Oct. 7, 2024

William Saunders On Phoenix Chickens

Show Notes
Transcript

In the Poultry Keepers Podcast, Rip Stalvey interviews William Saunders, a Phoenix poultry breeder from Florida. William shares his journey, starting at age four, and his breeding experiences over 19 years focusing on Phoenix birds.

He discusses the rewards and challenges of breeding Phoenix, including weather conditions in Florida and maintaining bird health. He outlines his breeding process, emphasizing the importance of selecting traits like leg length and feather condition, and discusses his management practices such as feeding high-protein diets and separating males and females to prevent feather picking.

William also shares his methods for maintaining bird lineage, customizing pen setups, and his participation in the American Phoenix Breeders Association. His advice to newcomers is to start with good stock and continuously learn from experienced breeders.

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WEBVTT

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Hi! Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast.

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I'm Rip Stalvey, and together with Mandelyn Royal and John Gunterman, we're your co hosts for this show, and it's our mission to help you have a happy, healthy, and productive flock.

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Joining us today is William Saunders, a breeder of phoenix.

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William is from Florida and William, thanks for being on the show with us today.

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Thanks for having me today.

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I appreciate it.

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Our pleasure very much.

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So tell us if you would, first, a little bit about yourself and how did you get started in standard bred poultry?

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I started when I was four years old, believe it or not.

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I'm 35 now went out to one of my family's farm and just came back some just chicks.

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And got started and it was addiction from the beginning and just kept breeding and breeding until eventually I hit the, probably seven, eight years old and started showing the local fairs and then tried a whole bunch of different breeds and found my breed actually I turned to Sumatras first, absolutely loved them.

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And then turned into Phoenix.

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That was probably about my sophomore year in in high school and just went full throttle into showing them and haven't quit since.

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Very good.

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How long have you been breeding Phoenix?

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I think it was about 2001 is when I originally got started.

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This would be about 19 years with just Phoenix.

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I knew it had been a while, I just didn't know exactly how long it was, but yeah, I remember seeing you run into the shows a right good long time ago showing your birds, and I can't say your birds have gotten progressively better year after year, and you've done a really good job with them.

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What do you find is the most rewarding thing about Phoenix?

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Man.

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One, I chose a project bird in the beginning, they still needed a lot of work.

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And one of the things that I really like to do is just choose, the direction I want to go and really work on to try to get them down to perfection, which the breed as a whole still has some work to do, but they've come a long way.

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Just one thing, like you just mentioned is each year, if I'm trying to breed a certain thing into them, let's just say longer legs, something I was working on and just coming back and seeing the offspring just, just make strides over the year.

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And still have the full feather and what we call the curtain in the phoenix world, just full tails.

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I'd just go out there and watch them for hours when I wanted to.

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Now that we know what you find most rewarding, what is the biggest challenge you think you face with your birds?

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I guess that can go all over the place.

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I would say maybe with the males, especially being in Florida during the summer, we get a lot of storms, we, you get the hurricanes.

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So the weather and conditioning the males can be the hardest part just because, all my pens are fully fully topped, because they have to be, but any mud or anything like that can weigh down feathers, just get them dirty, might rip feathers they need a good bit of space, otherwise the same thing, just the conditioning alone just one bad storm, one bad weekend, might ruin it, and sometimes it might be as easy as one of your breeder males is in a pen and one of the female steps on his tail and pulls it, that takes another full year to grow back.

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It's never ending.

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Sometimes with the breed, as chicks, if they don't have enough room or whatever, just, they just tend to mess those feathers up.

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That take a long time to really condition them for show ready.

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Exactly.

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I think, just a personal story here.

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One of the most embarrassing things that I have ever done at a poultry show was I was judging birds at the show in Inverness, Florida, and I had been handling some of Tony Rivers birds, and she had a male there that had an exceptionally nice and exceptionally long tail.

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And I had

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looked at him and started to put him back in the, and he wouldn't go back into the coop, and I thought, What in the world is going on?

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And I'm glad I didn't force it because I was actually standing on a couple of these sickle feathers.

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Oh, that was, I looked around real quick to make sure nobody was watching that.

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I've done before on my own farm where some of the tame ones, I'll go around feeding and sometimes maybe they're coming out of the pen or sometimes I have some that are loose and I'll accidentally step on some feathers and when they're out and you can't do anything about it.

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You've talked about it a little bit, about some of the management procedures you have to use in raising phoenix, but is there anything particular in the different stages of your birds, for example, do you do anything differently for chicks and your grow outs and your mature birds?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I have a system down just doing this long enough that works for me.

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I know everyone has their own This one they use.

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For me, what I do is I do have a bitty shed when they hatch out because weight's a big issue and our birds were trying to get bigger and Florida being so hot typically we hatch January through April, or January through April 1st, and I do a hard cut off unless I need a special batch.

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From there, they'll hatch out, they'll stay in the bitty shed for roughly about four to six weeks, and I'll keep a light on them and everything.

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I do feed them twice a day, just trying to constantly just make sure they have enough food.

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And really just maturing and getting big as fast as I can.

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From there, they graduate to above ground pins.

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Those are my chick pins slash grow out pins.

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They're above ground and give them a little bit more space, but they're not fully on the ground or anything yet.

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And that gives me a chance to have them Kind of eye height so I can constantly look at them, they can see me.

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It does, from my experience, it does help them to team down a little bit better than having'em on the ground.

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So that kind of has worked out for me.

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And same thing, if they're eye level, I can look over'em just constantly.

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'cause between that, four to six weeks and probably about the three or four months, I just constantly scan'em and see if there's anything I need to call out or something I need to change up from there.

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It depends on room and everything, but they graduate.

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to the, on the ground pin, and I know we're going to talk about that in a little bit but I do have several pins that they are 4x6x6, and I have, what, 27 of those, so I have a chicken row that they'll go into until they start really maturing, and same thing, I just separate them or cull as I need to.

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And we've talked about your basic pin setup and coupes and all that, but when it comes to conditioning, do you use a special Type of pen or special size or tell us about that if you would.

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I try to give them plenty of space is and again I'm not the best at conditioning because, man, they're a lot of work, but to leave them alone.

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A bird by itself is the best way to do it.

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Just so there's no one else that's picking on that bird, he's getting full nutrition.

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I use shavings, not hay, just because I've learned the hard way with those long tails.

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If you use hay.

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It gets knotted there and it is impossible to get out and you end up cutting its tail.

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And that's never any good, especially for your show birds.

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So that's another thing I've learned over the years is hay.

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Full roofs, that's another thing, is keep keep dry.

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These are one of the things that one, if they, they get muddy or messy or you just don't want to have to clean those tails.

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But also, wet birds are sick birds also, so I always try to do a great job to do anything I can to channel rain from getting in there.

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I'm not at the point yet one day I want to get to the point where I can do the full metal buildings and have them completely enclosed.

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But that'd be down the road when maybe I have a little bit more land and a little bit more money to upgrade my facilities a little bit better.

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Let's switch gears here and let's talk about your breeding program.

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And first, how closely related are the birds that you breed?

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Are they like brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters?

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What's your thoughts on that?

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So I have a few different lines that I've been working on.

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And again, the size has been something that I learned that I, if I get too inbred, they get smaller over the years.

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So I've learned that I have to keep bringing in new blood.

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So that's something I had to work on.

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I think it was three years ago, I brought in an amazing rooster that I picked up from one of my friends, and I set my whole breeding program around the bird, because mine were just too small at that time.

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I culled all of my males, I brought in a BB red male.

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I bred it to all my females, I got rid of that male, and started breeding from there so everything got kind of brothers and sisters and everything, I started out crossing, and then again this year, so three years of brothers and sisters, I brought in some new females, and now I'm breeding over those males that were brothers and sisters at one point, those crossings,

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so my

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BB Red, is kinda outsourced every about three years, I would say.

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Just cause I brought in I'm able to bring up the size, but then anytime you bring in new blood, there's a new set of problems that come associated with that.

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Like sometimes it's smaller things like maybe leg color.

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I want plate, and sometimes I might start getting green chick green legged chicks.

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So I have to cull all those birds, or in this example for the BB Red male I brought in, his saddle wasn't as long as I normally like, so any of those chicks that didn't have a long saddle, I would end up culling, and eventually I got where I am now, and I'm very satisfied where I am, but as always, there's the next step of something else to look for with my silver line, and I did the same thing.

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I found an amazing bird to bring up size and height of my birds a little bit.

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I'm looking for the longer legs, more of a modern phoenix style.

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It's been catchphrase, but it is phoenix.

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I'm just looking for longer legs right now.

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And I bred him to some of my hens and some of my friends hens that I brought in.

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I raised all those.

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I culled all those hens.

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I culled all those roosters.

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And I did the same thing.

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Kept all those hens and bred it to that male again.

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And third year, I finally had some offspring I was very fond of, and so I started breeding the brothers and sisters, and so this year I brought in a new line of hens because I try to always outsource to keep the size up, and so this is the first year of breeding those hens same thing, I'm seeing a little bit of color problems.

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But, I just need that weight to stay up in the show world that I'm doing everything I can to make sure that happens.

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Which has worked nicely because my hatching, hatching success is amazing because I've had over 90 percent hatch rate most of the time.

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Oh yeah, I've done great, even ship the eggs I've done, amazing.

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So I'm very happy that, I can always say I've had excellent results.

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And then my, my golden line is all over the place.

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Just because of the lines I mixed in, because if you breed BB to silver, and you cull correctly, and you get golden, you can breed those golden to golden up to three generations, what I've told, before it starts being diluted, or having problems, and then I brought in some new blood with those goldens so I got quite a variety there I can hardly even say those are brothers and sisters, those are Take care.

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That's currently one of the things that I'll be good for about two generations for me to bring a new blood again.

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Interesting.

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William, with all those different lines and managing all of that and keeping that straight, do you toe punch your chicks?

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Do you wing band them?

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What's the procedure you use so you can track who's descended from who, basically?

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That's one thing I definitely struggle on.

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One thing I have to, or I do is I do leg bands.

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Thank you.

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Which sometimes has a number and sometimes they'll use a electrical cord and I'll know whatever line it is they'll be the color red, for example, and because I siphoned through the bird so quick, most of the time, unless I'm extremely satisfied satisfied with a rooster, he's gone within three years because my bloodline has improved so much year after year.

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I'll know exactly which one they are, but for the most part I'll do special hatches where I'll know this one came from this rooster, or I'll let the moms hatch it where I know this came out of that pen, and if I need to, I do the bands leg bands, but as far as computer software or paper, I, I'm bad about that, I don't keep records, it's all it's all one of those things, I can look at the bird and I know exactly where it's from either I know what pin it is or I do have the leg bands

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to market if I need to.

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Do you let me backtrack a little bit.

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I know some breeds require some kind of unique hatching procedures.

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When you're incubating the eggs, do you do anything special for your Phoenix

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My Phoenix I've had really no problems whatsoever.

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As far as hatching, they've been absolutely great.

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Mothers have been Brody.

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As far as my incubator, I do have one of those GQ incubators.

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So it's got the, it does all the work for me.

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I just make sure I have this, the humidity's right.

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Temperature's right.

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I make sure the eggs are turning and I'm good to go, basically.

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So it made it really easy for me having such a high success, a hatch rate.

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Easy is much better.

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That's for sure.

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What

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what are the age of your chicks or your young stock when you start?

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Your culling or selection process with those.

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Are they a certain age that you try to do it by?

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Do you go by how mature the birds are?

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Or what works for you?

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It also matters what I'm looking for certain characteristics.

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Kind of maturity does matter.

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Some chicks when they're born, they might have green legs, but after one or two weeks, they turn plate, so that's been nice.

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But if it's been about a month That's the first thing I'll start culling for is legs, which for the most part, I don't have that problem after, I bred the way I do for about two years, but again, anytime I breed new lines and sometimes I do green legs, and that's the first thing I'll start culling for.

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This year again, everything's different because every year I'm looking to breed a certain direction.

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I'm fighting blue earlobes, and I, some of my best birds, especially my silvers, have been they have the blue earlobes, and this year I'm just not going to mess with it anymore.

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That's one of those things, if it's after about six weeks or so, and I see that blue earlobe I start culling those birds.

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From there, I give them a little bit longer, and then start looking for color issues.

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For example, if it's let's say a silver female and she starts getting black specks in her chest, which sometimes that can be masculine features, but I don't want those in my show birds, so I start culling those, or on some of the pullets if they start getting too much lacing in them same thing, I'm just going to start culling right away.

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The more birds I can cull younger means I can focus on my show birds and the ones I really want to get where I want to get them so it's a good thing to cull hard.

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And the harder your cull is, the better your birds will be the next year, and the better your breeding set will be anyways, from what I learned it's well worth it to cull as hard as you can because it pays off in the end.

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That is some excellent advice and not only if you're raising phoenix, but if you're raising other birds as well, and I've heard John Shryder say multiple times, as well as some other folks, if you're gonna raise good birds, you've got to learn how to be hard cullered.

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It's just, that's what it boils down to.

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We talked about your conditioning setup, your procedures for conditioning.

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Does, do you feed any kind of a special feed?

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Give them any special treatment or just the management procedures for your conditioning.

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Especially my phoenix, they have to have a lot of protein because they're shooting out those long tail feathers and it does take a lot of energy.

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So I there's a local feed store up here Hill and Dale that I absolutely love.

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27 percent quail food.

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And then I'll run up to Tract Supply and I'll mix in catfish floater which I think it's 35% protein.

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And I blend those two together I keep that as high as I can and I feed it obviously not the catfish floater, but the quail.

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I feed it from the day the chicks start and all the way to adults.

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And that's one of the things I've learned that they absolutely have to have the protein.

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Over the years, if they, if I fed anything below about a 20%, they will literally start going cannibalistic and just start pecking the feathers out of each other and it drives me insane because, of course, the best males have the best tails and those are the first ones that tend to go.

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And also, if there's any vegetables or anything that I have that go bad, I always try to get greens in there try to spread it throughout the bird.

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Anytime that's an option it's definitely one of the things that will help.

00:16:18.179 --> 00:16:18.700
Gotcha.

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Alright, you've raised your birds, you've conditioned your birds, you get to a show with your birds.

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Is there any special grooming or fitting techniques that you do when you're showing your phoenix?

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Are they different than any other breed of birds?

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It's hard for me to really tell because I've only I've done basically Sumatras and Phoenix for, man, basically the last 19 years, that's all I've had.

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I really haven't focused much on Sumatras, I've went in and out, and I'm starting to get back to those a little bit.

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Just cause I really enjoy them, but for the most part I only enjoy the Blacks.

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Which kind of gets boring to me, but I enjoy them a lot.

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But for the most part I guess what I do is, about two days before a show, after conditioning everything, choosing which ones I'm going to do I will wash them, and that's one of the things, I wouldn't, again, have their own procedures, but those tails get so long, that what I do is I get a toothbrush, and I get a five gallon bucket, and I'll put some dial soap in it, and I'll sit there and I'll scrub those tails till they're clean as I can get them.

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I'll clean their feet, trim their nails.

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Anything else that needs to be cleaned up, that's when I'll start the process, and again you don't want those birds to set them down or back in their pens or whatever when they're wet, so I keep them off the ground and let them dry in totes or whatever, carrier pins, and those will be most of the time what I've used to take them to the show, and same thing is you don't want to use normal wire with phoenix because they turn, And those little pins, and they'll mess them up right away.

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Even in show pins, they mess up their tails.

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It drives me crazy every time.

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I've had them before, because I had no one check in the night before, just to check them all in.

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And by judging time tomorrow, they'll start having almost rips in their tails just for their turning.

00:18:05.204 --> 00:18:08.134
And I always double coop my males, if that's an option for that show.

00:18:08.674 --> 00:18:14.144
But it's still just kills me as far as knowing how hard I worked and one day is all it took just to mess them up.

00:18:14.144 --> 00:18:15.464
So that's always a little aggravating.

00:18:16.265 --> 00:18:16.974
I can imagine.

00:18:16.974 --> 00:18:19.974
So it negates a lot of hard work.

00:18:20.244 --> 00:18:23.865
What advice would you have for people thinking about getting started with Phoenix?

00:18:23.865 --> 00:18:25.075
What would you tell them to do?

00:18:25.315 --> 00:18:25.684
First?

00:18:25.684 --> 00:18:27.454
I'm assuming that they're going to stick with the breed.

00:18:27.484 --> 00:18:33.325
So they've already tried a few breeds and make sure this is one that, they're really going to stick with and do their homework and everything.

00:18:33.875 --> 00:18:36.295
Once they're at that, know the standard.

00:18:36.315 --> 00:18:39.164
I always promote American Breeders Association.

00:18:39.474 --> 00:18:41.505
That is something I started a few years ago.

00:18:41.555 --> 00:18:49.105
Tony Rivers, which is one of my really good friends and a mentor her and I have traded birds back and forth and beat each other up in shows for years.

00:18:49.105 --> 00:18:52.085
We have a lot of respect and share a lot of time together.

00:18:52.085 --> 00:18:55.545
But she started the Breeders Association and that's really started to build.

00:18:56.105 --> 00:19:01.075
And I encourage those, the newbies especially, or people that are new to the breed, to join that.

00:19:01.390 --> 00:19:07.910
There's people always sharing information how to breed them, care, conditioning, feed, all kinds of things.

00:19:08.269 --> 00:19:13.779
There's a directory that for me, me, for example, people call and ask questions or whatever.

00:19:14.089 --> 00:19:17.910
I consider myself still in the learning phase because I believe you can always learn.

00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:21.440
But for people that are new, I try to point them in the right direction.

00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:26.339
The other thing is someone else has covered in one of your podcasts, but every judge is different.

00:19:26.339 --> 00:19:27.420
They see different things.

00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:40.220
But what I'll tell the newer breeders is make sure you do spend a little bit of extra money or do your homework to make sure you find the best possible breeder to find with, to start with the best birds you can possibly get.

00:19:40.779 --> 00:19:45.450
And then from there, learn and adjust and do what you need to do to make the line your own.

00:19:46.015 --> 00:19:51.365
But these people, especially someone like me, and there's a few others, have been doing it for over 10 years.

00:19:51.704 --> 00:19:56.424
Why start with stock that looks more like a game bird compared to a phoenix?

00:19:56.815 --> 00:19:57.625
Start with some of the best.

00:19:58.319 --> 00:19:59.759
And make your own line from there.

00:20:00.039 --> 00:20:01.009
Excellent advice.

00:20:01.289 --> 00:20:10.009
William, I know you're a busy guy and you've got things to do and I don't want to keep you too long, but in closing here, is there anything you would like to share with the listeners that we haven't talked about?

00:20:10.420 --> 00:20:15.839
That I can think, I know I'll definitely listen to this interview later and say I should have done this, should have said that.

00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:20.740
I would say juvenile offsprings is one of the things that I'm really fighting right now.

00:20:21.140 --> 00:20:25.470
Especially with protein and everything is I've learned to keep males and females separate.

00:20:25.759 --> 00:20:32.240
One, phoenix are probably the most outside breed as far as males to males that you can raise those often together.

00:20:32.980 --> 00:20:38.039
But they tend to raise better with the males by themselves than the females, in the group of females.

00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:48.799
Just because the females sometimes just love to pick those feathers out that it's been a hard learning experience that I've just learned, keep those separate and they do better and you're happier by doing that.

00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:52.059
That's just one of the things that just happens to come to mind as we're thinking of it.

00:20:52.859 --> 00:21:05.289
That's an excellent point because I have seen, and not just Phoenix, but I have seen females just pick on the males unmercifully and they would basically demute them in certain areas.

00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:06.750
It's pretty sad.

00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:07.559
Huh.

00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:09.670
Yes, it's so aggravating.

00:21:10.470 --> 00:21:10.829
William.

00:21:11.339 --> 00:21:18.529
Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us your passion for phoenix and how you particularly raise and manage those birds.

00:21:18.920 --> 00:21:21.859
I found it very enlightening and I'm sure our listeners will too.

00:21:21.910 --> 00:21:22.930
Thank you very much.

00:21:23.730 --> 00:21:26.329
Thank you for your time and consideration for interviewing me.

00:21:26.329 --> 00:21:26.950
I appreciate it.

00:21:27.465 --> 00:21:29.105
Thank you for joining us this week.

00:21:29.445 --> 00:21:38.596
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.

00:21:39.135 --> 00:21:46.445
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00:21:46.465 --> 00:21:48.736
com and share your thoughts about the show.

00:21:49.945 --> 00:21:53.736
Thank you again for joining us for this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast.

00:21:53.955 --> 00:21:55.566
We'll see you next week.