June 13, 2023
Starting Your Own Poultry Flock: Expert Tips and Essential Considerations (Part 2)
Thinking about raising chickens? Join hosts Rip Stalvey and John Gunterman as they delve into the essentials of starting your own poultry flock. In this episode, they discuss setting clear goals, choosing the right breeds for egg production, meat, or dual-purpose, and understanding how your geographic location influences breed selection.
Learn about the significance of feather types in various climates, the risks associated with heat stress, and the invaluable "rule of ten" for maintaining a healthy flock. Whether you're a novice or looking to expand your poultry knowledge, this episode offers practical advice to ensure your poultry-keeping venture is both enjoyable and successful.
#PoultryKeeping #BackyardChickens #ChickenFarming #EggProduction #DualPurposeBreeds #PoultryBreedSelection #HeatStressPrevention #PoultryManagement #StartingAChickenFlock #Homesteading
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00:00 - Choosing Chicken Egg Colors and Breeds
07:01 - Starting a Chicken Flock
13:24 - Raising Chickens
27:15 - Chicken Breeds and Egg Colors
41:22 - Raising Poultry
48:09 - Poultry Keeping Resources and Communities
WEBVTT
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Hi, i'm Rip Stalvey.
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In this episode of the poultry keepers podcast, my co-host, john Gunerman, and I will give you more tips and advice to help you start your flock.
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So, john, continuing on with things you should think about.
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What color do you prefer?
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Amazing, that's a weird decision, but in certain geographical areas, there's a preference for one egg color over another, and it's usually between white and brown.
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Well, i remember growing up.
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The jingle is still indelibly burned into my head Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh Was the commercial on TV and on the radio and everything.
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So when you went to the grocery store you didn't touch white eggs because those were shipped in.
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You wanted the brown eggs.
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Any difference in the egg itself, nutritionally, flavor wise, any, it's all the same.
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And you can also.
00:01:01.808 --> 00:01:13.138
you know some folks are after blue colored eggs and you get these from Americana leg bars and there's some other ones out there I've seen none that they look like Easter eggs.
00:01:13.278 --> 00:01:15.688
Yeah, some of them looking like they were painted.
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And I'm going to throw a little trivia on you here, john.
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If you break open a white chilled egg, what's the color of the shell on the inside, white, okay, you break open a brown chilled egg, what's the color on the inside, white?
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You break open a blue egg.
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What's the color on the inside?
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Blue?
00:01:34.662 --> 00:01:56.611
Exactly, they have a unique characteristic in that the egg color permeates the entire shell from the outside to Okay And he took me back to my animal sciences class there And because of a retro virus, and I've actually heard predictions that eventually all the eggs will become blue as the retro virus works its way around the planet.
00:01:57.640 --> 00:01:59.263
Oh, just changes the color of the egg.
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Believe it or not, you can get designer egg colors.
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Can an egg be two half and half, two different colors, swirl, swirl.
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For example, you cross a blue egg layer with a brown egg layer And that produces a green egg layer, because the brown pigment is deposited on the outside of the egg shell as it's being laid.
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So since the egg shell starts out blue, you add that brown color in there.
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Okay, so it's like a glaze on a porcelain Yeah.
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Exactly, and you can get them in in light greens, you can get them in dark greens.
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Some of the more recent colors that are being advertised are olive eggs or sage colored eggs.
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The people that are selling the dozens or 18 packs.
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They're all different colors.
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They're the first ones to sell out at farmers market, Absolutely, And I missed one because while we were on brown shell eggs I should have mentioned you can get extremely brown, dark brown egg.
00:03:04.866 --> 00:03:10.068
These are usually from breeds like morons, typically, or a couple of others.
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Barnabelers used to, but they're not so much anymore And well, summers lay more of a terracotta colored egg, but the morons can be very, very dark to the point that they almost can look black.
00:03:23.545 --> 00:03:30.605
But it's funny, people who breed morons are after that extreme dark egg.
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They grade those eggs by color, four being the very lightest, nine being the very darkest.
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But if you take them to the farmers market and you lay them out there, people will invariably go for the number fives and number six.
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Then they will for the very, very dark eggs.
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We talked about geographical location and we talked about better type.
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We talked about calm type, but some of the breeds are better for some things than they are for others And we alluded to that a little bit.
00:03:59.167 --> 00:04:01.599
But just kind of bring us up to speed on that.
00:04:02.824 --> 00:04:12.655
Well, i personally try to steer myself towards what we consider the dual purpose breeds the chicken that's going to be a good egg layer and a good meat producer.
00:04:12.655 --> 00:04:21.480
They're not necessarily going to be outstanding either, but they can go either way And I kind of like that.
00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:29.841
So at hatch and when I'm sorting any male that's not absolutely tip top to breed with goes to freezer camp.
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I like to utilize my flock therapy their pets a little bit, but they're also food, so I like a bird that I can count on.
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I'm very passionate about, about the genetic preservation and preservation of the breed.
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I seem to get drawn into these weird little side things.
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Here's some.
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You know old English fizz and prowls.
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Yeah, you can have these for free.
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They're a little weird, they're downright insane.
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But we'll figure them out and they may stay or they may not.
00:05:05.509 --> 00:05:09.869
Yeah, i've gone through the hatchery birds.
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They were fun, they were nice, they did really well for the first 18 months And then they fell off.
00:05:16.290 --> 00:05:21.285
They went into their first mole and when they came back around their performance was horrible.
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It's hard to justify when feeds $25 for a 50-pound bag and then you count how many eggs you're getting out of the bird on her third year.
00:05:29.610 --> 00:05:36.562
It doesn't make sense to keep a third year bird unless it's a standard bred bird that you're using for breeding.
00:05:36.562 --> 00:05:43.262
If a bird made it to her third gear on my farm, she's pretty spectacular, or he is pretty spectacular.
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Excuse me, but that's one thing I want to point out about the advantage of standard bred poultry over the hatchery birds.
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Hatchery birds are not selected for longevity.
00:05:54.795 --> 00:05:58.204
Standard bred birds will go.
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I've had females seven or eight years old that I was still hatching eggs from Hatchery birds.
00:06:03.523 --> 00:06:09.420
Like you said, they hit that 18 to 24 months wall and boom, that's it.
00:06:10.843 --> 00:06:13.673
But the nice thing is it's not specific to hatchery birds.
00:06:13.673 --> 00:06:16.321
All birds will do that when they're hatched.
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You're usually going to get 18 to 24 months out of lay out of the first laycycled bird, because they don't molt during the first molting season with the rest of your flock.
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So if you always have new generations coming back behind the older birds, you can keep yourselves in eggs and just rotate them out.
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There are breeds that are not designed specifically for egg production, or specifically for meat production, or for dual purpose Breeds like Polish, you know.
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so what about ornamental breeds?
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What's your thoughts on ornamental breeding?
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That takes a lot of breeding knowledge.
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I tried crested birds our first year here.
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No single crested bird lasted more than 48 hours on open pasture.
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One of the things that we haven't touched on and I think it's important that when you're considering breeds is temperament of the birds.
00:07:12.428 --> 00:07:18.189
Nobody likes an aggressive rooster, so that's one of the things you want to evaluate temperament of the breeds.
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The best way to do that is to talk to somebody that's got them, and I'll give you an example.
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There's no secret that Rhode Island Reds are my favorite breed.
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I have never had an aggressive standard bred Rhode Island Red male ever.
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I have had Rhode Island Reds from hatcheries that would fight a chainsaw.
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If they had an opportunity, they can be extremely aggressive.
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So those are the sort of things you want to take into consideration, especially if you've got young kids or grandkids.
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That's sure It can be a traumatic event to have a bird fly up in your face, even for an adult who's used to it, And those furs are dangerous And the claws can cut.
00:08:00.552 --> 00:08:04.603
So that does bring up a good point about safety.
00:08:04.603 --> 00:08:13.612
If you have youngsters or domestic animals that aren't used to being around your fowls, Those are both directions you need to protect from them and them from your fowl.
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Correct Temperament to me that's number one.
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I will not tolerate an aggressive bird.
00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:26.387
So there is no need of whatsoever to keep an aggressive male.
00:08:26.387 --> 00:08:38.011
And if you do keep an aggressive male and you use him as a breeder, i guarantee you you're going to get a certain percentage of his sons are going to be aggressive birds, because temperament will breed forward.
00:08:38.779 --> 00:08:45.573
No, I mean, i can't in good faith breed a bird that does that, no matter how good they are.
00:08:45.573 --> 00:08:49.360
you know, i have grandkids myself, so you know.
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I just get tired of looking over my shoulder, wondering when is he going to grab me, because sooner or later it's going to happen if you got an aggressive bird.
00:08:56.570 --> 00:09:00.068
But how do we go about getting started?
00:09:01.700 --> 00:09:06.471
Well, as I mentioned, I started initially with hatchery stock.
00:09:06.471 --> 00:09:12.892
I ordered day old chicks and I ordered some hatching eggs and you know, like everybody, it was the learning process.
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Speaking of hatching, eggs.
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That's the way a lot of us get started.
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That's the way a lot of us pick up a new breeder, a new variety of hatching eggs from a friend.
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But if you've never run an incubator before, i don't recommend you start out with hatching eggs because that is a big learning curve to run learning how to run an incubator.
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That's a time and educational and financial investment.
00:09:37.662 --> 00:09:39.328
Not only that.
00:09:39.328 --> 00:09:46.660
I think you'd be better off, you know, talking with the breeder that you were thinking about maybe getting your eggs from and saying, hey, could you give me some started chicks?
00:09:48.225 --> 00:09:53.076
Some will, most won't, most only will sell.
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You're going to get their culls, adult birds, okay Okay.
00:09:56.342 --> 00:10:02.414
But the advantage of getting an adult bird is what you see is what you got.
00:10:02.414 --> 00:10:07.056
You know, with baby chicks or with eggs It's a crap shoot.
00:10:07.056 --> 00:10:09.062
You don't know how they're going to develop and turn out.
00:10:09.604 --> 00:10:11.669
But lottery 200, right, if you're lucky.
00:10:11.669 --> 00:10:26.182
Oh yeah, with adult birds, what you're holding in your hand is what that bird is going to be Now, depending on the breed, he may still be maturing size-wise, but you got an idea of the body.
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Shape is right, the comb is right, is the color right?
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You can pretty much tell.
00:10:30.192 --> 00:10:33.028
So that's an advantage to start at night.
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It's also the most expensive way to start.
00:10:36.541 --> 00:10:40.350
But all the hard work has pretty much been done in the expensive part the feed.
00:10:40.951 --> 00:10:41.832
Most folks like it.
00:10:41.832 --> 00:10:43.063
It's the expensive way to start.
00:10:43.063 --> 00:10:44.128
It's really not.
00:10:44.128 --> 00:10:45.926
You're saving yourself a lot of money.
00:10:45.926 --> 00:10:49.769
You're not having to raise 50 chicks to get five to keep.
00:10:49.769 --> 00:11:08.361
Okay, If you keep five out of 50, you got to take into account those other 45 little eating at the same time, So that you got to add that expense in So adult stock, even though they may set you back anywhere from a hundred to $300 for a trio.
00:11:08.361 --> 00:11:12.889
But it's the best way And, trust me, you'll have a lot less invested in those birds.
00:11:13.801 --> 00:11:36.791
And you're, having gone through this myself, i am easily five to 10 years ahead in my breeding program by investing upfront in the best possible quality stock I could find From a breeder in my local area who had similar goals for his flock, and they stand on the backs of other breeders before them.
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I can trace my line back 50 years.
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And I think that's important.
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I mean, some of the breeders that handle them are no longer with us.
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I can look up their show records.
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It's all in the journals.
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And if your breeder is not willing to share with you the provenance of their birds, maybe you don't want them.
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Because I think the reputable breeder, the person who's done their research and done their work over the past five, 10, 15 or 50 years, is going to have this information readily available for the person that's considering taking over their breed.
00:12:10.009 --> 00:12:19.490
Yeah, and a lot of times that that is the relationship that builds is sort of a master apprentice relationship, because I know I'm personal to my birds.
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I want to see the people that get them start off the best possible.
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So I say you know, you can benefit from my experience or you can do it your way.
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Some people choose to do it their way And they usually come back after six months or a year and say, okay, what am I doing wrong?
00:12:31.970 --> 00:12:33.846
And then we can massage the process a little bit.
00:12:35.682 --> 00:12:40.044
John, and this is something you're dealing with right now, and that's infrastructure.
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Yes, tell the folks a little bit about what they're going to need for their infrastructure.
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Well, it depends on where you're starting, but at the very minimum you're going to need some sort of a chicken coop or house to keep them out of the elements, away from predators.
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Around that, some sort of a fence.
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Usually, again, keep the chickens in and predators out.
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It's more to keep predators out than chickens in.
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On that I have a layer of electric fence, not because we're in a high predator area.
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I keep saying the word predator a lot, but that to me, is the single most thing about infrastructure is looking at ways threats to your birds can get in and ways your birds can get out.
00:13:24.090 --> 00:13:26.966
So what do you have available for buildings?
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You know, can you put up a chicken coop?
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Can you buy a chicken coop locally?
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I was able to find a really nice locally Amish built coop before COVID for a very reasonable price and they actually I was a men and I delivered it for the Amish Kind of an interesting relationship up here And then I had them build a barn for me later because I was so impressed with their work.
00:13:50.009 --> 00:13:54.687
So that was about $600 investment and that'll house about 18 birds.
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Off the front of that I saved a little money and got two 10 by 10 dog kennels, the chain link kennels, and if you assemble them in to end, you can get a 30 by 10 foot run for the birds, which is more than adequate space for that size housing 18 birds.
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30 by 10 run And then they have access to well, basically an acre on my property And when they do go over the fence and they do they can go anywhere they want in the neighborhood, where thousands of acres of unrestricted excess And folks if you're going to start with baby chicks, you're going to need a brooder or some keep them warm If they're coming out of the incubator.
00:14:33.466 --> 00:14:34.409
You got to keep them warm.
00:14:34.409 --> 00:14:36.967
You got to keep them dry food water.
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That's another learning curve.
00:14:38.764 --> 00:14:40.207
What about feeders?
00:14:40.207 --> 00:14:41.149
What about waterers?
00:14:41.149 --> 00:14:44.769
Do you have adequate feeders for the number of birds you have?
00:14:44.769 --> 00:14:51.226
We'll get into this on a later show, but for ever so many birds, you need so many inches of feeder space.
00:14:52.605 --> 00:15:02.126
Well, one of the best things I found is when you're going to have a feeder space, when the birds first get home, just lay down some newspaper and dump the food right there and put the birds right on top of the food.
00:15:02.126 --> 00:15:04.105
So they're standing ankle deep in it.
00:15:05.259 --> 00:15:09.331
Speaking of food, you're going to have to have some age appropriate feed starter.
00:15:09.331 --> 00:15:18.870
You want to feed your chick from day one to about the time they're eight weeks old And you're looking at something that's about 20 to 22% protein.
00:15:19.259 --> 00:15:21.386
And something that we're going to harp on a lot later.
00:15:21.386 --> 00:15:29.446
I'm sure is, but don't get that M medicated if you can avoid it, some areas you just have to get it.
00:15:30.299 --> 00:15:49.015
If you can avoid it, it's best not to, because you're actually pre-treating against something you probably don't need to worry about anyways, and probably folks is used to treat or not treat, but prevent coxidiosis, which is a little protozoan that gets in the intestinal lining of young birds.
00:15:49.015 --> 00:15:50.465
It can actually lead to death.
00:15:50.465 --> 00:16:00.048
but if you're not in a wet, humid area you're probably not having a huge problem with coxidiosis And we'll cover this more in a later show.
00:16:00.048 --> 00:16:05.808
but you can do the same thing by feeding them yogurt for the first four weeks of their life and what to eat.
00:16:06.580 --> 00:16:08.386
Simple concept of beneficial exclusion.
00:16:08.386 --> 00:16:18.942
Let's put some microbes deposited on their intestinal lining to fill up the void, so the coxidiosis protozoans can't attach And we don't need to worry about it.
00:16:20.299 --> 00:16:31.006
After your chicks hit that eight-wheat mark, you need to transition them over to a grower feed, which is around 18 to 20% protein, and you maintain them on grower feed until they start laying.
00:16:32.460 --> 00:16:36.889
Another thing that we kind of skipped over I think is hugely important is grit.
00:16:36.889 --> 00:16:40.768
I actually have grit in my brooder.
00:16:40.768 --> 00:16:54.830
On day one I screen it down to 1.25 of an inch because I have a little that most gardeners have for sieving their starting soil, and day one they're on the smallest gray that I can give them.
00:16:55.500 --> 00:16:57.085
Folks what John's talking about.
00:16:57.085 --> 00:17:17.573
grit is actually crushed granite And the reason you feed them that birds and just feed it goes into the crop and it gets some enzymes added to it and then it slowly works its way into the gizzard, which is that big muscle that actually grinds and helps pulverize the feed so they can absorb the nutrients in it.
00:17:18.259 --> 00:17:28.211
Birds have a beak for tearing and ripping, but they swallow their chunks whole And then the mastication happens down in the gizzard that basically the grit becomes their teeth.
00:17:28.211 --> 00:17:36.944
It would be like giving me a beautiful eight-ounce filet mignon and then making me take out my dentures and try to eat it.
00:17:37.539 --> 00:17:38.963
I always keep grit in front of you.
00:17:38.963 --> 00:17:43.866
Birds, whether it's baby chick or layers, they all be grit all the time.
00:17:43.866 --> 00:17:56.547
It comes in basically three sizes There's a size for baby chick and there's a size for growing birds, and then they transition into the layer size.
00:17:56.547 --> 00:18:04.326
You may be wondering why feed them grit if it's an insoluble material And granite is certainly insoluble.
00:18:04.326 --> 00:18:14.710
It will get worn down in the birds, gizzard and become smaller and smaller until it finally passes out through the intestines and through the poop.
00:18:14.710 --> 00:18:24.819
So that's why you always want to give them grit And don't fall into telling you that, oh hey, my birds pick up all the grit they need, free ranging.
00:18:25.761 --> 00:18:32.834
So I live in Vermont where 99% of all the grit used in the poultry industry comes from.
00:18:32.834 --> 00:18:36.469
There's a place called Northeast Material Handling down in Berry.
00:18:36.469 --> 00:18:41.586
That's called the Rock of Ages Quarry And we have some beautiful pink granite.
00:18:41.586 --> 00:18:49.808
So if you ever get that pink granite, it came down the road from us And I live on top of a pile of what we call glacial tillage.
00:18:49.808 --> 00:18:52.605
Here I don't need to buy grit.
00:18:52.605 --> 00:18:56.490
I'm one of the few people in the world that probably doesn't need to buy grit and I still do.
00:18:58.321 --> 00:19:01.669
I live basically on a sand mound here in Florida.
00:19:01.669 --> 00:19:07.989
we got, all we got is sand And we don't have any particles big enough once you get them past the chick stage.
00:19:09.460 --> 00:19:11.673
That's important too, because I didn't realize this till.
00:19:11.673 --> 00:19:23.228
We were talking with Jeff Matt a couple of weeks ago And I thought the grit basically went in and passed through with the food, but he said the larger particles stay in there until they're worn down enough to pass.
00:19:26.099 --> 00:19:31.090
So grit I like to refer to as the most underutilized supplement propulatory.
00:19:32.019 --> 00:19:37.691
It is, and it's probably the least expensive way to unlock the most amount of nutrient value from your food.
00:19:37.691 --> 00:19:42.265
Yeah, definitely more so than fermenting, and I'm making air quotes when I say ferment.
00:19:42.265 --> 00:19:58.349
I may even say it with a little disdain next time, but if we want to talk about the year I spent in a college research environment with nothing significant to report from the great fermentation experiment, we can do that.
00:20:00.700 --> 00:20:14.805
Don't forget yourself, because you're the key element in keeping poultry, and by that you need all the education you can find, because you don't know what you don't know, and when I first started I didn't know a lot.
00:20:16.288 --> 00:20:22.410
Trust me, right, right, you know I started in heritage pasture poultry at the college.
00:20:22.410 --> 00:20:25.367
We were raising meat birds to serve in the cafeteria.
00:20:25.367 --> 00:20:27.705
I didn't really know.
00:20:27.705 --> 00:20:35.849
Well, the first time I heard about the standard of perfection, somebody mentioned oh, that's covered in the SOP, and I went to the warm room to look at the bookshelf for our standard operating procedure.
00:20:36.762 --> 00:20:38.808
And I went no, no, no, that's the standard of perfection.
00:20:38.808 --> 00:20:39.844
We don't have one.
00:20:39.844 --> 00:20:47.528
But you know, they knew my military mindset and said you can use that like a standard operating procedure, because everything you need to know is in that book.
00:20:49.660 --> 00:20:51.803
So I got myself a copy of that book And they're absolutely right.
00:20:51.803 --> 00:20:57.924
The only thing I need to know is right there, written by the people who designed or built the birds in the first place.
00:20:57.924 --> 00:21:00.326
This is how to care for the bird that I built for you.
00:21:00.326 --> 00:21:02.846
It's like the owner's manual to your car.
00:21:02.846 --> 00:21:08.789
You used to be able to go get a hill Haynes, haynes or Chilton manual at the auto parts store.
00:21:08.809 --> 00:21:10.413
Yeah, you can't do that anymore.
00:21:10.413 --> 00:21:12.692
No, this is like that for your bird.
00:21:12.692 --> 00:21:23.932
This is the owner repair service manual for your bird, even if you run up against management questions or you know coop designs.
00:21:24.252 --> 00:21:26.446
Check with your local Ag Extension office.
00:21:26.446 --> 00:21:29.709
They probably got a ton of publications they can point you to.
00:21:29.709 --> 00:21:34.049
I know there's a lot of resources available online.
00:21:35.140 --> 00:21:38.390
Your local Ag agents going to have the advice that's more pertinent to your area.
00:21:38.390 --> 00:21:46.912
They're going to know what does well there, what doesn't do well, what your neighbors are being successful with or not, and be able to guide you in the right direction.
00:21:49.257 --> 00:22:02.308
I talked about information available online and there is a lot of good information online but sadly there's a lot of poor, non-trustworthy information online.
00:22:02.308 --> 00:22:12.982
There's a lot of group and they start getting off into the emotional aspect and that's not going to do you any good in learning how to keep poultry.
00:22:12.982 --> 00:22:18.125
It's hard to find a good group, but once you do, stick with it.
00:22:18.125 --> 00:22:31.605
That's why I started the poultry keepers 360 group, because I wanted to be based on scientific information, on personal experience, information that folks could trust.
00:22:33.234 --> 00:22:41.482
Being able to say I've done this and I'm here to help you get through it is hugely enabling to people as well.
00:22:42.434 --> 00:22:46.884
People find a lot of information that you can use in historical publications.
00:22:46.884 --> 00:22:55.159
These birds that we created a lot of them are just like they were in the 40s or 50s and you can go back.
00:22:55.159 --> 00:23:05.936
I love to go to a site called archiveorg and you can find hundreds of poultry publications online there.
00:23:07.315 --> 00:23:10.021
That was the heyday of what I consider citizen science.
00:23:10.021 --> 00:23:15.965
Poultry's were communicating through the monthly or by yearly breed journals.
00:23:15.965 --> 00:23:17.099
Somebody would write a letter in.
00:23:17.099 --> 00:23:21.181
It would be published and mailed out to all the other breeders that got that journal.
00:23:21.181 --> 00:23:25.365
Other people would be compelled to write back and share their findings.
00:23:25.365 --> 00:23:30.666
The whole community really raised itself up and it was a beautiful breeding ground.
00:23:30.666 --> 00:23:35.704
Excuse the pun for this sharing of knowledge and acceleration of the process.
00:23:35.704 --> 00:23:40.580
It happens online now on a lot of the online forums.
00:23:40.761 --> 00:23:52.999
You just need to be able to sift through the flotsam and the jetsam, best advice I can give you if you're on a new group, just sit back and watch and listen what's being posted.
00:23:52.999 --> 00:23:55.599
The advice is being given.
00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:57.141
If it makes sense, okay.
00:23:57.141 --> 00:24:01.638
if it throws up a red flag for you, it's like I don't know so much about that.
00:24:01.638 --> 00:24:04.903
Well, might be time to search for a new group.
00:24:05.355 --> 00:24:16.525
Well, i also tend to find that if I tend to ignore posts that have a lot of exclamation points and all capitalized words, i just go whatever it is.
00:24:16.525 --> 00:24:17.686
There's too much emotion.
00:24:17.686 --> 00:24:20.121
I probably don't even want to read it anyways.
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