Backyard Chickens

leaving cash on the table. Gold is such a good investment vehicle that if you had bought ten thousand dollars worth of gold twenty years ago, you would have roughly the same amount of money. Can can you beat Can you beat gold? You can't. I've replaced most of my teeth with gold, and I have read the same amount of teeth. It's a win win, Wow, Wow, incredible. Gold is.

Gold is perfect for a number of reasons. Look, if you're worried about instability, obviously, if society collapses, gold is the thing that you want to have, because, of course you'll still be able to trade what is fundamentally a useless rock for goods and services in the event that there's no civilization. That that just makes complete sense. Don't stock up on ammunition, stock up on gold. What about gold? Immunition. Oh now see, that's what if you want to kill

super vampires, that's what you want is gold bullets. You know, there is something like maybe it's like Survival of the Fittest. I'm allergic to gold, so if I touch it gives me a rash. So I can't survive in a world of gold. I love you well if you need so, if you need to take out Sharine and the Apocalypse, make sure make a gold spear or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

just givet jewelry. Look, it's it's a good idea. According to one of my friends, who has read much more Marks than Idea, Marks particular, that we would go back to the gold standard. So yeah, like you're it's gonna be great. The immortal science wins again. Um, this is actually today we are talking about um collapse, but not the collapse of the economy, because the economy is kind

of always collapsing. That's part of what makes it the economy. Instead, we're talking about the fact that the market for eggs has gotten insane. People are paying crazy prices for huevos these days. Um, and there's there's no no good reason for it, obviously, Like it's the you know, egg production in some places was like impacted by the bird flu, but that is not why eggs have gotten more expensive.

It's pure corporate greed. But regardless of that, people are finding themselves thinking about like, wow, eggs are expensive as hell. Should I maybe get some chickens? Um? And today we have several chicken owners on the podcast, myself and James Stout, and several people who don't have chickens but our chicken que rheus. So we're going to talk about having chickens. James, Yeah, yeah, I do. I've been training for this my whole life. So this this was your idea, so Vents is very

much my baby. So if you guys just want to sit back and learn about chickens, your baby James or your egg Well that's the thing, isn't it. Robert one could be the other. I've given enough time. People have talked about this. I've heard. Yeah, it's been a discussion for some time in the chicken community. All right, it's talking about chickens. So I want to start out with like, if you're thinking about getting chickens, and I have written a script for this, thank you. Yeah, I'm ready to roll.

So the most important thing obviously when you're getting animals, you're getting any animals, is like that you're responsible for a living thing and you have to take care of it, and you have to be kind to it, and you have to treat it well and make sure that if you're not able to look after it, like if you travel a lot for work and someone else can write.

And I think chickens are particularly useless or they're useful and they're very nice that they're not like the most practical animals, like if you if you leave them alone, they will die. If it gets too hot, they will die, if it gets too cold, they will die. Um, Like, you do have to look after them. They're not like a wild animal that comes in sometimes in lace eggs, Like they are an extremely domesticated animal that's been domesticated

for probably thousands of years. So it's a responsibility. I guess I'm just gonna I'm gonna go through some of my stuff. If you guys have any questions, as we like move along, please feel free to ask him. I want to start out with the breeds of chickens, which I think are a good idea. And so when you're looking at chickens, so The first thing you don't want to look at if your space right, like how much

space do I have? And there are websites where you can calculate, like working with your acreage or or how many yards you have? How many chickens are appropriate, James, the level of prepper and the stuff is beautiful. I'm like, I'm so happy because I will I will note be be careful about getting too many. When I got the place that I got, I inherited fourteen chicken and that is a tremendous quantity of chickens. And and there was especially chickens make you know, kind of in their prime.

Egg laying can make one. Sometimes some chickens will do to a day. So there were weeks where I was getting like close to a hundred eggs, which is far more, far more eggs than a human being can possibly consume. That you can consume, I can consume a hundred eggs. Well they will, they will consume you. I will mail you eggs always more eggs. Eggs are like eight I walked into a grocery store. Okay, I'm i'm, I'm I'm

now doing the bit. I walked through the grocery store in the eggs where eight fifty and I was like, what the fund is going on here? Man, I'm gonna I'm gonna make a fucking bank. I have like literally sixty eggs sitting in my kitchen right now, going to sell eggs in the dark web. You goddamn right. This is how I fucking leave this this damn podcasting bullshit behind. I'm gonna become the egg man switches. Finally, I used for cryptocurrency egg coin. It's actually it's tied to the

value of eggs. As you completely collapsed. Um, yeah, don't don't over chicken yourself like starting out, but also don't get too few. You do want at least three. They'll be sad or they won't get along. And if you if you're like a normal household, three is probably a great number of chickens. Like you, you will probably be quite happy with three to four chickens. Yeah, you'll get like if you estimate like six eggs per chicken per week,

it's like a fair kind of estimate. They'll take some time off during the year or with seasons change or molten stuff, So eighteen eggs, like, yeah, you're getting pretty hard in a normal household. You've eating that many. So I think if you start people like to think that they should get bantams to off with, Do we know what bantams are? Non chicken understanding. I have a lot of chickens, but I don't know any thing about the

kind of chickens. So we've had a few bantams. They're not great, to be honest, like bantams are mostly showing birds, So it's a smaller chicken. Think of it as like a half sized chicken, right, um, And if you've seen like a really fancy and you can go ahead and google some bantams like yeah really little, yeah, really pretty. I like to I like large chickens. Now, look, I don't engage in cock fighting. I think it's a moral, but I like to know theoretically, if they had to,

my chickens could handle themselves in a fight. Did anybody ever think Robert would be like you, I'm a big chicken guyable it's yeah, you want big chickens. Some breeds to look for, orpingtons like buff Orpington's and you can remember that big buff and great ass chickens. Yeah, I could get a yoke to Orpington, get get a hench rhode island red. People in America don't say hench, but yeah, we used to have a couple of those. So one of the things about bantams is you can't get them

point of lace. The point of lay is when they've been sexed. Right, so you know that they're girls and they they come to you just to when they're about to lay, right, and you don't. Generally you get bantams younger and you don't get them sexed. So in our case, we had one. She she crowed a lot, so I thought she's a rooster. She wasn't. Any other one was a rooster. So yeah, that's god be my question. Do you need to get a rooster? Also? No, so the

chicken regardless, I can't. I don't understand how that works. Okay, So the chickens are gonna lay regardless, right, that's just like how they can do. That's that's the eggs on fertilized. Right. Yeah, so they won't make chickens, they will be babies. Okay, I get it, I get like a human doing it them. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of like their equivalent of a menstruation effectively. Yeah, I know that. Now everything's coming back to me as far as like began talking points.

Go chickens, by the way, because chickens are as James said, these are animals and you have to take good care of them. That is your responsibility. You do low key realize the longer you have them. But they're monsters, like their favorite food is their own kind. They have at each other kids. Yeah, so like, don't go outside with your chickens. Like the other day I was, I was cutting down some some bushes and I had was wearing

shorts a little cut from the from the thorn. When they see blood, they are just like fucking does that affect the egg? Like, yeah, I mean what you made them? So? Yeah, we we butchered a deer last year and we wound up with a lot of like deer fat and kind of like meat that you gave it to the chickens. Well, yeah, we had some stuff because the deer had been hit by a car. There was some meat we couldn't eat, so we wound up giving several pounds of meat to

the chickens and those eggs fucking ruled. Okay, it's not advised to feed them, dear, But yeah, so you wanted stuff. Actually, if you so they do believe. There's a stuff called purple spray. I'm sure it's not what it's actually called, but it's purple and it's a spray, and you can we already called it purple spray. You can spray on them and it just stops it looking like blood. I'm sure it's like an antibiotic or maybe an antiseptic, but yeah,

you could spray that on the chicken. So like one of mine, she's just got this little thing on her wing that opens up every now and again, and I just make sure I spray that and that stops her from the other ones from pecking her. Right, Yeah, so they have to be. We had a last year some kind of animal, I think it was probably a like a like a possum or something, I don't really know. Some kind of animal gotten to the the coop and attacked

my chickens and we had I had one chicken. We called it the anarchists chicken because it could always escape. It like never was in the cage um. And when when they got attacked, the Anarchists chicken leapt to defend the rest of the flock and fought off whatever it was that attacked. But she wound up with a hole in her side, and so I like took her and I addressed the wound, and I put her back in the cage, and they all immediately tried to I want to have a separate Yeah, yeah, yeah, I that was

the lesson that I learned. I had to take her out because yeah, we have a tiny rabbit hutch that we use. It's called the Meryl Peep Memorial Chicken Hospital because Mery's not about chickens who died. And you just put put them in that for a few days until they're better, and then then they can reintegrate. It's fine, And so I did. We're very we've we've made very little progress on my script. Okay, so sorry, you want to get buffal Pinkton's right down and reads a good

plymouth rocks. Americanas are nice. Have you guys seen those? If we don't have, If we don't, I don't know anything about talking about what do they teach you in school? Um? Like? So they're called Easter eggers. Sometimes they lay different colored eggs like Pastel's colored eggs like blue and green eggs. Have you not been exposed to this at all? No?

I get up extra cornfield. But also I I guess, I guess I was a round a farm, but we didn't interact with the chickens because you don't, I don't know. They were like here de old cows instead. That was like, chickens are good, don't go dive straight into cattle if you're getting into animal husband But yeah, americanasun say ladies colored eggs. One of my friends dad's had them when I was a kid, and he made bank selling them around Easter. So yeah, if you're looking to get into

your chicken hustle. And then leg horns are like really good. They're like hardy chickens, but they are allowed. So if you live near people, um, I would consider not. You should also check your local laws, Like where I live, you can't have a rooster. You can have up to five chickens within city limits. You can't have a rooster. You don't really want a rooster have chicks. And one of the things roosters can do is like peck at your chickens and effectively like were holes in there, like

yeah that they wind up like parts. Yeah, their little sons of bitches. We harvested ours as soon as I got the place, and yeah, that's that's the term. This leads into a question that I've been wanting to ask, which is that, Okay, it is my under is my firm belief that I could defeed a chicken in single combat it would send me to the hospital. But apparently this is the thing you need to do with your chickens.

So how how practical is it to defeed a chicken in single combat if you have to extract another chicken or something. I've never actually had any kind of aggression from my chickens. When I'm bleeding, they'll peck my leg.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, while we we hadn't realized that, like they so I think that you want when you get chickens, it's a rodent proof freedom, right, So you don't want to just put the food in the bowl if you have an issue with rodent's you want to have a things like basically, she comes up, she stands on a step and that opens up the feeder and she can pack and eat, right, And you want to get a road and proof feeder. You can just buy

them attract to supply. But I was gummed up with rain and we didn't realize and the chickens are obviously not getting food. They're upset with this, so they would attack me every time I came outside, like, they'd attack me and I'd be like, go away. So I'd give them treats, right, I give them like worms and apples. A kitten has arrived, I have to. She was wasting to hold or to be held. I'm holding my cat for anyone, that's like, what's happening. She just wanted to

be snuggled. That's okay, she's given your kiars um. Yeah, so you the mind would attack me for a while, and I just gave them meal worms when they would attack me. So unconsciously I was reinforcing the attacking behavior, and so they would attack me for a while. But I think you could take them. Just keep swinging and yeah, you don't. You know, you don't have to. They're very like most of the time, at least mine. I hand

feed them. So like a nice treat for them is I'll cut a melon in half and I'll chase Sharne because she's allergic to melons, and you just hold it out and they'll come and eat it. And they they love scraps like that's often like what I do with basically all of my food waste is give it to the chickens, and they tend to be very happy with that. Yeah, it's very it's a very sustainable thing. Let's get onto space. I want to talk about before, before, before, before we

get into this. I speaking of sustainability. Do you know who else is incredibly sustainable? I don't think we can say capitalism? Yes, inherently, so shiny stuff, it will last a thousand years. All right, we're back. Buy some gold. Buy some gold. Want to re enforce it, because gold, when you're starving, will be more useful than chickens because it's shiny. That's right, That's right. It'll make you forget that you're slowly starving. And it's the foundation of all

of this. Ship's shiny. Okay um, yeah, so don't have shiny things. I want to talking about chicken coopes, because there's a shiny thing sectional. I love a good coop. I do love to make a coop. I'd have to buy a cooper, have to help my friends buy coops. It's just it's a it's a great conversation area anyway.

So they do need a coupe. They need a place where they can go at night, and you want it to be shut off from predators, right, so you don't want your possum, your raccoon, and your fox, your stout, your weasel, fare whatever whatever you're dealing with snake. Um. So, once you get above three chickens, you might have more

than one nesting box in there. But like this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go out and buy You can buy them on Amazon now, but they're quite expensive and they're often quite ship like the pre made chicken coops are very poor quality. Like if you have a shed or a kennel or something like that, you can pretty easily make it into a coupe and you can just put a drop down door on the front so you can close them in at night and let

them out in the morning. And or I've seen people use like drawers, you know, like like dresses, just open those and use them as nesting boxes. And you want to put down some straw in your nesting books. Yeah, I have I think four for the chickens that I have now, which is about I think we've got about

eleven um And there they are. Two of them are large enough for two at a time, and then two of them are smaller, although chickens all and and sometimes one of the things you have to do occasionally is come in and like take them out of the some of them out of the nesting boxes. Some of them get like stuck in a loop. Where did they get broody? Yeah, yeah yeah, And so you just I just like take them out and set them down where there's like some stuff to peck at, and they seem to It kind

of resets their little chicken brains. Silky Bantams, which are one of the like show bantams get Rudy is fun and it's like I've had friends who have had him, and they will they will not eat and not drink because it's just like, no, I'm sitting on this egg, like you can't stop me. And you have to lock them out of there. There's not even an egg there, chicken, what's wrong with you? Yeah, well they'll take another chicken's egg. Yeah, just yeah. Or even like silky it's cute. Look them

up there, they're real, they're flu furs. They're very cute. So you want to build them a run to write a place where they can say if you run around and have their food, have their water, And I would suggest using construction netting when you build a run broy that people called chicken wire, which is like maybe one inch size holes, but like a lot of stuff can get through that. You'd be amazed, like rats, my snakes

can all get through that. And use construction netting, which is like maybe I'm not very good at inches, but like about one cent to me to size a lot less.

He's going to get through it. And you might want to bury it down to like a foot or two below the run if you're building something permanent, just because things can't dig underneath, like a we had a foxtic underneath when I was a kid, and don't it's preferable to do that to putting on the floor of your run because they don't like the little wire and their little feet. Yeah no, no, definitely not on the You want them to have access to dirt and ideally sometimes

grass too. One thing that they because I will let them out sometimes during the day and I have a barn that has like like it's kind of dust in there, like not dust um almost like almost like sandy dry dirt. And one of their favorite things, especially during the summer, is to just kind of like sit down and rub. Yeah, that make it all up in the like, and they kind of need to be able to do some version

of that in order to be like healthy. Otherwise they yeah, it's it's good for them, it's good for their skin, it's good for them existing. Yeah, it's good for their mental health. I think that like people keep kicking their terrible conditions commercially, but it doesn't mean you have an excuse to. So when I when I got these chickens, they had been the people who'd have them before. I

don't know what the funk was wrong with them. They had a sizeable outside run, but whoever, the folks who had them had covered the entire bottom in stone, so they were just like living on stone when we know they were. They were in a horrible shape. And when I when we harvested the rooster, his gizzard was full of automotive glass, like, yeah, it was fucked up. It was I spent because they all had they all had

huge patches of them that like we're bald um. I mean we we we dealt with that, partially by getting rid of the rooster and partially by making sure we gave them I was I still do mix in um oyster shell bits with the calcium is good for them. Yeah, so you'll know if they need that, Like they stopped coming and he startually really dangerous, like an egg can rupture inside if they're laying it and that can be fatal. So you want to make sure, um, if we just

we can cover a few quickly, I guess. And so they do like to grub for worms and stuff like that, right, look for insects and they love to have scraps. But for laying chicken, you want to make sure it's getting a decent based diet of layers pellets, which should be like somewhere between six protein which sorry, what what kind of pellets? Layer pellets? Yeah, there's a number of brands of it, but yeah, they're called layer pellets. Yeah, some of them will already have oyster shell and grit and

like Robert said, they do need those. If not, you can augment them, but it's probably gonna be easier to just get one sack and just dump it all in. They do need access to water as well that they can get out all day. I think it's better to use like a nipple type drinker, which is a you can take a bucket, any bucket right fill it up and then you put these little nipples and they just get their red and again they like to peck it red stuff, so they'll peck at them and then they

get and that stops. Like you know, they can't put their feet in the water and get their ship from their feet in the water and get sick, like then they're not clean animals. So just if you do that, And then I like to put a little bit. It's hot where I live in San Diego, so I put a little bit of electrolyte stuff in there for them and they don't seem to mind, and it just seems

to help. And then yeah, like it's it's good to you can feed them kitchen straps, but you don't want to overload them, especially on carb stuff, like they do need enough protein to keep up there laying and they definitely need enough calcium. And one thing I would say if you're if you're going to buy something, if you're going to buy a chicken coop, there's a company called

egg Glue, which is like iglobe egg. They make some really nice pre fab coups that are pretty good, and you can buy an attachment which puts a little door on it. That it uses a solar panel I guess to charge itself, and then it will open at daylight and close at sunset. And so if you're the sort of person who knows that, you'll forget to bring your chickens in. Obviously they're you know, they're at risk at night from predation and things, and they become completely fucking

useless at night when they go to sleep. You can pick them up and turn them upside down and like, yeah, my interior, the coot the interior of my coupe hairs. It's cute. It's basically like a ladder, like a like a very wide ladder going up the side of the building and they just all stand on like it's like a group of twenty, like a different levels of the ladder just sit there as they as they sleep at night. Yeah, they need to step on it, that's a good. Yeah,

mind you can't just on the floor. Yeah, they don't like just being in the dirt. And then like something to entertain them. So a good thing to entertain them is like if you have CDs. Still, young listeners may not remember having CD collections, but if you do have CDs or you know, you can find c ds you can just hang those and then they'll pack at them and stuff because they're kind of shiny and they move around. So it's the thing to do with your lattice. Marisees.

They also really like, I mean one of the things that so I just tore out my what was left of my front lawn in order to grow more stuff, and I just tossed all of the the chunks of like soil and and and there they of pecking at that ship. It's like one of their favorite things in the world. Yeah, we put them on. I have some

planters out back and they're like fen staffs. The chickens carget in and then when we turn them over and we like replant them, we'll put them in there and they just go have and they find these huge worms. So I have no idea how they got in there,

but yeah, they love that stuff. Yeah, and I let him out into the yard periodically, and it's always whenever I have to like walk them back in because you kind of just like loop around them to like guide the flock as they move, because they'll kind of instinctively go away from you if you're walking towards them. Um. One of my one of my hobbies is to like pretend to be an old feel like we should stop

this immediately buy some gold. Okay, sometimes I pretend it's the shosh ancor them, and which is where chicken by the coast. It's kind of go and show us why bedsheet all of us love having health insurance? Please can I can I ask a question about space? So like how much physical room do they need? Like how much line do you have to have? So you can look at there are pretty good like calculators online. We can look at how many square yards or whatever you have.

But I'm terrible at estimating size. But you know, my, my, I don't have very big garden. You know, we've we've had up to six chickens. But you do want to just look it up and it's not like the square yardage you have isn't as important as the access they have to stuff? Right? Yeah? Can they get sunlight? Can they be like out in in like something that feels like you know where a chicken would want to be. But this is this is this is like not something

you can run from an apartment right? No outside? Yeah, if you live in an apartment that like has a yard or something that shared you potentially could, but no, you you do need like some amount of dirt and grass. Essentially, if you maybe have like a community garden, you can talk to people about doing it. They're like them, So mine just go all around my yard all day and like, uh,

you guys have noticed also coming to my office. Um, and then they'll put themselves to bed at night, and they know where their home is so that they'll just go back to bed at night. And I want to talk a little bit about health, because there are definitely some chicken health things and just it's very expensive to take chicken sort of vet actually because you have to go to an exotic and avian vet, and they're quite

rare exotic and avian vet. You could take them to a regular vet, but most of the time, so actually, if your chickens get sick, in most states, there's a state run helpline you can call and it's free and they'll put you onto a vet right away and they're very very helpful. And then they're because of the danger of different avian flus like infecting large numbers of of of animals. Yeah, does something similar to pen insurance exist

for farm peep farm animals or not? Really it does, but I don't think you probably wouldn't want to be investing it out for your chicken. So I give you if you're breeding livestock, and that's the thing you can have, um And you know, one of the things you do have to keep in mind is that at some point you will have to kill them, um, you know, because they will get old enough or sick enough, and some form of euthanasia will wind up being kinder than continuing

to like let them be um. Like, That's just that's true of any kind of livestock, right, at some point you have to if you don't just want to let it die naturally, which again in a lot of cases, will be prolonging it suffering. You you do have to be willing to take care of that one way or the other. Yeah, Like you can give them the best life you can give them and look often for them as you can, but often times here they will or they'll get hurt, right, like if somebody still get injured.

I think it's a good reality to remind people of that. It's like, it's actually like a serious thing to have a chicken and then be responsible for its life and death. And also like the egg comes out of their butth hole, right, so it's covered. Well, it's it's not just like cartoon

and chicken playing, you know what I mean. Like I think, yeah, it's a while ago, um, but it's not that game everyone playing in COVID where you're in the island and you build stuff and yeah, I just think people usually are really flipping with stuff like like, yeah, you know, it's a living animal, and like you have to take care of it, and it's your responsibility, right the storm, Like you need to think about that. You don't want to let the bumholes get too poopy. We're talking about health.

So they can get worm that way, and that's really bad. So if you see that, just just pick them up and they'll be And that's this is why you want to handle them when they're young, so that you can handle them with stuff like this. So like I'll just pick them up and use a spray bottle or a little hose with a bit of warm water and and they they don't mind that at all, and at least they don't give me any ship. And but you want to look up some of the common things you're going

to see gape worm. It's called gape one because they'll gape you. You'll see them gaping. They can be egg bound, and then depending on where you are, right, they can be too hot too cold. You do need to make sure they have shade. I found this thing. I found it someone was moving out. It's like a it's like a mister, but like they have at restaurants. You know when you go to a restaurant in l A and

it's hot and seven annoying wetness. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, I've ever been to like an amusement park and like a like a lie and they sometimes have them too sometimes in the like fruit and vegetables when there. But that's the only restaurants not inside outside misters to make it if you're in Phoenix or somewhere, yeah yeah, yeah, so I've got one of those. And you can find lots of ship by the way, like if you're if you live in a place that's gentrifying, like unfortunately has

happened in the park San Diego I live in. Like like, for instance, all the wood for my chicken keeping paid for their ship. Like there's rich people doing stuff to houses. It doesn't need to be done, just like obtain wood from their building sites. Yeah, and obtain it's it's it's like those powles of bricks, and they didn't want you

to use them. They wouldn't leave it out there. Yeah, and why I would live with Warren have sent the pallets of Brits if you didn't want to use and so uh yeah, obviously, like health wise, like I said, you want to make sure you have that purple spray on hand. You want to be giving them some electrolytes and their water. You want to make sure they have shade if it's hot and their coop is warm, like

they don't like it much below freezing. Like yeah, I keep like a heat lamp basically all winter in there with with a red bulb so it doesn't like upset their their sleep patterns. Yeah. People, the way battery people do it, like battery chickens is they they they do more day night cycles using artificial light to to make the chickens lay more if you see what I mean, and the chickens will lay an accelerated rate. I'll keep them laying during the winter, be doing that that's not

particularly good for the birds. And I let them rest this winter. Yeah, let them you know, they're animals. They you know, they don't just exist to provide your food. Like a question on this, like how cold is there like a point it gets in the winter where it's like you probably shouldn't have them. We just want to keep the coup warm. And then like so like when we were at Tenacious unicorn ranch, right and they have chickens.

I don't know how cold it was, but I went to bed every night with analgene full of boiling water and when I woke up, I was hugging an ice baby like it was yeah, the heat so where I was staking and work the first time. So it was called a f and the chickens had a nice warm coupe with a heat lamp and they they were fine. Yeah you can. I mean people keep chickens in every imaginable climate, so you get as long as you're careful about making sure you know that you have a warm

place for them to sleep, they will be okay. Yeah, and you can can Can you let them out in the snow and stuff or should you? Yeah? You know, yeah, they have fun with that. There's it's snowed yesterday and like chickens are having a great time out. Yeah, they like you actually like they'll run like I remember at home this snow and yeah, and talks when you're buying the chickens, right, like consider that in your breed choice,

like something going to do're going to do. Some of them are gonna not like heat and honestly, like one of the better things you can do in that situation. If you're like if I live in some weird ass part of the world where it's freezing half the time, just google like keeping backyard chickens whatever the name of your area is, and then Reddit and yeah, you will find people talking on yeah, yeah, I've gotten this is the this is the breed that I picked, and this

is what I do. And people love to talk about the chicken. So yeah, to crack you out your into read it was one of my resources that exactly. It's a good place to look. Yeah, So if you have a cupe, you're gonna want to clean it, right, you can use that chicken pooper's fertilizer. It's some of the best in the world. So then if you're if you're into this sort of you know, like growing your own food and this all works well, right, you give the chicken to scraps chicken to make you eggs and poop.

You put that into your plants. You have nice plants. You want to balance it out. It's a bit acidic, I think, just using the ship, so you want to be combusting with other stuff as well, right, checking your soil chemistry before you sort of go ham But yes, you can do that. You do want to make sure. Yeah, I've got the poultry helpline. We spoke about that. California's is great though, Like, don't hesitate to call the poultry helpline if you need help, Like there's there's people who

are being paid to help you. And that's normally, like I know, like most pet owners, unless they're very wealthy, will have had to make horrible decisions about their pets health versus their own income when when they've like you know, and it's it's ship. So that helpline is free, and like rob it said, it's because they're always gaded infectious diseases. So take advantage of like your you know, taxpayer funded

chicken vat and yeah, give him a call. Um, I think I don't know it's in every state, but I know it's in a lot of them, and yeah, go ahead, Oh um, are you going to talk about uh giving them like the shake and bake treatment for uh what do you call it? Um? If they get uh mites? Oh yeah, yeah, go and go ahead and talk about it. So you know, chickens can get there's like a skin but it's it's it's it's functions similarly to like a skin infection. There's like little mites that will get on them.

You'll notice bald patches. It can be I mean, it's bad for their health obviously, like you would not want to be covered in mites. And so there's um. There's this kind of mite killer called promethrin um and the way that you you can apply it in a number of ways, but you basically need to coat the entire chicken.

It's essentially a white powder. So what we did when we had to do it is we just took a giant a large feedbag and we filled it with permethrin and we we put the chickens in it once at a time and just kind of like give them a little shake so they got covered. You've shaken baking all of them, and then they're just like wandering around confused and covered in this white powder. Like what the funk happened.

It's very funny that it's very fun um. I mean, it's just it's the best way because they get covered very quickly that way. Like there's you know, with mites and dust and stuff. You do want to make sure that where they're living is not too moist or not too dusty. They can get respiratory conditions from that, so you don't, Yeah, you want to make sure that you

know they're living in a nice environment. And they also like the biggest health thing you're going to see is so they will peck at each other, right, especially when you first get your birds, they're gonna establish what it's called a pecking order, and which you know people have used, heard and use an advantage and order in which they get I didn't know the meeting. I didn't understand what that meant completely until right now this moment. It's my

gift to you, very helpful today. It's a lot of Yeah, it's what they call a knowledge transfer. The Yeah, so that they'll do that, they'll pick right, they'll establishing all when you get a new bird, you don't really want to introduce one new bird at once, right, So say this is how you get fucking conned into having bantams because let's say your your garden can support four chickens, and then one of your girls dies and you're sad

and you want to get more birds. So you're like, well, we can't, we can't go to five full size chickens. We'll get bantam for like two half sized chickens. And that that is good for the social dynamic because they weren't one won't get picked on, one won't be like the new girl, and then they pick on her. But then you've got bantams, and then you you just I don't know, I'm not no, it's not very pro bantam and they're just difficult. So how do they establish the

pecking order? They pack at each other and peck at each other. Yeah, and well basically one of the well it's just like any other, like physical confrontation, like they peck at each other and like, okay, well you're harder than me, Like I can't you know, I'm not here for that. The back down. Sometimes they will really start picking on one and then you do have to separate

them for a while. Um, so I think that you've got to watch out for that, and you've got to be viteering and when you first get them, you're going to be excited and you're gonna want to go outside and then interact with them. So you know you'll be watching that anyway. So just make sure you have treats and stuff and separate them and don't be scared. They can't hurt you, the chickens. But um, yeah, it's normal of them to peck at each other. You've got to

keep an eye out for if they do draw blood. Said, they are fucking dinosaurs and they will just hone in on that, So that's when you have to separate them or come in with your purple spray. Um. So yeah, you just have to make sure that you're aware of that. And they pecked out your leg when it was bleeding, does that hurt a little bit? Like you wouldn't do it recreationally? Yeah? People would you know? You yuck? You're young? Yeah, if you are, if you are turned on exactly like

it's not. They're not like like full body attack that I walk in every day to feed my chickens and I don't get peck there anything like they're they're fine. Um, they're not like attack animals and chickens by the way or like every other creature, some of them are assholes, right, like any kind of animal that you have and any like just like people, some of them are dick. I remember, like on that subject. I was a few years ago.

I was writing about rattlesnake behavior for his story and there's this run fucking rattlesnake which literally every time I ride past it, it's just like bam, like fucking Like. I've talked to the snake behavior expert and he's like, yeah, man, that one's an asshole. Some of them are just don't know what to tell you. Just come across a bell end like it it is what it is. Um, So yeah, if you sometimes he's gonna have a chicken, which is mean,

and it just gotta hope that doesn't. You know, you've got to make your choice end, right, if it's really causing chaos in the flock, like, what are you gonna do with it? Yeah, that may be a chicken that you eat. Um. You know, one of the things you learned keeping chickens is how wildly we have fucked up the chickens that we used for meat, because like a normal chicken does not produce breast meat that is that size, Like that is the size of like a normal grocery

store chicken breast. Those are from monsters that we made. Well, yeah, that's like breast meat was popular, so they made that that like they inserted like a horborne or whatever to make that part of the chicken grow. And I mean I've seen videos of like the chicken toppling over because that's so heavy, not supposed to it's madness. It's so sad, and then jones are not fully develop like it's very cruel,

Like I am, Yeah, it's sucked up. Yeah, I didn't eat meat, Like I'm not really like down with the way the American commercially culture raised animals a toy. I grew up on a farm. I could have raised animals my home with you. I agree touching. Yeah, cheap cheap meatings too. I understand other people. Do you got to feature families whatever? And obviously one way or the other.

If you're raising chickens, like and you at some point you know the chicken is going to die if at all possible, I think you do kind of have a

responsibility to find some use for that meat. Yeah, it's just that they're sick, in which case yeah, obviously if they get like yeah, I had to I had to kill two last year because they got like some sort of avian flu and the state people will come and take them away and do an autopsy if if they do get sick like that, and so that that's nice to know because then you have, you know, do I have to worry about the rest of my flock? You know what? What is this? Is there something in the soil?

It's something I'm feeding them? You know, you can if you have concerns like that, it's nice to have them do that. That's a really really good note. But yeah, you if you are responsible for them, like and you have to give them the best life they can and the kind of death, and you know, you're responsible to the suffering as little as possible in their little lives.

We used to buy chickens when I was a kid from a guy who bread chickens for a battery farm, and we'd go and get them with chicks and just be like you you you you you are going to run around our farm. Will don't have a wonderful life, And I'm so sorry the rest of you have this fucking horrible existence. But it's nice to save some of them. So it's gonna be hard to get chickens right now.

So my last thing was really like when you're buying chickens, right where you're gonna get your chickens from, and so hopefully you know where you live you have like a farm, shall steal them, liberate them from a battery farm, shoot your way in it. It doesn't it's worth it, and they have all probably Well I actually think people have literally gotten to much of terrorism charges for that. But

well I think it's pigs, wasn't it that they go? Yeah, yeah, chickens are not charismatic enough for people to go to prison over. Yeah, I know, it's unfair, it's unfair. It's racism. Really. Yeah. If there's one thing we could tell you as a group of individuals legally responsible for what we say, i'm yourself and liberate poultry. Yeah, fight your way in like like the only not the only, but the most concrete evidence of like dinosaurs have like now devolved into these chickens,

you know what I mean? Like that is so funny to me that out of all the animals, that is the closest thing we have to a dinosaur, that is a dinosaurs and again their favorite food as their own kind. And also like like they will like every now and then I will give them some of their eggs just because it makes them so happy to eat. Well, I was gonna ask, like what you said that it tasted different when you gave them meat, Like what is the difference that you caught in the taste when they do

eat their own eggs versus like just the feed. Oh no, I mean their their own eggs, don't. I've never fed them enough for it to be a meaningful component of their diet. They will eat scrambled eggs and cheese. They like to you know, when they're sick. Can you can you like taste a difference if you give them herbs, so like one thing that people do is give them little bundles of herbs and you can taste that in the egg. Yeah, it just kind of richer, you know.

When you it's like you'll notice different, like if you if they are calcium deficient, the eggs are really fragile. And if they have a shipload of calcium in their diet, like my eggs are, like you have to like you have to want to crack those fuckers. If you feed the flax seeds. Then the eggs have a higher Amiga three content. Like if you have it's like it makes sense, it's super interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can. You can give them flag seats and like that kind of thing.

You can mess with their diet bit and they they like that stuff. So yeah, when you're buying them, what you want, I think is the beginner is like a point of labored and you can say point of flay and that's what they'll give you. Know that they're going to try and give you pullets or they're going to try and say it's nice to raise chicks, but it is. It's really nice to raise chicks, but some of them will die and that will be upsetting for you, and um,

it's hard because again work. That's a general note any life time. If you if you decide that you want to be a person who has live stock, you have to be okay with them dying and it being an experience that is more direct to you than like obviously it's it's not as emotional as like when a catterat dog dies, but it will not involve a vet with the kind of frequency that like a dying pet does. Like you will have to deal with you know, animals die,

because animals just die. Sometimes they wind up with the same kind of ailments people have. For like an animal's hard will give out or something. And you didn't do anything wrong. It's just an animal was born with a heart defect. Right, It's just like a thing that occurs if you have enough animals. Yeah, we used to say, if you have life stock, you have dead stock one day. Yeah, like it's just something you have to face up to. But like someone else is already doing that ship and

they're probably doing it with less compassion than you. You're buying you know, warm out eggs. So you let I say you you can't, You're not God, but like you owe these animals like a decent life. And yeah, it's a little suffering as you can. So yeah, by the point of leg chickens, make sure that their sex right you you don't want to restie. You might not legally be able to have a rooster. And then something like

a dog container. It's fine. I brought them home in a shoe box before, Like I'll just put them next to me in my truck. And they're pretty chill that you know, give them, give them a little bit of water, in there, but generally they don't, you know, want to drink.

You can kind of swaddle them. I've seen people swaddle them, um, you know if they're really panicking or whatever, and swaddling it's like when you wrap them like you would with a baby, and people do that, I know, when they have to move them in like a hurricane to try and calm them down. But I've always just put them in a dog container. Are we going to talk about storing eggs? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because people don't. Yeah, it's a weird American thing. Yeah, so this doesn't happen

in the rest of the world. But you guys get your eggs refrigerated, and that's because they're washed before they come to Yeah, you don't need to do this normally. No, you shouldn't wash your eggs, nor should you refrigerate them.

Just I have a little helter skelter thing, and it just looks like a spiral, right, and you put the egg on the top and it just rolls its little way down and it gets to the bottom and that way I always take them from the bottom, and that way I'm always sort of getting the oldest eggs first, so I don't end up with like one at the bottom of the basket, right, so you don't them no,

just just bring it not until you're ready to eat them. Obviously, wash them before you cook them, because some of them will have poop and stuff on them right right before that. Just keep them normal and then lost for months like that, Like there are there you can there are a couple of other ways to Obviously you could pickle them, be

very careful with that. If you are canning them, um, I would recommend just pickling them and putting them in the fridge because eggs in like hard boiled eggs in particular, are troublesome to can because there's always if you think about hard boiled eggs, there's always like a little bitty cracks and like the white of the egg and that is where botulism can live. So be extremely careful if

you are pickling eggs. Um, just I would recommend don't like you know, can them specifically, just pickle them and put them in the fridge and you know, the less a pretty good amount of time. Yeah, pickled eggs are delicious. Yeah, is the is the thing about not refrigerating the eggs, do you actually still have to refrigerate, like if you

use the store if yes, you can in this country. Yes, you can roll them in vegetable oil and I think ash, which replicates the way that they have a membrane on that and but very fair like all intended if you're buying them, yeah, yeah, when they come out like a little pole basically yeah, like it's kind of fills to pause on the outside of the egg, I think because I understand it. So if you really wanted to store them, you didn't have access to refrigerator, you could do the

actual thing. You should look it up. The other thing you can do that is because again, if you have any quantity of chickens, there's a good chance that they will produce, like I have a problem with this, significantly more eggs than you can consume. An interesting way to are you gonna talk about water glassing? Oh you talk about it there? Yeah, that you can look like look it up. I'm not going to give you a guide over this because preserving stuff is something that you should

take care on. But you can google water glassing. It's basically a way you can keep eggs for like up to a year. That way, um in like crack able friable condition. But I think we are getting the note that James and I should stop talking about chickens for now. Continue in another episode, James, and we'll talk about chickens privately after this. And you are pretty James said it. People love to talk about their chickens. They do me

talk about chickens. Yeah. Yeah, Maybe let's start a side podcast for Patreon reasons, Chicken Cast, Chicken Cast Anyway, poultry pod. Until next time, take a lesson from the chickens and eat your own young Okay, oh my god. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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