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Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast.
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John and Mandelyn and I are with you today and we're gonna have a really good show.
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We're gonna be talking about spring fever and how it applies to chickens.
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So, Spring brings fresh energy blooming gardens, and for many of us, that irresistible urge to add new chicks to the flock.
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Now, whether you're hatching your own or scrolling hatchery websites.
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Today's episode is all about channeling that spring excitement into smart, sustainable poultry planning.
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We'll help you balance that spring fever with flock success so you can enjoy the spring season without getting in over your head, at least hopefully.
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So let's take it away guys.
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Let's start with this.
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I lost my place.
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Sorry about that.
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That's a hard one.
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Let's
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start with this hatching your own chicks.
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What are some of the advantage, like control over genetics, breeding goals and satisfaction of watching chicks hatch?
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What do you think advantage of from hatching your own birds, Madeleine?
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Sorry, I have to start that with a laugh because I have been struggling with spring fever when it comes to chickens and chicks since 1989.
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Oh, it's very
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real.
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Oh boy.
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Early on, I could not walk into any setup that had birds and resist it.
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So very quickly I found myself with this flock of.
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Incredible diversity, two or three of everything.
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And when I was focusing on bans, it re, like my parents asked me to count.
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Keep in mind this is like an urban area and I was supposed to have about 20, and when my parents asked me to count, it came up at 53.
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I think that's something we all go through and Yeah.
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Is what, three to one?
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Yeah, at least two.
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I about had a 20 bird flock if they were standardized, but they weren't.
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So I flexed that number out.
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You're okay.
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Chicken wrap.
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But that excitement level, just hearing that noise of the little peeps, I don't know what compulsion that is.
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It's, but I have gotten control over myself over the years
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is what we've just, and now my rule
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is I have to hatch it.
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Then I slapped some breeding rules on there that if you're gonna do this, you're not hatching all willy-nilly.
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No ma'am.
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You're gonna hatch like you mean it, and you're gonna take it seriously because that's what's gonna keep you in check.
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So that's my, over the last couple decades, that's been my mantra of I have to do the whole thing and I have to do it correctly to keep myself within responsible parameters.
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And I think you've experienced the pain of managing multiple concurrent and successive hatches as well, and the Yeah, of that's pain that
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made me,
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it's better to have a couple of big ones than a whole lot of small ones, for instance,
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now some people like to hatch ongoing throughout the season, and other people like to hatch just a little early, and that's it for the year.
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And I have so much respect for the people who can hatch one time and be done for the year.
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I, I'm trying to adopt that model.
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Just managing feed'cause I do, grind and mix my own feed as needed.
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And mixing up three or four, or now even five different formulas.
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Every two or three weeks because we have quail we have.
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Large foul Santa cla and allegedly there's some bourbon red turkeys coming soon.
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And each one of those has different stages of life and different feed requirements for different stages of life.
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And trying to manage those effectively can get overwhelming,
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but it's a relief when you reach the end of it.
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Oh, yes.
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When you're all on your adult ration and you're only got two or now three'cause of turkeys, although I'm gonna do some double duty with Turkey and quail, Jeff showed me how,
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You, to me, not only is that challenge okay, but there's.
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When you're hatching your own, you have to be worrying about fertility rates.
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How good is your incubation skills?
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It's, it takes a little trial and error to get to where you can hatch good numbers of chicks, and then you gotta worry about do you have the equipment, space and time?
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Because it is so easy to just take every egg that's laid, stick it in the incubator.
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Then suddenly you realize, hey, I got space for 50 chickens and I got 120 hatched.
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Whoops.
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Yeah.
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Big,
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whoops.
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You look at your pen size and then behind that you look at your, rearing pens and then your brooders and I don't ever shoot for maximum capacity.
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cause that, I think that's pushing it,
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it's helpful if.
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You go into it with standards, even starting at the hatching egg and look at shell quality.
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Look at shape, look at size.
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Because
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instead of setting all of'em, how about you go through and grade'em instead and make sure what you're putting in that incubator is worth hatching.
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To cut off some of that extra after hatch Yes.
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Of chicks that exercised, or chicks that didn't hatch that well because the egg shape wasn't quite right.
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You can do yourself a lot of favors by just being picky on what you actually put in that incubator.
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And we've been talking about that for so many episodes.
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And I am really happy to see it.
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I'm getting contacted by a lot of folks that they are starting to pay attention to the hatching eggs they set.
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Yeah.
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And that, it makes me feel good that folks are saying, Hey, I think what they're saying has some merit to it.
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Yeah.
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I've been getting a lot of questions, people sending me pictures showing, high porosity problems going, Hey, what can be causing this?
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And I'm like, maybe not enough calcium.
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I.
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Or if it's, across your flock, not enough calcium.
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If it's just one bird, don't set those eggs.
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Let's just let it end there.
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Not every layer was born to be a breeder.
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No.
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Amen to that.
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Most of'em are breakfast egg makers.
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If you actually get into the little details Yeah.
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Of who you should be hatching from and why.
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Most of them should just be on breakfast duty.
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If you stick to the plan that you set, your first year and then revise your second and third, hopefully you're getting things under control and you have your toll gates, you have your, I'm not setting eggs under this size or over this size, or from a, from hands under this age or over this age.
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There is no over, actually, by the time they've been around three or four years, you definitely want their eggs because they've proven themselves.
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Because you don't carry slouches.
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Correct.
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And
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If you're hatching your own chicks, folks, I really hope you're doing it with an eye to improving the breed.
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Or preserving the breed,
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or to building a sustainable flock.
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That's what it's all about to me.
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If I'm breeding, I need to be doing it to improve the breed and not just.
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Increase my numbers.
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And that can be tempting this time of year and especially in the current economy.
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Now there's a lot of people scrambling for chicks this spring.
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I was totally oblivious to how intense this particular season has been going for people who are sourcing chicks because they're not breeding, they're not hatching their own, they just wanna get egg layers.
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And I was not prepared for what I have heard of how.
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That scene is right now, it's intense and it's gonna be also really temporary
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this season.
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The ebbs and flows of the market for chicks, it varies year to year.
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This year is an intense year, but I want you guys to know it's temporary,
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right?
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It's kinda like the whole pendulum swinging thing.
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It may be up on one end now, but probably in a year or so it's gonna be swung over to the other side.
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Don't.
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Don't get caught up in all the, Hey, eggs cost so much.
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I can save a lot of money.
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I gotta be honest with you, you're gonna be hard pressed to save money if you're raising your own
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chicken.
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Here's the secret.
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A reason that the eggs are costing a lot in the stores is they cost a lot to make.
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Once you start raising your own chicken, you're gonna realize that yes.
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I heard that some of the farm stores were selling out in mere moments, and a lot of'em, they put a maximum number you could buy because there were people showing up buying them all.
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Yeah.
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And I've got a neighbor that blows my mind.
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If you're gonna show up somewhere and buy all, why would it be that farm store instead of doing a big order through a hatchery?
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Because there's still, when you buy from the farm stores, those chicks are shipped in.
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The stores do provide, a little, if you lose it, we'll replace it.
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But how are they gonna replace it if they don't have any on hand?
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Because they sold'em all.
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But also that shipping stress can last up to a week of when they receive those babies.
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So let's say the farm store receives 300, and in that initial shipment, since they did get started a little early, when it was still cold, let's say two 50, come out onto the sales floor.
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And then all
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this constant stress of
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Correct.
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It's a lot on a little baby.
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It's a lot.
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And the juggling of hands in that first week, losses almost need to be part of the expectation because that's a lot of stress on a little bitty baby
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this year.
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If you didn't pre-order your chicks from the local, big box stores you're not getting any, they just don't have them.
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I got a call from my local hardware store manager who knows that sometimes I have chicks available.
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He's Hey, if you've got any chicks available this year.
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And I'm like, no, sorry.
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I definitely don't.
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Thanks for the, yeah,
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I don't either
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look out, but he's got people coming in there, they wanna buy chicks and he's sorry if you didn't pre-order, I've got nothing.
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Now in off seasons, like last year, because last year didn't have any big driving forces behind sales, so they were back to, they, back to making the bins markdowns because they have their next shipment coming in.
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They need those bins to be empty and that's where someone can swoop in and get everything left for 50 cents a check.
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I know they're, that's not happen this year.
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More, they're costing more to carry, so they gotta go and make room for this small, but next season
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it'll probably be right back into that.
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Yeah.
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And the problem with that, when they start dropping their prices, the chicks that they have left over are probably, there's a good chance they're not the best quality chicks they received.
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Yeah.
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They've, so you factor.
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Yeah,
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well, there's still just gonna be hatchery grade as hatched or whatever.
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We got.
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True.
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Yeah.
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So you take matters in your own hands.
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You've got your flock.
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You've made your good breeding selections based upon, previous episodes of the Poultry Keepers podcast.
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You've got all your equipment and away you go.
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Whether I think whether the folks are gonna buy.
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Chick somewhere from the big box store, from a local breeder, or they're going to hatch their own.
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The key takeaway to that is you need to be prepared to deal with them.
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You gotta have the space to the feeders, the infrastructure.
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Yeah.
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To make it all work.
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And it brings us first to the next point.
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And resisting chicken math.
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That's hard, but it can be done.
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Oh, it's a killer.
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And let's define that when we start, what is chicken mass?
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I like to equate it to go into the store and say, oh, I'm just gonna buy six bullets.
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Oh wait, now I have 23.
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That happens.
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It can happen Just that quick.
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Just can, but you get excited and there's such a breed variety and.
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That old, impulse buying situation, it's a struggle to keep it under control.
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Is it not managed, but
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what happens if shipping losses aren't as high as you expect?
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Say I ordered 72 quail eggs and nine Turkey eggs, and I expect a 50% loss just due to shipping.
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But,
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but then surprise nine times, strangely enough rate they all hatch
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or 90% hatch rate.
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And now I go, oh no.
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Now what do I do?
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I plan for that much success.
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I got all these mouth
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to feed and I don't have enough broer space.
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So guys, how do we help our listeners control that chicken math urge?
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I think for me, the thing I would say is makeup.
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Plan for your flock before chick season even arrives, or at least before you go down to buy chicks.
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But also, if you already did make that commitment, you need to be quick and fast on staying ahead of those problems that arise from chicken math after the fact.
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If you,'cause this is what happens.
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Let's say your brooder will hold 20 chicks.
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For three weeks.
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And you accidentally put 30 in there, that means you are already on borrowed time and you're already setting yourself up for failure.
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Because if they get too crowded, you're gonna have problems.
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If that brooder gets too gross, you're gonna have problems.
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So if you know you have too many, get in there and clean every single day because you want to avoid.
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The problems that come from crowding, you need to be thinking about and immediately implementing a plan to get them into better space.
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Keep their air quality good.
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Keep everything clean before you are seeing the ramifications of the impulse
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And goes, it's already too
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late.
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Get in there.
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That's right.
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Get your hands dirty and fix it.
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And you gotta plan.
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Not just for the immediate, but those chicks are gonna be growing constantly.
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They're gonna be getting bigger.
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There's gonna be feather feathers dropping everywhere when they molt.
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You gotta be prepared to deal with all of those.
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You don't want any of that to surprise you because when you get surprised, you're already starting out behind the eight ball
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and
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that's never a good news.
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So how big is your coup and your run?
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How many birds can you support?
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What do you need to cu down to in the fall?
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To carry through the winter?
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One thing I'll do to accommodate chicken math is once I start seeing my trajectory of where everybody's headed and how many I'm gonna have, I will absolutely go back into my adult pens and go who among you do I really need to be keeping?
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Do I have any that aren't laying as expected?
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Do I have any that are slacking off?
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Do I have any who aren't gonna be quite as good as what I have up and coming?
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And I'll start thinning preemptively and then consolidating and freeing up space that way.
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And then also, since I have a dull purpose F block, and we do eat chicken, and I'll start looking at who's ready to go into the freezer to free up space that way as well.
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So it's a preemptive strike.
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Type situation for you?
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One, once my chicken mat starts kicking in and I start taking a look around, then I start looking at, all right, I can thin here.
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I can space these out.
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This way I can adjust for fire in case my hatch rate was way better than I thought it was gonna be.
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Which varies.
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Like even just yesterday, we had some really severe weather come through and we had a power outage right when I had eggs hatching.
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Our generator is primarily focused on freezer because we can't lose the food we've already put up.
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No,
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and our generator is suitable for our household, but not the barn.
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So what I did was make sure I did not open any doors.
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I didn't change anything.
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They just had to ride it out the way it was.