Poultry Keepers Podcast

Grow Out Secrets-Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman • Season 2 • Episode 105

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In Part 2 of the Grow Out Secrets series on The Poultry Keepers Podcast, Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman return to the conversation on raising and evaluating young poultry during the critical grow-out phase. This episode dives into the real-world decisions poultry keepers must make when selecting future breeders and culling out the rest.

Learn how to spot activity levels, how nutrition impacts development, when to expect certain traits to appear, and how to manage your grow-outs for optimal health and performance. The team also discusses:

  • The importance of space and gender separation
  • Why grit and feed freshness matter
  • Common myths about protein vs. amino acids
  • Managing culls without guilt
  • Using records and data to build better genetic lines

If you’re serious about raising better birds—whether for show, breeding, or production—this episode is packed with practical tips and honest insights from experienced keepers who’ve been there.

Visit www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com for bonus episodes, downloadable guides, and tools for smarter poultry keeping.

#PoultryKeepersPodcast #GrowOutSecrets #ChickenCulling #BackyardChickens #FlockManagement #PoultryNutrition #RaisingBetterBirds #ChickenHealth #BreederSelection #ChickenFeedTips #KnowYourFlock #PoultryEvaluation #CullingWithPurpose #IntentionalPoultryKeeping

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Alex:

Welcome to this episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast. In todays episode of Grow Out Secrets,-Part 2, John Gunterman, Mandelyn Royal and Rip Stallvee conclude their discussion on Grow Outs. They pick up where they left off last week. Now let's turn it over to the team.

Rip Stalvey:

Mandelyn, I have a question for you. How much attention do you pay to activity level? Are they alert, energetic foraging? Is that important to you?

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, absolutely. I'm looking, so when I pull'em out of those brooders at about five weeks old and I set'em up into a grow pen. The very first thing I expect them to do is immediately bounce around, play, take a dust bath, scope out the feed and water situation, and totally be enjoying the new freedom of space.'cause now, they have a nine foot ceiling, they can do whatever they want. So another three, four weeks after that, I start introducing'em to the outdoors at, 8, 9, 10 weeks old. And that first day is pretty normal for them to huddle in the doorway and go that's scary out there. But the next day when I open that door up, I expect at least one of'em to be brave and I expect its favorite best friends to go out with them and start exploring and doing their little chicken thing. Any of'em that hang back. And they don't want to do that. We're into the third or fourth day. Then I can go ahead and stick a colleague band on that one and know it just doesn't have the gumption I need. It's not out there doing what they're supposed to be doing. This bird is more passive and there might be some future breeding ramifications from using that bird. So I won't, I want the ones with the get up and go.

Rip Stalvey:

One thing and we haven't touched on it yet, so I guess this is probably a good, pretty good place here, but when you raising chickens, and this is something the three of us have experienced personally, that when you change your nutrition, it can actually shape to a certain extent the growth of your flock. All three of us have gone from. A Okay. Feed to a wow feed to just pack the nutrition. John's even making his own. And y'all correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't nutrition have a remarkable effect on our birds?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes. You'll start noticing a trend of more of them doing what they're supposed to be doing, not just a little handful of'em on feed. But when you give all of them the actual correct nutrition, you're gonna probably see a reduced rate of call because more of them are getting what they need to go out and do their chicken things

Rip Stalvey:

and don't just change their feed, feed'em grit too. That makes a. Powerful difference.

Mandelyn Royal:

It really does well. And using the right size grit and making sure they always have it and that they're uptaking it, yes, you can shave off 20% of your feed consumption because they're able to metabolize and digest it better,

John Gunterman:

pays for itself instantly.

Mandelyn Royal:

And then my next little science project I wanna try to do for grow outs. Actually doing a way better job of tracking consumption levels of a popular feed versus a higher end feed. Because the difference in consumption can be as much as 20% in some cases. I think it's a little more than that, and the feed doesn't cost twice as much, but you could save almost twice as much in your consumption rate.

Rip Stalvey:

And produce a lot less manure. I wish I could convey what Madeline just said better to so many poultry keepers, because when I start talking about switching to a higher quality feed, the first response I get is it costs more.

Mandelyn Royal:

A lot of times it's only$5 more per bag once you, yeah, it a little bit chicken.

John Gunterman:

But you instantly regain that cost.

Rip Stalvey:

We know that on better

John Gunterman:

production,

Rip Stalvey:

we just gotta figure out how to do a better job of convincing new folks with Expensive isn't expensive.

John Gunterman:

No. Buy the best and only try once

Mandelyn Royal:

and cost, not just the upfront cost. What's the backend cost and versus your savings versus your result.

John Gunterman:

Also backend costs increase manure production, increased nitrogen, increased ammonia. All these extras that come by feeding a low quality diet that affect the health of the chicken, and what comes out the backend end. You give them grit, you're gonna realize more return on, what goes in.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah,

John Gunterman:

you're gonna pass out mo less unprocessed

Rip Stalvey:

And you can over feed high quality feed too. By that I mean if you're, I've seen some people that have started feeding game bird grower, gay bird starter, gay bird breeder. Some of that stuff's 30% protein. Our birds do not need that amount of protein. You're wasting money. It just comes

Mandelyn Royal:

out the back end after 24%. All that extra protein just comes right out. The back

John Gunterman:

wasted, totally wasted. I brooded my quail and my Turkey puls together because they need that protein level. The Santa Claires are in a separate brooder. They're right above them, but they're, right now at about a 21 and a half with, of course, some really nice supplements. But I'm able to make my own feed, on the fly, grind my grain and make it exactly the way I wa I want it. But you can absolutely go to the feed store and get, a bag of Turkey and game bird starter if you have turkeys and game birds. But I wouldn't use them on, I. Large foul. There's some, you're pushing them too hard. The renal systems can't handle that excess protein.

Mandelyn Royal:

And there's that myth out there floating around. And if you want'em to grow good, give'em a lot of protein. But truth be told, it's not actually the protein. No, it's the amino acids.

John Gunterman:

You're giving, they're checking

Mandelyn Royal:

the wrong line item on the bag. It's the amino acids.

John Gunterman:

You're basically giving your birds type two diabetes.

Rip Stalvey:

I, I wish they would put amino acids the first two things on feed tag. I really do. But you're exactly right. They people. And I did it, so you know. I get it. I understand. Oh,

Mandelyn Royal:

we all did it back in the beginning. Focused

Rip Stalvey:

on protein. And it doesn't matter. 16%

John Gunterman:

layer, 16% layer. I'll take whatever is the cheapest. Oh, that stuff on the pallet. Six months old. Yeah. You want five bucks a bag? I'll take all of it raw.

Rip Stalvey:

Wish more people would pay attention to the amount of vitamins and minerals in their feed, because that too can make a significant difference.

John Gunterman:

And check the, since you're looking at your tags anyways, check the manufacture date or the milling date. Use as fresh as possible. Don't take any, don't buy anything more than 90 days old. Certainly you need to show that to your store manager and say, Hey, you need to send this back to the mill because this has expired.

Rip Stalvey:

And some dates can be hard to read. It's not like a simple month, day and year, for example. Some may use a number like 25 dash three 30 and what that means. It was made in the year 2025 and the 330th day of the year. Yep. Yeah. They do their best to hide things from us, I swear. Makes me nuts.

John Gunterman:

I know our local composter has actually worked out a deal to help some of these people with their expired feed and moldy feed. This time of year they've been getting a lot of bags of moldy feed and they just, put'em in the digester along with everything else. Unfortunately, a lot of people have learned the hard way that. The health problems that come with feeding older or poor quality feed are very detrimental and can wipe out a flock if you're not careful.

Mandelyn Royal:

That, and keeping it dry and preventing mold, because mold is a big problem.

John Gunterman:

And,

Mandelyn Royal:

and that includes cleaning your feeders and checking the bottom of your feeders.'cause I know in some of my pens I'll temporarily use those. Cheap plastic gravity feeders, but the lip on'em creates spillage'cause it's too shallow. So I'll put it inside of a bigger feed pan to give it a higher side. Yep. And the birds are gonna still kick it out into that other pan. But I need to do my job of picking up everything and checking the bottom of that bigger pan I use to make sure it's not growing mold and getting crusty underneath that feeder.

John Gunterman:

And if you've got an auto watering system, you should be flushing it regularly.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh yeah.

John Gunterman:

Making sure there's no algae slime growing inside of it. Jeff is famous for saying, if you wouldn't drink out of your poultry drinker, fix it.

Mandelyn Royal:

And then you have people who comment and say they drink outta mud puddles every day. Yeah. It's okay. And that's where they pick up parasites and coccidia too. Sure.

John Gunterman:

My dog does too. When we're walking along the side of the road, she'll also drink out of the toilet.

Mandelyn Royal:

We were first enough, we would too, and then deal with the bellyache that came from it.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. Hey, this gets us to a good segue point to talk about. Developing the ability to identify problems early on.

John Gunterman:

Yes. You

Rip Stalvey:

know, look for things like sudden growth drops. Where they doing really good and then wham, all of a sudden they just stop growing. Or your birds,

Mandelyn Royal:

or even if they had a negative growth rate to where Oh yeah. Gaining. And then boom, they lost weight. But they're at an age where they shouldn't have

Rip Stalvey:

look for things like labored breathing or respiration imbalances. Has the feather stopped growing? That's something that's often overlooked because people don't understand the growth rate that they should have on their birds feathers. Behavioral clues, like they're just hanging out all by their selves. That's not normal for a chicken.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. That's never a good sign.

Rip Stalvey:

Or they dis interested in feed.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. The cock rolls something I've noticed and I was a little concerned at first. A cock roll after their normal little establishing their pecking order thing, will usually go off in a corner and sulk for a little bit. Maybe a day as he got his butt handed to him by the granddaddy Cockrell. But you should come back and, fall into line. If he stays outta the circle for more than a day or two, that's when you need to start being worried. But, just running in and scooping up a cockle.'cause he just, lost his pecking order fight and putting him in a pen and, rehabilitating him and then putting them back out in the yard is probably just going to incur the exact same episode all over again.

Mandelyn Royal:

It might end up on a repeat of, pull'em out, put'em back. They do it again. Pull'em out, treat'em, put'em back. They do it again. Yeah it's repetitive if you keep pulling birds out because they don't handle reintroduction that well. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

So if you've got a bird that's being constantly picked on, if you pull them out, don't ever put'em back in, you pull'em out, they go to the freezer, I say, or somewhere else.

Mandelyn Royal:

If they still have more time to grow the one getting thoroughly bullied, usually I'll just drop'em into the next younger batch.

John Gunterman:

I don't really don't have a problem so much with that, but or at all, let's be honest. But I've seen it and that's part of the choosing for temperament. And you don't want a little wimpy bird that gets his behind kicked and doesn't have the natural ability to defend the flock when it needs to happen. Justice, you don't wanna bully either.

Mandelyn Royal:

When there's a predator alarm, pay attention also to when those boys stand up, look around and they're ready. Oh, yes. Or did they hightail it into cover first before even thinking about anyone else?

John Gunterman:

Uhhuh. So I just, the other day I was sitting in here and it was a oh strange warm day. So the kitchen window was open and I heard my rooster's little chuck alarm call. So I went to the kitchen and I looked out and this rooster went and he ran to where the furthest hen was away and put himself between him and the predator that was out in the field. They were still on the inside of the electric fence, so I wasn't really worried and then waited for all the hens to go back into the hen house before he went back in and I went, yeah, good rooster.

Mandelyn Royal:

Exactly.

Rip Stalvey:

That's what you wanna see.

John Gunterman:

That's what I wanna see.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's talk about the things that a lot of people don't want to talk about, but let's talk about culling. Culling is not I'm not scared, is not punishment. Look at it as flock refinement. When I'm sitting around watching birds, I'm looking for things that. I wanna see stay in my flock. And if a bird doesn't show me anything, then it's removed. Okay? Now, whatever you do with it, whether you eat it, whether you give it away, whether you sell it, that that's a decision that you have to make. But if it's not gonna help, move your flock forward. Don't keep it. What are some of the things needs some breakfast, eggs. Yeah. What are some of the things that you look for when you're calling birds? Madeleine?

Mandelyn Royal:

I look for what you said, like the value to the breeding program. Is this bird gonna help me? Is what I look at first, and I. If I feel on the fence about it, I might give'em some more time to grow. If I've got any questions about how's the tail gonna finish? What's the final wing set gonna be? How deep did the chest get? How much more growth potential does this bird need to tell me if it's breeding quality or not? And then making the decision on if it's gonna be good for my program or not. But I also. Looking at what's negative about the bird, what is the worst feature that this bird has, and do I have the flock ingredients available to do some compensation mating to correct that? Or is it a serious enough issue that I just right in the freezer? In the freezer without any further thought. So it just depends on that individual bird's merit or what I might have to, I. Breed up to make that bird better through the offspring. It's really bird by bird. Like I don't have a blanket policy. It's just bird by bird.

John Gunterman:

I'm basic. What about you for yourself? Any sign of a structural or genetic fault as the bird is growing out is a disqualification. I know it's a numbers game. I know that if I hatch out a hundred birds, if everything goes really good, I'll have 10 that are good enough to carry forward and 90 birds for the freezer.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh yeah. Out of a hundred birds, I already know I'm eating 50. I already know that. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

Or I can donate the, right out of the right outta the shoot. Any chicks that aren't. Destined for breeding at the end of three weeks. I can take all those and just integrate them into somebody else's flock and they can raise'em out and put'em in their freezer, and I don't need to carry that feed bill myself, and I can just concentrate my time and attention. That's something that we just can't buy more of on the birds that I intend to keep.

Rip Stalvey:

Another thing. A lot of folks take, don't take into consideration the way they should, is the environmental factors in grow out success. And the number one at the top of my list is overcrowding. Give your birds room to grow and show you what they got. Am I wrong?

Mandelyn Royal:

No, you're absolutely right. They need space. They need. Good conditions. They need clean conditions to really have the best odds of becoming their best bird possible. And if you crowd'em, you're gonna have problems with control freaks not letting the other ones eat. And now you're gonna have a really uneven growth rate. You're gonna. Even the female development, they can be competitive with each other. So one thing I do and grow out is I do separate the genders by about eight weeks old. I'm hoping to have males separate from females because the way that they develop past that, the boys are way more focused on their pecking order. The girls can have problems if the boys try to involve them. It's just easier to split your genders and get a more even growth rate with less competition. So long as you don't overcrowd'em, just never do that. The poop piles up too fast. They start getting stressed. You're setting yourself up for failure with respiratory problems if you're not keeping your cleanliness where it needs to be, and overcrowding just makes everything that could go wrong worse. End of rent.

Rip Stalvey:

No, it was a good rant. It was a good rant. And to our listeners, I would encourage you to adjust what you're doing based on what and by that I mean do you need to modify your feed? Do you need to change the spacing? By that I mean do you have enough feeder space so everybody can eat in peace and not squabble?

Mandelyn Royal:

The internet says one inch of feeder space per bird. I feel like that needs to be more like 10,

Rip Stalvey:

That's really crowding it. I like to,

John Gunterman:

I would ideally like to have little partitions or dividers. About a bird wide, an open trough system, about a bird wide, so each bird can stand and eat what's in front of them without competition on either side,

Rip Stalvey:

And that, that's one of the reasons I like trough style feeders is because birds can feed on both sides. So you put a trough style feeder and you just double the amount of feeder space you got.

Mandelyn Royal:

You could partition it, and that would become the anti roost device too. Those partitions would prevent roosting if they were triangle and fit on both sides. Oh, it's in my brain Last

John Gunterman:

time, last last time I tried that they roost it up there anyways and ended up pooping in their food. But my Chante Clares love to roost. So the next rendition is going to be the wire with the spinning conduit over the wire to as an anti-US device. Because it was a solid board the last time and it didn't work out. So we're gonna do the three-eights inch steel cable. The idea that popped

Mandelyn Royal:

into my brain makes me wanna go out and get a 3D printer.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh my goodness. All right then.

Mandelyn Royal:

Not today. I have chores to do.

John Gunterman:

I've got some files that I can send you if you want to get a printer. I don't, but I have some things that I need made.

Mandelyn Royal:

Today I have to go through my whole grow out rotation'cause I've complicated my grow out process. So since I emptied out a pen yesterday by processing the birds that were in that pen, now I get to muck it out, set it up, adjust everything for the size of bird going in there. And then I get to go through my brooders sort for gender sort for quality. Start refilling pens, clean all those brooders, go into the hatch room. Sort through all those chicks, move them to the other brooders to then muck and clean and scrub to then empty my incubator of what Hatched yesterday. Yeah. The whole rotation I have today to do it.

John Gunterman:

You touched on an important point that we haven't brought up in a little while, Mandy, and that's when you're resetting. You're resetting for the age of the bird that's incoming, so that the feed and water is at the appropriate height for the bird. If

Mandelyn Royal:

that appropriate height does wonders on keeping stuff clean,

John Gunterman:

it does and makes your life easier

Mandelyn Royal:

and reduces waste.

Rip Stalvey:

I just start, say, saves you money on feed too.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. You want that feeder and the drinker right at the height of their back

John Gunterman:

so they have up

Mandelyn Royal:

or hanging. You want it right there at the back level.

John Gunterman:

So they got an easy reach, but their head has to be in the feeder or the trough.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely.

John Gunterman:

And these are all, very important, but incremental gains in the process. And if you've been a listener to the show for what, over a year now, maybe you're at this point and ready to make these minor incremental improvements. That's what I like to call'em.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's drop back to record keeping again. I, it is something I keep Okay. Going back to because it's something that, not very many, it's so

John Gunterman:

important.

Rip Stalvey:

Do a fine job of, but you can use all this data that you're hopefully tracking to fine tune your breeding program. It can help you decide who stays and who goes. If it comes down to, it can help you adjust feed plans for next time

Mandelyn Royal:

to let you know what incremental change you should make next.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly. Yeah. It can help you choose housing upgrades or say, hey. These birds are a little bit too crowded. Move them to an outside chicken tractor whatever your system is. But most importantly, all this record keeping the real payoff for me is that it helps to build a genetic line that thrives under. Your conditions don't go by what's in the book. Go by what you exceed, what you experience, and what your location is. But those records can really help build a genetic line. Don't believe me. Try it.

John Gunterman:

Unfortunately, I can expect different growth rates based upon what farm, my chicks, or even the unhatched eggs go to. I know how they're gonna develop here. Because of my husband's practices. Once they leave things change. And if somebody contacts me three or four weeks later and says, Hey, I'm only seeing this weight at this point, I can pull up my charts and say you should be here. Okay. Why? Are you using this, protein level of feed at this point in time? Have you always had fresh, clean water available? And then we can look at the husbandry methods as to why they're not reaching the same growth potential I would expect them to have. But I do expect them to be a little bit lower, especially with a new breeder with my birds. They're just not used to'em. They're used to, whatever they've had

Rip Stalvey:

and just make it a practice to spend, I don't know, five or 10 minutes daily. Just at least paying close attention, what I like to call mindful watching of your flock, observe them during feeding time, during perching social interactions, laying, roosting all of that can be very revealing to you. Is what's going on with your birds. Have really

Mandelyn Royal:

good data collection story.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. Laying on us,

Mandelyn Royal:

a local friend of mine she has three different genetic groups of birds. Two of'em are the same breed, and then another breed, and her husband is a spreadsheet building wizard. So he came up with an evaluation sheet. So they take their kids out as a family, they go through and they sort their birds and they fill in. An entire profile of each bird. They're looking at comb shaped, they're looking at weight, they're looking at feathering, coloring. Everything about that bird has a line item on this evaluation sheet. So then they take that evaluation sheet and they build a profile under the band number for each bird, and then they have all of the growth history associated with that individual bird. All the way back to day one. So then when a group of chicks come up to be 15, 16 weeks old, they have everything notated in that data and he can build graphs to show trait by trade or genetic pool versus genetic pool. He can pluck gender out as a sorting feature. So if you wanna know what your growth swing for each male was, he can sort that out and show a graph. And so he said the last time I saw them, they were picking the top performers. And I was like whoa. What do you mean? How long have you been choosing only the top performers for growth rate? And he said since we started. And I was like, how many generations into that are you? And he goes for some of'em, it's two generations and three generations. I was like, okay, you gotta slow down on that to avoid too big. And instead he pulled up that graph and I said, you wanna be right here. Right here in the middle, slightly above, not your bottom, not your top. Now, use this fancy graph to figure out which birds you should even consider for breeding just because of their growth swing and the data that he showed me. Yes, it was so colorful, detailed, and. Beautiful. I'm so jealous that I haven't sat down to do it for myself.

John Gunterman:

Just tell him that he needs, I love it to be looking at the plus one vector of his bell curve. That's where you want to be selecting from.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.

John Gunterman:

Many, anybody who understands what we're talking about just goes Okay. Yeah, no, I've got never seen

Mandelyn Royal:

better graphing on chicken growth though, except, commercial professional stuff, but for a home flock, oh my gosh, yes. Beautiful.

Rip Stalvey:

This just reinforces what I've been told so many times by so many of the old true master breeders said that your best breeder prospects are from the. The center of the flock,

Mandelyn Royal:

the most balanced, the most even Yes, heterogeneity.

Rip Stalvey:

The middle of the bell curve.

John Gunterman:

That's, and,

Rip Stalvey:

and just one final thought I want to share about records and their importance is if you will, train yourself to look at each. And every bird, each individual bird has a living journal entry in your flock story. Take notes, read carefully and write a future you're gonna be proud of. Now, before we go and we're getting close to our we are at our hour here. I want to encourage all of our listeners to subscribe. So wherever you're listening to it, is it on Apple? Is it on Spotify? Is it on YouTube? Amazon, subscribe. Get regular updates on our podcast. We have now started just this week adding bonus content on our website. And as a podcast I'm posting a full podcast episode every Tuesday and then some shorter blocks of material on Thursdays and Saturdays. Nice. So you want to be pure to gang in on that too, because some of the bonus content is stuff that we don't talk about on air. So don't miss out on that. And the website is www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com.

John Gunterman:

Easy is that

Rip Stalvey:

easy, easy peasy. So with that said, I hope each and every one of you have a spectacular week, and you have fun observing your birds. Hint, hint. But most of all, just keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing things right and you're gonna have a success. So thanks for listening everybody. Thanks for joining us for this deep dive into monitoring your grow outs. Every successful flock starts with careful observation and a purposeful decision making. You young birds are telling your story. Make sure you read it. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you in a week. Bye-bye.

Mandelyn Royal:

See you next time.

John Gunterman:

Take care.

People on this episode

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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