¶ Considerations for Keeping Poultry
If you're thinking of keeping poultry but don't know where to start , coming up will share some things for you to consider .
Before you make the plunge , we want to give you some things to think about now . I know it's happened to me I don't I'm not going to tell you how many times But I go into the feed store and they got all these tubs of baby chicks or brooders full of baby chicks . And man , they are hard to resist .
But please do so , because You really need to think through this whole poultry keeping hobby before you jump into it . For example , set your goals . What , what do you want your birds to do for you ? Why are you keeping poultry ? Are you wanting them for eggs ? And you know how many ? what birds would you need to have to feed to your family ?
Well , for a family of four , you want about Four , maybe five females , and that will give you plenty of eggs and some extras to share with friends and family . Do you want to raise birds from meat ? You need to know how many times a week does your family eat chicken ? Two or three times a week , or maybe once a week , or maybe once every two weeks ?
So what about both ? can you have both ?
What about both ? Yeah , there's birds that will do both , and , and we call those dual purpose breeds . They lay a good number of eggs , although They're not as productive as your egg layers That are bred specifically for that .
They also have bigger bodies than your normal egg layers , like leagans , and that will give you a reasonable amount of meat When you process them particularly the male .
Does that make them harder to raise or less efficient ?
Doesn't make them harder to raise . It will make them less efficient than your egg laying breed just because their bodies are larger . You can look at egg layers and pick them out because they're typically smaller body . Their bodies are more rectangular in shape .
Dual purpose breeds Have larger bodies and it's starting to become a more box-like shape , more square , and then you get down into your meat breeds . Those birds have Very square bodies and they're very heavy . So the bigger the body cinder block on legs , exactly right . The bigger the body , the more it's gonna cost you to feed them . Just bear sad in mind .
Maybe you want to keep exhibition birds . Yeah , you've maybe been to a poultry show at your county fair , your state fair , and you were really impressed with a whole variety of Breeds and different color varieties And it's really is an impressive thing . It's a hobby that I've been involved in since I was About 18 , 19 years old . It's a lot of fun .
It is a lot of fun but it is a lot of work because one of the things to remember right off top There's what I call the rule of ten . That is , for every ten birds you raise to maturity , you will get one . That is good enough to keep just one .
If you raise a hundred birds you'll get ten , and That's either good enough to show or good enough to use to move your flock forward in a breeding program .
And that's that's from a very well bred Group to begin with . Yes , you're starting with hatchery stock , maybe one in 200 or one in 300 . I . Wouldn't start with actually stock .
But I've tried to and I've experienced the frustration of trying to it's very difficult Because exhibition birds are bred to a written standard , Not only for color but for what we call type or body shape .
Now your hatchery birds are not bred to a written standard and that's one of the primary differences between hatchery and exhibition birds Exhibition birds that can be hard to find a start in those birds and requires a lot of searching and research and A relationship building on your part to get good ones even finding a breeder who you you can convince that they
want to sell you some of their stock . Well , that goes back to building the relationship It . It can be hard to walk up to John Smith at the show and so , no , john Smith's probably gonna roll his eyes and Look at you like I don't know you . I don't want to know . I don't know if I want to trust My genetics in your hands or not .
I want to know that you're gonna be able to not only take care of the birds but breed them properly and Move them forward and have that breeder's name associated with them correct in the future too .
So what about ? I've heard at shows that after the shows , or even during the shows , there's a lot of birds for sale and for auction .
Most shows today have a Section set aside for sale birds . Okay , but the thing you got to remember , those birds are in that sale area because they were a breeders culls . Okay okay , now that's not to say they're all bad birds , because that's certainly not the case .
They're just birds that he didn't want to keep in his flock , to breed from or to show for with .
Are there breeders ? I mean to people like win ribbons at shows and then sell the bird immediately there .
So I'll just go from personal experience . Okay , i had a bird That was champion of the show . overall champion wrote all unread pull it . and there was a lady there that was really Enamored with that pull it and she , she offered to buy her and I thought , no , i think I want to keep her .
and the more I thought about it , the more I thought , you know , she'll not only give that bird a good home , she'll do something with it . So before we left , i just called her over and I said , hey , look , you know , i Like , yeah , i think you'll do the right things by these birds , so Just go pick that bird up and take it home with you .
I I didn't sell it , i just gave it away . I've given away more birds than I've ever sold in my life .
Yes , but I like to think of it as genetic preservation . Exactly , I'm stashing some genetics with some people that I trust exactly That's .
That's That's the way I look at it And I know that's the way a lot of other readers of standard bread poultry look at it , and hopefully that's the way I Our listeners will look at it too after listening to the show . So another reason that poultry Are kept , and that's for preservation breed preservation .
There's a lot of rare breeds out there that are Desperately in need of help Red caps come to mind , lamonas come to mind But they they need folks who are dedicated and willing to work with them . But with preservation breeding , you have to maintain a lot of birds .
I mean , this is not something you can do with the trio or something you can do with two trios . I mean we're talking two or three hundred birds in a flock and you're doing open flock mating in this . Most of the time you're doing open flock mating .
There's times when you would resort to other breeding techniques , but you want to keep that genetic diversity and and the diversity up , so Open flock mating is the best for doing that .
It's hard to make progress with them , but so let's suppose that somebody got some Super rare birds , like a old English pheasant fowl That , uh , you know , starting off with five birds Because they're so five birds is , is there enough genetic diversity there ?
do , because we don't know how they were bred before They got to me and we don't know how they were bred before they left England two years ago .
If you breed your birds right . Yes , there's a good book out on the market Called starting where you are , with what you have , written by Ralph Sturgeon . I knew Ralph and he's been . He passed away Several decades ago now , sadly , but he was a master preter and if you follow the directions or there's suggestions in his book , you can do it .
I maintained My family of Rhode Island Reds , or I should say my strain of Rhode Island Reds , for many , many years . They had been bred for close to 90 years by the time I got out of them , 90 years with no outside blood being brought in . So you can do it , you just have to learn how .
This is not something that it's easy for the newcomer to Comprehend or to start out doing not trying to discourage everybody , but it's just a fact of life right .
Well , this , this is a very specific preservation and conservation type question Which I definitely want to cover in more detail later in the series .
Yeah , and , and we , but the average person starting out , you know , as you said there , they're either gonna take their time and do their research or find a local mentor Who's gonna take them under their wing , or they're gonna come home with the dozen chicks and that all you need , you know , a Stock tank package from tractor supply on an impulse buy .
That's kind of how we get our New poultry people . One of those ways .
Yes , you know . We have hundreds of thousands of people keeping poultry in the United States And I would be willing to bet you that 90% of them started that that very way .
I know I did so Yes , if there's a mistake to be made . You know I did it before I started taking poultry classes in college . You know I figured well , let's just see what does well here .
So I ordered two of this and two of that and two of that so I had , you know , 14 birds of seven different varieties and I thought that's gonna tell me what I need to know and which variety I should grow here .
And all it did was confuse the economy And it was hatchery stock , So I don't think there was an accurate representation of what we can expect from the breed .
But and and I know we're sitting here Talking really serious stuff But the beauty of what you did and what I did . We learned a lot with that first impulse by . We got into the basics of carrying , breeding , managing those birds , and That's how a lot of us started , no doubt about it .
And , folks , if you're listening and you're thinking about getting into poultry , you can do it too .
Yes , i think it's usually around about the second year . When your birds hit their first mole And they stop laying is when the new poultry keeper starts thinking okay , i got a couple of months off , do I really want to do this ? and I see a lot of equipment That's right at 18 to 24 months old for sale on the various marketplaces .
Well , john , we talked about Goals for keeping poultry , but I know I live in Florida , you live in Vermont . We have two very Widely divergent .
Yes , completely different geographical influences . I'm at 1800 feet of elevation . We have a week or two every winter Where it's negative 30 Fahrenheit before the windshield is factored in . That the Dat effects a lot as far as just a flock that I want , the breeds that are going to be in it , where I place my Coupe , in relation to wind breaks and windrows .
But also it has a huge impact on feed considerations . What , what the local feed supply is in my area . Do I only have the local big box store and you know to at home 50 pound bags , or could I possibly start getting some raw ingredients and mixing in some oats and wheat and Barley and all those other , you know , whole grains ?
You know we'll definitely get into diet and nutrition later , but that's that's where I'd like to be able to move to . But not not everybody has that option . Sometimes the only thing you have is Lowe's or Home Depot or tractor supply or Western auto or what are the big chains down south that everybody goes to for feed .
We have a kind of small chain here called rule King . Okay , they have a reasonable Feed available there and it's usually pretty economically priced .
But you got to learn to read the tags though .
Another whole another show , and we'll get it coming up before too much longer .
Let's just put this out there Don't go shopping by price tag . Learn to at least look at the tags when you're making your buy .
Yes , What about ? and and I know you had to deal with these kind of things when you were Deciding on what breed you wanted to raise . But does body size impact the birds up in Vermont ? I know ? I'm down here .
Well , if the birds start getting overweight , they're just not healthy to begin with and they're gonna have a real hard time with the heat . So there is that . So keeping the birds in good physical condition , i think it's more important than the overall body size .
I've got some shanta clairs which were bred up in Oka , quebec , canada , about 14 kilometers across the border from me , and they're they're pretty good size . At 18 weeks They're pushing six and a half pounds live weight . They don't like the heat .
It's currently 92 degrees out and Which is very rare for this time of year up here , and they just look like they've melted into a puddle in their favorite little hole That they've dug in the ground . But on the flip side , they're fantastic in the winter .
They have no combs , they have no wattles , so that affects their ability to perspire and Give get rid of excess heat in the summer . But in the winter I don't have to worry about frostbite , which is a genuine concern . I mean it's . It's sad to see the birds in pain like that .
People say it doesn't hurt them , but I've picked them up and I've tried putting some salve on them in the way that they've , you know , kind of reacted . I know that they're in pain and I don't like that .
Yes , it's um
¶ Geographical Considerations for Poultry Keeping
One . One thing that I want to mention here is that Different breeds of poultry were developed for different purposes , and They were all in four specific regions . I just started to say they were developed to perform well in that region because when a lot of our breeds were developed , folks didn't have Much income .
So they kept chickens and they sold eggs , they sold processed poultry and If those birds didn't perform well where they live , they didn't keep them . That's the bottom line .
The US Postal Service started shipping eggs .
I would have to look that one up because I really did transform the industry . Early on it was a railroad express agency that shipped eggs and birds . I've got several birds that came in by train to my location because you couldn't ship them by mail like you can now , but I don't recall exactly when maybe chicks started being mailed . I have to look that up .
Well , we'll share that with our listeners on it on another show . Another thing that was the feather type . How does that affect the birds that you would evaluate up in your area ?
Well , for my area I want really dense Under feathers down sorry , having a brain cramp and I want thick , wiry Feathers on the outside that are gonna protect against wind and driving , rain and sleet inhale . My birds insist on being out in all weather . I Can't keep them inside when it's negative 30 Because they just get downright ornery .
They want to be outside Well , they were bred for that they were . They're fine with it . They love to eat snow . If I put fresh warm water out on a warm poultry fountain plate , the first thing in the morning they come out . They don't go for the water or they go and pack up the snow and eat snow . I didn't teach them that . I mean this .
This was a complete Cutover . These birds had zero contact with anything else on the farm . It was like a 90-day zero bird period here . I wanted to see what they naturally knew out of the shell .
One thing that people get into down in the south . They see these heavily feathered birds like Cochens Orpington's , just really profusely feathered birds , and Then sadly they get into these birds and then when the summer temperatures here It's the El scorcho mark on on the thermometer , they start having problems with birds actually dying from heat stress .
So if you have hot temperatures you want to stay away from those breeds , if you possibly can , that have long , profuse feathers . And I know , i Know somebody that had English Orpington this . He was very proud of the fact that they had 13 inch long feathers And that blew me away .
I couldn't imagine a bird With 13 inch long feathers and these were feathers off the breast area . These were not like tail feathers or anything like that .
But they're down . Do they have a lot of yes capacity for airflow under there , or is that taken tight as well ?
It's very thick . It's not a fact . One lady that I'm aware of them , i'm certainly not going to mention any names Had birds that were dying and she finally resorted to clipping about half the feathers , the lower half of the bird's body , completely off , to cool and help them cool down well , last year my Black Osterlops .
I was observing them in my front yard and it was one of the very few days that it gets above 90 here in Vermont and One of the old gals she was about four years old was kind of Limpin along a little lethargicly and she was heading for the waterer and I had a sprinkler going and she went underneath the sprinkler to get there .
I'm like okay , okay , and she literally got to water , get her beak in twice and then fell over And I did in the crops , yana , and it was a heart attack , yeah , and you know it was sad because But you know she was old and her entire life She had not been exposed to that heat was the first time she saw above 90 degrees .
He can really wreak havoc on the flock if you're not prepared to deal with it . I think it's worse than cold It is . I would agree with that . I would agree with that posed ?
and what's the old , the old Process of to protect dubbing ? Yeah , so apparently I can take these breeds that are susceptible to Frostbite and dub them and then relieve that sensitivity a little bit .
But the sad part about Dubbing and removing , you know the comb and the waddles and the air loads . That's the , that's the radiator because , that's the radiator to get rid of body heat . You know when it gets hot , and if they don't have a calm , they don't have bottles , man , they can suffer from the heat .
So the bird that I dubbed to protect it from frostbite when we're at negative 30 is probably going to have some real problems on the other end , when we hit above 90 here , because it can't dissipate enough body heat .
Well , they don't sweat like people , do you know ? to get rid of the heat they depend on the comb , the waddles , and they can also pant and that will help alleviate some of the body heat . But heat is a big stressor to you have to worry about .
So much to think about with geographical influence . Yes , It's probably the single biggest factor that people should consider when selecting a bird making sure that it's properly suited for the environment .
I would agree with that . I would agree with that wholeheartedly . You know another thing that people need to decide right up front are you going to keep poultry in a linear fashion or are you going to keep them in a cyclical fashion ? And by linear I mean you buy the chicks , you raise them up , they lay eggs . They hit about 18 months to 24 months of age .
Their egg production is pretty well over with . You're not going to get very many eggs from them , so you can either process them or pass them along to somebody else . But to get started you got to go all the way back and start to process over with another batch of chicks . Now that style of poultry keeping is not sustainable .
Usually the birds that are maintained in this linear poultry keeping process are hybrids , and so hybrid , if you don't know , is where they've crossed two different breeds of birds to produce a bird that is a little more productive , lays more eggs , maybe it gets larger And in some of these strains and John and I were talking about this before we started recording
the show but there's 16 generations that go into producing that chick . You buy at the store The parent stock , you've got the grandparent stock , you've got the great , great parent stock and so on . It's amazing the amount of effort that goes into those chicks .
And these are all held under very strict biosecurity and genetic security conditions , because at each layer of the genetics it's usually a different owner , and then they will contribute their piece and keep their flock going . But that's also how they can ensure heterosis and this hybrid vigor and production .
So there is a lot of science that goes into it , but it's out of the scope of most home breeders .
Absolutely I would not . oh , i don't even want to think about what it would take to maintain parent lines going back so many generations . It's scary .
It's not too bad if you have too small heritage flocks and then you can cross them together for a little heterosis bump , but I still consider that a genetic dead end . I would not try to breed those .
They're not going to breed you , no .
No , mandel is going to have some real fun there in the Punnett square as far as expression , which is great fun to see If you want to start doing some farmyard science .
Genetics is a fascinating thing that I know just enough about to be really dangerous , but it can teach you a lot about birds . You know we talked about linear poultry keeping and the other thing I mentioned was cyclical poultry keeping and that's the type of poultry keeping that I'm involved in .
I know that's the type of keeping poultry keeping that John is practicing , but it starts out with breeding and then hatching and then rearing and then going through and selecting the best birds and starting the process all over again Next year , So it goes in a cycle . These are usually done with standard bred poultry because they are sustainable .
If you breed them to each other , you can get the same bird to hatch out .
That's one of the requirements of being in the considered a standard bred bird . Is that it breeds true ? Yes , It's .
The one thing that really upsets me and gets my angst going is when I see people that are they're not really breeding , they're just multiplying .
They take a rooster and a bunch of hands , they throw them together with no concern about trying to improve the breed or maintain the quality that they have , and they practice this philosophy over and over and over again , and all they're in for is to make money off the birds and they pass them off . Sadly , many times there's something that they're not .
You know , these are from show quality lines .
Well , they might have been seven or eight generation birds .
Well , i'll tell you how to become a millionaire keeping poultry . Start with two . No , start out as a billionaire And you you'll find these folks offering birds on eBay and some of these sites like that and are hatching eggs And if you find out they're keeping seven or eight different breeds .
You can pretty well guess that they're not working to improve any one breed .
I got my start through the livestock conservancy and they have a good online resource for finding people who have qualified stock . Where else can people look ?
There are specific breed groups on Facebook like Rhode Island Reds or Bress . Although it's not recognized breed here in America , They are a fantastic dual purpose breed . There's clubs for clubs for Plymouth Rocks Just almost any .
Club for everything . Yes , yes , it's just finding the breed that you want and joining the club . Or actually get a couple of breeds in mind and join a couple of different clubs and you know , just lurk in the background and listen to what people have to say .
Well , another good place is the American Poultry Association . You know you can join the American Poultry Association . You'll hear us refer to it often as the APA , but that's we mean American Poultry Association . But one of the cool things about becoming a member is that each year you will get this huge yearbook And it's a chock-pull of ads and a few articles .
But if you're searching for breeds , that , for standard breed , is the place to go . to look is the American Poultry Association's annual yearbook .
Okay Now I get that every year and I look at the pictures , to be honest with you , because there's some beautiful pictures in there . Yes , beautiful birds , beautiful birds , beautiful birds , inspiring , you know .
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