WEBVTT
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Hi there, and welcome to another Poultry Keepers Podcast.
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This episode concludes Rhode Island Reds, An American Classsic.
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We hope you enjoy our conversation and pick up some good tips on Rhode Island Reds along the way.
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So lets start where we left off last week.
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With that in mind, every time somebody I see in these groups, people are like, I'm looking for fresh blood for my birds.
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My first question is why?
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What are you trying to fix?
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Because unless you bring in something that's like that, like a, like showstopper, showbird.
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You could be throwing in a rent and having to start completely over messing up what you have done.
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So if,
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excuse me, I'm sorry.
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If you ever find yourself feeling that way that you absolutely got to bring in unrelated blood.
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My suggestion is get it from a related line.
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In other words, find somebody else that has a line of birds that you have and get one from them that has the qualities you want.
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That way you won't
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be starting over.
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Exactly
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right.
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People get scared when they've been line breeding and all of a sudden they get a hatch that is completely ugly and a whole lot of defects all of a sudden.
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And instead of getting scared and getting new blood, they need to push through that.
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Because on the other side is a lot purer line, okay?
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And they don't understand that.
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Their head is the right direction, they just don't know it, okay?
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And, you pick through the uglies and, you breed again, right?
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And the next generation, a lot of those defects will be gone if you can get through that one or two really ugly generations.
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Ruthless culling.
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Jeff,
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I've had that happen to me.
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New blood is always a
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mistake.
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Yeah, I've had that happen to me, and when I stopped and thought about it and really evaluated the birds, it was not so much the birds fault, it's that I hadn't put the best birds to work.
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That were best matched together in breeders.
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Yeah.
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But the fault was actually my fault and not the bird's fault.
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You have the bloodlines.
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The bloodlines are already there.
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You know that you have the bloodlines.
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You just have to push through that, that mistake or that ugly and, there's good stuff on the other side, but every time someone, whenever you bring in new blood, you're starting over.
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People don't understand.
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You are starting over.
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And you don't know what you're bringing in.
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I don't care how good the breeder is, or the person is, or whatever, or how many ribbons they got.
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You don't know what you're bringing in.
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You know what you own, but you don't know what you're buying.
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A
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good example of that is my hatch this year.
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I've got pullets that are coming up that are outstanding.
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Every male that I hatched, he's crock pot, and I started to worry and then I thought, no, I've got the birds here still on the property that produced Ripalicious.
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It's there.
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It's just me figuring out the puzzle pieces to who did goes to with him.
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Mr.
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Reese had a saying.
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Always keep your blueprints.
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Yup.
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Yup.
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My
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original birds are in the back.
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They're my egg layers.
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And I keep all my breeders separate up on the hill.
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And if I ever screw up on the hill, I just go shopping in my backyard.
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There you go.
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Yup.
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Yup.
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Rip, a while ago you made mention about the feathers and we were talking about the blacking on the feathers and that kind of stuff.
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Shaggy on YouTube wants to know how hard you work Should the feathers be?
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Shaggy, I would want feathers on a red to be somewhere between the look of the feathers on a Leghorn and maybe an Orpington, something like that, somewhere in between those.
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You want it tight, not real tight.
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You don't want it real loose either.
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And they're, because of the red color, they're prone to dry out.
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Yes, That's why when you're conditioning birds, it's a good idea to keep a squirt bottle of water over there where you're conditioning.
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Go by once or twice a day, just pshh.
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Or let them out.
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Give them a little
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misting.
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Let
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them out in the rain.
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Yep.
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So for me in the summertime, I listened to Jeff, even though sometimes he thinks that I don't listen to him.
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I'm sure often you don't.
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Oh I went through I bought Jennifer has got me addicted to Timu.
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And I was on TV one day and one of their, flash sales that they do, that's almost as bad as going in, into a big box store and you hearing the chick sound it was misters, for your deck.
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And it's like the tube with the fittings, the tee fittings, where you can screw in the misters.
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And I was like Jeff always says that this is good in the summertime to help keep them cool.
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And they talk about doing it to keep the feathers moist.
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And it helps them stay healthy and this that and the other so now in all of my breeding pens I've got misters and they'll cut on about one o'clock in the afternoon and they'll cut off about three Plenty of time to dry up before the sun goes down.
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I always got wind a lot of mine have fans in them to dry the ground so I don't have to worry about that, but It really does make a difference on their feathers.
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Big difference.
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Let's see, Tim also says that he bred reds for 25 years.
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It can be great breed, but very challenging.
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Yes.
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I agree.
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So many people don't understand just how challenging reds can be.
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I'd put them right up there.
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That goes for anything that you're going to be detail orientated about.
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When you're breeding birds, you've got to be detailed.
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You've got to be detailed.
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You gotta pay attention to the details because it'll bite you if you don't.
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And you can find
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yourself running down a rabbit hole really quick.
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Done that.
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And you can't just focus on one thing, you gotta have it.
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It's the whole, there's three pages of check boxes,
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but, Sue, I want to add one thing on to that.
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You're right, you can't focus on just one thing.
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But, when you try to correct a problem, when you're first starting out, I would focus on one problem to try to correct it at a time.
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Yeah.
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If you try to correct five or six ago, it'll drive you nuts.
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Yeah.
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You won't get there.
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You gotta look today, tomorrow, and two years from now.
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All right.
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This next question is, Jeff, have you ever shown birds?
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Have you ever been a show bird person?
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No.
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All right.
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So this question is going to be, we'll go from left to we'll start with Jennifer.
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We'll let her answer and then Sue, and then we'll let Rip answer this question.
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How do you house your show birds and keep them show ready?
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And I think people are going to be really surprised at how this question is answered.
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If we're talking about like right before the show, is that what we're talking about?
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Yep.
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How do you house your show birds and keep them ready for a show?
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So I would think that's, if you're going to the Ohio National in a couple of weeks from now to then, what are you doing with that bird?
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I have soft feathered birds.
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So I would wash them like 10 12 days in advance and then I set the whole alleyway of my barn with drop pins on the floor and I just dump the shavings over the top and keep them in there and every day 14 times a day you got to go by there and clean out the shavings, dump more in there and make sure they're not close enough that they're fighting between the Cages, and I have had one jump up and hung himself the day before a show, so now I lay stuff on top of the cages to keep him from doing that again.
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So it's a learning process all the way up until that morning.
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All right.
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Sue, how do you and I'm laughing because I have a clue you where you're going with this but how do you house your show birds and keep them show ready?
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I try to keep their pens as clean as possible.
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Year round it's right.
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And some days I do well and other days I don't.
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But the two birds that won for me, the best one was picked off the ground.
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The morning of the show, or the morning before I left to go to the show, so she was not even washed and the other bird had his butt and legs washed and taken.
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I just, I feed them good.
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I take care of them.
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They get outside.
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They get on green grass.
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They have fresh air.
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They're chickens.
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They do what they want to do.
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But I just drink clean water, clean, fresh food.
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I don't put them in conditioning pins.
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I just don't.
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They stay with everybody else.
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And
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you let your chickens chicken.
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I let my chickens chicken.
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The one girl that, honestly, the one girl that won Knoxville and 21.
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I went out there to win.
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to load up at five o'clock in the morning and she was standing there and I thought you look pretty good so I just picked her up and checked the bottom make sure she didn't have bugs they're in a box and away we went she won the whole show so or she won a large champion large fell I won't say she won the whole show but it definitely shocked me because I didn't think anybody pay any attention to those curve so But they did.
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They did.
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What about you Rip?
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How do you house your show birds?
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I'm a lot like Sue.
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Leave them outside, let them run around, let them be chickens.
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I can honestly say I have never washed a Rhode Island Red to take it to a show.
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Other than to wipe off the face and wipe off the feet and legs.
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Make sure the butt's clean.
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Just never needed it.
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Wipe them down with a silk cloth.
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That'll get the dust off of them.
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Shine them up a little bit.
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Rub a little of my comb dressing on their Face and wattles and comb and that's real simple to make it's 50 percent alcohol and 50 percent olive oil.
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Shake it up and rub it on there.
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The alcohol helps redden the comb and the olive oil makes it shine.
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And do the same thing, use the same thing on the feet and legs too.
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But if I'm going all out to condition a bird, I'll put it in a show coop, bring it inside for about 10 days or so.
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And I want to get it used to showing.
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Against strange birds.
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So I'll shuffle a order of the birds around.
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I don't, every day I'm move them around.
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I play a radio in there, get'em used to strange sounds.
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I even have some audio that I recorded at a show.
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So that's usually what I play.
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Just common sense stuff.
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Don't overthink it.
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This is not a breed that requires lot of pimping and carrying on with them.
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Yeah, we're not doing it.
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It's not table dancers.
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No.
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Let's see here.
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I'm trying to get that
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image out of my head now.
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Yeah, Lordy.
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Tim says type has been the most challenging.
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Most have lost the true brick shape.
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That is true.
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Amen, Tim.
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Let's see.
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We only have some quail and small backyard mixed flock of chickens trying to learn as much as possible and convince the better half that we need some farmland.
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I hate to say it, but you don't need a lot of land.
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I have one acre.
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You just gotta, you just gotta have your pens.
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And if you don't have a lot of land to have big pens.
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You just got to work extra hard to condition your pens and keep them clean.
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Honestly,
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as far as raising birds and getting them in good shape and good condition, reds are pretty easy, good feet, good management, good water.
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You're good to go.
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We'll see you soon Rip.
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Do you track egg numbers and are you tracking individual matings?
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Yes and yes.
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No and no.
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But Sue's the rebel.
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I am.
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I know.
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But honestly, I can look at some of my females and I know exactly which male they came out of and real close to which female they came out of because I have a limited amount of birds.
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I have more now because I hatched a lot, but no Tim this spring is, Sue's going to be a better manager.
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Yes, yep.
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Sue has a better memory than I do.
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I can't do that.
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I can tell by looking at them.
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They each have their own kind of little quirky thing.
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The, each of my adult females,
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see, back in the day, Sue, I was, I had 10 breeding pens.
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Yeah, I
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just, there's no way I could keep track of that with my feeble brain.
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Yeah, one day, one day.
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How do you manage a trip to the Ohio National or somewhere where you drive an extended period of time?
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How often would you stop and tend to your birds?
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Or do whatever, and then start again.
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Coming from Oklahoma, it was almost between 14 and 16 hours.
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And we stopped, to use the bathroom, eat lunch, and do that.
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But they rode in extra large show boxes.
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They had plenty of room to stand up and move around.
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Or dog kennels, the great big dog kennel things.
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And they had food and water inside the dog kennels.
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So they had room to move around.
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They made the trip just, they made the trip better than I did.
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Yes, every time.
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I do it a little bit different than Sue.
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I don't use a big box to carry the birds in, but they do have feed and water available.
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All I want them to be able to do is stand up and sit down.
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Because when birds start turning around in some of those boxes is when they start turning around.
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So I guess for that you would either have a box that they can fit in, that they can stand up and sit down or have something huge where they have more than enough room to move around.
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So they don't damage any of their feathers or anything like that.
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Yeah.
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My show boxes are 10 inches wide and about.
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20 inches tall.
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All right, now this next question is one that is loaded anytime you ask any poultry keeper this question.