In this episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast, John Gunterman, Mandelyn Royal, and Rip Stalvey discuss various aspects of written poultry standards and their interpretation, including tail selection, body capacity, leg structure, feet, and keel alignment. They emphasize standards important for breeding for the optimal traits that contribute to the bird's health, functionality, and meat quality
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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast, John Gunterman, Mandelyn Royal, and Rip Stalvey discuss various aspects of written poultry standards and their interpretation, including tail selection, body capacity, leg structure, feet, and keel alignment. They emphasize standards important for breeding for the optimal traits that contribute to the bird's health, functionality, and meat quality
You can email us at - poultrykeeperspodcast@gmail.com
Join our Facebook Groups:
Poultry Keepers Podcast -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/907679597724837
Poultry Keepers 360 - - https://www.facebook.com/groups/354973752688125
Poultry Breeders Nutrition - https://www.facebook.com/groups/4908798409211973
Check out the Poultry Kepers Podcast YouTube Channel -
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Hi, I'm John Gunterman, and I want to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast. Joining me in the studio are Mandelyn Royal and Rip Stalvey, the rest of our podcast team. We're looking forward to visiting with you and talking poultry from feathers to function.
Rip Stalvey:Okay, we've talked about the backs, now let's move a little further down the bird and talk about the tails. You know, you have to think about the size, the shape, the angle of the tail carriage, and the spread of the tail. And those are all defined in the standard of perfection. So, Mandy, what's your thoughts on selecting for tails?
Mandelyn Royal:So when I look at the breed standard, it's going to first mention the angle of the tail, and the tricky part of that is the bird is going to change that angle as it moves around based on how it's standing, so you can't make a snap decision on tails. And they also can change over time too. So what they look like at six months old might be different than what they look like at a year and a half old. So I'm learning to be patient on tails to see what they're really going to turn into. And I'm only looking for what's an outright flaw to a tail. Like if it's a wry tail, split tail, something like that, you can see that earlier, but it might also show up later. So tails are something I'm just trying to be patient in looking at.
Rip Stalvey:Yeah, I agree with you. It takes a little bit of time for those things to. To really develop and settle in.
John Gunterman:It's really helpful to watch them just in their natural habitat to get an idea of where their tail is in general, because it'll change based on what's going on in the environment. If there's predators around the tail's gonna do one thing. If there's, if there's anything above them, they're naturally, the tail set's gonna drop. You know, that's why I don't have a nice little viewing pen with a top on it, like Mandy does, because when I did, I set one up for the camera so I could get a downward shot, and as soon as I did, I saw my Chanticleer's tail drop maybe 10 degrees.
Rip Stalvey:It makes a big difference.
John Gunterman:So, in the show, I mean, I'm sure that's what they refer to as coop conditioning, to get your Bird to show properly, but as it gets accustomed to being in a cage.
Rip Stalvey:You take a bird that's been running out and you put it in a show coop, it's going to almost instantly change the way they look. I know Sue Dobson's Red champion up there at the Ohio national. If you looked at that bird in the coop, you saw that his head was kind of shrunken down to his shoulders. His tail. was going downhill instead of being level like it should be and That was because they had set bantam coops on top of the large fowl coops and anytime you do that, it's gonna make them hunker down
Mandelyn Royal:Yeah, so it's also important to look at them in all their different areas Don't only base your opinion off of when they're in a viewing cage. Don't only base your opinion on When they're out in the field, you want to see them in every scenario to get an idea of what's really going on, and then you want to find out what angle and shape and length and all of that you're supposed to have for your particular breed, because every single one of them wants a slightly different variation.
Rip Stalvey:Yes, you bring up a good point there, in measuring tail angles, and okay, we'll use Bresse for an example, their back should slope from basically their shoulders back to the tail. have a downward slope to it. Do you measure the angle of the tail from the horizontal plane, or do you take into account the amount of slope in the back?
Mandelyn Royal:At this point, it's kind of both, depending on the overall balance I'm seeing from the bird. With where they're at in development, I've got some other stuff to pay attention to first before refining tails. So long as they're not squirrely or too thin or otherwise wonky. It's something I'm looking for later in the actual particular angles. I've got other stuff to fix.
Rip Stalvey:The standard actually prescribes that it be measured from a horizontal plane, as if the back were level.
Mandelyn Royal:I'll have to file that tidbit back for later.
John Gunterman:And if your particular breed has a flat back, or is prescribed to have a flat back, that makes it a little easier.
Rip Stalvey:Yes. Reds are really easy to evaluate tails because they have that long level horizontal back.
Mandelyn Royal:Yeah, that would make it easier.
Rip Stalvey:You were talking about looking at at your birds when they're doing different things. Sometimes I've been known to go out there with a video camera and just turn the birds out that I want to evaluate and just sit there and video'em as they move around, as they scratch. I want to, I want a natural movement. I want them to feel comfortable, to feel relaxed. You can do more to evaluate birds that way than any other way that I've found.
Mandelyn Royal:Well, and you can go back and reference it later too. And you can check out some other details like what their legs are doing, what their wings are doing, how alert they are, watching their behaviors. There's a lot to be seen when you're just observing and then if you video it. Now you've got references to go back to if you need to.
John Gunterman:And you were looking at a video of some Chanticleer and we'll talk about this in a minute, and you spotted something going on with the legs that I didn't see. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you do get flock blind. So having somebody else take a look at something, you know, you spotted it right away.
Rip Stalvey:Okay, we talked about tails and evaluating those.
Mandelyn Royal:Oh, I did have one more tail comment. Go for it. One of the things I'm looking for is for the back end of the tails to be open rather than pinched. And then what that looks like is when you're looking from the backside of the bird with like a head on shot of the rear, if those tail feathers touch each other and it's real tight, that can indicate a narrowness that's on the backside, that's not just the tail. Like once you put your hands on them, you can confirm it, but I'm looking for. Almost like a tented shape there, where there's an openness between either side of those tail feathers.
Rip Stalvey:The old timers used to call that a teepee shape, because if you look at the bird from the rear end, it's got that elongated V shape. You can rest assured that that's tied in to the width of the back, most of the time.
John Gunterman:That's mirroring the structure that's ahead of it.
Rip Stalvey:Yeah, and you can look at the legs. How far are the legs apart? The wider the legs are apart, the greater the width of the tail will be from side to side.
John Gunterman:So the spread of the tail is directly tied, at least to the the latter half of the body capacity.
Rip Stalvey:Oh yeah, and hey, you brought up something good, and that's The next thing I think we need to talk about is body capacity, what it is, why it's important. And how to look for it. John, what are your thoughts?
John Gunterman:You need the basic room for the organs to fit and do their stuff naturally. So, too tight of a body, too narrow. I equate everything to the kitchen. So, I see some things that are you know, torpedo shape, like torpedo rolls. They're kind of narrow at the front and narrow at the back and broadest at the shoulders, but it's too pinched and that's gonna cause all the internal organs to be stressed. I like to go for this cinder block shape where I've got, you know, a lot of room for the hen to have her organs and do her reproductive thing and you know, roosters can be roosters. They need to be able to defend their flock and be able to carry themselves and ward off predators or at least warn of them.
Rip Stalvey:I had somebody ask me one time, well, why do I need to be worried about body capacity? I said, well, body capacity dictates so much else that goes on in a bird, rate of growth.
John Gunterman:It's the frame. It's, it's what everything is built on. You can't put two pounds of poop in a one pound bag, as my grandfather used to put.
Mandelyn Royal:Remember that even during egg laying, once it's into the What do they call that? The calcification process? That egg is in there spinning, and turning, and moving down through the laying track, and if it's tight, then it's gonna not function probably as well as it should, and it's gonna want a priority of space that can affect the other organs, especially if you get them too fat. That further causes additional inside constriction. And you might see some problems coming from poor structure, poor capacity.
John Gunterman:You could have torpedo shaped eggs, or you could have golf ball shaped eggs. And that's going to be a reflection on the body capacity.
Mandelyn Royal:Well, with where the laying equipment is, it's right up underneath the spine and you can even have poorly shaped eggs that are flat on one side if it's pushed up into that back so when the egg gets laid it'll look pretty normal until you turn it to one side that'll have like a flat spot on it.
Rip Stalvey:Another thing is that body capacity is linked to if you have females suffer from getting egg bound, where they have, they can't actually lay the egg because it's, the egg is so big and they have that physical blockage there between the pubic bones. That can cause you some real problems. It can cause you to lose some of those birds.
Mandelyn Royal:You'll absolutely lose them because if they prolapse once, they're going to do it again.
John Gunterman:Yeah, well then, you need to lose them.
Mandelyn Royal:Yeah, they shouldn't be part of the breeding equation. That's for sure.
John Gunterman:Nature selects pretty well for us. We're, maybe the one's messing it up because we're always, I think, trying to go, Oh, this is a really nice bird. Let's give her a chance when you should have maybe put her in a stew pot a long time ago.
Mandelyn Royal:There's not any one trait that is worth sacrificing the important things for. It doesn't matter what their head is like, what their comb is like, their color. That all is secondary, at least to me it is, when you're looking at those more important utility traits that help with their health and function.
John Gunterman:So Rip, there's a couple of terms that I'd like to clear up from the standard that talk about heart girth and sorry, my brain's not quite working yet but let's start with that one and, you know, there's two or three more I'm sure we're gonna work our way around to.
Rip Stalvey:Well, to me, heart girth And I like to measure that when I'm evaluating birds, I'll put my thumb on the very top of the back, up near the neck, and then I'll put my middle finger, underneath the bird on the bird's breast. That'll give me an evaluation of how deep that chest cavity is. And then I, of course, so top to bottom, top to bottom and side to side at the front of the wing.
Mandelyn Royal:Is that in front of the wing?
Rip Stalvey:Yes, I do it in front of the wing. And the greater the heart girth, the more efficient that bird becomes at processing feed. Do it, just being able to live, in other words. It's it's directly linked to the bird's overall quality
John Gunterman:The vital organs, they call it the heart girth, because that's pretty much where the heart muscle is.
Rip Stalvey:It's just like if you were measuring it on a A horse or a cow or something like that, heart growth is important there, just like it is important in chickens.
Mandelyn Royal:I like how thoroughbreds are so deep in the chest because they're working hard and
John Gunterman:Yeah, the heart muscle needs room to work.
Rip Stalvey:Heart muscle, lung capacity. It's all tied into that.
Thanks for watching!
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Thanks for watching!
Mandelyn Royal:Well, we covered the depth of the body and how important that is. And so if we're just working our way down the bird, then we get to think about the straightness and the width between the legs, because that's what the whole body is standing on.
Rip Stalvey:Yes. And you know, like I mentioned before, if you've got a good wide bird, you're going to have a well formed tail with a nice spread side to side and top to bottom, although I realize that's kind of a cosmetic thing, but that spread in the bird, between the legs. Is related to heart girth, it is related to body capacity, and you want legs that are straight, top to bottom. Because if they're turned in or cow hocked, as folks say that's indicating a bird that's wider at the top than it is kind of down at the bottom.
John Gunterman:Knock kneed.
Rip Stalvey:Knock kneed. Those are the ones that have leg problems, have trouble walking.
John Gunterman:And they can also be bow legged, too. And that's the opposite problem. And those, those are structural defects, and those should not be bred forward.
Rip Stalvey:Exactly. And it's easy to evaluate, if you're watching your birds, if they turn and walk directly towards you, or directly away from you, it becomes readily apparent if those legs are straight, or if there's a problem with them.
Mandelyn Royal:Yeah, the more you look for it, the more you see it. And I've also noticed that the legs, and how they're set, and where they're positioned on the body, and If they're coming down bowed in, there's almost always a very steep and sharp V shape to the keel that's very narrow, more often than not, and that's a problem I've noticed on most birds of most varieties I've tried. Like, it's almost like the underside of the bird is getting completely neglected.
Rip Stalvey:Well, so many people They really pay attention to the top line of the bird, or let's say, the top half of the bird. Because it's easy to see visually. And they forget all about the The equally important is the bottom half of the bird when viewed from the side.
Mandelyn Royal:Well, for dual purpose and for table, the underside is even more important if you're worried about what it's going to look like in a shrink bag.
Rip Stalvey:That's the meat. That's the
John Gunterman:breast.
Mandelyn Royal:Yeah, that's the part that's turned up for display. If they're narrow or pointy or sharp or otherwise not looking very meaty, that's the first thing you're going to see as soon as they're in a shrink bag.
Rip Stalvey:Absolutely and amount of body fleshing is something we need to touch on too, because if you don't have good body fleshing, you're going to have a really small carcass to eat, because that's directly tied to the amount of breast meat, the amount of thigh and leg meat.
John Gunterman:And also your feed conversion ratio. If you're feeding and keeping and housing a bird for that long and it's only producing X amount of meat where the bird right next to it is producing, you know, 125% in the same time space and feed, you know who's more efficient?
Mandelyn Royal:Well, and if you've already accounted for your environment, your husbandry methods, and you've already ruled out feed as either helping or hindering what's going on. If you know you're on the right track with everything, but that fleshing still is not there, then that's when you start looking at the genetic influence and if they're even going to be able to produce birds that have a better condition, and I've experimented a little bit by taking a really meaty bird and breeding it to one that wasn't that great to see how that would kind of spread forward in the hatch results. And, when there is a genetic tie, you might only see 25 to 50 percent of them as being as meaty as the one parent, and then the others are as not meaty as the other parent. Which was interesting confirmation to not be tolerant on poorly fleshed birds for the sake of other traits. I know it's not worth it.
Rip Stalvey:To me, in a way, this almost goes back to what we were talking about when we first started. And that's the importance of the balance of the bird. You've got birds that are shallow breasted and pinched in, tucked up in the rear, it looks out of balance.
John Gunterman:Mm hmm. So for the first couple of years, maybe the birds that actually would look best in the shrink bag are the ones you want to breed from instead.
Mandelyn Royal:That's what I did initially.
John Gunterman:Yeah. You put your lesser quality birds. When we're doing restoration forestry, we call it low grading. Your forest where you're out, you're doing single tree selection worst first, you're taking the worst out first and only leaving your best trees to grow and mature. So you're, you're always building the best possible forest. It, I see a direct correlation here, single bird selection, worst first out. And by the time you're done, you just have great birds. And you're like, Oh, you know what? You look the most like this bird and you both meet the standards. So you can have some conjugal visits and I'm going to collect your eggs and we'll see what you do.
Rip Stalvey:Okay. Oh, we were on legs. Let's move down to the toes.
Mandelyn Royal:Oh, Toes. Toes can be frustrating.
John Gunterman:Especially as soon as you get your incubation right. At least for me, toes cleared up a lot. I was culling for crooked toes unnecessarily because there is a direct correlation to incubation temperature accuracy, especially in the early development stages.
Mandelyn Royal:And if it's not that, it's riboflavin. Nutritional things can affect it, the incubation can affect it, you have a lot of legwork to rule out things before you can pin it to genetics. Right.
Rip Stalvey:Well, and you know, you were talking about nutrition, and it's important to remember that it's not just the nutrition we feed the chicks, it's the nutrition that we feed the breeders. Absolutely. Because if they don't have good nutrition bases They can't put all the nutrients those developing embryos will need, up until they hatch.
John Gunterman:A human finds out she's pregnant, bam, prenatal vitamins, folic acid especially. You know, the essential amino acids become even more essential when you're building an offspring. I don't care what species it is. And that's, that's going to help epigenetically set the chick up for success because as it's being developed, it has access to all these things. So it's going to breed forward better and stronger. It's going to, it's going to come out of the egg with a higher hatch weight. Initially, which is going to translate to its entire life.
Mandelyn Royal:I heard somewhere that if you see nutritional issues prior to 10 or 12 weeks, it very likely came from the adults being deficient in what they were able to put into that egg for that chick.
John Gunterman:It's like if you do get crooked toes or a wry neck or something. Look at the onset. Is it before or after two days, three days? Is it before or after, you know, a week and a half to two weeks? It'll tell you whether it was, I don't want to say prenatal, pre shell or post hatch. What is the proper term for that? I feel so non scientific.
Mandelyn Royal:I don't know. I'm sure there is one. There probably is. Pre hatch.
Rip Stalvey:You know, talking about straightness of toes, I got a question for you guys. If the rear toe twists around forward, what's that called? Duck foot.
Mandelyn Royal:I got one right.
John Gunterman:Does that mean it's initially coming off the shank straight back and curves back?
Mandelyn Royal:The whole placement is off.
John Gunterman:Okay, because I've seen them come straight back and then curve back around.
Rip Stalvey:Duckfoot is when that toe is coming off almost at a right angle to where it should.
John Gunterman:So it should come straight back. If you look at your chicken footprint in the snow or in the mud or whatever is soft ground around you, it should come straight back in their gait naturally.
Mandelyn Royal:Oh, that'd be a good way to test them out. Scatter some flour on a smooth surface, set your chicken to walk on it, and it'll tell you where that toe is.
John Gunterman:Or just wait till it snows. The way it's been going, pretty much anywhere in the country is likely to get snow.
Mandelyn Royal:Let's talk about straight keels.
John Gunterman:Straight keels. You've been selecting hard for this, Mandy.
Mandelyn Royal:So hard. I'm so sick and tired of seeing that flaw. I've seen it in every breed I ever put my hands on. Mostly because of how I was sourcing my birds because I like to make things more work than they need to be but They the keels. Oh, man there's a lot of different shapes they can be. You want them straight and smooth and not bowed inward not bowed outward just a nice straight Even probably long too. There's not too many that should have a short keel, but measuring them and getting your hands on them, that's the only way you're going to know what you're looking at. Rip, how do you measure your keels?
Rip Stalvey:When I first pick up a bird, I put the front point of the keel bone up against the heel of my hand, and then I lay the keel bone along, through the palm of my hand, along my index finger. That allows me to feel, is it straight or not, and how long it is.
Mandelyn Royal:That's also different than how I do it. We should hang out and handle birds.
John Gunterman:At the other end, I like to see it, you know, inside the carcass after it's been cooked. I look at the cartilage and the bones and see, I have this image, remember the old Battlestar Galactica series? The Colonial Viper spaceship? To me that looks just like the cartilage and keel should look like in a chicken.
Mandelyn Royal:Oh, you're right. I never thought of it that way, but you're right. So, I'm not the only one pulling the bones out and looking real close.
John Gunterman:I mean, if it's sitting on the platter and you're taking it apart when you're eating it, I mean, as I'm enjoying the meat, I'm, I'm definitely analyzing the carcass of the bird that I'm consuming. This brings us to the close of another Poultry Keepers podcast. We're very happy you chose to join us. Until next time, we'd appreciate it if you would drop us a note letting us know your thoughts about our podcast. Please share our podcast with your friends that keep poultry. We hope you'll join us again when we'll be talking poultry from feathers to function.