right.
00:15:27.586 --> 00:15:38.067
If you see things like plant byproducts, if you see anything that says byproducts, that's mean it's previously been used for something else.
00:15:38.756 --> 00:15:40.017
And this is the leftovers.
00:15:40.817 --> 00:15:43.267
You'll see distiller grain byproducts.
00:15:44.067 --> 00:15:50.346
That's already gone through the cooking fermentation process and had been nutrients removed.
00:15:51.147 --> 00:15:51.986
Those are fillers.
00:15:52.086 --> 00:15:54.346
They're fairly inexpensive to use and feed.
00:15:55.147 --> 00:15:57.662
And some feed absolutely has to have.
00:15:58.461 --> 00:15:59.072
Fillers in it.
00:15:59.402 --> 00:16:00.532
If you're buying pellets.
00:16:00.552 --> 00:16:01.091
Pellets.
00:16:01.442 --> 00:16:02.792
And if you're getting crumbles.
00:16:02.802 --> 00:16:03.442
It's a binder.
00:16:03.481 --> 00:16:03.961
It has to.
00:16:04.292 --> 00:16:04.662
Yeah.
00:16:04.761 --> 00:16:07.101
You can't make a pellet without that binder.
00:16:07.902 --> 00:16:08.981
And here's another irony.
00:16:08.981 --> 00:16:09.942
You mentioned crumble.
00:16:10.341 --> 00:16:13.731
First they make the pellet, then they bust it up to make crumble.
00:16:14.532 --> 00:16:15.511
Just leave it alone.
00:16:16.312 --> 00:16:20.111
And I can remember when crumble was about all you could get.
00:16:20.192 --> 00:16:23.241
And I asked, I knew the company made a pellet.
00:16:23.772 --> 00:16:24.312
I priced it.
00:16:24.312 --> 00:16:26.052
It was 3 more for a bag of pellets.
00:16:26.851 --> 00:16:31.392
I never did figure that one out because that's got to have pellets to make the crumples, but okay, whatever.
00:16:31.951 --> 00:16:36.892
Now that I've been feeding just this coarse mash, my birds are loving life.
00:16:36.971 --> 00:16:37.881
I'm loving life.
00:16:37.951 --> 00:16:51.402
I'm able to actually go around to my local farmers because I live in a very rural agrarian area and buy, corn and wheat and barley and oats when it's seasonably available from my neighbors and store it.
00:16:51.741 --> 00:16:53.552
Right now they're all in 55 gallon.
00:16:54.246 --> 00:16:55.206
Steel cans.
00:16:56.006 --> 00:16:58.836
I did run short on corn, so I had to run up to E.
00:16:58.836 --> 00:16:58.986
M.
00:16:58.996 --> 00:17:03.447
Brown and Sons and buy another 200 pounds, but I'm still great on all the other ingredients.
00:17:04.247 --> 00:17:04.747
That's good.
00:17:05.326 --> 00:17:09.507
A friend of mine is trying to get me to bring home his silo.
00:17:09.557 --> 00:17:11.166
It's an actual, stand up.
00:17:11.606 --> 00:17:12.257
Oh, there you go.
00:17:12.326 --> 00:17:14.666
It's a whole thousand pounds at least.
00:17:14.666 --> 00:17:15.936
It's a pretty good size.
00:17:16.392 --> 00:17:17.321
I was like so what?
00:17:17.561 --> 00:17:20.142
I can make corn hole and store it indefinitely.
00:17:20.521 --> 00:17:20.942
Yes.
00:17:20.942 --> 00:17:21.961
I was looking.
00:17:21.961 --> 00:17:23.821
And then you get at a different silo for each ingredient.
00:17:24.622 --> 00:17:24.682
Uhhuh.
00:17:25.481 --> 00:17:33.342
as long as they're whole, you can use the IBC totes and as long as they're kept dry, soon as it's ground, do not store your feed in an IBC tote.
00:17:33.942 --> 00:17:35.112
It's gonna mold instantly.
00:17:35.912 --> 00:17:41.942
Worst idea ever, but keep your grain whole, you get a screw auger feed system, great storage solution.
00:17:42.541 --> 00:17:49.582
What can you do if you can't find a good quality feed and that happens very regularly?
00:17:50.382 --> 00:17:52.991
That's where the supplements come into play, I think.
00:17:53.402 --> 00:17:54.061
Exactly.
00:17:54.311 --> 00:17:56.701
You can make your own, you can have it custom made.
00:17:57.051 --> 00:18:03.021
Or, you can use a feed supplement, and there's two good ones on the market right now that I highly recommend.
00:18:03.451 --> 00:18:11.531
One is the Fertrell Breeder and Showbird supplement, and the other one is Kerry Blackman's ShowPro supplement.
00:18:12.332 --> 00:18:16.021
Both were formulated, developed by Jeff Maddox.
00:18:16.821 --> 00:18:17.692
They're good stuff.
00:18:18.321 --> 00:18:19.912
For the specific purpose.
00:18:20.332 --> 00:18:20.731
Yes.
00:18:21.332 --> 00:18:36.602
The Show Pro, if you're into showing birds, it has some added cysteine, the amino acid cysteine for improving your feather quality a little bit, if you have that concern with your birds, plus it has a couple of other ingredients that are not in the Fertrell product.
00:18:37.402 --> 00:18:39.412
You think, Oh, that's expensive.
00:18:39.412 --> 00:18:39.781
Yeah.
00:18:40.582 --> 00:18:41.672
But it's one of those things.
00:18:42.471 --> 00:18:42.811
Yeah.
00:18:43.612 --> 00:18:54.031
The Fertrell stuff's not 50 bucks for 10 pounds, but you use such a small amount for an average large fowl, you're only feeding them a teaspoon of that stuff a day.
00:18:54.471 --> 00:19:03.531
Yeah, you better keep that in the freezer along with your coffee because you're probably not going to use it all before it ages out and it keeps perfectly in the freezer.
00:19:03.551 --> 00:19:06.367
And it will greatly improve your birds.
00:19:07.167 --> 00:19:15.778
I know the first time I tried it, I was feeding nutrient feed and I was basically clueless about Fertrell supplement and all that kind of stuff.
00:19:15.778 --> 00:19:18.508
And Jeff Maddox talked me into trying it.
00:19:19.258 --> 00:19:19.528
Yup.
00:19:19.627 --> 00:19:20.258
That's how he got me.
00:19:20.817 --> 00:19:26.708
I noticed a change in my bird in about three days and then it just kept getting better and better and better.
00:19:27.288 --> 00:19:32.748
It's one of those investments that can save you money and give you better, stronger, healthier birds in the long run.
00:19:33.268 --> 00:19:44.958
We talked about the feed and the supplements and their nutrition to help them be as productive as possible, but there's still another way where things get lost, which is if they're wasting.
00:19:45.458 --> 00:19:46.458
Oh yeah.
00:19:46.708 --> 00:19:47.087
Yeah.
00:19:47.698 --> 00:19:51.718
There's a lot in the feeder type, which you ran into on your grow out in this feed trial.
00:19:51.728 --> 00:19:53.698
Yeah, that was something I didn't anticipate.
00:19:54.498 --> 00:19:59.407
And then, There's so many nuances to providing the feed to the bird.
00:19:59.968 --> 00:20:01.938
Why don't you explain what happened during the feed trial?
00:20:02.738 --> 00:20:10.948
So I had just the basic round gravity style feeders, and I have them in multiple sizes, from one pound all the way up to eleven pounds.
00:20:11.488 --> 00:20:15.157
And I've historically only ever been feeding a crumble.
00:20:15.438 --> 00:20:20.367
And there was no issue with the flow of that feed getting to that bottom trough.
00:20:21.167 --> 00:20:30.067
But when I started with the new chick starter that was milled and really fine for the chicks it didn't flow down to the bottom trough.
00:20:30.067 --> 00:20:33.488
It just hung in the gravity part and didn't flow.
00:20:34.117 --> 00:20:38.998
And it took me a couple of days where I would lift it up and shake it.
00:20:38.998 --> 00:20:40.607
And I was thinking that, that's weird.
00:20:41.117 --> 00:20:42.127
But then.
00:20:42.488 --> 00:20:44.327
I saw it just, it didn't flow.
00:20:44.337 --> 00:20:45.248
It didn't move through.
00:20:45.258 --> 00:20:53.897
So it's a whole other type of feeder that I need to invest in, in order to feed that style of feed.
00:20:54.357 --> 00:21:00.067
And I'm going to have to do the trough styles where it can spread out, which actually is better for the birds.
00:21:00.067 --> 00:21:03.468
And it gives everybody more shoulder room to access that feeder.
00:21:03.468 --> 00:21:05.827
Then that then reduces your competition.
00:21:06.363 --> 00:21:11.673
Which then gives you a more even and consistent flock result, as it turns out.
00:21:12.272 --> 00:21:21.042
And you've seen from your friends weigh data, that even now, hours without feed can make a difference in those.
00:21:21.053 --> 00:21:33.083
Yeah it didn't seem like it was that much, but when I compared notes with another friend of mine using our genetics, He was averaging 30 grams heavier for a little weak old chick.
00:21:33.113 --> 00:21:33.913
That's a lot.
00:21:34.593 --> 00:21:35.813
That's everything.
00:21:36.613 --> 00:21:36.992
Yeah.
00:21:37.012 --> 00:21:42.103
Where I saw 65 grams, he saw a hundred, 110 grams.
00:21:42.417 --> 00:22:01.827
When you first told me that, Mandelyn, I thought, and I got to thinking, I don't remember seeing a tube type feeder until early to mid 60s, and that's just about the time that you started seeing a lot of crumbles hit the market.
00:22:02.567 --> 00:22:08.057
Up until that time, everything was mash feed and everything was fed in a trough.
00:22:08.074 --> 00:22:10.893
Ah, makes sense now.
00:22:11.482 --> 00:22:13.823
And I could be off on those dates a little bit.
00:22:13.833 --> 00:22:17.083
I'm getting to be an old geezer and I don't often remember things as I should.
00:22:17.883 --> 00:22:33.992
But, and I remember going up to a gentleman up here that lived north of me, Ed Little, and he had, oh, I don't know, five, 600 Rhode Island red commercial birds and his feeders, they were homemade, nothing wrong with a homemade feeder.
00:22:33.992 --> 00:22:34.692
They worked great.
00:22:35.202 --> 00:22:43.022
He made them out of one by eights and they were just, Eight foot long, just three boards open on the top where the birds could access to feed.
00:22:43.823 --> 00:23:00.553
He would not feed, fill them over halfway to help lessen feed waste or lessen the feed waste because if you've ever watched your birds, they are great at sorting through and billing through feed to expose those choice bits.
00:23:00.553 --> 00:23:08.123
A choice bit to a bird is the larger pieces first and things that look good.
00:23:08.363 --> 00:23:13.353
Yellow, corn, they're little piggies and they don't have hands.
00:23:13.353 --> 00:23:15.853
They can't sort through them and they can't get into the feeder and scratch.
00:23:15.853 --> 00:23:16.563
So what do they use?
00:23:16.563 --> 00:23:24.113
They use your bilk, beak and they like to try to peck and then they jerk their head back to expose a little bit of feed.
00:23:24.913 --> 00:23:29.393
So if you can increase the height of your feeder, you can help reduce that.
00:23:30.012 --> 00:23:34.403
Know a lot of folks are using a PVC, piece of PVC pipe, six inch PVC pipe.
00:23:35.202 --> 00:23:41.942
My birds threw 50 pounds on the floor so fast using those PVC feeder designs.
00:23:41.942 --> 00:23:43.653
Flipped their heads back and forth.
00:23:44.252 --> 00:23:46.063
I learned a trick to dealing with that.
00:23:46.863 --> 00:23:49.722
Did you cut yours in half when you made the feeder?
00:23:50.522 --> 00:23:57.522
No, I did the tube going up and then the elbow coming out at about a 45 degree angle upward.
00:23:58.323 --> 00:24:01.593
That was supposed to prevent That from happening?
00:24:01.613 --> 00:24:02.103
Doesn't.
00:24:02.903 --> 00:24:07.002
I put grates down so they have to go through the grate to get to the food.
00:24:07.803 --> 00:24:13.883
That can work and they make you can buy plastic feed grates or you can make it out of some half by one inch wire.
00:24:14.682 --> 00:24:23.772
But I was talking to a friend of mine out in Washington, no, Oregon, and we were talking about PVC pipe feeders.
00:24:24.573 --> 00:24:45.623
And he said, When he first made some, he hated them because he took a six inch piece of pipe and cut it halfway down, made two feeders out of it, where you got this kind of wide ish trough that's really not very deep, but it has these straight sides on it.
00:24:46.133 --> 00:25:00.232
He said he finally dawned on him to only cut about the top third off that piece of pipe, so he had curved sides, that as the birds would flick the feed back towards them, it would fall back in.
00:25:00.242 --> 00:25:01.192
It wouldn't go out.
00:25:01.992 --> 00:25:03.255
Oh, that's a good idea.
00:25:03.255 --> 00:25:03.982
Of the feeder itself.
00:25:04.782 --> 00:25:13.893
And then he also rigged a no roost pole that goes across there where they, some folks complain my birds get in the feeder, the trough style feeders.
00:25:14.113 --> 00:25:22.113
Just put a round dowel works good, piece of PVC pipe, but have it where it will spin free and hang it over the feed.
00:25:22.913 --> 00:25:29.242
Give them just enough room to get their head in there, but not enough room that they can get in there and make a mess with it.
00:25:30.042 --> 00:25:34.702
And that can be as simple as running a piece of sturdy cable with the pipe over that.
00:25:35.272 --> 00:25:36.772
That makes it real loosey goosey.
00:25:36.772 --> 00:25:39.353
As soon as they try to jump on it, they slide right off.
00:25:40.053 --> 00:25:40.942
I was talking about Mr.
00:25:40.942 --> 00:25:41.682
Little earlier.
00:25:41.982 --> 00:25:49.573
I remember his feeders, he had taken strips of wooden glass, like they used to put plaster up with.
00:25:50.373 --> 00:26:18.462
And He'd cut squares, I don't know, they seemed like they were about three inches square for each end, and then he'd run strips of lath back and forth, he had one on the side, one on the top, one on the bottom, both sides, top and bottom, and he had fixed it, Had just driven a nail in there and then drilled a hole in the end of the, extended his feeder board up, drilled a hole in that to where it would just sit there and spin, just as free as it could be, just like it was on Berry.
00:26:19.262 --> 00:26:25.123
The birds could get on it, it didn't throw them right off, but it would eventually, it would spin them around and keep them off.
00:26:25.762 --> 00:26:36.393
Now, one of my favorite ways to save on feed is always keeping my eye out for the unproductive birds, the ones who just never grow up to be the best.
00:26:36.458 --> 00:26:38.077
No slackers.
00:26:38.357 --> 00:26:46.407
Yeah, the slackers, the ones who didn't fill in well, they were always puny, they maybe only put out two or three eggs a week.
00:26:47.038 --> 00:26:51.867
Just the least productive birds are the ones we invite to the freezer first.
00:26:52.097 --> 00:26:52.710
They need to go.
00:26:52.710 --> 00:26:53.137
They need to go.
00:26:53.448 --> 00:27:12.917
They're costing you money, big dollars, and I know you can get attached to birds and all that, but it's something you really have to do, and with our economy the way it is here, that if those less productive birds are not removed from the flock, your prices are going to go out of sight for feed.
00:27:13.718 --> 00:27:18.798
I'm not keeping any bird past 32 weeks of age unless she's laying five eggs a week.
00:27:19.597 --> 00:27:20.307
At least five.
00:27:20.837 --> 00:27:23.238
I like to see six, but Six would be great.
00:27:23.278 --> 00:27:25.208
I had one last year that laid seven.
00:27:26.008 --> 00:27:26.738
Didn't take a pause.
00:27:27.028 --> 00:27:27.867
For how long?
00:27:27.907 --> 00:27:28.657
Overachiever.
00:27:29.208 --> 00:27:31.258
Yeah, non stop.
00:27:31.827 --> 00:27:33.968
That's the one you definitely want to hatch from.
00:27:34.248 --> 00:27:37.317
I set every egg she laid for two months.
00:27:38.117 --> 00:27:40.048
See, that brings up another point, though.
00:27:40.067 --> 00:27:44.307
It's so hard to overhatch and get yourself into a bind.
00:27:45.107 --> 00:27:46.718
Oh, it's not hard to overhatch.
00:27:46.718 --> 00:27:48.968
It's hard to control yourself and keep yourself from overhatching.
00:27:49.317 --> 00:27:49.748
It is.
00:27:49.807 --> 00:27:50.258
It is.
00:27:50.258 --> 00:27:52.038
There's Hatchaholics support groups.
00:27:52.067 --> 00:27:53.577
I'm not joking about this.
00:27:54.377 --> 00:27:55.498
I'm guilty of it.
00:27:55.518 --> 00:28:00.458
I'm, I can't point fingers and say, I can't do that because I'd have to point right back at me.
00:28:00.817 --> 00:28:01.117
Yeah.
00:28:01.117 --> 00:28:11.958
So budget for the number of birds you can afford to raise, try to hold yourself to that budget and promote marital harmony and fiscal responsibility and all those important things.
00:28:12.387 --> 00:28:17.038
Another thing that comes to mind Let's face it, we all to spoil our birds.
00:28:17.107 --> 00:28:19.008
We all like to give them treats.
00:28:19.407 --> 00:28:22.837
It's not The best thing for your birds.
00:28:23.018 --> 00:28:24.798
It's not a healthy choice.
00:28:25.238 --> 00:28:26.258
It costs you money.
00:28:26.817 --> 00:28:27.157
Okay.
00:28:27.877 --> 00:28:28.157
Yeah.
00:28:28.157 --> 00:28:38.337
And I if you were to start reducing their treats, they're going to look at you with that sorry, pitiful look on their face and try to lay the guilt trip on you, but don't knuckle under.
00:28:38.738 --> 00:28:44.347
Limit treats to no more than 10 percent of the bird's daily intake of food.
00:28:45.147 --> 00:28:45.498
Okay.
00:28:45.907 --> 00:28:50.218
If your bird, if you're feeding four ounces of bird four ounces of feed per bird.
00:28:50.887 --> 00:28:54.278
And don't just say I'll just throw them a handful of corn.
00:28:54.288 --> 00:28:55.958
How much does that handful of corn weigh?
00:28:56.577 --> 00:28:59.198
Or I'll throw out a handful of mealworms.
00:28:59.228 --> 00:29:00.637
How much do those mealworms weigh?
00:29:00.897 --> 00:29:02.498
Deduct that from the amount of feed.
00:29:03.057 --> 00:29:06.827
But also look what it's doing to the nutritional profile for the day.
00:29:07.327 --> 00:29:08.387
Screwing it all up.
00:29:08.788 --> 00:29:10.198
It's throwing it out of balance.
00:29:10.238 --> 00:29:19.673
And now I've convinced my birds that if I take a handful of their regular feed and I wet it and I mash it up into a little ball and I throw it, they're That's the best treat in the whole wide world.
00:29:19.873 --> 00:29:21.423
They think it's something spectacular.
00:29:22.222 --> 00:29:27.343
Anytime you turn that bag around and you read it, it says feed as a sole ration.
00:29:27.863 --> 00:29:28.222
Yes.
00:29:28.782 --> 00:29:32.732
And then when you look at that analysis and it says, this is your protein.
00:29:32.952 --> 00:29:33.762
This is your fat.
00:29:33.792 --> 00:29:34.663
This is your lysine.
00:29:34.663 --> 00:29:42.222
This is your, all of those little levels is based on the assumption that they're not eating anything else, right?
00:29:42.242 --> 00:29:44.972
Everything you add takes away from that analysis.
00:29:45.772 --> 00:29:47.758
Exactly of what they're actually taking in.
00:29:48.268 --> 00:29:51.653
I've never seen give them a giant head of iceberg lettuce to keep'em entertained.
00:29:51.653 --> 00:29:53.423
They're getting zero nutrition from it.
00:29:53.923 --> 00:29:53.932
Yeah.
00:29:54.678 --> 00:30:03.992
Unless you're buying a nutritional supplement from a supplement maker, you're not supplementing their diet by feeding them kitchen scraps or anything else.
00:30:04.643 --> 00:30:13.133
Some people I've seen where they do warm oatmeal as a treat in the wintertime, but when you look at the nutritional profile of oatmeal, it's backwards.
00:30:13.583 --> 00:30:15.292
There's really not a whole lot in there.
00:30:15.688 --> 00:30:23.407
If you want to feed them something, if you want to feed them something warm, just take some of your feed and add hot water to it.
00:30:24.208 --> 00:30:24.508
That's it.
00:30:24.678 --> 00:30:24.948
Yeah.
00:30:25.218 --> 00:30:26.907
They'll hug your neck if you do that.
00:30:27.018 --> 00:30:28.188
Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:28.907 --> 00:30:30.278
Yeah, sure.
00:30:30.298 --> 00:30:32.948
Hey, do either one of you guys have anything else you want to cover?
00:30:32.948 --> 00:30:36.708
I think we've pretty well gone through our outline here.
00:30:37.357 --> 00:30:39.768
The difference that a little free range can make if you can keep them safe.
00:30:39.768 --> 00:30:40.188
Oh yeah.
00:30:40.988 --> 00:30:52.837
When they go out and find the live bugs, because what some people don't realize when you get that little bag of dried out mealworms, it doesn't have the amino proteins in there for nutrition.
00:30:52.837 --> 00:30:56.127
They're a dried out shell of a husk with incomplete proteins.
00:30:56.127 --> 00:30:59.278
So the nutrition isn't there, but you give them a live bug.
00:31:00.077 --> 00:31:00.897
Now you're talking.
00:31:01.107 --> 00:31:01.627
That's right.
00:31:01.627 --> 00:31:09.942
And from the culinary perspective, this access to pasture is where all your flavor comes from.
00:31:10.222 --> 00:31:17.022
And all the wonderful things that are supposed to be beautiful about a heritage chicken are going to start expressing themselves.
00:31:17.553 --> 00:31:34.202
If they're just on a bag, boring feed their entire life they're not going to taste that amazing as a chicken, they're going to taste and even the color of the yolk and the egg, when they start getting those dark leafy greens, you start seeing that real dark orange yolk.
00:31:34.623 --> 00:31:37.452
Oh, the carotenoid pigments are amazing.
00:31:38.252 --> 00:31:38.702
Yeah.
00:31:38.752 --> 00:31:42.393
And the yolk stands so tall in the pan when you're cooking them.
00:31:42.873 --> 00:31:46.843
I almost hate to break the yolk, but I like to have it broken in my sandwich a little bit.
00:31:47.222 --> 00:31:50.952
I saw a picture of an egg yolk the other day.
00:31:51.752 --> 00:31:55.792
That was a light cream color at best.
00:31:56.173 --> 00:31:57.873
I've seen white yolks before.
00:31:57.962 --> 00:32:00.083
Those are so unappetizing to me.
00:32:00.083 --> 00:32:00.663
I'm sorry.
00:32:00.692 --> 00:32:02.932
I like a good strong yellow, white, orange yolk.
00:32:03.732 --> 00:32:09.692
But that's really we talk about that, taste of place, terroir in the kitchen, in the culinary world.
00:32:09.702 --> 00:32:19.472
And that's where that's coming from is access to nature, the sun, the rain, the bugs, the worms, the dirt, the soil.
00:32:19.982 --> 00:32:21.292
That's how a chicken should chicken.
00:32:21.423 --> 00:32:23.423
That's part of being a chicken.
00:32:23.442 --> 00:32:24.363
That's exactly right.
00:32:24.542 --> 00:32:30.843
And the more feed they go find on their own out of that nutrient dense environment, the less of the bag stuff they're going to have.
00:32:31.482 --> 00:32:34.212
John and Mandy, I appreciate you so much today.
00:32:34.222 --> 00:32:35.573
Y'all did a really good job.
00:32:36.103 --> 00:32:36.863
I had fun.
00:32:36.952 --> 00:32:38.282
I hope you two did.
00:32:38.282 --> 00:32:42.163
And I hope our listeners had a good time and learned something from us today.
00:32:42.803 --> 00:32:47.173
I just hope we save some people time because it can take a lot of time to learn.
00:32:47.803 --> 00:33:04.272
You didn't save any money at all actually, you spent a lot more, you spun your wheels for a little while, you scrambled for a little while, let us save you that time and just do it the best way you can afford and it will help your birds a lot.
00:33:05.073 --> 00:33:05.492
It will.
00:33:05.492 --> 00:33:08.432
And you will be a much happier camper because of it.
00:33:08.762 --> 00:33:09.012
Yeah.
00:33:09.012 --> 00:33:09.292
Trust me.
00:33:09.373 --> 00:33:09.913
Yeah.
00:33:10.712 --> 00:33:12.752
And we've stayed away from, oh, nevermind.
00:33:12.972 --> 00:33:13.873
Go ahead, close it up.
00:33:14.173 --> 00:33:16.083
I would just say we stayed away from my trigger point.
00:33:16.123 --> 00:33:18.532
I wasted two semesters on fermented feed.
00:33:19.333 --> 00:33:21.563
Let's save that for its whole other rant.
00:33:21.813 --> 00:33:24.462
That's another can of worms.
00:33:25.262 --> 00:33:25.542
Yeah.
00:33:26.232 --> 00:33:27.542
Next time, take us home.
00:33:28.262 --> 00:33:28.863
All right.
00:33:29.042 --> 00:33:35.722
Folks, we are so glad you joined us today for this podcast show from the Poultry Keepers Podcast.
00:33:36.083 --> 00:33:45.512
We're happy to have you with us and it's our listeners that keep us going and keep us wanting to do this because we hear from them on a regular basis, how much they appreciate it.
00:33:45.512 --> 00:33:49.012
And, recently we just reached 25, 000 downloads.
00:33:49.553 --> 00:33:52.163
And I can remember the first episode we did.
00:33:52.163 --> 00:33:55.202
I was ecstatic when we got 25 downloads.
00:33:56.002 --> 00:33:59.482
We've crossed the year mark now very strongly.
00:33:59.553 --> 00:34:04.413
It's almost, I think Mandy joined us not long after we started.
00:34:04.442 --> 00:34:08.722
I remember visiting her place on 4th of July last year.
00:34:09.043 --> 00:34:12.172
I just started saying, I want to say it was in late July when she came on.
00:34:12.382 --> 00:34:12.862
Yeah.
00:34:13.663 --> 00:34:16.842
I was bringing her some birds, four episodes or so.
00:34:17.242 --> 00:34:17.492
Huh.
00:34:17.572 --> 00:34:18.422
Yeah, wasn't much.
00:34:18.632 --> 00:34:19.202
Wasn't much.
00:34:19.813 --> 00:34:20.802
We're gonna wrap it up.
00:34:21.242 --> 00:34:26.893
I'm gonna let my partners here get on with their daily routines, and I'll get on with mine.
00:34:27.822 --> 00:34:33.092
This brings us to the close of another Poultry Keepers podcast, and we're very happy you chose to join us.
00:34:33.382 --> 00:34:39.273
Until next time, we'd appreciate it if you would drop us a note, letting us know your thoughts about our podcast.
00:34:39.563 --> 00:34:47.632
Please share our podcast with all of your friends that keep poultry, and we hope you'll join us again when we'll be talking poultry from feathers to function.
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:05.780
00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:16.910
00:00:27.507 --> 00:00:29.417
And when I say, weigh your birds.
00:00:29.716 --> 00:00:39.286
The standard dictates the weight for every breed and try to keep within those rate weight parameters within 20%, one way or the other, you'll be fine.
00:00:39.936 --> 00:00:45.686
But once you start going over that 20 percent too much in weight, you've got a problem going on.
00:00:46.317 --> 00:00:52.027
And that tells you, you need to regulate the amount of feed your birds are consuming.
00:00:52.067 --> 00:00:58.926
And the only way that I know I have to do that effectively is that you limit the amount of feed you're feeding your birds.
00:00:59.726 --> 00:01:03.817
Average bird, whatever the average bird is, I'm not real sure at this point anymore.
00:01:04.617 --> 00:01:10.927
But, usually you can allow four ounces of feed per bird per day.
00:01:11.727 --> 00:01:14.897
And that, here again, that depends on the quality of your feed.
00:01:14.906 --> 00:01:16.647
I feed a real high quality feed.
00:01:17.447 --> 00:01:22.087
And I started mine out at four ounces per day once they matured.
00:01:22.887 --> 00:01:25.996
And it didn't take long before I realized, hey, this is too much feed.
00:01:25.996 --> 00:01:26.846
I got to cut them back.
00:01:27.647 --> 00:01:35.477
And I'm down to the point now to where I'm feeding a little bit less than, Three ounces of feed per bird per day.
00:01:36.277 --> 00:01:37.447
It's about where I am now.
00:01:38.037 --> 00:01:42.197
I judge it by when they go to bed, I look at how much is left.
00:01:42.996 --> 00:01:43.917
I put enough out.
00:01:43.956 --> 00:01:45.736
So it's gone by the middle of the day.
00:01:46.066 --> 00:01:50.387
And then I put some out for the end of the day, just to fill their crops before they go to roost for the night.
00:01:50.936 --> 00:01:54.266
I think it's important though, that we should mention, this is all after grow out.
00:01:54.277 --> 00:01:59.917
This is post 16, 18, 20 weeks for that first minimum 16 weeks.
00:01:59.956 --> 00:02:02.087
I want to keep food and grit in front of them.
00:02:02.481 --> 00:02:08.072
And water at all times, as much as they can possibly get down whenever they want it.
00:02:08.872 --> 00:02:09.092
Yeah.
00:02:09.092 --> 00:02:12.042
I generally pre feed all the way up until I get an egg.
00:02:12.051 --> 00:02:18.692
And then once I start seeing the egg, then I start I've come around to the idea of limiting their feed.
00:02:18.692 --> 00:02:27.542
I used to free choice feed everything all the time until I started running into that pickle when those girls get to be one year old, they're not laying when they should be.
00:02:27.542 --> 00:02:28.592
I start picking them up.
00:02:28.611 --> 00:02:32.032
They're obese, they're fat, they're not productive.
00:02:32.787 --> 00:02:41.497
And that's where I did start to see that value and monitor their condition and keep them a little on the lean side.
00:02:41.507 --> 00:02:45.597
Not bony or anything, but don't let them get fat.
00:02:46.396 --> 00:02:48.276
And keep them interested in foraging.
00:02:48.546 --> 00:02:50.586
They're like, Oh, we're out over here in the feeder.
00:02:50.586 --> 00:02:52.407
Let's go look for bugs and worms.
00:02:53.206 --> 00:03:12.546
One ounce of feed doesn't sound like very much when you talk about savings, but when you figure you've got a bunch of mouths to feed, like 10 or plus feet, and Mandy, I don't know how many birds you've got, but that one ounce would be a substantial savings for you.
00:03:13.347 --> 00:03:15.137
Yeah, it adds up pretty quick.
00:03:15.336 --> 00:03:18.977
And right now when I'm in peak growth season, I have birds of all ages.
00:03:18.977 --> 00:03:22.986
I might be blowing through 1200 pounds a month.
00:03:23.787 --> 00:03:26.127
Yeah, that's a lot of ounces.
00:03:26.926 --> 00:03:28.016
That's a lot of ounces.
00:03:28.016 --> 00:03:29.097
You're exactly right.
00:03:29.306 --> 00:03:30.347
That's a lot of dollars.
00:03:31.146 --> 00:03:44.287
I was pretty excited to see the drop in consumption just by changing the quality of our feed, because the cost wasn't that much more because I was spending anywhere from 19.
00:03:44.287 --> 00:03:48.276
99 a bag up to 23 a bag.
00:03:48.757 --> 00:03:51.937
And that was for, mid tier crumble feeds.
00:03:52.711 --> 00:04:01.991
And then when I switched over to Jeff's formulas and I started getting it as a milled feed, it took the cost up to, what, like 26.
00:04:01.991 --> 00:04:03.431
50 a bag.
00:04:03.961 --> 00:04:08.072
But I'm saving more money by spending a little more initially.
00:04:08.151 --> 00:04:10.512
It shows in the drop of consumption.
00:04:11.312 --> 00:04:12.771
And then the birds are better on it.
00:04:12.891 --> 00:04:15.151
They have a different contentment to them.
00:04:15.151 --> 00:04:15.512
They don't.
00:04:16.067 --> 00:04:19.117
Look at me like they're still starving after eating half a feeder.
00:04:19.916 --> 00:04:27.877
And you probably get more eggs, better quality eggs that hatch easier, stronger chicks, better fertility.
00:04:28.677 --> 00:04:32.177
So it's not just cost much more, just a couple of bucks.
00:04:32.437 --> 00:04:32.766
I, yeah.
00:04:33.567 --> 00:04:34.726
I did some figuring on that.
00:04:34.726 --> 00:04:35.947
You're talking about how much it costs.
00:04:36.336 --> 00:04:49.706
And I compared my high end feed, which I'm paying the same thing you are about 2650 a bag, 50 pound bag to one over here at our local big box farm supply.
00:04:50.507 --> 00:04:52.206
That was I got the numbers right here.
00:04:52.216 --> 00:04:52.536
Hang on.
00:04:53.336 --> 00:04:54.586
23 a bag.
00:04:55.216 --> 00:04:55.567
Okay.
00:04:56.107 --> 00:05:05.187
So initially my feed cost me 3 more, roughly a bag, a little over 3 more a bag than the big box brand name.
00:05:05.797 --> 00:05:22.117
But when you figure out that your birds on this high quality feed are going to eat easily 20 to 25 percent less feed than when you're feeding those lesser quality feeds, they feel like they have to eat more because they're not getting the nutrition they need.
00:05:22.716 --> 00:05:34.836
But when you use a feed that is nutritionally dense, it's well formulated, it's balanced for their needs, it has the proper levels of amino acids, the proper levels of vitamins and minerals, They don't need to eat as much feed.
00:05:35.286 --> 00:05:37.637
And it's fresh and delicious and nutritious.
00:05:38.437 --> 00:05:49.586
But when I factored all of that in, okay, you know how much more it cost me to feed a bird than on the feed I'm using versus what I could get in the store?
00:05:49.677 --> 00:05:50.276
Oh, the other way.
00:05:51.076 --> 00:05:54.096
Cost me about a penny more per day.
00:05:54.896 --> 00:05:56.266
To use a high quality feed.
00:05:57.067 --> 00:06:04.987
But then with the improved hatch rates and the improved quality, that turns into additional gain.
00:06:04.987 --> 00:06:05.576
Additional revenue.
00:06:05.726 --> 00:06:06.656
Yeah, sure.
00:06:06.916 --> 00:06:07.706
Better egg production.
00:06:07.956 --> 00:06:10.666
10 percent bump in your hatch rate by feeding better.
00:06:11.216 --> 00:06:12.976
And you're getting 10 percent more chicks.
00:06:13.336 --> 00:06:15.867
That makes that little penny more totally worth it.
00:06:16.507 --> 00:06:19.857
And, people who are, they have hens to lay eggs.
00:06:19.857 --> 00:06:27.826
Higher quality feed is going to give you not only more nutritious eggs, it's going to give you more eggs in the long run, because you're going to see your production bump up.
00:06:28.627 --> 00:06:35.057
If you go from a lower quality feed to a high quality feed, the notice and the changes will be pretty dramatic.
00:06:35.797 --> 00:06:47.447
Especially on grow out, because naturally the body cavity is going to develop better and stronger and More appropriate to the laying the bird's just going to be bigger and healthier and better developed.
00:06:48.057 --> 00:07:00.976
And Mandy, you've been doing, although I think you've about wrapped up your feed study right now, basically Mandy can tell you, she can reaffirm what we're just talking about, that you get more growth, more body development.
00:07:01.776 --> 00:07:02.607
I'm so excited.
00:07:02.607 --> 00:07:03.877
I'm doing a second trial.
00:07:04.026 --> 00:07:06.266
I just put the eggs in the incubator yesterday.
00:07:06.567 --> 00:07:07.286
Oh, good for you.
00:07:07.396 --> 00:07:08.276
I knew that was coming.
00:07:08.586 --> 00:07:10.927
I only said 106 eggs though.
00:07:11.516 --> 00:07:11.947
Okay.
00:07:12.747 --> 00:07:13.177
Only.
00:07:13.976 --> 00:07:14.387
Only.
00:07:14.466 --> 00:07:14.906
Only.
00:07:15.266 --> 00:07:15.807
Hey, you know what?
00:07:15.817 --> 00:07:16.656
That's a smaller number.
00:07:16.656 --> 00:07:21.137
You should try my little experiment about weighing all the chicks every day for the first three weeks.
00:07:21.726 --> 00:07:22.656
Oh, that sounds tedious.
00:07:23.382 --> 00:07:36.552
It is, but there is so much valuable information in a friend of mine was weighing her chicks daily, and it was really neat to see just how big of gains they can actually do in a single day.
00:07:36.711 --> 00:07:37.232
Yes.
00:07:37.382 --> 00:07:42.961
When they're eating good and they're getting everything they need, daily gains.
00:07:43.242 --> 00:07:45.081
They're like little balloons filling up.
00:07:45.382 --> 00:07:47.732
It's almost scary how fast they can grow.
00:07:47.752 --> 00:07:48.141
Yeah.
00:07:48.432 --> 00:07:49.732
And then if you look at them.
00:07:49.841 --> 00:07:57.622
Across their cohort, by the end of three weeks, you can tell who your rock stars are and who can be sold off as a, still a very good, started chick.
00:07:58.172 --> 00:08:00.141
More suitable to just do breakfast eggs.
00:08:00.841 --> 00:08:01.362
Yeah.
00:08:02.151 --> 00:08:02.622
Yeah.
00:08:03.422 --> 00:08:07.422
Mandy, have you gotten to the point yet where you've totaled any numbers?
00:08:07.422 --> 00:08:12.492
For example, I know you try to process your birds about 16 weeks, if I remember correctly.
00:08:12.997 --> 00:08:20.326
Yeah, and I still need to weigh all of our carcasses and get everything in front of me in the spreadsheet.
00:08:20.586 --> 00:08:21.906
I still have my scribbles.
00:08:22.706 --> 00:08:23.416
I understand that.
00:08:23.567 --> 00:08:31.877
I was just wondering, are you seeing better fleshing at 16 weeks on this new feed or are they attaining better fleshing in less than 16 weeks?
00:08:32.677 --> 00:08:36.866
There was a lot of variation because the genetics were so diverse.
00:08:36.866 --> 00:08:41.017
I use there was like four different genetic families involved.
00:08:41.236 --> 00:08:41.496
Total.
00:08:42.297 --> 00:08:47.606
And the birds that normally grow well, grew better.
00:08:48.086 --> 00:08:52.917
And the others, I didn't have experience with them before, so I don't know what they were doing before.
00:08:53.346 --> 00:08:57.937
So that's why I'm immediately jumping right back into a trial using just one family of genetics.
00:08:58.736 --> 00:09:06.817
And then I can compare the new data with the old data and then also see how this batch does from birds that I'm a lot more familiar with.
00:09:07.616 --> 00:09:09.096
I know they've done it in the past.
00:09:09.177 --> 00:09:10.966
That will be the telling study, I think.
00:09:11.076 --> 00:09:11.667
Yeah.
00:09:12.466 --> 00:09:16.817
Because then you're comparing apples to apples, not apples and oranges.
00:09:17.616 --> 00:09:23.136
But it, that first trial did let me work all the kinks out and figure out how to do it better.
00:09:23.937 --> 00:09:29.966
We always learn and we always realize that no matter how much we know, we didn't know as much as we thought we knew.
00:09:30.767 --> 00:09:32.557
That's my profound statement for the day.
00:09:33.356 --> 00:09:37.067
We talked about high quality feed and low quality feed, bargain feeds.
00:09:37.726 --> 00:09:43.106
And if you're unsure that if you're looking at one, look at the feed tag, you can learn a lot from the feed tag.
00:09:43.907 --> 00:09:47.927
And don't just stop at the protein, and the fat, and the fiber.
00:09:48.177 --> 00:09:50.187
Read the entire tag.
00:09:50.986 --> 00:09:52.407
Especially those ingredients.
00:09:52.586 --> 00:09:53.447
Oh, yeah.
00:09:54.246 --> 00:10:08.096
It's just as important, sometimes I think it's probably a little bit more important, than the total amount of protein is the levels of the amino acids lysine and methionine.
00:10:08.897 --> 00:10:13.807
If there's not enough lysine and mycyanine, you're not going to get good growth on your birds.
00:10:14.356 --> 00:10:15.826
Just absolutely no way.
00:10:16.567 --> 00:10:18.356
You're not going to get healthy chicks out of the egg.
00:10:19.157 --> 00:10:25.386
And it affects not only the body growth, but it affects the feathers, feathers are protein, let's face it.
00:10:25.517 --> 00:10:26.246
What are proteins?
00:10:26.297 --> 00:10:27.197
Amino acids.
00:10:27.807 --> 00:10:29.206
It's going to in fact, excuse me.
00:10:29.417 --> 00:10:41.116
It's going to impact not only the bodies and the feathers, but like John was saying, the health, and you're going to get more hatchability, more vigorous chicks that hatch.
00:10:41.917 --> 00:10:44.277
It's just a snowball effect.
00:10:44.277 --> 00:10:46.177
It doesn't just start here and stop.
00:10:46.547 --> 00:10:50.966
It just keeps, it's one of those things that just keeps going and going and going in so many areas.
00:10:51.537 --> 00:10:53.866
It's, it was amazing to me.
00:10:54.506 --> 00:11:02.626
When I've said this before, it's when I stopped trying to save money on feed is when I actually started saving money on feed.
00:11:03.226 --> 00:11:04.447
I'm glad you brought that up.
00:11:04.476 --> 00:11:16.897
I started sprinkling this magic Fertrell breeder supplement powder over my, all flock starter crumbles and all of a sudden I'm going, wow, these chicks are very different.
00:11:17.346 --> 00:11:31.476
Then the chicks two weeks ago in the previous batch, there's something going on here and then the grit we got, we have not brought up grit yet, except once that is so important.
00:11:31.476 --> 00:11:48.397
Yeah, I know, but there's no way you're putting all this beautiful nutrition down into your chickens and without grit in the gizzard and proper gizzard function to grind and masticate and extract all this goodness, it's just going out the back end.
00:11:49.017 --> 00:11:57.907
We say 10 percent more are savings just from adding grit that would just otherwise be going right out the back end of your chicken.
00:11:58.366 --> 00:12:04.697
I saw a report fairly recently that they did on broilers where they didn't get 10%.
00:12:05.496 --> 00:12:08.422
They had a 15 percent improvement in feed efficiency.
00:12:09.221 --> 00:12:11.451
Just from feeding grit.
00:12:12.251 --> 00:12:14.211
Grit's cheap and it works wonders.
00:12:15.011 --> 00:12:20.432
Even, they say sometimes on the internet that if you feed a crumble you don't need grit and that's not true.
00:12:20.432 --> 00:12:20.851
Malarkey.
00:12:21.652 --> 00:12:22.721
Not true at all.
00:12:22.731 --> 00:12:25.971
We need to do a chicken myth busting episode.
00:12:26.022 --> 00:12:28.881
There's a few things I just want to smash apart.
00:12:29.682 --> 00:12:30.022
Next time.
00:12:30.081 --> 00:12:31.091
That would be fun.
00:12:31.351 --> 00:12:33.642
Oyster shell can be substituted for grit.
00:12:33.991 --> 00:12:34.831
Wrong answer.
00:12:35.631 --> 00:12:36.042
Not even.
00:12:36.172 --> 00:12:36.682
Not true.
00:12:37.481 --> 00:12:41.761
And I had someone contact me the other day that was wanting to know about limestone grit.
00:12:42.562 --> 00:12:46.562
No! No, that's just about as bad as oyster shells.
00:12:46.572 --> 00:12:49.601
Almost as bad, just a notch in between.
00:12:49.892 --> 00:12:54.022
And the reason we say they're not good, those are fairly soft materials.
00:12:54.022 --> 00:12:55.932
What we're talking about is granite.
00:12:56.692 --> 00:12:59.601
Good old, hard as my head, granite.
00:13:00.402 --> 00:13:05.331
And you may not know this from right here in Berry, Vermont, beautiful.
00:13:05.331 --> 00:13:07.272
The color of the grit can make a difference too.
00:13:08.072 --> 00:13:14.471
I learned this from Jeff that most chickens don't like to eat red grit, not cherry stone grit.
00:13:15.272 --> 00:13:17.131
They much prefer the white grit.
00:13:17.932 --> 00:13:18.172
Yeah.
00:13:18.231 --> 00:13:24.152
And somebody came on and verified, said, my birds will not eat cherry grit.
00:13:24.951 --> 00:13:31.062
They'll go without it, but it's chickens are funny and the more I learn about them, the funnier it gets sometimes.
00:13:31.721 --> 00:13:40.032
But and it's the little things that can improve the efficiency, that can improve the overall health and welfare of our birds and the production long term.
00:13:40.392 --> 00:14:08.111
We're not just telling you, we're not, we're telling you folks, this kind of stuff to save you time, to save you money, to save you effort, because trust me, I have made every single error and every single mistake we're going over today, at least twice, usually multiple times, but yeah, I thought that was impressive where they were saving or getting 15 percent better feed efficiency, feeding the birds grit.
00:14:08.912 --> 00:14:10.951
Don't wait till they are mature.
00:14:11.022 --> 00:14:11.491
Heck no.
00:14:12.292 --> 00:14:14.792
You want to start immediately.
00:14:14.831 --> 00:14:16.552
Day old chicks, give them grit.
00:14:16.721 --> 00:14:18.101
Sprinkle it on top of their feed.
00:14:18.451 --> 00:14:25.871
I am mixing chick grit into the, my starter feed, which literally putting inside my hatcher.
00:14:26.631 --> 00:14:30.692
So the chicks are coming out of the eggs and they're falling into a pile of food and grit.
00:14:31.491 --> 00:14:32.371
And there's a water.
00:14:32.402 --> 00:14:34.091
I've tried top dressing with chick grit.
00:14:34.892 --> 00:14:37.142
The first day I just sprinkle it right on top.
00:14:37.162 --> 00:14:38.292
So it's the first thing they see.
00:14:38.892 --> 00:14:45.042
I read a study where it said that if it was mixed into the feed, it was like a certain percentage more efficient.
00:14:45.101 --> 00:14:52.672
And since I'm mixing my own feed anyways I'm buying my grains whole, weighing them out, cracking them or grinding them and doing the whole thing.
00:14:53.192 --> 00:14:54.861
I can mix it in at the same time.
00:14:54.861 --> 00:14:58.062
It is real easy for me to say, Oh, I need, 10 percent grit.
00:14:58.121 --> 00:14:59.491
And this is a hundred pound batch.
00:14:59.491 --> 00:15:01.761
So 10 pounds of grit gets thrown in.
00:15:02.562 --> 00:15:04.272
And grit is not expensive.
00:15:04.461 --> 00:15:05.121
It's not.
00:15:05.211 --> 00:15:10.751
And what it brings, it's the easiest way to save money on your food bill and make healthier chickens.
00:15:10.802 --> 00:15:11.162
Yes.
00:15:11.961 --> 00:15:14.251
And if you're not doing it, I'm going to quote Jeff.
00:15:14.272 --> 00:15:15.841
You're just being cruel to your birds.
00:15:16.642 --> 00:15:17.542
They really are.
00:15:18.001 --> 00:15:20.552
It, do they have a gizzard for a reason?
00:15:21.351 --> 00:15:21.782
Use it.
00:15:22.486 --> 00:15:26.616
We got sidetracked, but we were talking about what's in your feed.
00:15:26.886 --> 00:15:27.246
All right.
00:15:27.586 --> 00:15:38.067
If you see things like plant byproducts, if you see anything that says byproducts, that's mean it's previously been used for something else.
00:15:38.756 --> 00:15:40.017
And this is the leftovers.
00:15:40.817 --> 00:15:43.267
You'll see distiller grain byproducts.
00:15:44.067 --> 00:15:50.346
That's already gone through the cooking fermentation process and had been nutrients removed.
00:15:51.147 --> 00:15:51.986
Those are fillers.
00:15:52.086 --> 00:15:54.346
They're fairly inexpensive to use and feed.
00:15:55.147 --> 00:15:57.662
And some feed absolutely has to have.
00:15:58.461 --> 00:15:59.072
Fillers in it.
00:15:59.402 --> 00:16:00.532
If you're buying pellets.
00:16:00.552 --> 00:16:01.091
Pellets.
00:16:01.442 --> 00:16:02.792
And if you're getting crumbles.
00:16:02.802 --> 00:16:03.442
It's a binder.
00:16:03.481 --> 00:16:03.961
It has to.
00:16:04.292 --> 00:16:04.662
Yeah.
00:16:04.761 --> 00:16:07.101
You can't make a pellet without that binder.
00:16:07.902 --> 00:16:08.981
And here's another irony.
00:16:08.981 --> 00:16:09.942
You mentioned crumble.
00:16:10.341 --> 00:16:13.731
First they make the pellet, then they bust it up to make crumble.
00:16:14.532 --> 00:16:15.511
Just leave it alone.
00:16:16.312 --> 00:16:20.111
And I can remember when crumble was about all you could get.
00:16:20.192 --> 00:16:23.241
And I asked, I knew the company made a pellet.
00:16:23.772 --> 00:16:24.312
I priced it.
00:16:24.312 --> 00:16:26.052
It was 3 more for a bag of pellets.
00:16:26.851 --> 00:16:31.392
I never did figure that one out because that's got to have pellets to make the crumples, but okay, whatever.
00:16:31.951 --> 00:16:36.892
Now that I've been feeding just this coarse mash, my birds are loving life.
00:16:36.971 --> 00:16:37.881
I'm loving life.
00:16:37.951 --> 00:16:51.402
I'm able to actually go around to my local farmers because I live in a very rural agrarian area and buy, corn and wheat and barley and oats when it's seasonably available from my neighbors and store it.
00:16:51.741 --> 00:16:53.552
Right now they're all in 55 gallon.
00:16:54.246 --> 00:16:55.206
Steel cans.
00:16:56.006 --> 00:16:58.836
I did run short on corn, so I had to run up to E.
00:16:58.836 --> 00:16:58.986
M.
00:16:58.996 --> 00:17:03.447
Brown and Sons and buy another 200 pounds, but I'm still great on all the other ingredients.
00:17:04.247 --> 00:17:04.747
That's good.
00:17:05.326 --> 00:17:09.507
A friend of mine is trying to get me to bring home his silo.
00:17:09.557 --> 00:17:11.166
It's an actual, stand up.
00:17:11.606 --> 00:17:12.257
Oh, there you go.
00:17:12.326 --> 00:17:14.666
It's a whole thousand pounds at least.
00:17:14.666 --> 00:17:15.936
It's a pretty good size.
00:17:16.392 --> 00:17:17.321
I was like so what?
00:17:17.561 --> 00:17:20.142
I can make corn hole and store it indefinitely.
00:17:20.521 --> 00:17:20.942
Yes.
00:17:20.942 --> 00:17:21.961
I was looking.
00:17:21.961 --> 00:17:23.821
And then you get at a different silo for each ingredient.
00:17:24.622 --> 00:17:24.682
Uhhuh.
00:17:25.481 --> 00:17:33.342
as long as they're whole, you can use the IBC totes and as long as they're kept dry, soon as it's ground, do not store your feed in an IBC tote.
00:17:33.942 --> 00:17:35.112
It's gonna mold instantly.
00:17:35.912 --> 00:17:41.942
Worst idea ever, but keep your grain whole, you get a screw auger feed system, great storage solution.
00:17:42.541 --> 00:17:49.582
What can you do if you can't find a good quality feed and that happens very regularly?
00:17:50.382 --> 00:17:52.991
That's where the supplements come into play, I think.
00:17:53.402 --> 00:17:54.061
Exactly.
00:17:54.311 --> 00:17:56.701
You can make your own, you can have it custom made.
00:17:57.051 --> 00:18:03.021
Or, you can use a feed supplement, and there's two good ones on the market right now that I highly recommend.
00:18:03.451 --> 00:18:11.531
One is the Fertrell Breeder and Showbird supplement, and the other one is Kerry Blackman's ShowPro supplement.
00:18:12.332 --> 00:18:16.021
Both were formulated, developed by Jeff Maddox.
00:18:16.821 --> 00:18:17.692
They're good stuff.
00:18:18.321 --> 00:18:19.912
For the specific purpose.
00:18:20.332 --> 00:18:20.731
Yes.
00:18:21.332 --> 00:18:36.602
The Show Pro, if you're into showing birds, it has some added cysteine, the amino acid cysteine for improving your feather quality a little bit, if you have that concern with your birds, plus it has a couple of other ingredients that are not in the Fertrell product.
00:18:37.402 --> 00:18:39.412
You think, Oh, that's expensive.
00:18:39.412 --> 00:18:39.781
Yeah.
00:18:40.582 --> 00:18:41.672
But it's one of those things.
00:18:42.471 --> 00:18:42.811
Yeah.
00:18:43.612 --> 00:18:54.031
The Fertrell stuff's not 50 bucks for 10 pounds, but you use such a small amount for an average large fowl, you're only feeding them a teaspoon of that stuff a day.
00:18:54.471 --> 00:19:03.531
Yeah, you better keep that in the freezer along with your coffee because you're probably not going to use it all before it ages out and it keeps perfectly in the freezer.
00:19:03.551 --> 00:19:06.367
And it will greatly improve your birds.
00:19:07.167 --> 00:19:15.778
I know the first time I tried it, I was feeding nutrient feed and I was basically clueless about Fertrell supplement and all that kind of stuff.
00:19:15.778 --> 00:19:18.508
And Jeff Maddox talked me into trying it.
00:19:19.258 --> 00:19:19.528
Yup.
00:19:19.627 --> 00:19:20.258
That's how he got me.
00:19:20.817 --> 00:19:26.708
I noticed a change in my bird in about three days and then it just kept getting better and better and better.
00:19:27.288 --> 00:19:32.748
It's one of those investments that can save you money and give you better, stronger, healthier birds in the long run.
00:19:33.268 --> 00:19:44.958
We talked about the feed and the supplements and their nutrition to help them be as productive as possible, but there's still another way where things get lost, which is if they're wasting.
00:19:45.458 --> 00:19:46.458
Oh yeah.
00:19:46.708 --> 00:19:47.087
Yeah.
00:19:47.698 --> 00:19:51.718
There's a lot in the feeder type, which you ran into on your grow out in this feed trial.
00:19:51.728 --> 00:19:53.698
Yeah, that was something I didn't anticipate.
00:19:54.498 --> 00:19:59.407
And then, There's so many nuances to providing the feed to the bird.
00:19:59.968 --> 00:20:01.938
Why don't you explain what happened during the feed trial?
00:20:02.738 --> 00:20:10.948
So I had just the basic round gravity style feeders, and I have them in multiple sizes, from one pound all the way up to eleven pounds.
00:20:11.488 --> 00:20:15.157
And I've historically only ever been feeding a crumble.
00:20:15.438 --> 00:20:20.367
And there was no issue with the flow of that feed getting to that bottom trough.
00:20:21.167 --> 00:20:30.067
But when I started with the new chick starter that was milled and really fine for the chicks it didn't flow down to the bottom trough.
00:20:30.067 --> 00:20:33.488
It just hung in the gravity part and didn't flow.
00:20:34.117 --> 00:20:38.998
And it took me a couple of days where I would lift it up and shake it.
00:20:38.998 --> 00:20:40.607
And I was thinking that, that's weird.
00:20:41.117 --> 00:20:42.127
But then.
00:20:42.488 --> 00:20:44.327
I saw it just, it didn't flow.
00:20:44.337 --> 00:20:45.248
It didn't move through.
00:20:45.258 --> 00:20:53.897
So it's a whole other type of feeder that I need to invest in, in order to feed that style of feed.
00:20:54.357 --> 00:21:00.067
And I'm going to have to do the trough styles where it can spread out, which actually is better for the birds.
00:21:00.067 --> 00:21:03.468
And it gives everybody more shoulder room to access that feeder.
00:21:03.468 --> 00:21:05.827
Then that then reduces your competition.
00:21:06.363 --> 00:21:11.673
Which then gives you a more even and consistent flock result, as it turns out.
00:21:12.272 --> 00:21:21.042
And you've seen from your friends weigh data, that even now, hours without feed can make a difference in those.
00:21:21.053 --> 00:21:33.083
Yeah it didn't seem like it was that much, but when I compared notes with another friend of mine using our genetics, He was averaging 30 grams heavier for a little weak old chick.
00:21:33.113 --> 00:21:33.913
That's a lot.
00:21:34.593 --> 00:21:35.813
That's everything.
00:21:36.613 --> 00:21:36.992
Yeah.
00:21:37.012 --> 00:21:42.103
Where I saw 65 grams, he saw a hundred, 110 grams.
00:21:42.417 --> 00:22:01.827
When you first told me that, Mandelyn, I thought, and I got to thinking, I don't remember seeing a tube type feeder until early to mid 60s, and that's just about the time that you started seeing a lot of crumbles hit the market.
00:22:02.567 --> 00:22:08.057
Up until that time, everything was mash feed and everything was fed in a trough.
00:22:08.074 --> 00:22:10.893
Ah, makes sense now.
00:22:11.482 --> 00:22:13.823
And I could be off on those dates a little bit.
00:22:13.833 --> 00:22:17.083
I'm getting to be an old geezer and I don't often remember things as I should.
00:22:17.883 --> 00:22:33.992
But, and I remember going up to a gentleman up here that lived north of me, Ed Little, and he had, oh, I don't know, five, 600 Rhode Island red commercial birds and his feeders, they were homemade, nothing wrong with a homemade feeder.
00:22:33.992 --> 00:22:34.692
They worked great.
00:22:35.202 --> 00:22:43.022
He made them out of one by eights and they were just, Eight foot long, just three boards open on the top where the birds could access to feed.
00:22:43.823 --> 00:23:00.553
He would not feed, fill them over halfway to help lessen feed waste or lessen the feed waste because if you've ever watched your birds, they are great at sorting through and billing through feed to expose those choice bits.
00:23:00.553 --> 00:23:08.123
A choice bit to a bird is the larger pieces first and things that look good.
00:23:08.363 --> 00:23:13.353
Yellow, corn, they're little piggies and they don't have hands.
00:23:13.353 --> 00:23:15.853
They can't sort through them and they can't get into the feeder and scratch.
00:23:15.853 --> 00:23:16.563
So what do they use?
00:23:16.563 --> 00:23:24.113
They use your bilk, beak and they like to try to peck and then they jerk their head back to expose a little bit of feed.
00:23:24.913 --> 00:23:29.393
So if you can increase the height of your feeder, you can help reduce that.
00:23:30.012 --> 00:23:34.403
Know a lot of folks are using a PVC, piece of PVC pipe, six inch PVC pipe.
00:23:35.202 --> 00:23:41.942
My birds threw 50 pounds on the floor so fast using those PVC feeder designs.
00:23:41.942 --> 00:23:43.653
Flipped their heads back and forth.
00:23:44.252 --> 00:23:46.063
I learned a trick to dealing with that.
00:23:46.863 --> 00:23:49.722
Did you cut yours in half when you made the feeder?
00:23:50.522 --> 00:23:57.522
No, I did the tube going up and then the elbow coming out at about a 45 degree angle upward.
00:23:58.323 --> 00:24:01.593
That was supposed to prevent That from happening?
00:24:01.613 --> 00:24:02.103
Doesn't.
00:24:02.903 --> 00:24:07.002
I put grates down so they have to go through the grate to get to the food.
00:24:07.803 --> 00:24:13.883
That can work and they make you can buy plastic feed grates or you can make it out of some half by one inch wire.
00:24:14.682 --> 00:24:23.772
But I was talking to a friend of mine out in Washington, no, Oregon, and we were talking about PVC pipe feeders.
00:24:24.573 --> 00:24:45.623
And he said, When he first made some, he hated them because he took a six inch piece of pipe and cut it halfway down, made two feeders out of it, where you got this kind of wide ish trough that's really not very deep, but it has these straight sides on it.
00:24:46.133 --> 00:25:00.232
He said he finally dawned on him to only cut about the top third off that piece of pipe, so he had curved sides, that as the birds would flick the feed back towards them, it would fall back in.
00:25:00.242 --> 00:25:01.192
It wouldn't go out.
00:25:01.992 --> 00:25:03.255
Oh, that's a good idea.
00:25:03.255 --> 00:25:03.982
Of the feeder itself.
00:25:04.782 --> 00:25:13.893
And then he also rigged a no roost pole that goes across there where they, some folks complain my birds get in the feeder, the trough style feeders.
00:25:14.113 --> 00:25:22.113
Just put a round dowel works good, piece of PVC pipe, but have it where it will spin free and hang it over the feed.
00:25:22.913 --> 00:25:29.242
Give them just enough room to get their head in there, but not enough room that they can get in there and make a mess with it.
00:25:30.042 --> 00:25:34.702
And that can be as simple as running a piece of sturdy cable with the pipe over that.
00:25:35.272 --> 00:25:36.772
That makes it real loosey goosey.
00:25:36.772 --> 00:25:39.353
As soon as they try to jump on it, they slide right off.
00:25:40.053 --> 00:25:40.942
I was talking about Mr.
00:25:40.942 --> 00:25:41.682
Little earlier.
00:25:41.982 --> 00:25:49.573
I remember his feeders, he had taken strips of wooden glass, like they used to put plaster up with.
00:25:50.373 --> 00:26:18.462
And He'd cut squares, I don't know, they seemed like they were about three inches square for each end, and then he'd run strips of lath back and forth, he had one on the side, one on the top, one on the bottom, both sides, top and bottom, and he had fixed it, Had just driven a nail in there and then drilled a hole in the end of the, extended his feeder board up, drilled a hole in that to where it would just sit there and spin, just as free as it could be, just like it was on Berry.
00:26:19.262 --> 00:26:25.123
The birds could get on it, it didn't throw them right off, but it would eventually, it would spin them around and keep them off.
00:26:25.762 --> 00:26:36.393
Now, one of my favorite ways to save on feed is always keeping my eye out for the unproductive birds, the ones who just never grow up to be the best.
00:26:36.458 --> 00:26:38.077
No slackers.
00:26:38.357 --> 00:26:46.407
Yeah, the slackers, the ones who didn't fill in well, they were always puny, they maybe only put out two or three eggs a week.
00:26:47.038 --> 00:26:51.867
Just the least productive birds are the ones we invite to the freezer first.
00:26:52.097 --> 00:26:52.710
They need to go.
00:26:52.710 --> 00:26:53.137
They need to go.
00:26:53.448 --> 00:27:12.917
They're costing you money, big dollars, and I know you can get attached to birds and all that, but it's something you really have to do, and with our economy the way it is here, that if those less productive birds are not removed from the flock, your prices are going to go out of sight for feed.
00:27:13.718 --> 00:27:18.798
I'm not keeping any bird past 32 weeks of age unless she's laying five eggs a week.
00:27:19.597 --> 00:27:20.307
At least five.
00:27:20.837 --> 00:27:23.238
I like to see six, but Six would be great.
00:27:23.278 --> 00:27:25.208
I had one last year that laid seven.
00:27:26.008 --> 00:27:26.738
Didn't take a pause.
00:27:27.028 --> 00:27:27.867
For how long?
00:27:27.907 --> 00:27:28.657
Overachiever.
00:27:29.208 --> 00:27:31.258
Yeah, non stop.
00:27:31.827 --> 00:27:33.968
That's the one you definitely want to hatch from.
00:27:34.248 --> 00:27:37.317
I set every egg she laid for two months.
00:27:38.117 --> 00:27:40.048
See, that brings up another point, though.
00:27:40.067 --> 00:27:44.307
It's so hard to overhatch and get yourself into a bind.
00:27:45.107 --> 00:27:46.718
Oh, it's not hard to overhatch.
00:27:46.718 --> 00:27:48.968
It's hard to control yourself and keep yourself from overhatching.
00:27:49.317 --> 00:27:49.748
It is.
00:27:49.807 --> 00:27:50.258
It is.
00:27:50.258 --> 00:27:52.038
There's Hatchaholics support groups.
00:27:52.067 --> 00:27:53.577
I'm not joking about this.
00:27:54.377 --> 00:27:55.498
I'm guilty of it.
00:27:55.518 --> 00:28:00.458
I'm, I can't point fingers and say, I can't do that because I'd have to point right back at me.
00:28:00.817 --> 00:28:01.117
Yeah.
00:28:01.117 --> 00:28:11.958
So budget for the number of birds you can afford to raise, try to hold yourself to that budget and promote marital harmony and fiscal responsibility and all those important things.
00:28:12.387 --> 00:28:17.038
Another thing that comes to mind Let's face it, we all to spoil our birds.
00:28:17.107 --> 00:28:19.008
We all like to give them treats.
00:28:19.407 --> 00:28:22.837
It's not The best thing for your birds.
00:28:23.018 --> 00:28:24.798
It's not a healthy choice.
00:28:25.238 --> 00:28:26.258
It costs you money.
00:28:26.817 --> 00:28:27.157
Okay.
00:28:27.877 --> 00:28:28.157
Yeah.
00:28:28.157 --> 00:28:38.337
And I if you were to start reducing their treats, they're going to look at you with that sorry, pitiful look on their face and try to lay the guilt trip on you, but don't knuckle under.
00:28:38.738 --> 00:28:44.347
Limit treats to no more than 10 percent of the bird's daily intake of food.
00:28:45.147 --> 00:28:45.498
Okay.
00:28:45.907 --> 00:28:50.218
If your bird, if you're feeding four ounces of bird four ounces of feed per bird.
00:28:50.887 --> 00:28:54.278
And don't just say I'll just throw them a handful of corn.
00:28:54.288 --> 00:28:55.958
How much does that handful of corn weigh?
00:28:56.577 --> 00:28:59.198
Or I'll throw out a handful of mealworms.
00:28:59.228 --> 00:29:00.637
How much do those mealworms weigh?
00:29:00.897 --> 00:29:02.498
Deduct that from the amount of feed.
00:29:03.057 --> 00:29:06.827
But also look what it's doing to the nutritional profile for the day.
00:29:07.327 --> 00:29:08.387
Screwing it all up.
00:29:08.788 --> 00:29:10.198
It's throwing it out of balance.
00:29:10.238 --> 00:29:19.673
And now I've convinced my birds that if I take a handful of their regular feed and I wet it and I mash it up into a little ball and I throw it, they're That's the best treat in the whole wide world.
00:29:19.873 --> 00:29:21.423
They think it's something spectacular.
00:29:22.222 --> 00:29:27.343
Anytime you turn that bag around and you read it, it says feed as a sole ration.
00:29:27.863 --> 00:29:28.222
Yes.
00:29:28.782 --> 00:29:32.732
And then when you look at that analysis and it says, this is your protein.
00:29:32.952 --> 00:29:33.762
This is your fat.
00:29:33.792 --> 00:29:34.663
This is your lysine.
00:29:34.663 --> 00:29:42.222
This is your, all of those little levels is based on the assumption that they're not eating anything else, right?
00:29:42.242 --> 00:29:44.972
Everything you add takes away from that analysis.
00:29:45.772 --> 00:29:47.758
Exactly of what they're actually taking in.
00:29:48.268 --> 00:29:51.653
I've never seen give them a giant head of iceberg lettuce to keep'em entertained.
00:29:51.653 --> 00:29:53.423
They're getting zero nutrition from it.
00:29:53.923 --> 00:29:53.932
Yeah.
00:29:54.678 --> 00:30:03.992
Unless you're buying a nutritional supplement from a supplement maker, you're not supplementing their diet by feeding them kitchen scraps or anything else.
00:30:04.643 --> 00:30:13.133
Some people I've seen where they do warm oatmeal as a treat in the wintertime, but when you look at the nutritional profile of oatmeal, it's backwards.
00:30:13.583 --> 00:30:15.292
There's really not a whole lot in there.
00:30:15.688 --> 00:30:23.407
If you want to feed them something, if you want to feed them something warm, just take some of your feed and add hot water to it.
00:30:24.208 --> 00:30:24.508
That's it.
00:30:24.678 --> 00:30:24.948
Yeah.
00:30:25.218 --> 00:30:26.907
They'll hug your neck if you do that.
00:30:27.018 --> 00:30:28.188
Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:28.907 --> 00:30:30.278
Yeah, sure.
00:30:30.298 --> 00:30:32.948
Hey, do either one of you guys have anything else you want to cover?
00:30:32.948 --> 00:30:36.708
I think we've pretty well gone through our outline here.
00:30:37.357 --> 00:30:39.768
The difference that a little free range can make if you can keep them safe.
00:30:39.768 --> 00:30:40.188
Oh yeah.
00:30:40.988 --> 00:30:52.837
When they go out and find the live bugs, because what some people don't realize when you get that little bag of dried out mealworms, it doesn't have the amino proteins in there for nutrition.
00:30:52.837 --> 00:30:56.127
They're a dried out shell of a husk with incomplete proteins.
00:30:56.127 --> 00:30:59.278
So the nutrition isn't there, but you give them a live bug.
00:31:00.077 --> 00:31:00.897
Now you're talking.
00:31:01.107 --> 00:31:01.627
That's right.
00:31:01.627 --> 00:31:09.942
And from the culinary perspective, this access to pasture is where all your flavor comes from.
00:31:10.222 --> 00:31:17.022
And all the wonderful things that are supposed to be beautiful about a heritage chicken are going to start expressing themselves.
00:31:17.553 --> 00:31:34.202
If they're just on a bag, boring feed their entire life they're not going to taste that amazing as a chicken, they're going to taste and even the color of the yolk and the egg, when they start getting those dark leafy greens, you start seeing that real dark orange yolk.
00:31:34.623 --> 00:31:37.452
Oh, the carotenoid pigments are amazing.
00:31:38.252 --> 00:31:38.702
Yeah.
00:31:38.752 --> 00:31:42.393
And the yolk stands so tall in the pan when you're cooking them.
00:31:42.873 --> 00:31:46.843
I almost hate to break the yolk, but I like to have it broken in my sandwich a little bit.
00:31:47.222 --> 00:31:50.952
I saw a picture of an egg yolk the other day.
00:31:51.752 --> 00:31:55.792
That was a light cream color at best.
00:31:56.173 --> 00:31:57.873
I've seen white yolks before.
00:31:57.962 --> 00:32:00.083
Those are so unappetizing to me.
00:32:00.083 --> 00:32:00.663
I'm sorry.
00:32:00.692 --> 00:32:02.932
I like a good strong yellow, white, orange yolk.
00:32:03.732 --> 00:32:09.692
But that's really we talk about that, taste of place, terroir in the kitchen, in the culinary world.
00:32:09.702 --> 00:32:19.472
And that's where that's coming from is access to nature, the sun, the rain, the bugs, the worms, the dirt, the soil.
00:32:19.982 --> 00:32:21.292
That's how a chicken should chicken.
00:32:21.423 --> 00:32:23.423
That's part of being a chicken.
00:32:23.442 --> 00:32:24.363
That's exactly right.
00:32:24.542 --> 00:32:30.843
And the more feed they go find on their own out of that nutrient dense environment, the less of the bag stuff they're going to have.
00:32:31.482 --> 00:32:34.212
John and Mandy, I appreciate you so much today.
00:32:34.222 --> 00:32:35.573
Y'all did a really good job.
00:32:36.103 --> 00:32:36.863
I had fun.
00:32:36.952 --> 00:32:38.282
I hope you two did.
00:32:38.282 --> 00:32:42.163
And I hope our listeners had a good time and learned something from us today.
00:32:42.803 --> 00:32:47.173
I just hope we save some people time because it can take a lot of time to learn.
00:32:47.803 --> 00:33:04.272
You didn't save any money at all actually, you spent a lot more, you spun your wheels for a little while, you scrambled for a little while, let us save you that time and just do it the best way you can afford and it will help your birds a lot.
00:33:05.073 --> 00:33:05.492
It will.
00:33:05.492 --> 00:33:08.432
And you will be a much happier camper because of it.
00:33:08.762 --> 00:33:09.012
Yeah.
00:33:09.012 --> 00:33:09.292
Trust me.
00:33:09.373 --> 00:33:09.913
Yeah.
00:33:10.712 --> 00:33:12.752
And we've stayed away from, oh, nevermind.
00:33:12.972 --> 00:33:13.873
Go ahead, close it up.
00:33:14.173 --> 00:33:16.083
I would just say we stayed away from my trigger point.
00:33:16.123 --> 00:33:18.532
I wasted two semesters on fermented feed.
00:33:19.333 --> 00:33:21.563
Let's save that for its whole other rant.
00:33:21.813 --> 00:33:24.462
That's another can of worms.
00:33:25.262 --> 00:33:25.542
Yeah.
00:33:26.232 --> 00:33:27.542
Next time, take us home.
00:33:28.262 --> 00:33:28.863
All right.
00:33:29.042 --> 00:33:35.722
Folks, we are so glad you joined us today for this podcast show from the Poultry Keepers Podcast.
00:33:36.083 --> 00:33:45.512
We're happy to have you with us and it's our listeners that keep us going and keep us wanting to do this because we hear from them on a regular basis, how much they appreciate it.
00:33:45.512 --> 00:33:49.012
And, recently we just reached 25, 000 downloads.
00:33:49.553 --> 00:33:52.163
And I can remember the first episode we did.
00:33:52.163 --> 00:33:55.202
I was ecstatic when we got 25 downloads.
00:33:56.002 --> 00:33:59.482
We've crossed the year mark now very strongly.
00:33:59.553 --> 00:34:04.413
It's almost, I think Mandy joined us not long after we started.
00:34:04.442 --> 00:34:08.722
I remember visiting her place on 4th of July last year.
00:34:09.043 --> 00:34:12.172
I just started saying, I want to say it was in late July when she came on.
00:34:12.382 --> 00:34:12.862
Yeah.
00:34:13.663 --> 00:34:16.842
I was bringing her some birds, four episodes or so.
00:34:17.242 --> 00:34:17.492
Huh.
00:34:17.572 --> 00:34:18.422
Yeah, wasn't much.
00:34:18.632 --> 00:34:19.202
Wasn't much.
00:34:19.813 --> 00:34:20.802
We're gonna wrap it up.
00:34:21.242 --> 00:34:26.893
I'm gonna let my partners here get on with their daily routines, and I'll get on with mine.
00:34:27.822 --> 00:34:33.092
00:34:33.382 --> 00:34:39.273
00:34:39.563 --> 00:34:47.632