Poultry Keepers Podcast

Selecting Dual-Purpose Chickens, Hands-On Traits That Matter For Meat and Eggs- Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, Mandelyn Royal, and Carey Blackmon • Season 2 • Episode 95

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Discover the art and science behind selecting and breeding true dual-purpose chickens in Part 2 of our series! Join us as we dive deep into evaluating carcass quality, balancing body structure for meat and egg production, and how nutrition and genetics both shape your flock’s success. Learn firsthand from real breeders’ experiences, feeding trials, and practical selection methods to create resilient, productive birds. Whether you’re a homesteader, breeder, or serious poultry enthusiast, this episode is packed with real-world knowledge you can apply today!

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Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast! In this episode, we're continuing our deep dive into selecting and breeding dual-purpose chickens. We'll explore real-world examples of how genetics and nutrition come together to influence carcass quality, body structure, and productivity. Whether you're working with American Bresse, Marans, or another dual-purpose breed, we'll share practical insights that can help you build a better flock. Let's get started and sharpen your poultry breeding skills!

Carey Blackmon:

See, I can remember as a child, my, when my granddaddy, I've followed him around on the farm. Part of his right arm went missing in the war. So he just had that one hand and he would squat down. He was about five two himself. He would squat down and start checking the birds out. Next thing I know, one of'em, part of it was here and the other part was on the ground. And he'd say, get that and take it in there to you nanny. And it is, it was what it was.

Mandelyn Royal:

Okay. Next picture before we start getting on nostalgic.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh geez.

Mandelyn Royal:

So these two carcasses, the one on the right is a 14 week old bird from my breeding from the original line I started with because I have branched out and done some scientific line crosses to see what traits can be teased out, what can be influenced through different strategies. I filled the barn up with science projects. And then the bird on the right is from a different farm, and that's similar to where I started, where there was a good broadness to the front of the bird, and then I tapered off towards the backside. And that's pretty common to what the American breasts usually dress out like. But on the left side. That's when you completely lose your mind and hatch as many as you can fit and feed'em the best feed you can feed'em and totally get ruthless on your selection. That's what it can turn into, which I think is fascinating.

Rip Stalvey:

There's no doubt in my mind that genetics plays a big part in that. But the other thing, it's the same

Mandelyn Royal:

genetic pool.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. Green fire farms

Mandelyn Royal:

only imported three batches. We are all working with the same limited genetic pool.

Rip Stalvey:

The one thing that I think people forget about is that nutrition plays a huge role in how our birds look and perform and what kind of carcass they produce. The egg production you get out of'em, so don't. We're talking about selecting birds, but don't overlook the nutrition component. That's something we harp on a regular basis. It can make a big difference in your birds. It really can.

Jeff Mattocks:

The genetics have to be there, and that's, oh yeah, what man has proven here through all of our hard work, but you're never gonna see that expressed. By feeding Common Everyday feed. True. And I think that's why Mandolin was doing this feeding trial for us earlier this year. And your next one, when does that start? Mandolin. You're gonna compare it to what you used to feed?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.'cause that's gonna be really telling too. And I've got another two weeks on the eggs before they hatch, and I've already got the feed on hand to get started and then I'll have to make another trip. For fresher feed for the changeover, from starter to grower. Can't have old feed either.

Rip Stalvey:

I think that's gonna be a pretty telling process.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. Because now we're into the same genetic pool Now what?

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. I wonder if it'll look like this on the table again. I'm really curious what it's, it won't look like quite like this, spoiler. It won't. No, but

Mandelyn Royal:

I have the, I think the rest of these pictures are from birds before the feed. I tried that. You formulated. These are gonna be crumble birds coming up.

Rip Stalvey:

You had me going there for a minute. I wasn't thinking in terms of feed. I got you now. Carry on.

Mandelyn Royal:

So this is back when I still had a pretty good flock of Morans and the breasts I had on for about a year. I hadn't done much, but as you can see, there's some pretty good meat on those birds on either end. It's just everything else about them was awful and I was still trying to. Straighten out kes, but those two carcasses actually turned out pretty good. I tried a little side dabble to see if the breast influence would hybridize some of the morans for a meteor carcass. No, it didn't change a whole heck of a lot in the F1, so I didn't pursue that. And then on the Morans, you can see where that keel jumps up a bit higher. It's a little more pronounced. They still have body width. They still have really meaty thighs. They just don't have that same fleshing in there. And coming from the Morans, I spent, gosh, five or six years with them working on widening'em out and getting that growth rate in. Because when I first started with the Morans, we weren't processing until after 22 weeks, but I got that to 18 weeks.

Rip Stalvey:

The Morans, to me, and I've always felt this, they have large legs and large thighs in relationships to the rest of their body.

Mandelyn Royal:

Boy do they,

Rip Stalvey:

but a lot larger than some breeds.

Jeff Mattocks:

So manly. When you did the F1 cross, was it a Moran Brewster on a breast hen?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because I do rely on that female line to bring forth that structure, but it doesn't always pan out. Maybe it was the feet.

Jeff Mattocks:

No, I was just curious which way you went on the cross.

Mandelyn Royal:

That could matter.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, it would. The hen's gonna carry the majority of the traits. You would hope that the Moran would give you a little bit more length on the overall carcass. The Moran has excellent leg structure. There's a lot of meat on those legs. It's just lacking in the breast, so it doesn't have that packaged appearance that you're talking about or you like still. It took a while to time

Mandelyn Royal:

that width though, to tease that width out. I did end up losing a little bit of back length, and I lost everything great about their feathers too, because I was working on the black silver variety and. Everything that came up meaty. Like I put my hands on that bird and I go, wow, I need to breed from you. It's a shame that you've got all this color leakage and gold feathers where the silver should be, and your comb has 15 spikes on it.

Rip Stalvey:

It'd be nice to get it all in one package, wouldn't it?

Jeff Mattocks:

I think it used to be all in one package, but then people started fiddling with it to make it, look pretty for the show. Yes, I

Rip Stalvey:

agree.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah,

Rip Stalvey:

I think we may have lost Mandy there. She looks like she's frozen.

Jeff Mattocks:

She

Rip Stalvey:

locked

Jeff Mattocks:

up

Rip Stalvey:

on us. Not anything I can do from this end. I don't think to she'd either have to log back in.

Jeff Mattocks:

So we had lots of people, like Sue said, or Rhode Island. Reds are delicious.

Rip Stalvey:

They are.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Laura, they eat their calls. They give the smaller birds to a local raptor center. And that's what Rob used to do with his, but he's lost touch with'em. So used to give the falconer small birds Hanes two acre hobby. They eat their calls and they're delicious. They don't even put anything on'em. Just chicken and water, crock pot and water.

Rip Stalvey:

It makes'em

Carey Blackmon:

good stock

Rip Stalvey:

like that.

Carey Blackmon:

I would be willing to bet that if you have a really good natural feed that's just grains and oats, I. That would go through and it's like when you open the ba, a bag of fresh feed, how it smells like you just wanna put it in a bowl and eat it. That's gotta go through the bird. So where you don't need the seasoning it does, but people don't, it makes sense to me. Yeah. Mandy is back. Mandy

Jeff Mattocks:

is

Carey Blackmon:

back.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. I lost internet there for a second. I'm glad it came back on. Oh, this next picture I'm excited about. It'll show a lot of body capacity. I. So these two birds, the one on the left is an American breast that a friend of mine raised out. She said she wanted to try'em and she said, I wanna see if they're really dual purpose and I'm gonna compare them to Bill Fels. cause I like their color better. So she got the Bill Fels and that bird on the right is how that went.

Rip Stalvey:

Big difference.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. Both of'em are 18 weeks old and that's another. Genetics thing where that breeding selection really comes into play because if that bird on the right was allowed to go fertilize eggs, you're gonna get a whole bunch more of that carcass.

Jeff Mattocks:

The one on the right was really a breasts also?

Mandelyn Royal:

No, it was a bill Felder. Oh, bill Felder.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Mandelyn Royal:

Second import, if anyone wants to know First import was better,

Rip Stalvey:

but that is a dramatic difference. No doubt about it.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, it's huge. And that was over two and a half pounds difference. And it's hard to say if the bill filter would've filled in more later.'cause you do have late blooming birds out there,

Jeff Mattocks:

but I would

Mandelyn Royal:

assume not much change would happen.

Jeff Mattocks:

Esther wants to know what you feed your early calls to finish'em out. She's seen select your, so there is fancy French.

Mandelyn Royal:

Okay. Finishing methods that I don't always do because they're actually pretty great without doing that.

Jeff Mattocks:

I think what she means is like when you make a selection, say on a six week or an eight week old bird, that's not done yet, are you putting them on a feed just to bulk'em out? No, I don't change

Mandelyn Royal:

anything.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay, so you're using the same feed all the way through?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. So as soon as they're on a grower feed, they stay on that feed. All the way until you told me to try the finishing feed you formulated for us.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Did you try it yet?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Mandelyn Royal:

I gotta do it again and see what's different there. It has enough corn in it, but the results were pretty similar to just doing the grower, so I was gonna play around with it a little bit and then let you know.

Jeff Mattocks:

How long were they on the finisher?

Mandelyn Royal:

Four weeks to six weeks.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay, and you didn't see any additional carcass vet? You should have seen more fat. No, it was about the same. Okay. There should have been more pad fat. So where you open up for evisceration to go into the abdomen. Yeah. There should have been a larger clump of fat right there at the end of the keel bone. And unfortunately too many people don't understand. You need to keep that. It's part of Yes. Flavor profile. Yes. You need to keep

Mandelyn Royal:

that. That cooks down to liquid gold. I

Jeff Mattocks:

know, but too many people remove it and throw it away'cause they don't understand the value of that. But.

Mandelyn Royal:

There's a genetic component too, and I saw some birds that had it pretty good and some birds not so much, and some birds, they're based on the pen results. That's why I'm excited for trial 2.0.'cause then I can compare pen against pen and then run'em through the same methodology, the same feed, the same everything. The only thing different is their specific family, but all of them have been under my breeding guidance for years now. But then I wanna get into those little details of how thick was that fat pad? Because when it's at least a quarter inch to a half inch, that's gonna be the juiciest chicken you ever ate.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. You don't want to remove the fats. People, I don't know, there's still bad publicity out there about fats. If you fed'em right and you raise them right, that's gonna be the healthiest fat you can get your hands on. Absolutely. Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

And Jeff, didn't you say that if you keep'em on a starter. Longer. You actually don't get more growth benefit from it. You can step that down.

Jeff Mattocks:

I don't keep'em on starter two, you don't. People think that they're gonna grow faster just because they keep'em on a higher protein and really you, it doesn't work that way and you're doing damage to the kidneys and the renal. The renal system of the bird. It does. There's no significant advantage to keeping'em on that. And again, it depends on where you live. What's your se, what's your weather like? What's your season like down in Alabama? Where carrie's at right now through the summer. If he was trying to grow birds, I might keep him on a higher protein because they're eating less due to the temperature. We've talked about it before. They're gonna eat for the calorie needs based on the temperature, and that's all. So there's a time and a place, and it's balancing your feed with your weather and your genetics. That gets tricky, and we're not gonna go into that tonight, but yeah, that's, you can, but you shouldn't in an average climate. Not right now. July and August in your growing seasons where it's cooler nights, warmer days. You. There's no need to keep'em. There's no advantages to keeping them on a higher protein feed for a longer period of time. You're actually doing more damage to the internals by doing that. And you're definitely making your chicken house smell a lot more ammonia. Yeah. Than it needs to be

Mandelyn Royal:

ready for another picture. Sure. This is a neat one too. So these birds were both from my breeding on the left is. A Morans at 16 weeks and on the rights an American breast, that was way too gosh dang, wide and out of balance. So he was cold for being too much. Also, at 16 weeks fed the same, grown, the same, exact same weight, three pounds, six ounces, but they were completely different body shapes. And so that's where you wanna dig into your specific breed standard and see what that standard says so that you can recognize if a bird is within that. Or not. And so in the case of that American breast on the right, it was lacking that balance. We wanna see it was too much and too far. And that's where I started to see, I had to step things back a little bit and start looking more at back length and depth and not just solely focus on width.'cause if you pick one trait and you keep selecting repeatedly for that one trait, you're gonna go too far with it. You're gonna lose the balance. But I thought it was really neat that they were the exact same weight, just. Different proportions.

Rip Stalvey:

Interesting.

Mandelyn Royal:

I figured I'd bring out a boy that wasn't in a shrink bag and this guy at 11 weeks old is showing that early width, which lets me know in another two to three weeks he would be shrink bag ready and he is gonna have that shape that's marketable and that's what it looks like. If you look at the left side image where his legs are. Lined up right in the middle of his body and he doesn't have too much mass on either end. He's gonna grow into himself pretty well. So that guy actually got a reprieve when it came processing time to grow some more. And let me see how he really finishes out and that's what the wonky teenagers look like. Plus, I liked his attitude friendly without being too friendly.

Rip Stalvey:

He's a nice looking bird. Nice looking.

Mandelyn Royal:

He's got a little crinkle in his comb though. If you really wanna nitpick

Jeff Mattocks:

when you're at the nitpicking stage.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, I'm starting to nitpick.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're starting to nitpick. That width is

Mandelyn Royal:

pretty in there. This is another one where I was like, whoa. Too wide. That's a bit too much. And that's where those really wide carcass pictures came from is when I saw those boys like this who didn't grow into it. Like you look at that bird and go, that's too wide.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, that one's starting to look more Cornish cross to me. Than your birds normally do.

Mandelyn Royal:

And so when you're doing the selection, you have to look at where can I improve and where do I need to scale that back a little bit. You have to be flexible,

Jeff Mattocks:

but do you want to just keep one line? At what point do you keep something like this and you start a line for a meat production as a primary meat production. Wouldn't there be a demand for that out there? And you advertise'em that way, right? These are more for meat production, not for the egg laying side. I'm just thinking of the homesteaders out there who are wanting these types of birds or people that want to grow their own food, would they not be interested in these broader birds? I realize there definitely

Mandelyn Royal:

is a market there and a lot of interest in it. I don't wanna lose the rate of lay and I don't wanna lose what I'm working on, and I don't have a second barn.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because it, it takes all that space and infrastructure to start off a whole new family of birds.

Rip Stalvey:

They did that earlier on with New Hampshires. It was created as broiler, broiler breed, but then it got morphed around to where there was two lines. One was a meat type. New Hampshire and one was a more production egg production type, New Hampshire. And you could see in some of those earlier pictures, you could definitely see the difference in the body.

Mandelyn Royal:

Now I'm just trying to aim for that balance of both because the first focus of my flock is to keep us going. And chicken, I'm not trying to buy anymore. I wanna breed for our own replacements and keep a good thing going without going too far in any which direction.

Rip Stalvey:

Mandy, I've told you this before and I'll just probably keep harping on it forever, but I think you do as good a job as anybody I have ever come across in breeding your birds and selecting wisely for your breeders.

Mandelyn Royal:

And it took a long time to figure out what it really took, because I've been hatching eggs for a long time. I've been hatching eggs since what, like 1989, but I don't think I really started breeding. I. Until after 2012. We kinda all get there. Process. It started to make sense and as I juggled through breeds.'cause I went through a try'em all, little phase there for a while and then I finally found the one that stuck and I now they're the only breed I have, which makes it easier too.

Rip Stalvey:

We get

Mandelyn Royal:

sidetracked.

Rip Stalvey:

I'm sorry, do we have any more questions? I know we've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with'em, but.

Jeff Mattocks:

No, I don't think we missed any. I'll look back through. Nope. I think we're in good shape.

Rip Stalvey:

Good. Mandy, I do have a loaded question for you.

Jeff Mattocks:

Oh.

Rip Stalvey:

Knowing what you know now, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? Or would you?

Mandelyn Royal:

That is tricky because on the one hand, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have spent so much time experimenting and wasting my time, but I wouldn't have learned what I know now if I wouldn't have done that. So I don't think I would change anything. I would just, yeah,'cause you gotta go through everything and learn it, and you have to apply what you hear because you can be told five different ways to breed a chicken. You can be told 15 different ways to raise a chicken and until you actually put it into practice with the birds you wanna keep and the region that you live with, the resources you have, you don't know what works until you apply it and it will work for you or it won't. There's some core principles that are the same. There's gonna be a little bit of experiment, experimentation to find what works for you and your flock. Besides nutrition. Feed'em. You'll probably be alright.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, but that's even variable based on where you live. That's

Mandelyn Royal:

what do you feed'em if you live in the desert?

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, a again, I gotta know what the temperature and stuff like that is. The recipe that I made for Mike Zer in Alaska is not the same as the recipe I made for you and the central states.

Mandelyn Royal:

He's still doing pretty good though with he, he got a couple of American brass and he's seeing that growth rate on that formula you gave them.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, no, it is still balanced, but it's balanced for Alaska, right? It's not balanced for Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois. And people that were live. If people are living in like North Dakota, Northern Minnesota, something like that, feed formulation needs to be adjusted for each region to maximize those genetic potential of each of those birds.

Mandelyn Royal:

Stu brought up a good mentor, really helps when you're breeding birds, and that's pretty true too. And I did have the benefit of my great uncle who. Let me catch my first chicken. And then he taught me the initial basics of what to do with it after I caught it. And then my grandmother too. She had birds her whole entire life and her mother before her and so on and so forth, all the way back to when they came over from Europe. They drank chickens with them then. But then the newer knowledge from hanging out at a PA shows and talking to people who've been doing it. 20, 30, 40 years and getting their perspective and then talking to people who do commercial birds and getting their perspective. I asked around through all different channels of poultry people to figure out where I wanted to fall into that and how I wanted to raise my birds. And I was mentored by a lot of really great people, and that was a lot of great perspective that came from that. So I try to turn around and mentor people too, and. That way they can learn at a faster pace than I learned.

Rip Stalvey:

A good mentor can shave years off of what you're trying to accomplish. I learned that the hard way

Jeff Mattocks:

and it ain't just chickens.

Rip Stalvey:

No, that's true. That's true. I had a

Jeff Mattocks:

great mentor that got me off and started doing the animal nutrition and he had more common sense than brook smarts and it's made a world of difference for my career. So it doesn't matter what you're doing. A good mentor can help you a lot.

Rip Stalvey:

I agree

Jeff Mattocks:

wholeheartedly.

Rip Stalvey:

Me too. Okay. I think we've probably about exhausted. You don't have, that's your last slide, didn't it, Mandy?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, that was the last one.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. I think we've gone through about everything. That we had. So with all of that said,

Jeff Mattocks:

he's wondering what he'd feed if he lived in the tropics. That's pretty much right. Rob. Rob. Yeah. Fish plantains and coconuts.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. It's amazing how a bird's diet can change and from geographical locations. It's just staggering when you stop and think about it.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's definitely true.

Rip Stalvey:

Folks, if you have forgotten or be sure and check out Mandolins, YouTube channel, Arcadian, orchids. Orchards, not Orchids. I'm sorry.

Mandelyn Royal:

Apples not flowers.

Rip Stalvey:

There you go. There you go. And I also, she's got a really good Facebook page where she post writes very well. I've always enjoyed reading your writing, Mandy. You do a good job at it. But she's a good person to try to emulate when it comes to poultry.

Mandelyn Royal:

So long as you're willing to eat a lot of chicken.

Rip Stalvey:

You got a lot of chicken. If you're gonna raise chickens, that's for sure.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because one of the worst things, like if you ever wanna to become a breeder and be public with it and share your birds out, there's gonna be some birds that probably shouldn't leave the farm. No matter how good a quality you get, flock wide, there's gonna be some. They probably shouldn't go outside of a shrink bag.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because reputations, there're hard to get and they can disappear pretty fast if you let the wrong birds out to the wrong person. And then now people are selling birds using your name and they're terrible because, and

Rip Stalvey:

it ruins your reputation. When they do that. It's not a good thing. So with that said, I think we can call it an evening. Carrie, do you have anything you want to add, Jeff? I'm good. No, I

Jeff Mattocks:

learned a lot. I learned a lot and I was really impressed by the pictures where the American breast was when she started to, now it's getting a lot more of, I don't want to compare it to the Cornish Cross, but the breast is much more developed. Okay. The breast is much more rounded and developed. It has a very good look and a shrink bag, so it's. Yeah, just keep on. I'm really anxious to see how the next feed trial goes. Me. See what we'll learn from that, but that's be too, especially after

Mandelyn Royal:

working the kinks out.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Do know how much feed you had in these Mandy? Did you ever figure out? Once I

Mandelyn Royal:

run the tally, I will know exactly how much. Okay. We're, it's written down in a pile of notes that I need to put in a spreadsheet.

Jeff Mattocks:

We're waiting with bated breath. I know. Especially me.

Mandelyn Royal:

I don't, I can't imagine why.

Carey Blackmon:

Oh Mercy. Mandy. No, Mandy. Wow. Angela. Mandy, I think what you should do is take one of those that once it's in a shrink bag and deep freeze it, and then overnight it to Jeff just so he can see for himself. Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Do I have to pack it with dry ice or No, just let it If you get it, if you

Jeff Mattocks:

get it frozen hard enough. If you get it really frozen hard and you put it in like an insulated chipper. And two day it or overnight it'll be fine. I get

Mandelyn Royal:

request for that.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Mandelyn Royal:

From people who go, I wanna try it before I completely change everything I'm doing with poultry. Let me try this bird, see

Jeff Mattocks:

if I can like it first. Tell'em. Tell them,

Mandelyn Royal:

oh, and I have a bone salt to cut one in half frozen. That would show me that too. That would,

Rip Stalvey:

yeah. Yeah. That would make a good,

Mandelyn Royal:

yeah, I forgot about that. Bone saw. I have it for pork. Which by the way,

Rip Stalvey:

it works on chickens just as good.

Mandelyn Royal:

I'll have to have my husband hold it.

Alex:

That wraps up this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast! We hope you found today's conversation on selecting dual-purpose chickens both informative and inspiring. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with fellow poultry enthusiasts. Don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our updates to get even more tips and information. Join us again in two weeks when we bring you more hands-on poultry knowledge you can use to build a thriving, resilient flock. Until next time, happy poultry keeping!

People on this episode

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

Co-host