Unlock the secrets of poultry perfection with our experts Mandy, John, and Rip as they traverse the complexities of selective breeding and the magic of meticulous record-keeping. Whether you're a seasoned breeder or new to the coop, this week's episode is a treasure trove of insights. We’ll show you how a snapshot can speak a thousand words about lineage and progress, and why a breeder's watchful eye can reveal surprising traits in your feathered charges. Our conversation illuminates the heart of poultry breeding, emphasizing the importance of consistency and the value of personal benchmarks when selecting your ideal breeding stock.
Join us for an enlightening discussion on the hands-on approach to bird evaluation, where their wisdom shines a light on the nuances of assessing poultry. Discover the unexpected revelations that post-processing examinations can uncover, from healed injuries to unforeseen attributes, and learn how these insights inform the journey toward a healthier, more resilient flock. They debate the merits of consistent selection criteria and the strategy of side-by-side comparisons, acknowledging that even among experts, beauty—and breed standards—are often in the eye of the beholder.
Concluding our episode, they delve into the genetic tapestry that forms the backbone of every breeding decision. The fascinating dance of traits as they express themselves requires patience, a critical eye, and sometimes a ruthless culling hand. From the ideal moments to assess specific characteristics to the challenges of breeding for particular colors, we cover it all. Whether you're aiming to produce meat stock or prize-winning show birds, this episode is your guide to navigating the complexities of poultry breeding with grace and knowledge. So, tune in, absorb the wisdom, and remember—every chicken in your coop is a step in your ongoing education as a breeder.
Unlock the secrets of poultry perfection with our experts Mandy, John, and Rip as they traverse the complexities of selective breeding and the magic of meticulous record-keeping. Whether you're a seasoned breeder or new to the coop, this week's episode is a treasure trove of insights. We’ll show you how a snapshot can speak a thousand words about lineage and progress, and why a breeder's watchful eye can reveal surprising traits in your feathered charges. Our conversation illuminates the heart of poultry breeding, emphasizing the importance of consistency and the value of personal benchmarks when selecting your ideal breeding stock.
Join us for an enlightening discussion on the hands-on approach to bird evaluation, where their wisdom shines a light on the nuances of assessing poultry. Discover the unexpected revelations that post-processing examinations can uncover, from healed injuries to unforeseen attributes, and learn how these insights inform the journey toward a healthier, more resilient flock. They debate the merits of consistent selection criteria and the strategy of side-by-side comparisons, acknowledging that even among experts, beauty—and breed standards—are often in the eye of the beholder.
Concluding our episode, they delve into the genetic tapestry that forms the backbone of every breeding decision. The fascinating dance of traits as they express themselves requires patience, a critical eye, and sometimes a ruthless culling hand. From the ideal moments to assess specific characteristics to the challenges of breeding for particular colors, we cover it all. Whether you're aiming to produce meat stock or prize-winning show birds, this episode is your guide to navigating the complexities of poultry breeding with grace and knowledge. So, tune in, absorb the wisdom, and remember—every chicken in your coop is a step in your ongoing education as a breeder.
Hi, welcome to the poultry keepers podcast. I'm Rip Stalvey and, together with Mantle and Royal and John Gunnerman, we're your co-hosts for this show and it's our mission to help you have a happy, healthy and productive flock In the breeding pen. I like to use birds that have a problem and make them to birds who meet the standard in that particular area Not exceed the standard or not less than the standard, but meet the standard.
Speaker 2:
And then you go through those offspring and you look for the percentage that picked up that one parent that had it pretty close versus taking extremes. You'll be lucky to find one that picked up something normal versus the rest of them having one extreme or the other If one parent is doing something correctly. That's the sort of pairing you want to do to kind of compensate for any flaws the other part of that breeding equation has.
Speaker 1:
I think one thing that this brings to the top of my mind, as we're talking about this, is that the important thing is to keep good records, followed very closely by establishing well, I'm going to get ahead of myself and I don't want to do that, but just keeping good records and going to serve you so very well and Mantle was talking about taking a lot of pictures I don't know how we survived breeding birds before the age of digital cameras and cell phones.
Speaker 3:
Everybody had the notebook in their back pocket.
Speaker 2:
Blue ribbons on the wall, or the lack of them.
Speaker 3:
No, the notebook in the back pocket. Famous last words is I don't need to remember that I don't, or yeah?
Speaker 1:
I don't need to write that down.
Speaker 3:
I'll remember it, especially at my age and picking up a few knocks in the head over my lifetime. Write it down, have your bird in your back pocket all the time.
Speaker 2:
Well, there's been a couple of times now to where I'll pick a bird up and I'll check over all the details. I monitored the growth and this bird just was checking off, box after box after box. I'm like, wow, this is probably the best bird I've bred all season. I really wish I knew who the parents were. Yeah, because then that almost says I don't need to hatch from anybody else other than those two parents.
Speaker 3:
Well, it should be as easy as looking at the wing band number or the leg band number and pulling out that notebook I was talking about and going who are you, who is your siren dam? Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2:
I'm definitely going to start doing that, because I have questions that I can't answer.
Speaker 3:
I tried doing it on the computer and I get lost in my own spreadsheets. It gets frustrating. Now.
Speaker 2:
I lose my notebooks, or they get rained on or something goofy. So I have to take my notebook and then run them inside and add them to the spreadsheet.
Speaker 3:
So I found out in the military, right in the rain, makes a pan and a notebook. They were designed for the space shuttle but and I tested it they will write upside down. Underwater scuba gear costs a little bit more going in but they never get destroyed. Even a puppy chewing on it will not hurt it, at least.
Speaker 1:
What about the need to establish a good, sound, strong reader selection program and a management program? What's your thoughts on that, john?
Speaker 3:
Well, I do that every fall and that's when I start getting panicky is when I'm choosing which two or three roosters and which I want to carry over ideally 16 birds going into the winter, because we do have a and it's somewhat expected loss Every year. I get attacked by ermine when it gets warm and rainy in the spring and then that always sets a panic. But I do keep two weeks worth of eggs in reserve. If I do lose a rooster, at least I know I've got, as genetics is back up somewhere in there. But yeah, the king, the heir, the spare. I'm going for the three clan spiral rotation and that's what I do. But if I find somebody where I really want this hand and this rooster, I mean they're just the best ever. If they're in different clans, so be it. I just made a fourth clan, if that's what we did, and just increased my record keeping a little bit, and drop another clan off if it turns out successful.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm constantly filtering the birds and I don't think there's any such thing as too late to call. Sometimes I'm getting birds that are a year, year and a half, two, three, four, five years old. That I mean. The cook method changes for sure with the age.
Speaker 3:
Handling the bird and I put them in the cone and I was like, wow, it won't go down because he's just so wide in the shoulders. And I saw the spread in the back and I went nope, you lived. I mean, the structure that was hiding, it was supposed to be a meat bird, somehow. It was just hiding and it was there and I was able to save him at the last minute.
Speaker 1:
I think Mandy just shared a quote with folks and I want to reiterate what she said because it's that important your hands will tell you a lot about your business Once you know what you're feeling for and you feel it on a bird that you hadn't really looked too much at.
Speaker 2:
as far as, like when you're reviewing pens, you can find one, two, three favorites by comparing the visuals to each other.
Speaker 2:
But when you get your hands on them I've had birds surprised me before and, like there was a male, I had left him in RoosterCoop and that's where I'll grow out like 25 boys at a time and something had spooked him and I was finding birds in places they shouldn't have been. I saw this one male. He was the leader of the group and he had been reprieved the time before because I couldn't catch him. And then I put the next batch of boys in and he decided he was going to take care of them and be the leader. So I found him over in a pig pen next door and I cornered him and I was able to catch him that time. And when I put my hands on him and picked him up he was so fleshy and meaty and well rounded in the carcass Like he felt incredible. So instead of putting him back in the RoosterCoop, I took him up to the barn and put him in his own pen to save for later and we're always on the lookout for that one in a hundred bird.
Speaker 3:
You touched on something and it just brought me back to boot camp in the Navy with my chief saying I'm a filter, not a pump. But that mindset and that adage is so spot on. I think that's what we're constantly doing. Yeah, we're setting a lot of eggs, but our whole goal is to filter down and just find the best ones to carry the best genetics forward.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, because one of the worst things you can do is try to push for quantity, but they run out of space and overcrowd them because that's going to limit their growth. It's going to potentially give you some health issues, especially if the ammonia load gets too heavy. That'll affect that. It was Jeff's book that said if you can smell the ammonia it's already 10 times too high for the birds themselves.
Speaker 3:
Make sure you've got a grown out space and a plan for every egg that you set. Yeah, If you can't get rid of it, what are you going to do with that? Because I think you're responsible for the life that you bring in. Even though it is just a bird, you have a level of responsibility to treat it ethically and humanely.
Speaker 2:
Well, I'm going to give them the chance to reach their potential too.
Speaker 3:
So stick to your goals. The important thing is and this is kind of how I found you initially, mandy was you're picking up and reviewing your birds, the videos that you put online of evaluating your birds, how you recommend people use your hand as the measuring gauge. It doesn't matter what size your hand is, because you're measuring the birds in your flock and selecting from within the ones that meet your goals.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's definitely peer against peer within your own flock. You're not comparing to anybody else's. So use your own hands on your own birds and figure out what you're feeling After processing is a good time to handle them some more too, to get familiar with what they feel like, so you can kind of transfer that knowledge to what it feels like when they still have their feathers on, so that then you can recognize those birds before it's too late. There's been a couple of times where we would get in the groove of processing and my husband would snatch them and go ahead and do the deed and then I ended up with the carcass and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa. This one's really nice.
Speaker 3:
I actually like being I've had birds come out of the oven room like, damn, how'd you get in there?
Speaker 2:
And then I remind myself that probably had funky wings or a goofy tail set, or there is something visual that I didn't care for.
Speaker 3:
Oh, I found broken legs that have healed in my chicken casserole. When you get down to the drumstick and you're like, oh, I remember this bird. Yeah, you broke its leg doing this when it was a chick. Yeah, rough handling sometimes birds get broken. But I still have this compulsion. If it's not a genetic defect, then it's not going to make them suffer the rest of their life. I'll carry them through. They still get the best life I can give them. I'm a softy like that.
Speaker 1:
Do you feel like it's important to be consistent from year to year to year in how we do our selection of birds? I mean, should we use the same methods? Should we bury him?
Speaker 2:
Pens. The FLOG goals will help you figure out what methods you need to be using. For me personally, I have a top five treat that needs to be there in any bird that I carry forward. So that's their fleshing, their bone spacing and structure, the health and vigor, some things that are just like a non-negotiable list, and after that what I'm looking for changes based on what I'm seeing I need to improve. So I'm not really looking at tail angles on every single bird because I have a pen for that, for that treat, and because I have the luxury of pen space and I can organize them. I can pick off five or six traits I want to work on and do that within certain pens and I have a lot of flexibility there from one season to the next. I just don't step away from my top five needed traits. Those core things have to be there and everything else is bonus and subjective and varies season to season.
Speaker 3:
The baseline I consider Good enough to move forward, and then incremental improvements.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and then use the compensation mating and finding out who they throw the best results with and figuring out what pen they really belong in by the time they're two, and if they're still here when they're two, then I'm going to hatch everything that bird lays, because those are the best of the best of the best.
Speaker 1:
One thing that I found worked really well for me is that when I evaluate a bird using my hands, I typically follow the same procedure one bird to the next I pick up a bird. When I'm picking up that bird, I'm already measuring the length of the keel using the palm of my hand and my middle finger. I can also evaluate the basic flushing qualities of that bird. By just applying a little pressure from the side, I'll fold out the same wings. It's rare that I fold out the bird's left wing first and then go over and look at the right wing. Then I move on to back width.
Speaker 2:
Well, you have that show judge experience too.
Speaker 1:
But I was doing that way before I started judging.
Speaker 2:
So you found your groove before that on what you were looking for and you had a systematic approach to how you handled them. I guess that would help the birds come up with expectations of when they get caught.
Speaker 1:
One thing that I found it did for me was I was able to more consistently evaluate birds. It was easier for me to say is bird A better than bird B, or is it bird B better than bird C? It was a familiar process that I found myself getting into that served me well over the years, still does.
Speaker 2:
One thing I had in a couple of years ago that has been absolutely invaluable was a viewing area, and I'm going to expand it because right now I can look at three birds next to each other at a time.
Speaker 2:
They're on a table, front and center, right in front of me, so I can see them in that visual, side by side, but they're also already caught in a cage so I can handle this one and then that one and then go back to the other one and then check the other guy, put them all back, step back, stare at them for a couple of minutes. And I can because I still have some clutter in my brain on what exactly I'm looking for on any given season, and finding who the best is out of a group is tricky and subjective, because if you put 10 breeders in a room with 20 birds and you told each of those breeders pick the best three out of these birds, you might get totally different. They're all going to have their own things that they're looking for and having the same breeder pick the same three birds as the next breeder I mean that's almost impossible, I think.
Speaker 1:
Almost impossible with judges.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I can only imagine how cutthroat and subjective it gets on Champion Row, even when they have to bring in multiple judges to kind of figure out.
Speaker 1:
It's not so much that it's cutthroat. Is that we each like it or not? We have our own way of interpreting the standard and applying the standard. And again, we're going to get into that next week's y'all, so don't miss that show. But it's just the difference between people. It's really what it all warms down to.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like I'll have sometimes.
Speaker 2:
I'll have a friend over and she raises the same variety I do, so we'll put some birds up in the cage and we'll both stand back and talk about them and discuss them, and she'll go well, I really like the comb on that one. That's something that I need to see in my flock and I'm like, yeah, the comb's nice, but look at the chest and then you have to decide well, is the chest more important than the comb? Well, absolutely so. Like. One thing I've been looking at the last several years is chest depth, and that is hard to improve. That's going to take me a while to just inch that chest down to what the standard wants.
Speaker 2:
I am going to need five or ten years for that.
Speaker 1:
One thing that we've been talking about selection and finding the better birds in the flock and something we'll get into again next week. But you know, the longer you tolerate a defect in your flock, the longer you're going to have it and the harder it becomes to get rid of you perpetuate what you tolerate Call, call, call.
Speaker 2:
I didn't get to be ruthless until probably about five years ago, where I started like, especially when I was seeing pale light color or At the time I was battling the slip wing too. So I had to just take a very no-nonsense approach to that and not be generous on females that were trying to hide a Poor wing, because if they hit it from me then I kind of pretended like I didn't see it. But then I started seeing it in the offspring and I was like man, I'm really gonna have to get in here and nitpick and really ruthlessly go through them if I'm Gonna ever stop seeing this and I did cleaned it up pretty quick though, didn't it?
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, one season of ruthless selection will straighten out a lot, unless it's something recessive that you have to track parentage to find it's real important again. But you might have two birds, the male and the female, and they visually check out, they pass the hand, feel they look like really good examples, but then, when you breed them together, you see something unexpected.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes there's recessive traits and there's polygenetic traits that require just all sorts of crazy factors to express Well let's not use the factor there.
Speaker 2:
You have to let the percentage of expression let you know how Big of a problem it is like if it doesn't exceed, like three percent or whatever percentage you want to come up with. Less than five percent it's probably not that big of a deal but it might be later. So tracking parentage again, in case you need to backtrack back to grandparents to get to the bottom of stuff that pops out later.
Speaker 3:
Sure, Well, luckily there's no set processing time on the heritage breeds and, as we've discussed, the only really changes is the cooking method. If you have to reach back to get rid of something, you still can make cocoa van or, you know, chicken fricassee If you have good records and can reach back and find it and root it out.
Speaker 1:
One question I get asked a lot is when you're evaluating birds. What age do you evaluate your birds? They don't know. Continuous can vary from breed to breed. It can vary from variety within that breed. It can vary from different strains of the same breed and variety.
Speaker 3:
I take each hatch as a cohort started value hat Go for the center of the hatch window is my ideal Because I want heterogeneity among my flock, so the first out and last out are almost always disqualified For some reason anyways. So I've learned not to even pay attention to them unless there's a rock star that shows up, but that's very rare. But the first three weeks can tell you a lot daily weights. If you can mark your birds and weigh them daily, the information that is locked in those first three weeks Can serve you to map out the rest of the birds potential life if they're Cared for and fed and watered correctly.
Speaker 2:
When it goes a long way in helping you learn your genetics too. I found that, even looking at it, from when to call for what traits, I don't really look at wings until after they've done a couple of molts and we're coming up closer to like four and a half, five, six months old, because some of mine will grow so fast. The wings get funky because of that, but then they're just fine later, after they finished grew and they look great.
Speaker 3:
But something I've noticed having larger hatches helps, because if you're comparing 12 birds amongst each other, it's a lot harder to see inconsistencies as if you are comparing 50 birds amongst each other.
Speaker 3:
Having a larger sample set and we talked about this earlier. Having a larger sample set, you, with the leg color, you can see who's really dark and who's really light Within the first couple weeks, probably right Already, start being making these selections in your head. Nope, you're out. You're out, you're out. You're going to the meat pen. You're going to the meat pen, you're going to the meat pen. You can stay. You can get the good nutrition that costs a little more maybe.
Speaker 1:
One thing that I'm going to throw out here about when to do the selection that is fairly consistent is if you're breeding party colored birds P-A-R-T-I, that's birds of more than one color, Pattern birds or in the case of reds, it's red bodies, black tails but when you're breeding those party colored birds, the best time to evaluate for color is wait until they have molded in their last adult primary, when all those primary feathers are in. You can rest assured that the color you see is the color you have to work with. What age is that? Usually it depends, you know, in my reds, my females anywhere from 67 months old, males maybe, oh, a month or so later.
Speaker 2:
For mine with the white breast, we have to watch out for yellowing and it can go all the way until a year and a half before they'll do a little color change on me and I have to wait for a molt and see what color the new feathers come back in, because sometimes the new feathers are yellow and not white.
Speaker 3:
You can feed a bird for a long time and hope it makes it through that last toll gate. Huh.
Speaker 2:
Well, and then even something like combs. You don't want to even think about comb size when they're six months old, because that thing is going to keep on changing all the way up to almost two years old.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
It might dip over at a year old, and if you've already hatched a bunch from them, you're going to see a bit more of that.
Speaker 1:
And sometimes I get concerned about what I'm telling people will lead them to believe flock improvement is a fast process and I've tried to stress it several times in our episode today that it's going to take some time. Breeding poultry is not a destination. Breeding poultry is a journey because no matter how far you get down the road, you're around a corner and oh, there's some more road I need to go down.
Speaker 2:
There's a hazard.
Speaker 3:
Turn left, turn right these topics back in science class that you thought had no relevance in your life, like punnett squares and laws of segregation and inheritance, all of a sudden became really important.
Speaker 2:
Well, I just hit a fork in the road by getting two completely different body structures out of my flock and I'm going to have to decide which one or if it's possible to blend them together. I favor blending them together to find the balance of both of those, but I might have to choose. So I'm going to hatch and see and come up with a new plan to aim back at consistency, because I hatched myself into so many variables.
Speaker 1:
now, speaking, of choosing Mandy. I'll be more than happy to ship you my dartboard if you'd like that.
Speaker 2:
I was going to lie in my hands. Tell me which ones are better for the table.
Speaker 3:
Ultimately, people who raise chicken eat a lot of chicken.
Speaker 1:
The better breeders do anyway.
Speaker 3:
You eat your mistakes and that's one way. Taking apart a chicken really helps you learn what went into making that chicken and what goes into making a good chicken and what doesn't. When you start looking at heart girth, chest capacity, body depth from the inside, it's enlightening.
Speaker 2:
Well, not only does it feed you and teach you, but it also goes a long way in helping to protect your reputation too, because any bird you let go of is going to be a reflection on to you and your program and your practice.
Speaker 1:
Like it or not, man processing birds is one of the best ways I know of to really have a good understanding and a good handle on. What is body capacity? What's it supposed to look like? What shouldn't it look like?
Speaker 3:
Those narrow birds, the ones that have to get culled, are the worst to process, because eviscerating them just cuts you to shreds.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. That's why I asked for your advice on kitchen shears for cutting spines out for spatch cocking.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, just crack that thing open like this and put it on a grill with a rick wrapped in aluminum foil on it.
Speaker 2:
That's the best way to do those little birds. Just go ahead and cut the spine out.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you know they were raised in good conditions and they probably don't have all the bad things that are associated with chickens, but still, let's not get our hands cut up trying to stuff them into a tiny little bird cavity.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, agreed, folks, this has been a really good show. I think we've covered a lot of territory, but I want to ask my co-host here what is one thing you hope people can take away from what we had to share with them today? What's a big benefit that they can get?
Speaker 2:
To be patient and tolerant, but also ruthless on calling it's a weird balancing act. You'll have to figure it out as you go.
Speaker 3:
I would say the most important thing is doing your due diligence to find the breed that suits your environment and then finding a breeder who's raised that breed in a similar environment, as similar goals as you, and start with that as a base.
Speaker 1:
I like what both of y'all said. I'm just going to add to that Breeding is an art, it is a science. It is guesswork sometimes, but if you keep good records, if you evaluate your birds, if you reflect on your flock progress, you will do well, that's fair and it's doable at any size too.
Speaker 3:
I could do it with 12 to 16 birds, and Mandy can do it with hundreds. How many birds do you have now?
Speaker 2:
I'm gonna get more efficient in time I'll get there. I'm still on my journey. I haven't even gotten there yet. Oh man, what a mess. But it's fun. I'm learning so much. I love these birds. They do all the chicken things and then teach you more than you ever wanted to know about chicken.
Speaker 1:
That's the one thing I love about poultry breeding is it is a journey you never do get to the end of your journey and it forces you to learn, expand your knowledge base, expand your management style. My mentor told me on more than one occasion if you're going to breed better birds, you better learn new things.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, be spongy, be open-minded, don't be too hard on yourself, try to have realistic goals and don't try to do everything once in a season, because you can't and you won't and you're just gonna end up frustrated.
Speaker 1:
Well, why don't we just end it here, and we will see you guys next week when we talk about how to read, interpret and apply the written standard. 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 every Tuesday. And 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 again for joining us for this episode of the poultry keepers podcast. We'll see you next week.