The Poultry Keepers Guide to Advanced Flock Management, Part 1
Jan 02, 2024Season 2Episode 27
Rip Stalvey, John Gunterman, and Mandelyn Royal
Embark on a journey through the art of culling and flock management with us—Mandolin Royal, Rip Stalvey, and John Gunterman—as we share our tried-and-true strategies for ensuring the vitality of your chickens. Discover the transformative power of selective breeding and the meticulous care it takes to cultivate a flock that's not just surviving, but thriving. We delve into the tough choices of which birds to cull, and how traits like comb size, laying patterns, and even the enthusiasm a chicken shows for foraging can be vital indicators of a bird's place in the pecking order of your farm's future.
Ever wondered how to discern the subtle hints that your chickens are flourishing, or how to aid them in recovery during molting seasons? Our discussion takes you into the heart of chicken behavior, revealing the connection between vibrant combs, dynamic flock interactions, and overall health. We'll guide you through the less glamorous yet essential aspects of poultry processing, from meticulously evaluating meat quality to understanding the genetic importance of a bird's resilience. Join us, as we offer actionable advice that fosters a robust and sustainable chicken community, ensuring your poultry passion pays off in health, happiness, and productivity.
Embark on a journey through the art of culling and flock management with us—Mandolin Royal, Rip Stalvey, and John Gunterman—as we share our tried-and-true strategies for ensuring the vitality of your chickens. Discover the transformative power of selective breeding and the meticulous care it takes to cultivate a flock that's not just surviving, but thriving. We delve into the tough choices of which birds to cull, and how traits like comb size, laying patterns, and even the enthusiasm a chicken shows for foraging can be vital indicators of a bird's place in the pecking order of your farm's future.
Ever wondered how to discern the subtle hints that your chickens are flourishing, or how to aid them in recovery during molting seasons? Our discussion takes you into the heart of chicken behavior, revealing the connection between vibrant combs, dynamic flock interactions, and overall health. We'll guide you through the less glamorous yet essential aspects of poultry processing, from meticulously evaluating meat quality to understanding the genetic importance of a bird's resilience. Join us, as we offer actionable advice that fosters a robust and sustainable chicken community, ensuring your poultry passion pays off in health, happiness, and productivity.
Hi and welcome to the Poultry Keepers podcast. I'm Mandolin Royall and I'm here together with Rip Stalvey and John Gunterman, and we're your co-host for this show, and it's our mission to help you have happy, healthy and a productive flock. We're going to be talking about some pretty tasteful options for your flock, because did you know that one way to call your birds is to invite them to the dinner table Just ahead? We're going to talk about how eating your birds is a tasty calling incentive.
Speaker 2:
How do you identify your call hands and what's your criteria?
Speaker 1:
Well, for me it varies based on their age and what I'm shopping through.
Speaker 1:
So, for example, if I have 40 pellets coming up on point of lay, I'm looking for early matures that start laying too soon.
Speaker 1:
Those are a call for me because they're probably not going to make weight. There's a bit of a balancing act there between getting started when they should average for chickens I'd say that's about 22, 24 weeks old but some of mine want to get started at 18 weeks and I need them to be five pounds. If they're going to do that, chances are at 18 weeks they're not going to make the threshold for weight. But then as they go through their laying, I'm looking at the regularity, the time of day when their egg size comes up, and so, out of the original group, that list of keepers will systematically get shorter and shorter as time goes on, and I keep that selection pressure on them all the way until two years old, waiting on those prime hatching eggs that come from the older year and a half two year old birds, because they've survived everything they needed to survive and they were also excellent producers over their first year of active laying.
Speaker 2:
That's when you get into the good stuff They've proven themselves. Yeah. And by the time you look at it, you're all in that. There's a couple of good tour gates in there, but coal doesn't necessarily mean, kill Early layers you could sell off to a backyard for flock. They'd be perfectly serviceable for folks like that. So I like those birds.
Speaker 1:
If they leave the farm, I want them to go to where there is not a male in residence. I'd prefer that they go to the urban flocks, where they're not going to be hatching or breeding from those birds that I call it out.
Speaker 3:
Let me throw this out there don't, and I may be all wet here, and it won't be the first time in my life, but to me, a lot of culling depends on what my flock goals are, and they can vary from year to year. With me, I may be wanting to focus on improved body length one year, and so my culling decisions are based on the birds that meet the general requirements and we'll get into those a little bit but also the specific of my birds that I'm working with. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:
I had to think back through a lot of hindsight that I've gained and I did have a bad habit of trying to select for too much at one time and you got to kind of slow it down a little bit. Oh, it'll kill you.
Speaker 3:
You know, if you try to correct more than one, maybe two things a year, you're setting yourself up for failure right off the bat. That's probably how I've almost called myself out of a flock twice.
Speaker 1:
now That'll do it.
Speaker 3:
Let's talk about what are some of the outward visual cues we can get from our birds that say hey, this might be a bird that I want to pass on for this year. For me, it's anything that lacks condition or fleshing, but that's because we're a table.
Speaker 1:
I'm looking for a bird. That's not a bird, we're a table.
Speaker 2:
I'm looking for the birds that jump down off the roost and actually run past the feeder in the morning and go out and start foraging on their own.
Speaker 1:
Rangeability is important too.
Speaker 3:
That really speaks to bigger to me. Those birds who lack bigger are not going to be the ones doing that, at least not in my experience, no, and also just looking, watching them, observing my birds.
Speaker 2:
If I have four or five birds out in the field just fucking around and say one of them has kind of a dirty vent and I have to wash it more than once in her lifetime and everybody else doesn't have that same problem, for some reason I maybe don't want those genes around.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, any bird that needs extra anything. They tend to drop out of selection as well here because you don't want to have a needy flock that needs to have. What do some people do they do like twice yearly blanket warmings to prevent some poopy butts, yeah, or they'll blanket treat for coxidia the entire flock and you got to stay away from that blanket treatment.
Speaker 2:
I want birds. That and the word is sustainable. They don't depend on me to breed forward true and healthy and be vigorous. They could potentially go three or four years without any human intervention if they needed to.
Speaker 1:
My grandmother had a 12 year old hen that was still laying these teeny tiny little Robin's egg size eggs. But 12 years old, she was still laying them.
Speaker 2:
And I bet you those genetics I mean they're certainly not going to change that are in there. Getting it fertilized is another thing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, when that hen was two or three years old, that would have been prime breeding for her. For that individual bird, and looking at it on the individual basis and then lumping it into the flock averages, getting to where you have consistent data to know what's happening in the big picture, but then the small picture of each individual to seems to make a pretty good difference.
Speaker 2:
Well, I think a lot of it is knowing your flock and you're always comparing your birds against themselves, not against other people's birds and birds in magazines. You've got your standard of perfection and you've got your goals in mind and when I look out at a group of a dozen hens, I can go no, no, yes, yes, definitely. Maybe you know, especially if I'm handling them a lot. You know you're. The way you describe the fleshing elements is great, so I'm going to throw you into the bus for that.
Speaker 1:
Well, when you get your hands on them, they ought to feel like a good meaty.
Speaker 2:
I could eat the bird sort of I pick them up and I go you're a chunker or you're not. I'm going to have fun taking you apart to cook or serve or no. Now on our little For me that pelvic structure is huge because I have big hands and I have to wear rubber gloves when I'm processing and I'm tired of cutting gloves and I'm tired of cutting my hands when I'm eviscerating. So I'm naturally going to select for that body cavity spacing between those bones.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a very important aspect because it ties in with the laying too. When they start getting to the larger size eggs, you want them to be able to lay them with ease. They shouldn't struggle. They should just pop in the nest box, sit down, squeeze that egg out and then go back to chickening.
Speaker 2:
Come out, give their little eggsong, tell all their friends they found a cool place and they should do it over there. And then they're gone.
Speaker 1:
My boys like to jump in and sit in the nest box, and they will start singing the eggsong too, and then they'll make a giant fuss over their selected spot, where they want the girls to lay. Sometimes it's where I want them to be, and sometimes it's something they thought of on their own.
Speaker 2:
It's that 300 gallon kettle waterer that we turned into a raised bed planter in the front yard usually not in the nest box.
Speaker 1:
Well, it's got the right elevation, the right soil consistency.
Speaker 2:
They can nest in on it On the other side of two different fences.
Speaker 1:
Do they never bury their eggs?
Speaker 2:
No, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1:
Some of mine will start to bury them to prevent me from finding them, maybe, but we have very gravelly soil, so that could be part of it.
Speaker 2:
They really can't dig.
Speaker 1:
But some of the other visual cues that's on our little list here. Like rip is big into aesthetic details so he'll start looking at combs and stuff and I was able to put that off for a couple of years while I worked on some other things. But when you are sitting and evaluating and looking at them, those little details of the standard traits of what makes a pretty and correct bird, you can use that for a point to call off of one season, Because just one season can really make a big difference in combs and tails, wingseds, little things like that, and it affects a lot in one season by making that the focus.
Speaker 3:
Mandy, that's really not where I was going with that, but you've done good anyway. Now, what I was thinking about is when I look at a bird let's say I've got a pin full of hens I want to pick out the less productive birds and the more productive bird. I look for a bird that has a nice bright red comb. If I see a female in there whose comb is shrunken down and shriveled up and almost pale pink like that's not a bird that I want in my flock.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, she's not going to be productive.
Speaker 3:
No, and the same thing for the rest of the hens. Is her face bright, red? Is the skin smooth or waddles? Are they bright, red and smooth? If they're not, that's another check on the bad size of the line there.
Speaker 2:
I look normally you know, clear and bright in the eyes. Yes, it's a term that I see around and if I go around and look, I can you know when you see it, you know you go. Oh, that's what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, if you go out and set and watch with your birds and see who's doing what, how perky and active they are, your leaders in the flock are going to be those vibrant, well-colored, active, vigorous birds. That's who you want.
Speaker 3:
What about feather condition? Do you think that enters into a bird's productivity or not?
Speaker 2:
Definitely. I see that tracing all the way back to nutrition. They have access to the basic building blocks that they need, so they're going to have great plumage, which also means they should be producing great quality hatching eggs.
Speaker 1:
And if they don't, it kind of gives light into that individual bird, like if I come across one whose feathers just look unkempt. That means that bird isn't grooming itself that well, not compared to its peers. So then I kind of want to watch that one to see why it might not be keeping itself in the same sort of condition the others are. And that's enough reason too to drop that one off the list of contention just for not taking care of itself that well.
Speaker 2:
Or it could just be something as simple as feeder crowding or, on the other hand, guarding her off the feed you never know. Watching your birds know your birds, their social structure.
Speaker 1:
Do you want the eggs from the weakest link? The one that they don't, because flocks can kind of tell you who the calls are too just to have a they self select. Yeah, they'll self select a bit themselves, which can get interesting when you watch their little dynamics and who's allowed to do what, who's in charge of flock decisions they're making for themselves. Just watching that can be insightful.
Speaker 3:
Another thing that I'll sort birds by is the color of their shank. That doesn't work on all breeds. Many you raise birds with blue shanks and some have white. But if you have a yellow shank bird and all the birds are really at a good heavy production and you find one that has really bright yellow shanks or bright yellow beak, chances are she's not laying very well.
Speaker 1:
Really.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, because over a period of time those hens are taking that pigment that they've accumulated in their bodies and in their skin and in their shanks and using that in the production of eggs and they'll start out bright yellow and then over a period of time it'll gradually get lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter. I've seen I've had row-dialin reds. Should have yellow shanks, right. I've had some old hens in heavy production that look just as white as snow, almost.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, all those carotenoid pigments the yellows, oranges and red pigments that comes from the plants and algae gets stored there and then get depleted as needed.
Speaker 1:
So would you want to look for that around? Like a year and a half old after their first year of production.
Speaker 2:
They're going to start to fade, yeah, when they get. And again, this highlights the importance of a properly managed molt, because that's part of the stores that need to get rebuilt.
Speaker 1:
Are you talking about the big, big molt when they're about 18 months old? 18?
Speaker 2:
to 20 months. Yeah, that is the hardest one. That's the real proving ground for me A bird that makes it through, that drops her feathers fast, loses the excess weight and then rebuilds and gets back into her laying prime.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, do you want to go through a managed molt, or just watching them as they go through it, naturally without you changing anything to force them into the molt?
Speaker 2:
I will wait until I see feathers start dropping naturally and then they go on their crash diet or angry with me for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but it's worth it. I'm coming around to that idea. I used to leave them to their own devices, but now I see the value in helping them and then using it as another parameter for selection.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, they may get mad, but they'll get over it they will.
Speaker 2:
I had a predator event with some ermine last week and I got to see the inside of the cavity of a few birds and they have not come up on their first molt yet and their abdominal fat was really quite heavy and thick because I want to study the carcass, the structure. Even when I'm taking a chicken apart in the kitchen or on my kitchen table after it's cooked, I'm always looking at different pieces of it and making sure that it was good or not.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, sometimes it takes me some extra time to actually get dinner on the plates because I'm looking at the bird.
Speaker 3:
Well, you know, we've been talking about things that are visual cues for culling birds, and John kind of got started on this and then we got into that rabbit hole situation again. But let's talk about using our hands to evaluate our birds. Endlin, you had a really wonderful post today over on the breast group, but, man, I don't know very many people that get into this hands-on evaluation of their birds like you do and frankly, I think the way you do it is the way everybody should be doing it.
Speaker 1:
It was a long time coming because I definitely didn't start off that way, but over time, especially after making that decision of going dual purpose, I started to see what really mattered in developing the flock towards those goals. And every time I've ever been disappointed in poultry it's because it wasn't done in the breeding, where I would have outwardly pretty bird's. But then once you got in there and you started dressing them out, they were pretty scrawny and that hands on evaluation is the only way to get past it and breed into something better.
Speaker 2:
Well, you had the unique opportunity we'll call it to expand out basically a non existing line and then select what you know you were looking for and then call it back down. So you really opened up Pandora's box for quite a few generations.
Speaker 1:
Oh, and it was expensive. It took so much space and time and resources just to see that through, and then I was not prepared for how many years it was going to take either. You can't fix that much in a single season and it has to compound on itself over time. So if you go out and you see your birds and you put your hands on them and you're disappointed, don't call the entire group and start over.
Speaker 1:
just find that one pair, that one tree that does it better than any of the others in that flock and only hatch from them. Don't hatch from anybody else, because a skinny bird is going to breed more skinny birds. Just find the ones that are incrementally just a little bit better than the others and put your focus on them.
Speaker 3:
And remember, you're not going to make giant leaps forward. You're going to take smaller steps forward. It's going to take some time. It's not an instant gratification thing to poetry breeding, it's not. You have to be in it for the long haul.
Speaker 1:
We had to eat our fair share of two pound birds before we got to four pound birds.
Speaker 3:
Let's lift towards that way. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:
Oh, you just count how many it takes to put in the crackpot, you know you've done good things when you only have to put one in the crackpot instead of three.
Speaker 3:
John was talking about pelvic spread earlier, and he is so right. There's nothing worse than trying to eviscerate a bird and feel like you're sticking your hand in a pen cushion, almost. Not only is it unpleasant for us to do that, those kinds of birds are not very productive birds when they're narrow, narrow bodies and all pinched together in the rear end. But what about, and Mandolin? You've probably processed enough birds that you have seen a little bit of a difference in the appearance of the bird's skin.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's variations there too, and that can sway by the breed, the particular bloodline and then individuals within both categories. There's going to be some variation in there, and the differences is not only the color of the skin but the thickness of the skin and how hairy the skin is. I didn't know chickens could be hairy. I've been out there with a little handheld blowtorch singeing off hairs on processing day.
Speaker 3:
I can still remember. I keep a little click start torch for that purpose. I can still remember my grandmother processing a bunch of old hens and she'd tie them up on the clothesline and when she had them all plucked and eviscerated and all that, and she'd water up some newspaper, roll it up, set fire to one another, she'd just go down there singing all the hair off those hens.
Speaker 1:
Oh, she made her own torch.
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah, that was back in the good old days, before there was such a thing.
Speaker 1:
Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Cornish Cross were bred away from having any hairs, so they don't have to do a singe.
Speaker 3:
I don't know, wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 2:
They pretty much don't even have feathers anymore.
Speaker 1:
Well, their body's twice the size it should be and they have the same allotment of feathers, so the coverage is just really poor.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so if you're raising Cornish Cross out on pasture, it's incredibly important they are under shade all the time because they will get sunburned and can die from it.
Speaker 1:
I bet they could. I never even thought of that.
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah, you bet you. We've talked about the pigment of the skin and we've talked about the skin appearance and feather condition and all these other things. But what about if you're going through a bunch of females and you're trying to sort out productive birds versus non-productive birds? What should the vent look like?
Speaker 1:
Well, how do we cover that without it sounding dirty?
Speaker 3:
Well, I like to say it should look smooth and moist.
Speaker 2:
I like round moist.
Speaker 3:
If it looks all puckered up like a prune and kind of dry she's not.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's it. It's either dry or prune.
Speaker 2:
You know it when you see it. If you know your birds, I could flip a bird over and go yeah, she's good or no, she's definitely not laying or having a problem with laying.
Speaker 1:
Well, and because that rear pelvic spread is variable based on if they're an active lay or not. So if you pick up a female and she's got that nice productive looking vent that looks like it's active and she'll probably also have a nice forefinger spread in between the pelvic bones versus the dried up, shriveled looking peep shoot, it's probably going to have maybe two fingers, maybe three in width.
Speaker 2:
Also, when the eggs being laid, you know listening for any signs of stress or strain or did they just drop it and move on? And looking at the condition of your eggs? If you start seeing streaking on your eggs, you know it's time to start looking at the structure of the hand that laid it.
Speaker 1:
Do you mean streaking like a blood smear or streaking like a shell texture variation? Because sometimes, like there was one female, I end up finding her and calling her out because while she was laying regularly, the egg was poor quality and, even though it came every day, there was a weirdness to the sheet, almost like maybe her organs weren't where they were supposed to be on the inside, causing an indent and a flat side on the egg. Maybe it wasn't spinning in the shoot correctly, maybe I don't know what wasn't happening correctly, but it was a very incorrect egg that became consistent. So, like distantly poor laying, I'll go find that bird and remove her from the flock.
Speaker 2:
It's the common flaw in my flock and it came from my breeder that way, and when I got my birds from them they very specifically said the torpedo shaped eggs.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, that's a deal breaker too.
Speaker 2:
I mean, they're beautiful, they're like 70, 72 grams and just great.
Speaker 1:
They're like really long and they're weird torpedo shaped.
Speaker 2:
They're the weird torpedo shape and we're like you know, we're just. They're adamant that that doesn't move forward. And I agree, they're traditionally my heaviest and single yokers at the same time. Oh heartbreak I know it is, it is.
Speaker 1:
Now is that when they're in the middle of peak production or later on, because sometimes I'll see it in my older birds their eggs will take up a torpedo shape. But they weren't that way the first year.
Speaker 2:
It was like a second or third year. And that was specific to my first year. That's part of my selection criteria. Moving forward on my breeding stock, like they're, I've already gotten rid of any of the torpedo shaped layers. They're with a friend of mine a couple of miles away and they're just producing fantastically for their farm stand and store.
Speaker 1:
If they're too long they don't fit a carton that well, but usually mine outsize the egg carton. It's also a double yolk.
Speaker 2:
People like that and I know, and they get so spoiled. He's got an eight year old daughter who just gives them so much love. That's her aspect of the business. She collects the eggs and that goes into her.
Speaker 3:
John and Manny, I know your thoughts and your position on this, but I want to sort this out here. What about the amount of body fleshing? Is that a good indication of production, or is it something we should even worry about?
Speaker 1:
So, going into this, I was always told that heavy weight birds are going to be poor layers. But come to find out that poor producers are obese. They're fat. They have limitations on what they can do because of their condition being obese, but in sharp contrast, you can have a very meaty, meaty bird that is still fairly lean. Who is productive is all get out. They're allowed to be meaty. Meatiness is not the problem, it's obesity and fat that's the problem. That's where I've ended up.
Speaker 2:
As long as you have the carcass size to accommodate all the necessary functions, the structure that makes it over.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, the inner capacity.
Speaker 2:
Ultimately, I look at feed conversion ratio. How much feed did this bird eat? How much flesh did she or he provide? To me that's important. Age is a variable that throws everything off, because obviously I've kept this bird around for two or three years and fed it a lot more food. What would have been the feed conversion ratio at 20 weeks?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's important to know.
Speaker 3:
Thank you for joining us this week. 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, we'd like to ask you to drop us an email at poultrykeeperspodcastcom at gmailcom and share your thoughts about the show. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the poultrykeepers podcast. We'll see you next week.