Poultry Keepers Podcast

Culling With Clarity-Part 1

• Rip Stalvey • Season 3 • Episode 121

Share episode

In this insightful episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast, Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman have a deep and honest discussion on one of the most challenging but essential parts of poultry keeping: culling.

But wait—culling isn’t just about processing birds. It’s about decision-making. It’s about your flock’s future. It’s about refining your breeding goals, making tough calls, and protecting your reputation as a poultry keeper. Whether you raise birds for meat, eggs, show, or dual purpose, you’ll walk away from this episode with fresh insight into what culling really means—and how to do it ethically, practically, and confidently.

From understanding structural and performance-based flaws to making hard decisions around age, behavior, and utility, this episode covers it all. Hear real-life stories, advice, and proven methods that will change how you think about managing your flock for long-term success.

Please visit https://www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com for more great podcast content, bonus episodes, and resources to help you raise better birds.

#PoultryKeepersPodcast #PoultryKeepers360 #CullingWithClarity #BackyardChickens #PoultryBreedersNutrition #ShowProFarmSupply #SmallFlockSuccess #ChickenBreeding #EthicalCulling #FlockManagement #DualPurposePoultry #RaisingBetterBirds #PoultryPodcast #ChickenKeepersUnite

 

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 -
https://www.youtube.com/@PoultryKeepersPodcast/featured

Rip Stalvey:

Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast, the show for small flock enthusiasts who want to raise better birds and make more informed decision. I'm your host Rip Stalvey and I'm joined by Mandelyn Royal and John Gunterman. And we're gonna be talking about something every poultry keeper has to face sooner or later Culling. Now, hold on. I'm not talking about killing. Nope. When I say culling, it means evaluating and how you choose to manage your cause can make or break your breeding program, your flock, the flock's, health, and your peace of mind. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in. We're going deep today. Hey John and Mandelyn. Welcome to Good to See You guys.

Mandelyn Royal:

Hey. Hey. Good to be here.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's just drive, dive right in here. Mandelyn, how would you define culling?

Mandelyn Royal:

I have mind flock split up into percentages of how they're called, and so some of'em are absolutely dinner. So those would be the terminal calls that shouldn't leave my property. Now, the others, it's a multitude of reasons, but there are plenty of serviceable birds, just not in my program, but those are the ones that can go on and potentially start a new flock or be productive somewhere else. And then there's the birds that I keep, so it's like a 10 to 20% retention rate, and then it's about 20 to 30% share rate, and then it's about a 50% call rate because we get hungry, we eat a lot of chicken.

Rip Stalvey:

John, what about you? What how do you define culling?

John Gunterman:

In the simplest terms, it's just removal from the future breeding pool. That doesn't mean, instant dinner time, but the birds can certainly serve out a useful and productive life. It just means that they've been deselected for future breeding.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, I, I like to think of culling as a time, not just for removing birds from the flock, but for one part of my selection process and refinement of where I want to go. And I, it's so important that folks have a goal because that's gonna help them as they go through culling their birds. What do you want from your flock? You want meat, you want eggs, you want dual purpose, you want show all that's gonna factor in. And I like to think about it as purpose driven flock decision. Yes. Kind of what Mandelyn was talking about there when she was talking. But

John Gunterman:

and it's something that gets a lot easier the more that you do it. And I, I don't just mean the emotional factor of. Deselecting a bird, but just the sorting process, the more you do it, the more uniform and the more homogenous your flock is going to be, and you're gonna have less and less outliers to remove. From your breeding pool if you're doing your job correctly.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely.

John Gunterman:

Once you break your mindset of the hatch aholic, let's just hatch everything I've got with every possible combination and see what I get, and then keep the best from that. That's what I would call a scatter shotgun approach to it, and it's not gonna get you very far, very fast, and it's going to be very expensive in food and labor and maintenance and just everything.

Mandelyn Royal:

And I think a lot about it in terms of pen space because I know the space the birds need. Yes. And I know my hatch capacity and I know my grow out capacity and I know my retention capacity.

John Gunterman:

So let's you know, let's utilizing that time and money and space on inferior birds.

Mandelyn Royal:

And I have enough pen space to where I can be a little bit generous in what I hold on to longer, but not by much.

Rip Stalvey:

I think that's good because I found, for me at least, that pen space helped me in my culling because I knew that if I crowded them too much by keeping too many uhhuh, that was gonna come back to bite me. Because they're not gonna do well, they're not gonna perform well.

John Gunterman:

And that's actually the way I've designed my system. And the number of eggs that I set, I specifically have the CT 60 60 Inc. Egg incubator. And my brooders are in stages. So as I'm going along, I'm constantly going down. By the time I'm at three weeks, half of my birds can go for sale. Very strong with who I want.

Rip Stalvey:

What John, quick question here, but what are some of the things that you look for, like faults in your birds? When you're going through and cuddling, what's some of the things that you look for? Physical traits in your birds.

John Gunterman:

Anything? Not to the standard. Any physical deformity of any kind. Cross beat, crooked toe. Anything that I don't want to see in my future generations gets removed from the breeding pool. And if I can identify who the parents were, I wanna reach back and remove the parents from the gen pool as well.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely.

John Gunterman:

You know that they're still throwing this, so I need to get it out.

Rip Stalvey:

You talk about removing faults and all that. There's an expression out there that the longer you tolerate something in your breeding flock, the longer you're gonna have it.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes, this is true. I'm doing that with leg color now because I was choosing structure over light color. And so guess what's persistent Uhhuh? Good structure with variable leg color. Imagine that

Rip Stalvey:

Mandelyn. The question for you is, how does that help you with the dual purpose practicality of your birds when you're going through and cuing what's some of the things that you concentrate on there?

Mandelyn Royal:

I do a lot of it gender based, and that controls my timing as well because the females take more time and the males, unless you're parat one-to-one, you really don't need that many males. And the more of them that I can get out of the way and off the feed bill, the more efficient I can be. And then the more pen space and attention I can give to the females. So I'm looking for that earlier. Meat production. To accelerate that process because I'm not the most patient person, and so I'm a little bit excited right now of starting my new little breed adventure with the LER because it's going teach me a little bit more patience than what I have. I already know it's gonna be more of a slow burn with them. Yeah, so that'll be a nice adjustment for me.

Rip Stalvey:

You, you were talking about being patient and when you said that, I immediately thought, I don't know too many poultry people that are all that patient anymore.

Mandelyn Royal:

Most people aren't. And so it's quite the change when you get into some of those older breeds and those older bloodlines and that slow burn methodology, it's night and day different than working with commercial hybrids. It is completely different if you're trying to make that switch into sustainable poultry it's a longer wait, and you do need to pick up those breeding tools to help you find that success within it, which is what we talk about.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. Stuff. That's why we're here. So I would Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Mandelyn Royal:

So with what I said earlier about doing almost like a gender focus between male and female and those different timelines, it's almost like I'm running two different flocks through Grow out and then the mini flocks within the age groups, because like we said in our last two part episode of Selection, it's at different stages and you don't wanna do it all at once. And there's a multitude of reasons on how you could be sorting your birds. Like behavior is one of'em. Temperament.

Oh yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Health and vigor it. The breed standard traits, the utility traits. There's a lot of reasons of why and when

Rip Stalvey:

and who. Let's flesh this train of thought. We got going here out a little bit, but. I like to think when I'm culling, I like to look for visual defects and body type first. And one thing that too many people don't focus on anymore is performance cu. Do they come from a good egg producer or a poor egg producer? What's their body growth? What's the feed efficiency like? For those birds. Definitely not many people are out there checking on feed de efficiencies, unfortunately, because gosh, if you don't know what it cost you to raise a bird or to get a dozen eggs, you can go broke faster.

John Gunterman:

You can, and this is a consideration sometimes when I'm setting people up if they're buying chicks from me, if they're looking for production to help offset, their family food bill. I think it's very important that they, get their stock from somebody who can say, these chicks were all hatched from hens who lay five to six eggs a day. Versus it's a barnyard mix. I can't tell you what you're gonna get or how many eggs you're gonna get per week. A it's not a good way to set somebody up for success and have a good launch into the poultry world. But, b, it's just not cost effective. You're setting your customers up for failure, and that's just not a good way of doing business. I don't believe my customers get really my best or at the very close second best, because I very good have that financial obligation as well. Okay? If they're just going down the road to one of the poultry farms to be raised for meat on pasture. Fine. I don't care. They're gonna eat bugs and grass and grit all day long and have happy chicken lives and become somebody's dinner and that's fine.

Rip Stalvey:

Madeline, you were talking about behavioral goals. Okay. Calling for behavior. And when we say that I get afraid that people think we're talking primarily about aggressiveness towards people.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, no, there's more to it than that.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. It is aggressive toward each other. Are they nervous, Nellie? Are they calm? All that kind of factors in as to where I wanna keep a bird or not.

Mandelyn Royal:

And a call to me is one that's too calm. There's a balance in their energy. I wanna see not a flat lunatic and not a lazy bum. I want that solid middle ground.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. And as a cohort of chicks, you could see, a couple are always standing with their face, in a corner away from the group. Then there's gonna be a whole bunch in a group, and then there's gonna be two or three running around the group, acting like little butt heads.

Rip Stalvey:

And I have found that the overly calm birds tend to produce birds that are not as well for vigor as I would like to see. And chicks. I don't know if y'all have experienced that or not.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes, I have. And those dile lap type RO birds that wanna be your best friend, they're probably gonna have the lowest fertility when they're a year and a half, two years old. They're just gonna bottom out

John Gunterman:

Uhhuh, but they're going to produce a very fine meat bird.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh yeah. The lazier birds do make a better meat bird because they sit around and eat too much. Huh. And as long as you have'em in the freezer before 18 weeks, your feed efficiency is good.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes. Oh yes.

Mandelyn Royal:

After 18 weeks, you start losing feed efficiency more and more like on a weekly basis. So that's why my targets our 14 to 18 weeks, and I see that better efficiency at 14 weeks depending on rate of gain and all that stuff. And after 18 weeks now you're just feeding out money and you're not gonna see much significant gain at a speedy rate.

Rip Stalvey:

No. That's kinda like my grandfather's expression. Makes about as much sense much sense as throwing money in a hog pen and hollering suey. But yeah, it's like

Mandelyn Royal:

When your pigs hit 300 pounds and they're eating 50 pounds of feed every three days, the efficiency's gone. The meaningful gain is over with.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes, sir. What about, and this is something I don't think many folks think about either, but age-based culling? Or when older birds aren't contributing. What's your thoughts on that?

Mandelyn Royal:

It depends on if they are having an issue that contributes to that reduced rate of lay, because I'll hear. Chitter chatter from folks saying, yeah, my birds are 16 months old and the rate of age is bottomed out, plummeted. I'm getting zero eggs. And my first question is did you check for obesity? Did you like, what's their malt schedule? Because at 18 months that big malts get ready to happen, but they can still pop back into production if that Molt was managed well, and they're a good layer. You'll find out after that malt, but right when they turn eight, nine months old, if they're gonna get obese from how you're feeding'em by 1-year-old, you're not gonna get very many eggs. And so you wanna rule out husbandry and dietary reasons for why they're not laying that good, because it could be something that might have been your fault, not their fault. But if you know you're that they're getting the right care, the right feed, the right management, and they're still not laying, then yeah. Pull'em out and move on.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Really what we want to do is have each bird live up to its genetic potential.

Rip Stalvey:

True. Very true. Yeah. One of the things that I like to look for when we're talking about age, if I have male or female, either one doesn't. Doesn't make any difference that routinely produce better chicks than they are themselves.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's the most valuable to find.

Rip Stalvey:

I just started to say that is a real gem you want to hang onto as long as you possibly can because they're hard to come by. Yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

less than 10%.

Rip Stalvey:

Much less, or if you have 1%

John Gunterman:

a, a very old bird who just has a lot of life experience. I've mentioned this hen that I have here that I sold several years ago to a friend up on the hill, and then it went to another friend of mine. And, this hen is back to me for breeding purposes because, she has just really proven herself to be outstanding at raising chicks. Obviously outstanding at predator awareness and just staying alive in this environment is something to be commended. Having these proven winners really helps and having the numbers to back it up, if she's got a wing band, I could look at her daily weights from hatch through three weeks.

Rip Stalvey:

And, John, one thing I've found that not only do birds like that. Pass along those genetics for that trait. But they also serve as trainers for young birds, almost.

John Gunterman:

Oh, entirely. Oh, I love

Mandelyn Royal:

a good training bird.

John Gunterman:

Yes. I'm actually making, trying to make her go broody now by just not collecting eggs for her. However long it takes for her to get it in her head. She wants to start sitting because I want her to raise out as many chicks as I can this year because that accumulated knowledge that she has in that brain of hers just from being alive that long. And what she can impart to those chicks is not something any farmer could ever hope to do.

Rip Stalvey:

And I know the tendency is for most poultry keepers and they've fallen into this trap. Put out by the universities. But in fairness, that's because you're used to dealing with hybrid birds, but you raise a bird, starts laying, you keep it for a year, and then you get rid of it. That's, that doesn't give you any longevity. It doesn't give you the opportunity to take advantage of the birds like we're talking about here. And add that genetic wisdom, so to speak, to the flock.

John Gunterman:

That's right. And it's the only way to get these long-term numbers on your birds. How do you know, unless your customers or the people that you've, set up with flocks, come back to you and say, Hey, these birds are real duds. They just peter out after two years and that's it. Now you gotta go, whoa, okay this is 2-year-old news to me. Now I've gotta backtrack even further to find out where the problem is. So having this active constant feedback loop is really important as well.

Mandelyn Royal:

Now, technically, a chicken isn't fully mature in expressing all of their carried traits until they're two years old, and so that's why waiting and testing their longevity and really solidifying your breeding choices doesn't happen until way later. And I see a lot of beginners who wanna make all their decisions at 16 weeks, and I'm like whoa. No there's a lot more milestones that these birds need to get through. Before you really commit to hatching everything she lays, or before you put that mail over all of your females there, there's a lot of milestones. And that longevity you don't even know until a minimum of two years.

Rip Stalvey:

And I've. I've said this before. How's she gonna go through a Molt? Yeah.

Is what

Rip Stalvey:

you don't really know about a bird until they're at least a year old. Two years is better. A lot of the old timers wouldn't even consider breeding a bird until she was over a year old. And they had seen what she did and how she went through the Molt and all that.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.'cause when you're breeding an eight month old bird, they don't have. The longevity piece, they don't have full maturity. They don't have that actual finished result. All you have is that history leading up to that eight month age point. And so like the final filter for me isn't until a year and a half. That's my final sort, and that's the fewest number of birds that I have is everything over a year and a half old.'cause then I'm at what, like two or 3%. Left. It's not many. And that filter starts at the egg itself too.'cause I'm calling for egg color. Egg size, egg shape. And then that filter keeps running for a year and a half at least.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, that makes sense. A lot of sense.

Mandelyn Royal:

Like I, I know I joke about having a second barn and that, how that would help me. But I know it would take probably at least three years to fill that second barn.

Rip Stalvey:

I don't know. You're pretty adept at running that incubator.

John Gunterman:

When she starts trap nesting and pedigree mating, yeah. To the moon.

Mandelyn Royal:

We'll see.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's talk about, this is almost like reverse engineering. We're talking about cause like it's something we need to get rid of, but are there cause that should not leave your property.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. Those are the ones that affect your future reputation. Like anything you give to someone else, even if you gift it for free, that person is gonna have something to say about those birds. Is it positive? Because if it's not positive, then now your reputation is at risk for every reason. People have to complain about your birds, so you should only let the good ones leave. Or people can say good things about it and eat the rest of them.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because you're gonna have calls on every flock. No one's mute. Sure. Even the top best breeders in the country still have calls. Absolutely. Do they sell the worst ones or do they eat them?

Absolutely.

Rip Stalvey:

Depends on the breeder.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Yeah. I had an extra batch or an extra hatch of grouts and a local listener actually, who I've been watching them build their farm. And I've been very in impressed with what I've been seeing. And, I had this dozen birds, so I reached out to'em like, Hey I really like what you're doing. Which is true, and I'd like to see how these birds perform under your care. Would you like a dozen birds? No obligation except to grow'em and eat'em. If you want to get started in breeding, if you really love them, I can get you set up, but let's just see how they do for you on your farm.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's good for research.

John Gunterman:

From my perspective, it's gonna be great because, they have a similar care plan, but. A different care plan. So I wanna see, what happens under this regimen and, it's close enough in environment that I know I'm not sending my birds to Arizona or Florida where they just don't belong. And maybe I found another breeder for the breed. At the very least, they're gonna get a good taste of, what it's like to grow them out and what they taste like in the freezer. But you have to have that level of trust. I've said before, I have a very strict qualification process of who gets my birds.

Rip Stalvey:

I'm just sitting here thinking that most people don't really look at structural calls. And they will pass along inadvertently. And I like to think it's because they don't know any better birds that really should go into the freezer rather than go to someone else.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, I noticed a couple of crooked toes in these birds that got picked up last week. But I also, and this is something that I know now I can probably very strongly attribute to. There was a couple of small power fluctuations we had during incubation during this particular batch. And I'm not seen, I was gonna say any crooked toes before that batch. And I've not seen any crooked toes after that batch. And I've not seen any crooked toes in three years on my farm, so I'm pretty confident it was that those two little temperature blips during incubation,

Mandelyn Royal:

temperature and humidity both can have an impact on their toes during incubation. Oh yeah.

John Gunterman:

Yes. But as everybody who's used to listening to the show knows I'm pretty that's a hard tollgate for me. Right now, and I just don't let them pass. But I'm at the point now where I believe I'm through it.

Mandelyn Royal:

So the things that would put a bird in my freezer rather than going to someone else's flock is anything structural, anything. And I'm talking keel, integrity,

Uhhuh.

Mandelyn Royal:

Even if there's a little dent in that keel, it's going in a shrink bag for my own consumption because I can't sell it if it looks weird. In the shrink bag,

crooked field, but

Mandelyn Royal:

A lot of size calling where I'm looking for a certain meat to bone ratio. I'm looking for a certain flushing rate of how they feel in the hands. I'm looking at width, length, depth, all that stuff. And that's how I end up eating half of them easy. And if it's not us, it's my meat buyer and I have one dedicated person that helps us. And anything that's good that I don't have room for, that's what gets to leave. And so it helps reputation a lot because I'm not selling the worst.

Rip Stalvey:

And there's a lot to be said for that approach for sure.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because I've been on the receiving end. What happened to me is I was on the receiving end of everybody's junky birds. And when I got'em and grew'em out and they couldn't perform and they hatched all these weird things, I'm like, oh oh

yeah, may,

Mandelyn Royal:

maybe they didn't know the ins and outs of breeding over several generations. Maybe they didn't even know what they had.

John Gunterman:

I call those, and that's Charlie end of first year freebies when people got all these birds and they're going into fall and they're going, oh, this is actual work and I've gotta do this every day. And winter's coming. There's great

three birds,

John Gunterman:

come and get them. No, don't bring them in. That's the worst thing you could do.'cause you have no idea how they've been kept. You have no idea what parasites or problems you're bringing into your flock? No.

Mandelyn Royal:

And sometimes it could be as simple as the producer not feeding'em appropriately. And once you give'em good feed, now they're a completely different bird.

Rip Stalvey:

See that a lot?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. So you have to go through the motions and figure out is this something that's genetic? Is it environmental or is it nutritional? Why? Why are you seeing these calls? What's the reason behind the rate of call? Because there's multiple contributing per

Rip Stalvey:

Let's. We don't have to go into great detail here, but let's talk about when and how to humanely euthanize a bird. Mandelyn, what's your thoughts?

Mandelyn Royal:

I do my best to avoid having chicken hospital and a lot of us, probably everyone has been there at some point where there's a bird not doing as well as its peers, and you have that choice. Of trying to fix it or not fix it. And it's all through the ages. It can happen right outta the incubator. It can happen two years down the road. You never know. So my approach is this something that can actually be recovered without breeding detriment?'cause my whole mission is developing my own breeding clock and pretty much eating. Almost everyone else. Yeah. And so like right now I have a male that is in treatment because he got a bumble on one foot, but his breeding value says I should fix that if I can. And I've got a timeline involved on fixing that little bumble. If in six weeks it's no better. I guess we're about done with that then. But when I go through and I'm looking at'em and I'm like. This one's not gonna have a good quality of life. This one is not doing great. And you have that choice to end their suffering early, or you can go ahead and prolong it out of sentiment. And that's something I had to really move away from because I don't think it's fair to that bird. If you limp'em along with low odds. How fair is that to the bird?

Rip Stalvey:

It's not. It is not, it's really not. No,

Mandelyn Royal:

I don't think it is. So I evaluate case by case and go from there. And if it's a done deal, then we're fast. Very fast.

Alex:

This concludes part one of Culling With Clarity. If you enjoyed the show we hope you'll share it with a friend that might like it too. Be sure to stop by www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com for more podcast episodes and bonus podcast content. Thank you for joining us and be sure to listen to Part two of Culling With Clarity next Tuesday. So long for now, and keep enjoying your birds.

People on this episode

Head Shot

John Gunterman

Co-host
Head Shot

Mandelyn Royal

Co-host
Head Shot

Rip Stalvey

Co-host