Poultry Keepers Podcast

Rhode Island Reds, An American Classic-Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, Carey Blackmon, Sue Dobson, Jennifer Bryant • Season 2 • Episode 71

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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, the discussion centers around the management, breeding, and showing of Rhode Island Reds, a classic American poultry breed. 

The hosts provide recommendations on maintaining bloodlines, handling genetic setbacks, and the perils of introducing new blood into established lines. They share practical advice on conditioning show birds, managing breeding environments, and ensuring the health and quality of birds through ruthless culling and good husbandry. 

 Additionally, the hosts discuss travel tips for transporting birds to shows and how to maintain them in optimum condition before and during events. Listener questions are addressed throughout, offering insights into detailed care and breeding strategies.

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Alex:

Hi there, and welcome to another Poultry Keepers Podcast. This episode concludes Rhode Island Reds, An American Classsic. We hope you enjoy our conversation and pick up some good tips on Rhode Island Reds along the way. So lets start where we left off last week.

Carey Blackmon:

With that in mind, every time somebody I see in these groups, people are like, I'm looking for fresh blood for my birds. My first question is why? What are you trying to fix? Because unless you bring in something that's like that, like a, like showstopper, showbird. You could be throwing in a rent and having to start completely over messing up what you have done. So if,

Rip Stalvey:

excuse me, I'm sorry. If you ever find yourself feeling that way that you absolutely got to bring in unrelated blood. My suggestion is get it from a related line. In other words, find somebody else that has a line of birds that you have and get one from them that has the qualities you want. That way you won't

Carey Blackmon:

be starting over.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly

Carey Blackmon:

right.

Jeff Mattocks:

People get scared when they've been line breeding and all of a sudden they get a hatch that is completely ugly and a whole lot of defects all of a sudden. And instead of getting scared and getting new blood, they need to push through that. Because on the other side is a lot purer line, okay? And they don't understand that. Their head is the right direction, they just don't know it, okay? And, you pick through the uglies and, you breed again, right? And the next generation, a lot of those defects will be gone if you can get through that one or two really ugly generations.

Carey Blackmon:

Ruthless culling.

Jeff Mattocks:

Jeff,

Rip Stalvey:

I've had that happen to me. New blood is always a

Jeff Mattocks:

mistake.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, I've had that happen to me, and when I stopped and thought about it and really evaluated the birds, it was not so much the birds fault, it's that I hadn't put the best birds to work. That were best matched together in breeders. Yeah. But the fault was actually my fault and not the bird's fault.

Jeff Mattocks:

You have the bloodlines. The bloodlines are already there. You know that you have the bloodlines. You just have to push through that, that mistake or that ugly and, there's good stuff on the other side, but every time someone, whenever you bring in new blood, you're starting over. People don't understand. You are starting over. And you don't know what you're bringing in. I don't care how good the breeder is, or the person is, or whatever, or how many ribbons they got. You don't know what you're bringing in. You know what you own, but you don't know what you're buying. A

Sue Dobson:

good example of that is my hatch this year. I've got pullets that are coming up that are outstanding. Every male that I hatched, he's crock pot, and I started to worry and then I thought, no, I've got the birds here still on the property that produced Ripalicious. It's there. It's just me figuring out the puzzle pieces to who did goes to with him.

Rip Stalvey:

Mr. Reese had a saying. Always keep your blueprints.

Jenifer Bryant:

Yup.

Rip Stalvey:

Yup. My

Jenifer Bryant:

original birds are in the back. They're my egg layers. And I keep all my breeders separate up on the hill. And if I ever screw up on the hill, I just go shopping in my backyard.

Carey Blackmon:

There you go. Yup. Yup. Rip, a while ago you made mention about the feathers and we were talking about the blacking on the feathers and that kind of stuff. Shaggy on YouTube wants to know how hard you work Should the feathers be?

Rip Stalvey:

Shaggy, I would want feathers on a red to be somewhere between the look of the feathers on a Leghorn and maybe an Orpington, something like that, somewhere in between those. You want it tight, not real tight. You don't want it real loose either.

Sue Dobson:

And they're, because of the red color, they're prone to dry out.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes, That's why when you're conditioning birds, it's a good idea to keep a squirt bottle of water over there where you're conditioning. Go by once or twice a day, just pshh. Or let them out. Give them a little

Sue Dobson:

misting. Let

Carey Blackmon:

them out in the rain. Yep. So for me in the summertime, I listened to Jeff, even though sometimes he thinks that I don't listen to him. I'm sure often you don't. Oh I went through I bought Jennifer has got me addicted to Timu. And I was on TV one day and one of their, flash sales that they do, that's almost as bad as going in, into a big box store and you hearing the chick sound it was misters, for your deck. And it's like the tube with the fittings, the tee fittings, where you can screw in the misters. And I was like Jeff always says that this is good in the summertime to help keep them cool. And they talk about doing it to keep the feathers moist. And it helps them stay healthy and this that and the other so now in all of my breeding pens I've got misters and they'll cut on about one o'clock in the afternoon and they'll cut off about three Plenty of time to dry up before the sun goes down. I always got wind a lot of mine have fans in them to dry the ground so I don't have to worry about that, but It really does make a difference on their feathers.

Rip Stalvey:

Big difference.

Carey Blackmon:

Let's see, Tim also says that he bred reds for 25 years. It can be great breed, but very challenging. Yes.

Sue Dobson:

I agree.

Rip Stalvey:

So many people don't understand just how challenging reds can be. I'd put them right up there.

Jenifer Bryant:

That goes for anything that you're going to be detail orientated about.

Rip Stalvey:

When you're breeding birds, you've got to be detailed. You've got to be detailed. You gotta pay attention to the details because it'll bite you if you don't. And you can find

Carey Blackmon:

yourself running down a rabbit hole really quick. Done that.

Sue Dobson:

And you can't just focus on one thing, you gotta have it. It's the whole, there's three pages of check boxes,

Rip Stalvey:

but, Sue, I want to add one thing on to that. You're right, you can't focus on just one thing. But, when you try to correct a problem, when you're first starting out, I would focus on one problem to try to correct it at a time. Yeah. If you try to correct five or six ago, it'll drive you nuts. Yeah. You won't get there.

Jenifer Bryant:

You gotta look today, tomorrow, and two years from now.

Carey Blackmon:

All right. This next question is, Jeff, have you ever shown birds? Have you ever been a show bird person? No. All right. So this question is going to be, we'll go from left to we'll start with Jennifer. We'll let her answer and then Sue, and then we'll let Rip answer this question. How do you house your show birds and keep them show ready? And I think people are going to be really surprised at how this question is answered.

Jenifer Bryant:

If we're talking about like right before the show, is that what we're talking about?

Carey Blackmon:

Yep. How do you house your show birds and keep them ready for a show? So I would think that's, if you're going to the Ohio National in a couple of weeks from now to then, what are you doing with that bird?

Jenifer Bryant:

I have soft feathered birds. So I would wash them like 10 12 days in advance and then I set the whole alleyway of my barn with drop pins on the floor and I just dump the shavings over the top and keep them in there and every day 14 times a day you got to go by there and clean out the shavings, dump more in there and make sure they're not close enough that they're fighting between the Cages, and I have had one jump up and hung himself the day before a show, so now I lay stuff on top of the cages to keep him from doing that again. So it's a learning process all the way up until that morning.

Carey Blackmon:

All right. Sue, how do you and I'm laughing because I have a clue you where you're going with this but how do you house your show birds and keep them show ready?

Sue Dobson:

I try to keep their pens as clean as possible. Year round it's right. And some days I do well and other days I don't. But the two birds that won for me, the best one was picked off the ground. The morning of the show, or the morning before I left to go to the show, so she was not even washed and the other bird had his butt and legs washed and taken. I just, I feed them good. I take care of them. They get outside. They get on green grass. They have fresh air. They're chickens. They do what they want to do. But I just drink clean water, clean, fresh food. I don't put them in conditioning pins. I just don't. They stay with everybody else. And

Carey Blackmon:

you let your chickens chicken.

Sue Dobson:

I let my chickens chicken. The one girl that, honestly, the one girl that won Knoxville and 21. I went out there to win. to load up at five o'clock in the morning and she was standing there and I thought you look pretty good so I just picked her up and checked the bottom make sure she didn't have bugs they're in a box and away we went she won the whole show so or she won a large champion large fell I won't say she won the whole show but it definitely shocked me because I didn't think anybody pay any attention to those curve so But they did. They did.

Carey Blackmon:

What about you Rip? How do you house your show birds?

Rip Stalvey:

I'm a lot like Sue. Leave them outside, let them run around, let them be chickens. I can honestly say I have never washed a Rhode Island Red to take it to a show. Other than to wipe off the face and wipe off the feet and legs. Make sure the butt's clean. Just never needed it. Wipe them down with a silk cloth. That'll get the dust off of them. Shine them up a little bit. Rub a little of my comb dressing on their Face and wattles and comb and that's real simple to make it's 50 percent alcohol and 50 percent olive oil. Shake it up and rub it on there. The alcohol helps redden the comb and the olive oil makes it shine. And do the same thing, use the same thing on the feet and legs too. But if I'm going all out to condition a bird, I'll put it in a show coop, bring it inside for about 10 days or so. And I want to get it used to showing. Against strange birds. So I'll shuffle a order of the birds around. I don't, every day I'm move them around. I play a radio in there, get'em used to strange sounds. I even have some audio that I recorded at a show. So that's usually what I play. Just common sense stuff. Don't overthink it. This is not a breed that requires lot of pimping and carrying on with them.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah, we're not doing it. It's not table dancers.

Rip Stalvey:

No.

Carey Blackmon:

Let's see here. I'm trying to get that

Rip Stalvey:

image out of my head now. Yeah, Lordy.

Carey Blackmon:

Tim says type has been the most challenging. Most have lost the true brick shape. That is true. Amen, Tim. Let's see. We only have some quail and small backyard mixed flock of chickens trying to learn as much as possible and convince the better half that we need some farmland. I hate to say it, but you don't need a lot of land.

Sue Dobson:

I have one acre.

Carey Blackmon:

You just gotta, you just gotta have your pens. And if you don't have a lot of land to have big pens. You just got to work extra hard to condition your pens and keep them clean.

Sue Dobson:

Honestly,

Rip Stalvey:

as far as raising birds and getting them in good shape and good condition, reds are pretty easy, good feet, good management, good water. You're good to go.

Carey Blackmon:

We'll see you soon Rip. Do you track egg numbers and are you tracking individual matings? Yes and yes.

Sue Dobson:

No and no.

Carey Blackmon:

But Sue's the rebel.

Sue Dobson:

I am. I know. But honestly, I can look at some of my females and I know exactly which male they came out of and real close to which female they came out of because I have a limited amount of birds. I have more now because I hatched a lot, but no Tim this spring is, Sue's going to be a better manager. Yes, yep.

Rip Stalvey:

Sue has a better memory than I do. I can't do that.

Sue Dobson:

I can tell by looking at them. They each have their own kind of little quirky thing. The, each of my adult females,

Rip Stalvey:

see, back in the day, Sue, I was, I had 10 breeding pens.

Sue Dobson:

Yeah, I

Rip Stalvey:

just, there's no way I could keep track of that with my feeble brain.

Sue Dobson:

Yeah, one day, one day.

Carey Blackmon:

How do you manage a trip to the Ohio National or somewhere where you drive an extended period of time? How often would you stop and tend to your birds? Or do whatever, and then start again.

Sue Dobson:

Coming from Oklahoma, it was almost between 14 and 16 hours. And we stopped, to use the bathroom, eat lunch, and do that. But they rode in extra large show boxes. They had plenty of room to stand up and move around. Or dog kennels, the great big dog kennel things. And they had food and water inside the dog kennels. So they had room to move around. They made the trip just, they made the trip better than I did.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes, every time. I do it a little bit different than Sue. I don't use a big box to carry the birds in, but they do have feed and water available. All I want them to be able to do is stand up and sit down. Because when birds start turning around in some of those boxes is when they start turning around.

Carey Blackmon:

So I guess for that you would either have a box that they can fit in, that they can stand up and sit down or have something huge where they have more than enough room to move around. So they don't damage any of their feathers or anything like that. Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

My show boxes are 10 inches wide and about. 20 inches tall.

Carey Blackmon:

All right, now this next question is one that is loaded anytime you ask any poultry keeper this question. And to be honest, a lot of them don't know the actual answer. How many do you have at one time? And now I'm sure we all know exactly how many pens and coops we have. But how many do you have at one time? Jennifer, look, Jennifer just sitting there oh, don't call me for that. Noticed she's recording eye contact.

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

I would say that, if your feed is delivered on a pallet the number's a little high, but you don't know. I would

Jenifer Bryant:

have 20 APIN, think.

Rip Stalvey:

I would hatch upwards of seven or eight hundred birds a year, but was selling a lot of baby chicks, I didn't keep that many, I would keep two, maybe three hundred because I also sold a lot of adult birds I probably, my birds that I wanted to keep, fifty or less, at the most you have to be just absolutely ruthless in culling, Not just reds but any breed, if you're, you need to weed down to about 10%, those are going to be your top birds, get rid of everything, get rid of the other 90%, keep 10 percent is

Carey Blackmon:

good rule of thumb. And what your definition of ruthless culling and what's a keeper, somebody else's may be a lot more relaxed. If we're talking about reds and minor. More tan than red and somebody else has a real red, one of their culls may be what puts more red into your birds.

Rip Stalvey:

Kerry, there's no doubt about it. The longer you have birds, the closer you cull.

Jenifer Bryant:

I would like to interject here though, the more pens and coops you have lets you spread them out more and it ebbs and flows. So while I have a bunch of pens. Come January, probably 60, 70 percent of them will be empty. Yeah, you sure don't want to crowd

Rip Stalvey:

them.

Jenifer Bryant:

You've got breeders, you've got grow outs, then you'll have culls, and then you'll be back down to just breeders again. Just because you have a bunch of coops and pens doesn't mean that there's birds in all of them all the time.

Carey Blackmon:

I've got three empty breeding pens, and An empty 10 by 20.

Jenifer Bryant:

I've got empty too.

Sue Dobson:

You're ready to start hatching.

Rip Stalvey:

I just started saying, y'all need to put eggs in the incubator. If you

Carey Blackmon:

got that much space, come on. So what I got to, I'm going to rotate my pens cause I'm going to clean them out, do everything, condition the pens. And I am a wintertime hatcher. Have some lighting that I've started my lighting program about a month ago. Because I like to, I like that 16 hour day for my birds, not for me. But, once the day starts shortening, I like to give them a break until they're through the molt. And then I stretch that day back out, roughly 30 minutes a week. And, if you live anywhere near me, right now, about 3. 30 in the morning, you're going to hear about your rooster's crow. That's just, it's getting, starting to get dark at, five o'clock now we're an hour and a half away from dark. So I like for my lights to go off about an hour or so before dark, right when I'm feeding them, because I like for the roosting process to be as natural as possible. And, Jeff, there you go again, that's. me listening to you. That's Jeff. Jeff got me on lighting and he taught me a few things about lighting. And then that rabbit hole happened and I traveled down it and I learned about the blues and the reds and. What does better for this and what does better for that? And you can get something to work all across the line. And how many Kelvins does it need to be? All that stuff is a whole new rabbit hole that you can go down.

Jeff Mattocks:

You need to repost that. I think people need a reminder as the days are getting shorter. I can do

Carey Blackmon:

that. Let's see. Ooh here's another question that I've had, because y'all, when y'all travel long distances. You've got food and water in with your birds. I don't, cause I'm afraid of making a mess, and I also have a truck that has a little stiffer suspension. How do you keep birds with water when you're driving?

Rip Stalvey:

Kerry my feed and water is not in with the birds. It's outside of the area that they are in. I have little wooden dowels. Yeah, they poke their heads out. They get their heads through, and then I have a little tray out there that has, Like little Dixie cups.

Sue Dobson:

Yep.

Rip Stalvey:

No mess. Yep. What about you, Jennifer?

Jenifer Bryant:

Mine, I don't travel that far. I don't go that far from home, so they I actually use moving boxes, cardboard boxes, and we have a two inch hole saw and we drill holes on all four sides at the top, and we keep them in the dark cardboard. I think the farthest they've gone is three hours. And so I don't feed or water them. We leave so early and then I feed them in the show coop before we leave. And they've got water the whole time, too and they're fine on the way home. An ideal situation is I sell the birds while I'm there and I don't come home with any.

Rip Stalvey:

See, y'all are lucky. You live relatively close to shows. My closest show is about three hours away. Just about have to pack a lunch to get there.

Carey Blackmon:

I think it's a rule that every time I drive through Ohio, I have to bring birds home with me. My wife knows that I'm going to Ohio in a few weeks. And she's, she asked me point blank. She was like, what are you bringing back? And I was like, I don't know.

Rip Stalvey:

My wife does not ask me that. I think mine is don't bring home anything to eat.

Carey Blackmon:

Think mine's mine is curious because I'd like to have an emu. Oh Lord. I'm just throwing that out there. Oh, you're going

Sue Dobson:

on the dark side, Kerry. You ain't right.

Carey Blackmon:

Don't do it. Don't do it. I want one to keep stuff away. A couple of my kids have got to where they like coming back into my chicken yard because they're not scared of any of my chickens. And that's my place. Go get you

Rip Stalvey:

a Hatchery Red male or a Hatchery Leghorn male and he will keep them out. Or, I thought about a goose.

Carey Blackmon:

I thought about a goose, geese. Now game, they're not scared of game. Now I have one or two that, that, my games that don't like anybody but me. And they won't go in those pens. But yeah they start coming back there. So if I could free range like an emu or geese.

Sue Dobson:

You're just trying to keep your kids out of the coop.

Carey Blackmon:

That's my place.

Jenifer Bryant:

Hey, I've got a big old coach and I'll give you, he'll keep everybody out of there.

Carey Blackmon:

That's right. I need, next time I come by there, I need to see if me and him can get along because it's me and him can get along. But he don't like anybody else.

Jenifer Bryant:

He don't like anybody.

Carey Blackmon:

I've got a

Sue Dobson:

little black Spanish bantam that will put the fear of God in anybody.

Carey Blackmon:

Can I let it free range?

Sue Dobson:

You can have him. If I can catch him.

Carey Blackmon:

I've got some that I can't, I haven't had Leghorns in a year. But I have two that are free range, and sometimes I'll see them in the trees behind the house at night, and sometimes I may not see them for weeks. I think that a raccoon got them, and then they come back. What type of water cups do you recommend using at the shows? Now, me personally when I think of this, I'm almost tempted to get a couple of those little white cups because I got some of the same type cages that they use at those shows just for conditioning. As a wise man in the top right corner told me that you put your cups on the side to get the birds used to standing sideways. And you make it as much like a show as possible to lower their stress so they'll do their best, which is why he has recorded audio of the show and he has those same type coupes and stuff like that. So I would think. When conditioning for a show, I would use exactly what they're using in the shows. Those just red paper cups, right? Yeah. White ones. The problem

Rip Stalvey:

with those paper cups, red males can have big combs on them and they can have a hard time getting water out of them.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

So what I do, As I use the one pint, they're heavy black plastic and they'll hang right on the wire. Caged Cubs, that's the word. Caged Cubs. Made specifically for that. And I just take enough, when I leave, I just put some in the car, take them to the show and I use them. So they're used to eating out of there, eating out of the same thing, drinking out of the same thing.

Jenifer Bryant:

So that was something I learned at my first show. You take a jug of water with you because otherwise you make a lot of trips to the bathroom to get water for your birds.

Yep.

Jenifer Bryant:

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

And put electrolytes in it for them too.

Carey Blackmon:

Hey, here's a suggestion for me instead of an emu. You get, get a donkeys.

Jenifer Bryant:

You can get a mini donkey. Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

Son, you

Rip Stalvey:

just gone off the deep end tonight.

Sue Dobson:

Yeah. Because

Jeff Mattocks:

your kids will be out there riding that donkey.

Sue Dobson:

Yeah, no kidding.

Jeff Mattocks:

I would. I would get a big old mean. You only get one goose if you get a pair. It don't work.

Yeah. You

Jeff Mattocks:

have one single gander.

Yep.

Jeff Mattocks:

You want the biggest, ugliest one you can find.

Yep.

Jeff Mattocks:

So while I'm at

Carey Blackmon:

Ohio. I go out to the sale barn, and I find one so I can bring something back from Ohio. You don't bring anything

Jeff Mattocks:

home

Carey Blackmon:

from a sale. Nah, quit being stupid. I wouldn't put it, I wouldn't put it in my yard for at least 30 to 45 days.

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

I still wouldn't bring it home. You don't know if you're bringing mites home. You don't know if you're bringing MG home. You don't know if you're bringing in, you don't know what. That is true. There ain't a chance I'm bringing a bird home from a sale. Okay, sorry.

Carey Blackmon:

Yep. I believe that is all the questions that we have.

Jeff Mattocks:

Alright. It was good conversation.

Rip Stalvey:

Folks, we appreciate you joining us tonight. We've had a lot of fun doing this show. I think we've covered a lot of ground.

Alex:

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, where we talk about poultry, from Feathers to Function. We hope you join us next Tuesday for another great episode.

People on this episode

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

Co-host