Jan. 15, 2024

Strategies for Growing a Strong Flock, Part 1

Have you ever wondered what it takes to amplify your poultry flock to the pinnacle of health and productivity? Let Mandolin Royal, Rips Talvi, and I, John Gunterman, guide you on a journey through the world of advanced poultry keeping. Mandolin, with her leap to managing 400 birds annually, spills the secrets on how she selects for the finest traits and the fascinating enigma of late bloomers among the roosters. We'll navigate the hurdles that come with a burgeoning flock, from stretching resources thin to the unexpected expenses, while also shining a spotlight on the nuggets of wisdom from breeders who have honed the art of a smaller, yet impeccably cultivated brood. Our episode promises a roadmap to achieving a robust and efficient flock with insights that only seasoned hands like us can offer.

Join our coop talk as we hatch strategies on breeding for genetic superiority and striking that delicate balance between the number of adult breeders versus the growing chicks. I'll unveil the art of selecting the right breed for your climate—hello, shanticleers for the cold—and share techniques that can tailor traits to your specific needs, like tweaking brooder temperatures for optimal comb size. We'll scrutinize the story of a Chanticleer rooster's struggle with a crooked toe and how it informs our breeding decisions, emphasizing the importance of staying true to breed standards and setting definitive goals for your flock. So, feather your nest with knowledge from our latest episode where we reveal that sometimes, the best things come in smaller, quality-packed batches.

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00:00 - Strong and Efficient Poultry Flock Building

07:09 - Breeding Practices and Genetic Improvement

19:39 - Importance of Breeding Towards Breed Standards

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Hi, welcome to the poultry keepers podcast.

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I'm john gunterman and, together with mandolin royal and rips talvi, where your co-hosts for the show, and is our mission to help you have a happy, healthy and productive flock.

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Developing a stronger flock takes time and effort.

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It requires us to improve our flock management skills and practices.

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Coming up will share how to do that successfully.

00:00:31.268 --> 00:00:42.134
Growing out more birds can improve your selection options and, mandolin, you've done this with your flock and you've grown out a lot of birds and a lot of selection to get to where you're at.

00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:45.042
Yeah, that was a long time coming to.

00:00:45.042 --> 00:01:05.703
I hadn't originally given that any thought, but as I started working the flock on more of a mission and coming up with our flock goals and really dive into what it meant to do the breeding, it quickly became apparent that I was going to need some more selection options to really find the desired traits that I was looking for.

00:01:05.703 --> 00:01:21.822
And the last couple years now I feel pretty comfortable at about four hundred a year and I'm not growing all four hundred of them all the way to a year old, but I'm treating it kind of like a filter and I can start making decisions as early as eight weeks.

00:01:22.043 --> 00:01:51.739
If they were a slow grower compared to some of their peers or maybe they were a little too fast and they got a little clunky, looking for what I'm looking for and one of the late developing males in the hand those are the worst, those slow developing boys that want to trick you for over twelve, fourteen weeks and they'll look every bit like a female that all of a sudden they're walking around with some saddle feathers and sickle feathers in their tail and comb starts jumping up, and then they learn to grow.

00:01:51.739 --> 00:01:54.138
My god, you're a stew pot candidate.

00:01:55.486 --> 00:01:56.031
Where'd you come from.

00:01:56.031 --> 00:01:56.495
You're going away.

00:01:58.766 --> 00:02:01.159
Thankfully it doesn't happen that often, maybe like one or two out of a hundred.

00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:15.449
But when you get numbers like that, when you're talking a couple hundred, it really does a better job of showing your percentages of your hatch results to see you can kind of Get a more accurate idea of what they're actually throwing forward.

00:02:15.449 --> 00:02:19.518
The smaller the batch, the more unreliable the data is.

00:02:19.518 --> 00:02:20.280
Like if you only hatch off 10.

00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:26.719
You're not going to get that good of a window of what's actually going on in your percentages of what's possible.

00:02:29.264 --> 00:02:32.230
I mean I'd really only be looking for one bird out of 10.

00:02:32.230 --> 00:02:36.078
I just know that the rule of 10 here applies, so much or less.

00:02:36.078 --> 00:02:44.489
If you're starting with, you know Rod genetics that have not been worked by somebody that has similar plans and skills.

00:02:44.549 --> 00:02:57.628
I forget the name of the breeder, but he was saying that he was trying to chase blue ribbons at the show and be really competitive and he got himself to where he was growing 5000 a year, looking for five birds.

00:02:57.628 --> 00:03:12.223
So he went from hundreds into thousands and I don't have the scale for that and I kind of don't want to put that much time into it either, because with every additional amount you add you're adding space, fee, time, resources, all of that.

00:03:12.223 --> 00:03:14.838
So you want to find what's comfortable for you.

00:03:15.789 --> 00:03:26.873
And numbers like that can scare a lot of people off, but you could easily have a sustainable home flock as long as you focus on a breed and don't get squirreled into.

00:03:26.873 --> 00:03:28.138
This is pretty and that's pretty.

00:03:28.849 --> 00:03:31.176
You got to do that initially to find what you like though.

00:03:31.497 --> 00:03:32.341
Made that mistake.

00:03:32.341 --> 00:03:41.877
I ordered three of this and two of that and four of these, all from a hatchery, and had a man, and they all did about the same, Fairly mediocre.

00:03:41.877 --> 00:03:50.801
It wasn't until I started getting into you know some really decent line bread heritage breeds that I went oh OK, there's an actual difference here.

00:03:51.990 --> 00:04:04.419
It's neat when you start noticing what's different though, like oh wow, same breed, night and day differences, and how they grow, how they look, how they behave, sometimes even I mean having birds that never ate snow.

00:04:04.659 --> 00:04:08.610
They never saw another bird eat snow, but they figured it out on their own.

00:04:08.610 --> 00:04:15.770
And in the winter I go out and check their water every day and it's full of really nice water and they just don't drink.

00:04:15.770 --> 00:04:19.141
They somehow learn to and prefer to eat snow than drink water.

00:04:19.810 --> 00:04:20.896
It's easy to get on the go.

00:04:22.190 --> 00:04:23.095
It's always there.

00:04:23.572 --> 00:04:25.112
It's always underfoot, that's right.

00:04:25.475 --> 00:04:28.829
Pretty much, but I don't want them to do that, because it's always underfoot.

00:04:28.829 --> 00:04:30.589
We don't want to feed our birds on the ground.

00:04:30.589 --> 00:04:34.500
I don't want them picking up snow that they may have defecated in.

00:04:35.550 --> 00:04:37.035
I agree with what we're talking about.

00:04:37.035 --> 00:04:41.158
I guess to a certain extent, the more you have, the more you can choose from.

00:04:41.158 --> 00:04:47.682
But for me, I think my breeding goals have been for a good while.

00:04:47.682 --> 00:05:02.858
Now that I want to refine my flock, I want to concentrate the good qualities, I want to eliminate those bad qualities, and the more I can refine the flock, I found that the fewer birds I had to raise to get the good ones.

00:05:03.790 --> 00:05:09.918
You know you're on to something when you only have to hatch off 25 or 50 and that gives you everything you need the next season.

00:05:10.711 --> 00:05:15.934
Yeah, there was an old red breeder in Kentucky, leroy Jones Leroy.

00:05:15.934 --> 00:05:23.055
He was hard to impossible to beat at a show and I asked him one time.

00:05:23.055 --> 00:05:26.225
I said, mr Jones, how many red bannums do you raise?

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He said I'll let two hens set a year.

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That's all he raised.

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It's all he needs.

00:05:31.149 --> 00:05:33.345
Well, if you've heard it, all that good.

00:05:33.386 --> 00:05:34.029
it's all you need, that's right.

00:05:34.589 --> 00:05:37.069
But you know, mandy, you were also talking about scale.

00:05:37.069 --> 00:05:41.730
It's easy to think, oh, there's an egg, I need to hatch it.

00:05:41.730 --> 00:05:47.829
You can get carried away big time and you're wind up against the wall of limiting factors.

00:05:47.829 --> 00:05:53.843
Infrastructure is one, but probably the biggest one is financial resources.

00:05:53.843 --> 00:05:55.709
The feed's not cheap, not the good feed.

00:05:57.298 --> 00:05:59.649
And good feed isn't cheap and cheap feed isn't good, very true.

00:05:59.649 --> 00:06:06.862
So getting some really good genetic stock to start with and then make your selection from there.

00:06:06.862 --> 00:06:30.769
One of my goals is to have what I consider a homestead size, self-sustaining flock, and I think you should be able to do that with three roots, three roosters, nine hens and hatching, you know, setting 100 eggs a year, you should be able to hatch out replacements for that core group and have enough to sell off, have enough to fill the freezer.

00:06:30.769 --> 00:06:34.461
To me that's about a minimum, sustainable flock size.

00:06:35.232 --> 00:06:36.898
That's about 50 birds into the freezer.

00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:41.389
Yeah, I think the first year we're starting out with a breeding program.

00:06:41.389 --> 00:06:49.377
There are some definite advantages to hatch and raise as many as you can efficiently, effectively and financially.

00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:52.269
Yes, and keep only your very, very best.

00:06:52.269 --> 00:07:07.201
And that way you're not forced into keeping less than the absolute best, if you go into it with the mindset of you know 50 of these hundred eggs that I'm setting are going to be meat in the freezer or sold to layers to my neighbors.

00:07:07.201 --> 00:07:08.324
It's a good mindset.

00:07:09.351 --> 00:07:23.764
And I try to have my space figured out to where 30% of the space is for maintaining the adults and 70% of the space is for growouts, and I look forward to that time of year coming into winter when 70% of the space is empty.

00:07:24.891 --> 00:07:26.399
I think that's a good policy.

00:07:27.572 --> 00:07:40.925
It reduces the winter chore load too, because if you try to do it from a profitability angle and all of your space is dedicated to birds in production, where are you going to grow your other ones out to?

00:07:41.007 --> 00:07:44.841
replace those birds, how are you going to get your flock progress and your improvements?

00:07:44.841 --> 00:07:52.519
And then how are you going to learn the genetics you have through seeing the range of what they are breeding forward?

00:07:52.519 --> 00:08:04.144
So if you tilt it to have way more grow out space than keep your adult breeder space, you'll you'll learn a lot more about your genetics and what you have by doing it that way.

00:08:04.951 --> 00:08:15.416
I think, when we fool ourselves into believing we've got to have a lot of breeders, we need to sit down and truly evaluate the quality of the birds that we have.

00:08:15.416 --> 00:08:20.656
It shouldn't take a lot of breeders to move your breed and your goals forward.

00:08:21.065 --> 00:08:23.093
Yeah, I'm coming to terms with that.

00:08:23.786 --> 00:08:29.173
But that also requires controlled breeding methods, which we're going to get to in just a little bit.

00:08:29.545 --> 00:08:32.068
Oh sure it does, folks.

00:08:32.068 --> 00:08:33.894
Mediocre birds are a dime a dozen.

00:08:33.894 --> 00:08:39.655
You can find those anywhere, but quality is harder to find and it costs you more.

00:08:39.655 --> 00:08:43.575
But it pays real major dividends in the long run.

00:08:44.767 --> 00:08:48.892
Shaves years off your hunt to get established, then going in blind.

00:08:50.186 --> 00:08:57.293
Yeah, you won't have to worry about having to grow out 5,000 of them looking for a showbird If you just start with something decent.

00:08:58.066 --> 00:09:04.077
That involves doing your research on a breed that's appropriate for your area.

00:09:04.077 --> 00:09:05.330
Let's start with there first.

00:09:05.330 --> 00:09:08.113
I had to go with shanticleers, no combs and wattles.

00:09:08.113 --> 00:09:11.274
We're on the second highest peak in Vermont.

00:09:11.274 --> 00:09:12.912
It gets cold, windy here.

00:09:12.912 --> 00:09:17.956
My birds get wind frostbite badly.

00:09:17.956 --> 00:09:23.296
They wouldn't do so well in Arizona or Texas or high desert.

00:09:23.417 --> 00:09:23.798
It does.

00:09:24.024 --> 00:09:37.232
Yeah, the only other way they have to shed excess heat is through respiration, so it's not good for them, whereas a bird with really big combs and wattles would probably be more appropriate for that area.

00:09:37.232 --> 00:09:42.176
So I often see people fall in love with a breed that's not appropriate for where they live.

00:09:43.365 --> 00:09:49.975
Well, there's some breeding work you can do for adaptability, but it's not going to be in that first generation.

00:09:49.975 --> 00:09:55.052
They'll have to get through a couple of winners to see the environmental changes that can also come into play.

00:09:55.785 --> 00:10:11.456
But RIP turned me on to a fun little thing where we can shrink, combsize by dropping brooder temperature after the first week A few degrees more than we normally would, and I'm fine with that because it shaves a few degrees or a few pennies off my electric bill.

00:10:12.186 --> 00:10:14.173
And I found that to be very true as well.

00:10:14.173 --> 00:10:19.977
You can see it in natural environment too, with your summer grown chicks versus winter grown chicks.

00:10:19.977 --> 00:10:21.309
It'll show then too.

00:10:21.309 --> 00:10:32.404
But you can definitely do that artificially by playing around with your settings and just watch their language and how they're behaving in the brooder to know if they're at a comfortable temperature or not.

00:10:32.404 --> 00:10:37.812
If you hear that distress call and they're all huddled up, then it's probably too cool for them.

00:10:37.812 --> 00:10:44.494
But if they're well spaced out and they're not complaining about it, don't give them any more heat than what they're getting.

00:10:45.186 --> 00:10:47.432
I start out my day old chicks.

00:10:47.432 --> 00:10:52.196
Most of the brooder manufacturers recommend 95 degrees.

00:10:52.196 --> 00:10:57.495
I start mine at 90 and then drop it five degrees every week.

00:10:57.495 --> 00:11:02.995
But, like like Manny said, I do pay attention to what the chicks are telling me.

00:11:02.995 --> 00:11:05.465
You know, are they all huddled up like they're cold?

00:11:05.465 --> 00:11:07.085
Well, raise the temperature a little bit.

00:11:07.886 --> 00:11:10.274
Nine times three, ten, the birds will tell you what they need.

00:11:10.615 --> 00:11:11.177
Yes, they will.

00:11:12.105 --> 00:11:22.739
I started at 95 and I can drop a degree a day over three weeks and it gets me right where, at three weeks, they're out into the real world regardless of temperature.

00:11:23.946 --> 00:11:38.658
In the spring and summer, when we start getting to where the overnight lows aren't too terrible, like in the 50s, 60s or so, I have a bad habit of pulling their heat totally as soon as they have just enough feathers to cover themselves, at about like five weeks old or so.

00:11:39.046 --> 00:11:40.631
They can self-regulate at three weeks.

00:11:40.631 --> 00:11:44.956
It costs you a little bit more in feed, but I believe you're going to have a healthier bird.

00:11:45.826 --> 00:11:50.774
Well, when they start gathering their own heat at two weeks, they just don't have the feathers to hold that heat in.

00:11:51.946 --> 00:12:04.524
You tease me about the fluff on my shanticleers, but that's something that I actually select for and bred for, because it's six degrees outside right now here.

00:12:04.745 --> 00:12:06.192
Yeah, it just makes them snuggly.

00:12:07.625 --> 00:12:12.052
Yeah, fluffy, I'm not fat, I'm fluffy so.

00:12:12.052 --> 00:12:12.903
But how do you get there?

00:12:12.903 --> 00:12:14.205
That's always the thing.

00:12:14.205 --> 00:12:16.413
People, you know where do you start and how do you get there.

00:12:16.413 --> 00:12:20.274
We already could cover, you know, find the best stock you can.

00:12:20.274 --> 00:12:28.196
You know, looking trade publications, apa journals, ask Around Online and some of the more advanced groups.

00:12:29.245 --> 00:12:36.049
John, one of the biggest mistakes I see folks make is they try to grow their flock too fast.

00:12:36.049 --> 00:12:42.001
It's going to take you time to learn specifics about your breed or your variety.

00:12:42.001 --> 00:12:58.643
To sort through all those birds that are Genuinely worth keeping are those birds that would be best not used in the breeding program, and for me, a Slow, steady growth will get you where you want to go, faster than a fast growth.

00:12:58.643 --> 00:13:00.715
Mandy's making faces.

00:13:00.774 --> 00:13:06.477
I don't know whether she's Well, I like to accelerate it just a smidge.

00:13:06.477 --> 00:13:14.111
Get my free bird birds at 14, 15, 16, 18 weeks old, some she's been heard away, oh.

00:13:14.111 --> 00:13:19.282
Yeah, I love playing the genetic lottery that is so intriguing to me.

00:13:20.111 --> 00:13:27.416
But your situation is, you had to pretty much because you had such a very Shallow gene pool to start with and select from.

00:13:27.416 --> 00:13:33.374
So you had to open up the doors box to find out what was hiding in there, then filter down.

00:13:34.691 --> 00:13:37.539
Point where it was too much, too fast and I had to step it back.

00:13:37.539 --> 00:13:44.375
And that took Four generations to hit a wall of it just being too much.

00:13:44.375 --> 00:13:58.009
And it changed the birds to when they were getting clonkier and the bones were thickening up, and for their breed it's not desirable to have big, thick bones, and that was changing the growth rate too and I didn't want to go in a different direction.

00:13:58.009 --> 00:14:07.339
So I scaled it back and found the comfortable size that worked with the genetics, without getting into funky territory.

00:14:07.940 --> 00:14:15.758
Yeah, well, you touched on one of our points that was coming up is Ultimately, your goal is to remove the undesirable characteristics from your flock.

00:14:15.758 --> 00:14:19.345
Yeah, overall, you strengthen the good qualities by doing that.

00:14:20.410 --> 00:14:31.673
Correct and I had a lot of stuff to Sort out, everything from slip wing and knock knees and keels that weren't shaped quite right before I even got into Body structure.

00:14:31.673 --> 00:14:53.450
First I had to go through Looking for defects and clean that up before I could get serious about anything else, so I was a okay with fast growth to get them in the freezer sooner you know, john, you talked about strengthening the good qualities and Working to eliminate the bad qualities, and there's some breeding procedures, breeding practices that work real good for that.

00:14:53.711 --> 00:14:56.320
There's some that don't work, so good for that right.

00:14:57.010 --> 00:15:01.429
And unfortunately, the ones that work best have picked up a somewhat bad reputation.

00:15:01.429 --> 00:15:08.384
Just oh, they have and that, unfortunately, it's quite the opposite it is the most powerful tool a breeder can use.

00:15:09.590 --> 00:15:10.071
Absolutely.

00:15:10.071 --> 00:15:20.620
You can say line breeding to people or in breeding to people and they just Come back at you with this shock, dumbfounded look on your face that you would even suggest such a thing.

00:15:20.620 --> 00:15:24.899
But Breeding mammals is a lot different than breeding chickens.

00:15:26.111 --> 00:15:28.416
It's just totally flip-flopped around.

00:15:28.416 --> 00:16:01.562
You can do things with chickens that you can't do with hogs or cattle, but line breeding has really been the tool that most successful breeders have used to build a very strong flock, and line breeding is nothing more than breeding together loosely related individuals, where in breeding is breeding together Very closely related individuals like father to daughter or mother to son or brothers to sister.

00:16:01.562 --> 00:16:02.625
Even I've done that before.

00:16:03.831 --> 00:16:11.274
Yeah, that's a powerful tool to figure out what's hiding in the genetics that you want to see and remove it's.

00:16:11.274 --> 00:16:13.182
Who said that?

00:16:13.182 --> 00:16:13.950
Kirby Jackson.

00:16:13.950 --> 00:16:21.937
He's been one of my mentors for a while and he really knows his genetic ABC's and all those little details.

00:16:21.937 --> 00:16:33.461
And he said if you really want to know what recessive Defects are hiding within a bloodline, go ahead and breed full siblings together and that'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the work you need to do with them.

00:16:34.371 --> 00:16:37.076
It's a magnifier for good and bad.

00:16:38.010 --> 00:16:39.456
Well, it's a choice you have to make.

00:16:39.456 --> 00:16:52.764
So if you rely on Bloodline crosses to keep vigor and stuff up high, you're also creating a Higher rate of variables in a bigger range of genetic expression and you're not going to get consistency.

00:16:52.764 --> 00:17:05.049
But on the flip side, if you really want to get in there and dig deep and scrub the genetics and get consistent and get those cookie cutter results and you're gonna have to breed with a tight method.

00:17:05.049 --> 00:17:10.028
But the caveat to that is you can't use inferior birds to do it.

00:17:10.048 --> 00:17:19.983
I Think a dozen Birds can do that for a home flock because you have the ability to line breed or in breed.

00:17:19.983 --> 00:17:23.557
You can go either direction with what you have.

00:17:23.557 --> 00:17:24.298
I think it's a.

00:17:24.298 --> 00:17:27.503
It's a good base number and you can easily grow from there.

00:17:27.503 --> 00:17:29.353
You know I surge up.

00:17:29.353 --> 00:17:36.315
You know I try to hatch out Well, last year was a light year, it was 200 and Sell them off.

00:17:36.315 --> 00:17:37.844
That was just a fulfill orders.

00:17:37.844 --> 00:17:38.809
I'm not doing that again.

00:17:39.971 --> 00:17:45.804
You know, we talked about the good aspects of line breeding and inbreeding and what it can do for you.

00:17:45.804 --> 00:18:12.019
There is a method that doesn't really work all that well to help you improve your flock and that's what most folks do and what's been done forever, it seems like, and that's flock mating, where you use multiple females and multiple males all in the same pen, and the problem with that is you don't really know which male and female produced which chick.

00:18:13.333 --> 00:18:26.578
And even if you saw a particular rooster with a particular hand and you collected her egg the next day, you can't be sure that that rooster sired an egg, because it could come from multiple donors in the same hand.

00:18:27.692 --> 00:18:51.400
You know I'm sitting here thinking as we're talking and for me and you're not going to know this right away it's going to take some time to develop this knack, but if you're looking at your birds and you're studying your flock, they're going to tell you whether the flock is ready for line breeding or end breeding, or whether maybe just back up a little bit and go back to flock mating for a season or two.

00:18:51.400 --> 00:18:56.701
To me that's the mark of a good breeder is knowing when to use what techniques in the breeding pen.

00:18:57.550 --> 00:19:16.678
Right, because the birds will tell you and I like to think of flock mating as almost maintenance and you can use those offspring to let you know if they're actually expressing with a general decent result or if you're seeing stuff you still need to work on.

00:19:16.678 --> 00:19:30.721
So, depending on what you're seeing that you need to call for, if you're having to call too many for the same thing, it's absolutely worth figuring out who's throwing that so you can pull them out and replace them with better offspring.

00:19:30.721 --> 00:19:37.864
But it's going to be pair mating that really tells you what each individual bird brings to the table.

00:19:39.070 --> 00:19:45.278
I think Mandy, one of the Chanticleer rooster that I brought to you, he's got a crooked second left toe.

00:19:45.990 --> 00:19:47.617
Both of his front toes are bent.

00:19:47.617 --> 00:19:49.474
Okay yeah, that was a.

00:19:49.474 --> 00:19:49.634
Thing.

00:19:50.931 --> 00:19:58.403
That was a thing, though, and I know which rooster he came from, and he's not in the line anymore.

00:19:59.550 --> 00:20:04.619
Well, and I didn't put him with my best girls, but I put him with five perfectly serviceable females.

00:20:04.619 --> 00:20:11.096
And rather than pair mate, I want to see the initial range of what that hybrid is going to do.

00:20:11.096 --> 00:20:15.140
So I am going to flock, breed those just to see.

00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:16.710
I want to see the range.

00:20:16.710 --> 00:20:27.430
I want to see the variables and options and what percentages I get for which traits, how many of them are meaty, and then from there figure out if it's worth pair mating based on those initial results.

00:20:28.936 --> 00:20:29.621
But for now.

00:20:29.621 --> 00:20:31.249
I just want to see I'll get you better.

00:20:31.249 --> 00:20:31.509
He's a call.

00:20:31.509 --> 00:20:33.430
Keep an eye out for that crooked toe though.

00:20:35.058 --> 00:20:36.309
Oh, for sure, because all the girls have great feet.

00:20:37.615 --> 00:20:39.910
You know it's a common flaw, I think whether I got rid of now.

00:20:41.333 --> 00:20:44.663
And I'll see the prevalence of how he throws that forward.

00:20:44.663 --> 00:20:46.038
I got a question for Mandy.

00:20:46.199 --> 00:20:46.945
Let's play Punnett.

00:20:46.965 --> 00:20:47.348
Square Bingo.

00:20:48.291 --> 00:20:51.340
And I know you're experiencing this in breasts right now.

00:20:51.340 --> 00:20:54.730
It's just not limited to breast, Either folks.

00:20:54.730 --> 00:21:04.109
I've seen it in a lot of breeds where people want to change a breed to suit what they wanted a bird.

00:21:04.109 --> 00:21:06.728
You see any dangers in doing that, Mandy.

00:21:07.601 --> 00:21:20.180
Yeah, because if you get too tunneled into that mindset, you might find yourself with birds that are so far outside of their breed standard that they don't look the part, they don't act the way they should.

00:21:20.180 --> 00:21:33.188
What you want to do when you're working with a particular variety hopefully you pick that variety because you like a description of what they should be and that's what you breed towards.

00:21:33.188 --> 00:21:43.999
To pick up some birds and start making them what they're not supposed to be, that can be problematic and it's going to absolutely affect your future potential.

00:21:43.999 --> 00:21:48.828
If you're trying to market those birds, do they reflect what they're supposed to be?

00:21:48.828 --> 00:21:54.183
Once you start changing them, you kind of got to start thinking about well, what am I going to call them now?

00:21:54.183 --> 00:21:57.220
Because they're not what they were.

00:21:57.280 --> 00:21:59.220
They're not what they were.

00:21:59.220 --> 00:22:01.138
They're not what they were.

00:22:01.138 --> 00:22:11.667
And that's what I have seen, where people get so focused on one particular aspect of the breed they're working with Maybe it's size, maybe it's growth rate.

00:22:11.667 --> 00:22:14.098
Maybe, it's eggshell color.

00:22:14.098 --> 00:22:16.047
Pick whatever reason you want.

00:22:17.067 --> 00:22:31.249
Yeah, and the birds change dramatically If we lose the ability to focus on the overall bird we're not doing that breed any favors better than how you found them Without changing them away from what they were supposed to be.

00:22:31.249 --> 00:22:39.607
When you get on the internet and you read about a variety, they're supposed to get to this size, like this color egg, be broody or not.

00:22:39.607 --> 00:22:45.705
There's a little list of expectations and once you start deviating from that, you don't have the same bird anymore.

00:22:45.705 --> 00:22:48.667
I'm not convinced it should still be called that breed.

00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:51.118
You're probably right.

00:22:51.339 --> 00:22:57.170
It either conforms to the standard or it doesn't, and if you're not, then it doesn't really matter.

00:22:57.170 --> 00:22:59.808
Do whatever you want, I guess.

00:23:01.083 --> 00:23:05.969
Well, you may as well go down the crazy rabbit hole of hybridizing and messing around that way.

00:23:05.969 --> 00:23:11.207
I learned so much by goofing off with yeah, but we've got the owner's manual.

00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:13.304
We've got the tune-up manual.

00:23:13.304 --> 00:23:17.250
In the old auto days it used to be the Haynes or the Chilton manuals.

00:23:17.250 --> 00:23:21.130
You got at the Auto Part Store along with a socket set and you could fix anything in your car.

00:23:21.130 --> 00:23:25.785
And the APA does this standard of perfection, which is pretty much the same thing for us.

00:23:25.785 --> 00:23:28.304
Yeah, If you know how to read it and apply it.

00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:30.564
That's our next episode.

00:23:30.564 --> 00:23:31.688
That's not this episode.

00:23:31.688 --> 00:23:34.098
I know I've got to throw the bait out there.

00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:35.304
He's getting ahead of himself.

00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:41.027
I know it's going to be exciting to talk about that one, because I've been I want to get ripped-repped up.

00:23:41.027 --> 00:23:47.118
I have a couple of questions about some of the terms in that breed standard That'll be interesting.

00:23:47.220 --> 00:23:51.443
So having goals and birds that can fit those goals is a good place to start.

00:23:51.443 --> 00:23:59.786
Thank you, read selection and, okay, buy the best starter stock, eggs or trios.

00:23:59.786 --> 00:24:02.488
We've covered that a little bit earlier.

00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:17.548
I think another thing that most folks don't do enough is I like to try to sit back and reflect on the birds that I have and compare them mentally to the birds that I started with.

00:24:17.548 --> 00:24:28.130
And if you can't see progress year after year after year now, folks, when I mean progress, you're not going to make giant leaps forward.

00:24:28.130 --> 00:24:35.645
It's going to be small steps at a time, so you should see slow and steady progress in your flock from year to year to year.

00:24:35.645 --> 00:24:39.569
If you do, it lets you know you're on the right track.

00:24:39.569 --> 00:24:48.220
If you don't, if you go okay, this year I got good birds and then it took me three more years to get a second improvement on it.

00:24:48.220 --> 00:24:55.688
I did not go back and evaluate my breeding techniques, my individual birds, my management practices and style everything.

00:24:56.781 --> 00:25:21.009
I like to keep picture files so I can go back and look at where I've been that way and then go out to the barn and look at what I have and then, like you said, this time of year before the breeding season, I'm out there every day doing chores and I'll take a couple of minutes and stare at a pen and when I come back inside I might dig into my picture files and look at.

00:25:21.009 --> 00:25:25.220
There's this one bird I had probably six years ago.

00:25:25.220 --> 00:25:31.200
His tail was so crazy long and sticking straight out and thin and his angles were wonky.

00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:44.665
His comb was terrible but he was so meaty that I used him for breeding and I have gained distance from that bird and I haven't seen a tail like his since, which is great.

00:25:46.227 --> 00:25:48.220
I'm trying to change tail angle too quickly.

00:25:48.220 --> 00:25:52.826
I lost some body capacity, a degree or two per year.

00:25:52.826 --> 00:25:56.130
Let's not jump from 45 to 40.

00:25:56.130 --> 00:25:57.484
Let's not try.

00:25:57.484 --> 00:25:59.063
I don't think.

00:26:00.220 --> 00:26:01.705
What is it that Rip had said?

00:26:01.705 --> 00:26:04.646
Don't use two extremes to try to find a balance.

00:26:04.646 --> 00:26:05.249
Correctness.

00:26:06.220 --> 00:26:06.721
Absolutely.

00:26:06.721 --> 00:26:10.868
That's the whole key to corrective mating.

00:26:10.868 --> 00:26:13.467
I've seen so many times folks will.

00:26:13.467 --> 00:26:19.384
Let's talk about Use John's example of tail angles, and I'll pick on Reds.

00:26:19.384 --> 00:26:35.086
Males should have an angle on their tail of 20 degrees, and if somebody's got some that are taller than that, well then, their philosophy is to use females that have a perfectly flat back or even drop their tail a little bit.

00:26:35.086 --> 00:26:37.200
All that's going to do is give you extremes.

00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:58.989
Thank you for joining us this week and before you go, make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they're released and they're released every Tuesday and if you're enjoying this podcast, we'd like to ask you to drop us an email at poultrykeeperspodcast at gmailcom and share your thoughts about the show.

00:26:58.989 --> 00:27:03.846
So thank you again for joining us for this episode of the poultrykeepers podcast.

00:27:03.846 --> 00:27:05.564
We'll see you next week.