Poultry Keepers Podcast

Culling With Clarity Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman • Season 3 • Episode 122

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In Part 2 of “Culling With Clarity,” join Mandelyn, John, and Rip as they continue their honest and thought-provoking conversation about the art and responsibility of culling within a poultry breeding program. This episode digs deeper into the emotional challenges, humane techniques, and practical considerations that all poultry keepers face when selecting and removing birds from their flocks.

You’ll hear personal experiences about predator recovery, humane euthanasia options, what makes dual-purpose breeds more sustainable, and the real-world challenges of over-culling and narrow gene pools. We also discuss deferred culling, stress-based selection, record-keeping, and how better birds improve your skills as a breeder.

Whether you're new to poultry or deep into a selective breeding program, this episode offers clarity, compassion, and practical advice to help you cull with confidence and integrity.

Subscribe for more expert-led conversations and bonus content every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Visit our website to listen to the podcast: https://www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com 

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Alex:

In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, Mandelyn, John,and Rip wrap up last week's discussion with part 2 of Culling with Clarity. So let's join them now. John, what's your thoughts?

John Gunterman:

When it's for humane reasons. Yeah. You just you do what you need to. There, there are some times where I will go through extraordinary efforts to save a bird and one of those times is after a predator attack.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, that wasn't their fault.

John Gunterman:

It wasn't their fault. And if one, if I have a pretty bad attack and lose several birds and one or two happen to survive, especially if they were an object of the attack and have been injured I've actually sutured up birds before

Mandelyn Royal:

and they're surprisingly resilient to recovery in those Oh, they're,

John Gunterman:

they're they bounce back. Great. But I, that ducks are even.

Ducks feel faster.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, for sure. But I believe that adds to that predator awareness trait that I'm always looking for. They've survived an attack. They've basically lived through it. Maybe they're gonna impart that knowledge down, either directly through a parental training.

They absolutely do.

John Gunterman:

Or genetically on an epigenetic development basis. But. If a bird survives a predator attack, I want to keep their genetics around, even if it was just dumb luck.'cause there may be something in there that gave them that little edge to get away a second before the bird that was right next to'em that didn't get away.

Rip Stalvey:

How do you guys actually dispatch a burden?

Mandelyn Royal:

I have three different methods depending on age.

John Gunterman:

Cervical dislocation.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, cervical dislocation. But I have three different tools. So if they're like little bitty chicks that hatched and they're just not gonna do well, which is like one and 101 and one 50, something like that, I might have to take care of early. And I have a set of pruning shears. And then that fixes it right there. And then for older ones, I have a poultry dispatcher tool that's wall mounted and that'll do it fast.'cause my knife work is not my job. That's what my husband does, and I wasn't confident in it. And if you're not confident, you wanna go with something proven and surefire because tabba, it makes you feel so awful. Yes, it's bad. So quick. Ensure is the approach so that you don't have to carry around guilt, that it took too long.

Rip Stalvey:

Those tools are handy. I've got one too, and that's what I use on older birds, but it's quick. It's doesn't overly stress out the birds.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, low stress is key to me. I don't want'em to even know it's about to happen. No, I don't want them to have any knowledge or feeling or anything over it. Because that's what's fair to them.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh, absolutely.

John Gunterman:

But there are other places that some of these can go. We have a Raptor Rehabilitation Center here, which will take live birds of certain sizes depending on what they're actually working on, rehabilitating. And then they also have a facility. Where they take care of the euthanasia, oh, I can't even say that word. In a carbon dioxide chamber. So if you are a soft heart about it, you can bring it to, you can usually bring it. Find some place that will take that for you. As long as you're not too particular about what happens afterwards.

Rip Stalvey:

What about comparing culling between. Single purpose versus dual purpose.

Mandelyn Royal:

I am a big fan of dual purpose. Because you're gonna end up with a lot of males that don't have anywhere to go. And they may be structurally sound with a solid temperament, but there's still nowhere available for them to go outside of your farm. And so that's where that dual purpose piece really fits in because you get to be picky. But nothing's wasted.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly. And I see too many times people go down to the feed store and buy a bunch of straight run checks and suddenly realized they got a bunch of males they got to dispose of. Yeah. That's not an easy trick to do.

Mandelyn Royal:

Especially when they're of a variety that's not ever gonna get meaty. Because now you're looking at soup stock and bone broth and not much else.

Rip Stalvey:

That's pretty, pretty much it. Pretty much it.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yep. And off of one Bird, I can get two pints of broth and two pints. Times however many birds. I don't even have room to store that much chicken broth. I'd rather have the meat.

John Gunterman:

Yeah I agree. See that's an important thing though, is the dual purpose birds, they have a value through their entire lifespan, whether it's for a potential breeder or not. They're always going to be a good egg producer. Or a good meat producer inherently. Otherwise you're not, you don't have dual purpose birds. Right now, and oh, by the way, pick your top 10% to breed from and you're good to go. It's, see, as easy as that, folks, I,

Mandelyn Royal:

right now, this time of year is extra al season. Yes. So if you just scan your local ads just look at how many are there.

For free. So

Mandelyn Royal:

that bird has been raised. Fed tended and that,

for at least people

Mandelyn Royal:

start listing'em at 12 weeks, eight weeks old and 20 weeks old, and on through this whole summer, they're listing them free of charge. So all that feed, all that time, all that space just to turn around and give it away for free. There should also be market value there.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Why are you giving away something that has value? I. I always look at that. If it's not worth going in your freezer, why do I want it?

Mandelyn Royal:

And unfortunately, that's where a lot of chicken ends up is a free rooster. Because there's not enough homes. There's not, it's impossible.

John Gunterman:

And there's luckily people, like in our neighborhood, there's two or three different people that I'm aware of that I could call up and they just drive around once a week and take all these roosters and put'em in a trailer. And they take'em back to their farm and they finish'em, and then the meat goes to local charitable organizations. But

that's good.

John Gunterman:

You know that's literally taking a waste product, that we're taking advantage of the fact that somebody has paid all this money to put into these birds just to give them away,

right. And

John Gunterman:

try to recapitalize some of that and feed people in need. So that's actually a decent model. But it's a nonprofit model. Nobody's making any money off of this. We're feeding people the best we can.

Mandelyn Royal:

And that's a good utilization. But when you look at any other type of livestock, the bottom of the market is always the meat value. Yep. For pig, for cattle, for goat, for sheep. The bottom price point is meat value and. Chickens. Don't have that.

John Gunterman:

Go to any dairy and waive a$50 bill under somebody's nose for a two day old male calf.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's not true. In our area our beef market's gotten crazy.

John Gunterman:

Wow. It has here too. We're all dairy up here. We don't really do beef unless you're into the specialty beef market. So all the male calves go to the, beef auction and they, feed into the food system. But that's part of, for any mammal to give milk, they have to give birth. So we're going to have, 50 50, just like with chickens, you're gonna have 50 50 male to female egg layers and roasters, you're gonna have 50 50 milkers and beers.

Mandelyn Royal:

Now when it comes to poultry, how picky is too picky when you're going through and making your decisions,

John Gunterman:

when you don't have anything left to select from that when you start considering an outcross, or maybe you were that bad to begin with, you don't know.

Rip Stalvey:

I. I think people can fall into the perfection trap, so to speak. I've been there. That bird is not perfect. It gets cold and that can come back to bite you in a hurry because you're going to, you're gonna have a very narrow gene pool if you do that for very long. I

like it.

Mandelyn Royal:

I had very frustrating two seasons where I almost called myself outta my original flock, and those were the best ones that I had. But I tried to get too picky too fast, and that was a mistake. It set me back a year just to salvage what I had.

Rip Stalvey:

I think ideally I'd like to see about. Af after I've worked with my birds for a while, I like to see about 80% of'em that meet my goals. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm going to keep 80% of them, trust me, but with the top 20 to 10% I like to err on 10%. Are going to be the breeders that I keep.

Mandelyn Royal:

Now over the grow out period, do you have a method of when you're calling, how many, like what age were you doing your first call versus what age you did your last call?

Rip Stalvey:

I would do my first call at about 10 weeks. And then for females, because Rhode Island reds are so darn slow to mature as males females, I could do comfortably at 16 to 20 weeks. I, as, as long as they were, the feathers were fully developed. It was my key for going by those. Yeah. But males it could take me 10 and a half, 11 months. Before I was comfortable calling those.

Mandelyn Royal:

Now, at that 10 month point, what percentage of males did you have left?

Rip Stalvey:

I would shoot for 15% to pick through for breeders. 15. That's about

Mandelyn Royal:

what I do. Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Like the bulk before 20 weeks for sure. For the bulk, but that might be 60, 70, 80%. Now the rest of them keep right on growing and I keep dumping feed down their throat'cause I'm waiting on those final details.

Rip Stalvey:

I, I got to the point with my reds, and it took me a number of years to do this, but I could look at a bird when they were 10 weeks old and I could predict fairly well what they were gonna turn into. Now I couldn't do it a hundred percent. But by the time they were at that four to five months old, I, the keepers became pretty obvious to me.

Mandelyn Royal:

And how many years did it take you to develop your eye to be able to do that?

Rip Stalvey:

Eight, nine years before I was comfortable with doing it.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. That, that tracks'cause I'm a, you're. Eight of doing this seriously, and I feel like I'm only just now pretty comfortable.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

only just now

Rip Stalvey:

I think Madeleine, I think some of that is because we are naturally unsure of ourselves and I have been known to go back and forth on the bird. Do I keep it? Do I call it? Do I? That's what

Mandelyn Royal:

that extra time is for.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. Geez. I have done that. I don't know how many times now my mentor. 10 weeks old, you'd look at'em. That one goes in this pen over here.'cause I'm going to keep it, this one goes in this pen over here'cause it's, I'm sell it. He was incredible. But he'd been breeding them 50 years too.

Mandelyn Royal:

So he knows. Knows.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes. And folks, the more you work with your birds, the longer you have them, the better you're gonna get at culling. And the faster you can go through a bunch of birds

Mandelyn Royal:

and you can't force that to happen any faster than it naturally will.

Rip Stalvey:

You may think you can't. You almost have,

Mandelyn Royal:

you almost have to slow down to learn it

faster.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. And this goes right back to the more time we spend studying and looking at our birds, the better job we can do and the faster we can learn to do it. But there, for a long

Mandelyn Royal:

time I was sorting my birds without calling just to see if I was right and developing my methods based off of the theories, but doing nothing terminally. So I would sort among my pens and say, I think these are gonna work out. I think these are gonna end up as degrade. I think these are passable, but not quite what I'm looking for. And I'd do that three groups split up, and then I'd keep feeding all of'em to see when I was wrong, how I was wrong, or when I was right, and how I was right. And it was expensive, but it was very highly educational. I learned a lot fast by not being too brash in my methods.

Rip Stalvey:

Have,

John Gunterman:

but you also get good conformation that, you know what, yeah, I was right.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah.

John Gunterman:

About you have,

Rip Stalvey:

have you guys ever practiced what I call, for lack of a better description here in my notes, deferred calling. Where you're not quite sure about a bird and you let it go and grow a little bit longer until you

Mandelyn Royal:

waiting for conformation is wise.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes. Makes sense. So

Mandelyn Royal:

long as you can afford to keep'em and house'em and give'em all their fair treatment of their lifestyle like you do. If you do it under crowded circumstances it's not gonna pan out as hoped. So you can really only do that if you can appropriately manage what you have and spend accordingly.'cause it's not a free adventure.

John Gunterman:

You bring up another interesting point, Mandy, is that the birds are gonna perform differently on their development based upon their crowding or lack thereof. So by changing the crowding a little bit, you could greatly affect the development. Of a bird,

Mandelyn Royal:

which is why you should take notes of everything you do and how that turned out so that you can confirm with accuracy if it's something that really works for you

John Gunterman:

and that's the key. Having a bird that develops amazing if they're entirely restricted and have a 10 by 10 run all by themselves doesn't do you any good. If your infrastructure is not gonna allow you to,

Mandelyn Royal:

If you put one bird

John Gunterman:

in 10 space,

Mandelyn Royal:

they don't have the competition to prove themselves.

John Gunterman:

So that's not a proven bird. And

Mandelyn Royal:

that's a bold bird, is what that is.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Yeah. So evaluating as a cohort or as a group is still of huge importance I believe.

Mandelyn Royal:

I feel like my sorting and selecting throughout the ages gives them a level of stress. Just by me doing that, that then helps me a week or two after that with further refinement because of those who couldn't handle the stress of what I did Yes. A couple weeks ago.

Rip Stalvey:

I can see that's for sure. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. There was an interesting question that. Was floating around in the groups about if you're moving, what would be the best method. And I really thought about that for a couple of hours and I said the least stressful for everybody and everything involved is just move with your eggs. The birds aren't stressed, they're not going through the moving stress. The poultry keeper isn't stressed. And then you can build your system at your end as your new flock grows.

Mandelyn Royal:

I built my system. It's all about

John Gunterman:

stress reduction on the keeper and the birds, and especially in a move cross country is what they were talking about. I, I really think that is the less stressful option for everything involved and to reach back, leave your birds with somebody that can always ship you eggs should you have a failure at the other end.

Rip Stalvey:

I really hadn't thought about what you're talking about very much at all, but it makes perfect sense, John. It really does. Well done. Mandelyn. Let's talk for a minute and we hit on it and then we moved on. But culling yourself out of a flock. I know you've experienced,

Mandelyn Royal:

I've done it numerous situations, times to completion as well, because I was looking for a certain timeline that my birds needed to perform within. And so I went through the gauntlet of breed choices, and then I figured out the nuance that Bloodline has within a breed. And so I got pretty good at identifying by about 12 weeks if I was gonna dump the entire flock and start over. And I did a lot of start, start just based on 12 weeks. And then I got the advice, you should really breed another generation from what you started with to confirm that what you think is true. So then I was like, oh, okay I'll try this. I'll feed'em like I mean it. Like I really wanna express everything in their genetics. I'm gonna house them the best that I can. I'm gonna give'em ample space, fresh, clean water every day, top-notch nutrition, and let the genetics tell me. And then give those genetics one generation to prove what influence, good husbandry and selection has. So I ended up doing five generations with morons because I love that a color, but also I needed manageable calls. I needed males who were freezer ready in less than 20 weeks, and it took every bit of those five generations to get there. But I lost the feather pattern in that process. The medias birds had the worst color. And I'm like, okay, I'm at that. That point of making a decision, are these gonna be ugly but useful or correct and skinny? And that's a hard choice to make. And this is about F five.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Filial generation.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah you can see really meaningful flock changes within three generations. You can get some proof of the method within one generation, after five generations, you ought to be somewhere. Yeah. They're not gonna be perfect and they're not gonna be done. But within five generations you should be somewhere. Sure. And that inkling of what could be should have happened in generation three with a little teaser at generation one.

John Gunterman:

But also between F five and F seven or filial generation. Five and seven. That span is when you are really need to be hypervigilant on your, you should be

Mandelyn Royal:

refining combs and little goofy details by seven.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. But this is also when your genetic outliers are gonna pop up from your great grandparents and your great-great grandparents. Yeah. But by then your line, or is gonna be so well established that the outliers are gonna be very dramatic and easy to spot. And you're gonna go, where did you come from? Oh, and then if you know about your breed history, you can say, oh, this, I can see this is coming from, the Rhode Island red influence on, or whatever. And then getting to that push

Mandelyn Royal:

and is a lot on your note taking in backtracking. How did that happen? Hopefully that information is in your notes, hopefully. But I tried American breasts. So far I'm at four different genetic adventures.

Rip Stalvey:

I really hope that,

Mandelyn Royal:

what were you gonna say, Rick? I really hope

John Gunterman:

you broke up there buddy.

Rip Stalvey:

Ribs got a

Mandelyn Royal:

good question.

Rip Stalvey:

I can see, I'm gonna say the question here is that I. The really, the importance of patience and progression in breeding. You gotta have patience and it's gonna take some time to get your birds to where you want'em, and it's done in little steps. You don't, I've never felt like I made a giant leap with my birds. It was all

John Gunterman:

I do when I. Spent the money on some really good birds from a best breeder I could find of the breed I wanted that rocketed me ahead by five, 10 years.'cause I was just struggling with what I had, trying to breed them up. And it really wasn't a good genetic pool to start with, but getting a hold of properly bred to standard birds. That had 20 or 30 generations of skillful breeding already applied to them, made all the difference in the world, and in the end, it's far cheaper than struggling along with subpar birds.

Rip Stalvey:

John, let me ask you a question. In doing that, when you went from mediocre birds to superior birds, do you feel like that made you a better breeder in the long run?

John Gunterman:

More grateful for the generations and decades of work that other breeders have done before me and more adamant about the need to continue this going forward.'cause without it, we're gonna lose everything We need competent, dedicated breeders that are willing to do what's been done since the standard of perfection was published. And keep this moving forward.

Rip Stalvey:

But I, did you realize that having better birds or did you find that having better birds made it easier in the breeding process? Oh, absolutely,

John Gunterman:

absolutely. I had much less call rate. The calls that did go towards food were much better. I. Or food value, better feed conversion ratio, better growth rates, better structural, just everything.

Mandelyn Royal:

Do you feel like you learned more from the better Bread Birds?

John Gunterman:

I learned different. We know I, I actually learn. At a more deeper level. By struggling and having to overcome challenges, it sets the lessons. So working with inferior birds and struggling through, I believe made me appreciate the better quality stock for sure.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's

John Gunterman:

true.

Mandelyn Royal:

I had that same experience. And then

John Gunterman:

I struggled. Once I got them, it was so easy to move forward'cause I've already been through all the frustrations and struggles and I was like, okay, I'm through that now. All I gotta do is just keep this going. Apply everything I've learned to what you know has been done and just keep it going forward. If it's too easy, I don't think you'll learn anything's All you're doing's is. If you're just going I read on the internet that if I did this would be okay. And then you do, and it is. So you get this fulfillment that oh, this advice from this person worked that time, so I'm gonna follow maybe this other advice, which may not work so well.

Mandelyn Royal:

That level of fulfillment. Once everything you've learned comes into that culmination and you're like, wow, this is what it all meant.

This is how it's supposed to work. It

Mandelyn Royal:

been 20 years because I spent so much time at the bottom of the market with the junkiest, worst hatchery source birds and going, how come? How come these don't do the expectation? What's wrong? And then I went to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and I'm like let's try exhibition. And I was like, wow, these are some pretty feathers.

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

But why am I only getting, 80 eggs a year?

John Gunterman:

This is one of the reasons I'm really excited for this batch that you've got in the incubator now of the Chante Claire's from Mark, because you're gonna get to experience this.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. Mine's this weekend. Today is lockdown for my new little adventure, and I am expecting, which I haven't. What was your

John Gunterman:

fertility rate on shipped eggs?

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh that. Okay, so this is the news that I have. Mark sent me 36 eggs. I had to pull two for lack of fertility. So I have 34 eggs that I haven't candle yet Today for the final, we're on day 18. So today's the day, and I set the same number of my own eggs and I had to pull three of mine out. Okay, so the, so now we're gonna look at the shipped eggs. Were one egg better than my own. That never happens.

Rip Stalvey:

You're right. It never does.

Mandelyn Royal:

So we'll see. I hope they're all still doing great.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's hope so.

Mandelyn Royal:

I'm doing that after this.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's hope so. Yeah. Gosh, folks, we have gone through another outline here.

Mandelyn Royal:

We can almost keep going because the topic is so diverse and so nuanced and so detailed. Like you can't beat yourself up and you can't Oh, we'll.

John Gunterman:

We will go on and we will beat ourselves up. We will. Well,

Mandelyn Royal:

yeah, that's probably my afternoon plan,

Rip Stalvey:

but I, I just want to tell our listeners, if what we talked about today gave you better insight or changed how you think about culling, share it with somebody that needs to hear it too. And we'd appreciate if you would subscribe to our. Podcast and Labor Review, because that helps other folks find us. You can visit us at www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com. We've got a lot of episodes out there. We've got, we're starting to accumulate a good bit of bonus content. We post episodes full regular podcast episodes every Tuesday and bonus content every Thursday and every Saturday. So

John Gunterman:

all for free.

Rip Stalvey:

All

John Gunterman:

for free. Check it out. Actually, you know what I'd like to change that. This will cost you something. Share, no, share this with somebody you know who could use this advice. We all have a poultry keeper that we know that's getting, starting out. They say, Hey, I know this podcast. Give it a listen. Absolutely. There's your membership fee.

Rip Stalvey:

We're I just. Figured it up. I made a post about it. Our little podcast that John and I started back a while back, we were only a year and a half old. When you stop and think about it, John, but we started, made the 28th was our first post. That's right. And remember how excited we were when we got 50 listeners and. I looked the other day and I don't know how many listeners we have. That's astounding. We're getting over almost eight, 9,000 downloads a month. And we're heard in 118 countries around the globe,

Mandelyn Royal:

which blows my mind'cause they're just chickens,

John Gunterman:

but they're. Genetic expression is gonna be based upon where these chickens are being grown and who's growing them. And every environment and every chicken keeper is gonna be slightly different. And I'd love to hear from some of these people in other areas, especially about specific challenges, if you're in a dry area or a wet area, that your experience can help other poultry keepers. So please consider sharing. N

Rip Stalvey:

not only challenges, but successes. What you know? Yeah. What successes have you had? Before we go, I just wanna mention a couple of things folks, remember, you don't need to be perfect. You just need goals and a desire to be intentional. And every flock decision you make builds towards your long-term success and long-term goals. So keep learning. Keep improving and never stop breathing with heart and purpose. Thank you for listening everybody. We'll be back next Tuesday.

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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