Hi! Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. I'm Rip Stalvey, and together with Mandelyn Royal and John Gunterman, we're your co hosts for this show, and it's our mission to help you have a happy, healthy, and productive flock. Mandelyn Royal joins us tonight and we are going to be talking about American Bresse. Isn't that right, Mandelyn?
Absolutely. There's a lot to go into with them because they've been around for a pretty long time. Just not in the U S for very long.
I just started to say, I think they've been around a lot longer than most, Folks realize where are they from
originally they're from France and like a lot of poultry breeds where they are named for the region they came from, the breasts are from the breast region, and there's a whole lot of history and methods and how they're grown there and a lot of different variations within there's also different varieties. There's actually a lot to it, so I don't know how deep you want me to go into the French side of all their history or
move on to how they're important to it. We don't have to get hung up on it, but yeah, give us a little detail there.
So most common in the U. S. is the White Bresse, and That's not the first variety that came later on. The colors that we don't have here officially right now is like the gray Bresse, and that was where they started from. And there's also black, which of course means there's blue and splash as well. And there's a red gold too. And they each have their own name. They're named differently for their specific regions over in France. So you can't say all the different colors are the same Bresse.
They all have their own more specialty breed names.
I'm curious what attracted you to Bresse to begin with?
The very first time I'd actually heard about him was through an advertisement I saw, and so I looked up the name and I was surprised by what I found and I was intrigued and with what they were saying for the dual purpose qualities, that's where I was in my flock development was trying to do that transition into dual purpose. And I had been having a hard time, Really seeing both meat and eggs from one breed. Like it was not going well.
And after I saw that ad for them, I reached out to the lady and I talked to her for a while and I ended up getting some chicks and eggs from her
and
what I had read about actually turned out to be mostly true with that first group. So I thought they were pretty incredible right out of the gate. And now we can process. At 14, 16 weeks and they've been a lot of fun to breed up and improve and work on the standard. It's been a lot of fun with them and it's the yield that really made it more enjoyable because I didn't have to stress about a cockerel management program. They just go to the freezer if you have too many.
I'm curious and I know you deal with this on a regular basis. But what are some of the traits to look for if somebody's wanting to start out with this breed?
If you're actually going to have them for the dual purpose qualities, especially the table qualities, you want to find something that has their bloodline bred for growth rate and the fleshing and the body structure, body capacity, all of those important things for overall production. They need that in their families so that you get a more consistent and reliable Table presentation. And because we're not eating, the top shelf best breeding stock birds.
We're eating the ones who didn't quite turn out as great as how their parents were. And those to me still need to be like a meaningful bird in some capacity. So that growth rate and the fleshing, it was the most elusive thing when I was trying a lot of different breeds. And these had that, so I've been terrified of losing it by making the wrong breeding decisions, so getting that growth rate predictable, that's
pretty important. You've been working to improve that, right?
Yeah, but they had it pretty well though they weren't far off the mark when I got started with them, at least in the batch that I started with. I've tried some groups from some other places and it varied. Tremendously, and what you could expect from those offspring. So that's where I started to learn just how diverse that flock is because every farm almost has a different kind of growth rate, a different kind of look to the bird. They're not very consistent yet.
So that's why we started working on a standard for them in the U S to try to be like there's a way these birds are supposed to look and grow and perform and standards help keep everybody on the same page.
Yeah. Sue Dobson's got a question here. What's your timeframe from hatch to freezer?
I'm averaging 15 weeks and seeing anywhere from three and a half pounds up towards, sometimes past four and a half pounds. Cause like I said, we're not eating the very best ones. So some of them are smaller. Some are perfect. Some are a little bit bigger, which is why they didn't make the cut. Cause there is such a thing as too big. You have to keep a overall balance going with them.
I've seen a couple of people breed for that size and it ended up changing the meat to bone ratio, which is another important thing to them. They're supposed to be like a real fine kind of delicate, graceful bird, like a solid medium. They're not supposed to be massive. 12 pound birds when they're a year old, they're supposed to just fall right smack in the middle of the spectrum of chicken, but have like more breast meat, more thigh meat, but on a thinner, delicate bone. If that makes sense.
And I think you were one of the first folks I had ever talked about. Was a breed that was supposed to have more delicate bone structure. Yeah, it was the first
I'd ever heard of that. Like I know in some game birds and things like that, you want like a finer bone, like a more elegant kind of look to them, not like a big, thick legged Brahma or something along those lines where they're, they're huge. They build this structure up because they're going to become a massive bird.
Yeah. I was, the first time I heard that, I thought gee, that's opposite of what most folks with a dual purpose breed go for. They like those big substantial bones on those birds.
It helps them stay meaty for the duration of growth, which really goes a long way on bringing your processing date earlier rather than later. Because you can find birds that are freezer ready at 14, 15, 16 weeks old, or maybe it's 20 weeks, 24 weeks, all the way up towards 8 months old before they're fleshy and caught up with their bone growth.
Some of them spend a lot of time growing bone, and the American Bresse, the ones we have here, there's some pretty big birds out there that grow that same way, where it's a little bit of a slow burn to get up to the freezer age. Some people do wait past 24 weeks up to 30 weeks just to get the pounds on them, but then at that point, they're not really feed efficient anymore.
So by keeping them right where they should be, you get a better feed conversion because they're not doing months of skeletal growth. They're meaty for the whole time, just Pick your age.
Got you.
What kind of yield do you want? If they're going to be, what, like 16 weeks, we see a more consistent four pound, four and a half pound. And then up towards 20 weeks, we're looking more at six pounds, but by then the feed conversion is different. And it changes the texture of the meat if they're not capons, like if they have their, male hormones coming in right at 18, 19, 20 weeks. Then sometimes Rooster Coop can get a little chaotic if you have all your boys together at that age.
So I like doing it earlier, right when you haven't just poured feed into them for months and months. Cause that was the struggle with a lot of other stuff I tried is yeah, they eventually got big. Eventually.
How would you classify their Temperament.
Oh, it can vary. So I have probably three distinct different temperaments in my flock since I have, a barn full of them and they're not all the same family. So I have some really chill, lazy ones. They're trip hazards. They stand at the door waiting on me. They let me just reach down and pet them. Like they're very easygoing, almost like an Orpington or that sort of temperament where they're just easy and chill. And then I have some others who.
If I surprise them, they bounce off the walls, and then you shoot in 50 different directions, and those I'm not crazy about. And then there's others that are middle of the road,
just chicken and
cabbage.
And you and I were talking about this earlier today. We were comparing them to another breed, but I think anytime we get birds imported in from another country, it seems like we see the same sort of scenarios. Temperaments are pretty much all over the place. Growth rates are all over the place. I don't know why that is, but.
We're talking earlier today about Marans and when they first came over, they were the same way, they're, they were all over the place and the type was not consistent but they persevered with them and got them pretty much whipped into shape now. So I'm pretty sure you guys can do the same thing with Bresse.
And Rip, in your opinion, how long does it take to really develop a strong family line? How many generations do you need to run through before you can confidently say, this group is a family that's predictable, it's consistent? How long does that take?
Oh gosh, Mandelyn, I think that has a lot of dependence upon the quality of the birds you start with. If you've got good sound quality birds you can get a good family going in three, four years. If you've got a lot of Diversity and type and color and weight and growth rates and attitudes. It can take you a while to weed through all of that. I
always think of it in terms of decades, if it's going to be a real big project and the American Bresse weren't imported until 2011. So they haven't been here long enough for that many people to really have those established family flocks where all of the silly recessive traits have been out, they've got all the. Disease resistance to stuff that's in America, because when birds also get imported, they're carrying immunities for what was in their natural environment.
And then you just rock their world and put them halfway around the planet with a brand new list of things that they have to get used to in their environment. So they had to go through that process as well. Initially there is, coccidia sensitivities and that's still ongoing in some flocks because it's all work in progress. They're pretty new and chicken time.
I'm just going to throw this out there. But do you think that's related to the birds themselves or related to breeders that have them that are not really aware and tuned into how to breed for improvement?
I think that's subjective and it depends and some people are prepared for the project and others dive in head first and they don't know where they're swimming to yet. But most of them do start doing research and learning and catching on and they grow with their flock. Like a lot of people come out on the other side and go, wow, and that was a crash course. I wasn't anticipating. I just wanted these birds, but it turns out, no, that's the whole thing.
But you get to eat good and you get a basket full of eggs every day. Like the amount that they lay compared to the harvest yields. Like they really are dual purpose to me.
Yeah. I was just going to say, Sue Dobson says she still has recesses coming out in her crabs after seven years.
Yeah. It might be forever. I don't know.
Mandy, when you gave the weights earlier three and a half, four pounds. Is what does that include? Is that carcass? With neck is that carcass with that's no neck
and no gizzards and I also remove the little tail nub I take that off too.
You're removing the Pope's nose. Why do you do that?
Because it looks better in a shrink bag
Yeah, yes, don't you know?
Oil gland there
just
cut out the oil gland
weird
There is really good meat in the Pope's nose. Okay. Okay. That is a delicacy. You're going to offend someone by cutting it off.
Really? Should I collect them and deep fry them as a group?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
You could
skewer them and do them on the barbecue. Some people breed for the way it looks. On two feet. Mandy has a large concern for that bag. Look. It's a lot
of work. She wants it to look good on the table. By the time I've got that bird in the kitchen, I need it to be beautiful.
That's right. There's a huge fat deposit in the tail. And there is a little bit of meat along the spinal cord that extends out into that tail. But, there's some flavor profile that you're throwing away. Just think of it that way. You're giving it to the dogs or something, I realize. But, my point being is, my personal opinion, I'm not buying a chicken that's missing the tail. Ain't happening. Ain't happening. Because, I got people in my family that go for that piece first.
Just because of the tenderness of the meat in the tail.
See, I'm that way about the oyster up there on the top of the thigh.
Yeah.
I can't lose those. Those are premium.
That's the second place some of my family members go is for the oyster.
That's my first spot. That little oyster on either side above the thighs.
So anyway, you're talking about a plain carcass. No neck, no heart, no gizzard, no liver. So almost you could pretty much add a pound back to that. So what you're calling four pound actually.
I could jam everything back in there in its own bag.
Yes. Yeah. And but that should make closer to a five pound saleable meat. Okay. Because everything you're taking off is part of the package. And but yeah, somebody had asked what if that was carcass or live weight? And Carrie answered that it was, but I wanted to know what was included in the weights that you were giving.
So generally for live weights, I'm looking them, looking for the res to be a minimum of six pounds.
And sometimes they should only lose 30% at And that's on the high side. They should. I do. Even if you take off the necks and everything else, that should be 30%. Okay, so a 6 pounder, 30 percent puts it at 4. 2 pounds. That should be exactly where you're at, right?
I think in Ohio math, that's where she's at.
Yeah. Yeah. They do math differently in Ohio. I know that for sure.
We do a lot different in Ohio, okay?
Yes, you
do.
New life in upstate New York says he agrees that the tail and the skin are the best parts. Oh,
I have to cook the skin just a certain way if I'm going to eat the skin too. Otherwise I save that for the puppies too.
That's my favorite part. See you, you like roasting them. You like slow roasting them. That's your preferred way of doing it. That
or smoke, but lately we've expanded out into chicken tenders, chicken nuggets, ground chicken. I did chicken sausage, which I was surprised about because of the flavor it had plus the seasoning. That was pretty good. And like today we did some chicken masala, tiki masala, something. My husband cooked today, so I was off the hook and it was pretty good. Good chicken. I'll tell
you what my wife calls it when I cook, chef surprise. Take it out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if somebody wants to get started. Raising this breed, should they start with hatching eggs, baby chicks, started birds, or adults?
Oh, that's tricky, cause while their population is steadily growing, and while they're getting more and more popular, they're still spread pretty thin, and in a lot of cases, people are just having to get whatever they can find if they want to avoid shipping. And most of the shipping is just gonna be chicks or eggs.
And some folks they spend a year, two, three years just collecting a flock to get going, because they feel like they have to start with a lot of quantity, which you only need that quantity if you're doing chicks or eggs, because like you can do pretty good progress on figuring out what you were sent, if you got a box of a hundred chicks. And you systematically sorted out and looked for their growth rate and who was gaining the best and you filtered them out leading up towards six months old.
And then you can come out with a pretty solid breeding stake from that. But if you order 10 chicks, oh, you're going to be, you're going to be working for a little while because there's like the diversity they have within them. And the trade expression, it's like a box of chocolates. So if you can get older proven birds where what is what you get, that's good. But then just make sure they're not too old, make sure they can actually help get you started.
And then definitely get your hands on them if you can, to feel that they're meaty. Cause there's some floating around. They're not meaty. They didn't have any work done for their growth rate, they didn't have any work done for the fleshing, and they don't feel much different than any other standard medium fowl. But if it's, if they're well done, and they are layered in the meat, like they've been one of the meatiest purebred birds I've ever put my hands on. But it varies and it depends.
How many strains or how many families or how many whatever. of the Bresse came over originally. Wasn't there three different
Yeah, so there were three different ones, two of them were similar, one was completely different, and for diversity's sake they were co mingled with each other in a spiral program, so it really made a big change in how many different ways these birds can grow and perform, because all, everything in all three of those lines is After you get, to that magic third generation of trait chaos in a breeding program.
It's exciting if you're right smack in the middle of all the different variables that can be within the breed. So I use it as an opportunity to learn more about chickens in general and how traits pass forward. And I've turned it into this big breeding experiment, which is teaching me more than I ever knew I needed to know. which is cool.
So Rip and Mandy, does it make sense to accelerate the breeding program and have two hatching seasons? So in other words, like you can pretty much have a cockerel at six months old and know what, have a pretty good feel for what is genetics you're going to do. Should you use artificial lights to stimulate hens to start laying again?
I wouldn't cause like they're really supposed to be like a Free range, hardy kind of bird. And I think when you start propping them up and babying them and forcing them, like you're going to change stuff about them that might not be positive for the long term. Then you still want to give them time to mature before you really start breeding from them. Like I wait till they're almost a year old before I even start doing test hatches.
It just slows down the process. That's the only thing I'm thinking. That's how I ended up with
a barn full. I have them going in a lot of different ways. So that I'm always hatching something.
Now, Mandy, if I remember correctly, during one of the conversations we had, you'd mentioned that you weight to the cockerels are closer to a year old, but you also said something about the egg weight.
Yeah, is it
60 or 62 grams, something like that, if I remember right?
That's the general size range, 60 grams, but when I'm doing test hatches from some younger birds, if I have questions I want answered I'll let, 56 grams, 54 grams sneak in there and for the early look For science. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Jeff I did two hatches a year for several years, not because I felt like I needed to do it to improve the birds, but I did it because. It helps with timing birds for shows.
I just didn't know if you could get a, get a jumpstart when you're trying to clean up genetics. I wouldn't think you
could.
That's what I was thinking. If you know that this rooster, this hen is really consistent and gives you this, and if I took a 20 week or 24 week old cockerel from that hatch. and put it back on its mother, man, I could bring out a lot of defects to start cleaning up that line in a hurry.
Okay. So if you've got that hen rooster pairing that is really consistent and you want to see how purified it is or how consistent it is, coming back and either putting the father on the daughter and probably do both, but put the father on the daughter and the son on the mother, just to see if you're as good as you thought you were. In that previous meeting, you're going to bring out all the ugly in a hurry by doing that.
And I think folks can get a clue when they're getting close to being able to do that, when they see their birds starting to look very uniform
and I don't know if Mandy's there, right? So I'm not. I'm just, just trying to think of ways to accelerate cleaning up the breed that, other people have really mongrelized and screwed it up in many ways. I know there's a lot of people out there in a hurry to get good Bresse.
You can't rush it.
Nah.
Yeah. You can. You can.
Some people are always in a hurry.
I'm one of those people. This is teaching me to slow down a little bit.
You can do it. Yeah I really think if you came back, son on mother if you already know that you've got this rooster in this hand, that are I've
been doing some of that, and I've done a couple sibling matings to see how fudgy things were in there, and I've got a couple of pens that are a lot better than the other in progress pens.
I bet if Mandy got more ruthless than what she already is with her culling, she could do twice a year and wouldn't have an atrocious amount of birds. I agree. I agree.
Sometimes I think about doing that and then I'm like, Oh, but then I don't want to call myself into a corner. I got to keep the ingredients.
I don't know. Do you?
Do you?
Do you? Do you? Some of your ingredients are already at other farms, so it really wouldn't be that hard to back up a step. That's true. They are at other locations, so it's not like you, you might back yourself into a corner at your farm, but the ability to get offspring and go back to where you were a year ago, Wouldn't be that difficult because you know
exactly what I was looking for and I'd be like, hey, let me see your 12 week olds.
Yeah
Hey Austin wants to know what is the best time of the year to hatch Bresse? Spring, fall, summer, winter. What do you think?
It depends on the climate Right now I'm a big fan of fall hatching because it captures the best layers because Practically any chicken is going to be laying in the spring, and unless you're trap nesting, you don't exactly know who's who, and I am a fan of small clans, and then collecting by the pen, but this time of year, anyone who's not a strong layer is taking a little break, and it's only the troopers that are still in active lay, so
those eggs
I'm finding this time of year, I'm sticking all of those in the incubator. Because those are my strongest girls making them. So I've got a nice, pretty healthy fall batch. I've got about a hundred or so I'm growing. So I think our last processing is going to be right after Thanksgiving. And then I'll take a little break.
Fall hatching is actually, you can do it and you explain why you're doing it. But I think for most people starting out with them, the spring hatch is probably going to be a lot easier. For most people, new, in their first two or three years of doing a breeding program, I think the spring hatch is probably a better choice.
And the pasture is better, and the grow out is better. Like I, I like to have another group going in to hatch by the end of March or so, so that by mid April, they're outside on new grass, taking advantage of the free food.
Yeah, I like, me personally, I like this time of year. Because you see the ones that are laying they're dedicated to laying and I like the vigor that they get from Survive in the winter, personally.
That makes perfect sense. And I'm not discouraging anyone listening from doing what you and Mandy are talking about. I'm just saying. For a new breeder who just got Bresse, if we go back to Mandy's comment earlier in the show, that, people bought Bresse because they heard they were a great homesteader meat bird with good lay. All right, no experience on breeding. They end up at the end of the year with everything from two pounders to 12 pounders, right? And they don't know what they're doing.
Okay. And I'm not putting them down. They're just new to it. Okay. So as your experience level increases, you can start doing those things. But first or second year breeders, I think you're, I think they're asking for trouble to try and replicate What a seasoned breeder is doing after seven or 10 years. Okay. That's my only point, right? Don't start doing that out of the gate because you, you're going to run yourself into trouble.
In the winter care dynamic too, like you don't want to go into winter buried in extra birds. Like you need to have a plan for sure. It's not the best selling time for the open market either. So my plan is always dinner. So I'm not at the mercy of market swings. I know where the cockerels are going.
And, and I think a lot of people who are getting the Bresse, that's exactly their plan as well, right? It's meat for their family, but, hatching much later in the year. If you're in the northern part of the U. S. where the nights are starting to get cold, right? Now you have to have a heating plan, you need a whole other set of infrastructure. Sure. You just, it needs to line up with where you live also.
That is true. Yeah.
So it never gets cold in
Alabama. So you're all set. I'll put a bird outside in January, December at five weeks.
And you can do it. You may not do that in Ohio.
Yeah. I wait till seven weeks.
There ain't much grass out there at seven in the middle of the wild. No,
but they have their feathers. They're a fast feather.
That's hybrid vigor right there. Yep. Yep. Throw them out there. Live or die. All right. Sorry Rip. That's all right.
No. This is all good stuff. Yep. Mandy, one thing I wanted to get you to touch on, and I see it come up a lot in the groups and particularly on the best group. They have white breasts and invariably somebody is going to hatch some that have black spots on them.
Can you
explain that?
It means they're not homogenous for dominant white and they've got some black sneaking through which is actually not a terrible problem to have because at least now you know the base color is black and they're not going to yellow out on you and turn orange by having the wrong base color under the dominant white. And you can breed them to where they pick up two copies of the dominant white gene and then you get the full coverage right over top of that black on a crispy white feather. It's neat.
But yeah, black spots aren't a bad problem to have and it's fixable.
But it's not anything to freak out over y'all. You know what it is. No, I freak out more over
red.
Yes, I would too. And that also those on with red in their background will also be the ones that go Brasse.
And I get a little concerned about yellow feet, green feet, yellow beaks, stuff like that. It's hard to know if that's a recessive throwback trait from some of the earlier breeding. Cause like in Europe, you have to remember both world wars decimated the poultry flocks throughout all of those regions. And there were a lot of breeds that didn't make a comeback. The Bresse did make a comeback and they used a couple of helper breeds to boost their commercial qualities in the early 1900s.
And some of those probably had yellow feet and that might sneak out again later, but it's something that I don't retain in my breeding flocks. If I ever see it, I'm like, Oh, you're the wrong color. You're going in the freezer, but it's not unheard of. It's just not desirable. But if you look in the history and you look at their work to bring in the commercial lines. Which is worth looking up and reading on like I should have brought a link, but Their history is pretty interesting.
It is. It really is. Got some questions here. Austin Blanchard wants to know do you have any problem feeding your breasts? In the heart of hotter part of the year.
No, mine tend to camp out a little more in the barn because it's shaded. And I have very deep sand closer to their pop doors. Like it's gotta be a good eight inches thick because of how my barn steps down with the concrete. I just filled it with sand. So they'll dig down and hang out there in the afternoon. Then they get up and go eat. They go through less feed because they are being lazier, but.
There hasn't been any significant changes, but our heat's not too terrible either we rarely cross over 100 degrees. The humidity will cross 100 for sure. They don't feel like 105. But it's not too bad.
And he also wanted to know, if there is, whoop, come here we go. Is there a difference in meat quality in white as opposed to black or gray breasts?
There's going to be some small little differences, but nothing major. If they're breasts, they ought to have the marbling gene for their fat development, and that, is a recessive trait as it turns out. So you want to avoid the outcrosses because they're not going to have the same fat development as the purebred birds will have. But as far as flavor, that's going to be the same. The finishing influences the end result as well.
So if you have a black breast and a gray breast and the black breast got specially finished, the gray breast did not, How do you know where that difference is? Was it the bird or the finishing? So you, to really test it out, you'd want to do a side by side where everybody gets the same and then see what the results are. But I don't think there's a significant difference. Like my three different groups of whites, they're all pretty similar for their table traits and flavor and fat development.
So it should be the same in the other types, I would think.
That makes sense. What about weather hardiness for your birds? Do they have a problem with temperature extremes?
They tend to handle heat pretty well. Mostly because so many of them tend to have oversized combs, like massive combs. Some of that is because they were bred to have them. Like it wasn't a consideration in the breeding program to have absolutely massive combs.
And that's okay in Arizona because it helps them release heat, but when those birds have those giant combs and they head to Alaska, it's going to be a problem, but birds are adaptable too, so the second generation you have, if you're in a northern climate, they're going to start evolving to that climate the longer you have them as well, and buying into a flock that's already in the north, that already had time to start, Getting acclimated.
That's helpful too, because they there's people with them in Utah, Minnesota. They're getting through winter. Some people have a special considerations with their housing. Like for us in Ohio, we have the big barn that it has lungs, it breathes.
And if we're gonna get sustained temperatures below freezing, I don't do that much different, but if we have sustained sub zero, I'll go wrap the pens in plastic to help hold in a little more heat, and I won't heat the water because it'll bump the humidity too.
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