Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast where we talk poultry from feathers to function. In this episode Jeff Mattocks, Karen Johnston and Rip Stallvee will take you through the things you need to know to raise birds from day old until they lay their first egg. So let’s get started shall we.
So if you're going to use Corid or an Amprolium product, you may want to actually supplement with additional thiamine to protect yourself over that time. What Karen?
Are you channeling Ingrid?
No.
Can conventional coccidiosis treatment like choroid be the cause of brain agony? Are you sure you're not channeling Ingrid?
No, I didn't see that,
that was why I was laughing.
That, that was priceless. Yeah. That was priceless. What's our next question on our list here, Karen?
Oops.
Is it? Whoa. Yeah. You jumped the head on me.
I clicked twice. Then I went back.
At what age should I change chicks from starter to grower? And to me, here again, it's one of those things, it's not a hard and fast rule, but at this age, I switch them over, okay? But, Jeff, I'm going to reserve my thoughts before I get into trouble here, so what's your thoughts on that?
Okay, so here is the simple rule of thumb for this, okay? This is the way I tell people. So Depending on your breed and how long until it reaches sexual maturity, like when do you expect to see the first egg? I take that timeframe and I divide it into three parts. Okay. So most of the time I'm working with a 24 week old, a lot of your Brahmas and different things will basically be pretty close to laying that first egg at 24 weeks.
I would want 8 weeks on starter, 8 weeks on grower, 8 weeks on a developer, right? If I could have it the way it, ought to be the way I was taught, it would be 3 equal sections, right? You're looking at a 22 starter 18, 19 percent grower and a 16 and a half or 17 percent developer, right? That's the step down for the protein and the energy needs to change along the way as well, right?
So once you're in that developer phase, you do not want a high energy fat building type feed because I don't want internal fat. We want the rest of the body to develop correctly, ovaries, testes, oviduct, all those sort of things. Anyway, that rearing period from chick to, I don't want to say maturity, but sexual maturity where you might see the first egg, divide that into three, and those are your break points.
But still, going along with what Rip's saying, you have to be able to make observation. Are they fully feathered? Are these parts of their body You can almost put a calendar on it, but then you still have to make the observation, and see where they're at.
And
now I feel like things are, they might not be improving recipe wise, but availability wise with shipping and that sort of thing. Back 10, 10 years ago, I could not buy grower. Except for meat bird grower at the store. Do you know what I mean? Like
you still can't Karen, you still can't. Yep.
So how do people get this stuff that they call grower?
Yeah. Availability really isn't. Any better than it was 10 years. It's a little bit lit just a little bit.
I feel like you've got Quality, but you've got a lot more places that will deliver to you than used to be.
Yeah, you got some new players in the marketplace that are making feeds available that weren't typically available 10 years ago I agree with you
But how do you get to grower then because that's not gonna be something that's sitting on their shelf waiting for them to buy if they don't have your book, yeah.
It's not. And honestly, I, if, once you find a really good starter, I'd much rather, so just, and we're happy to work with folks on these things, but if you can stay on the starter and if you're willing to hand add, like some oats to that or something else, some oats or some barley or, even some alfalfa meal. That'll bring the protein down. That'll keep the energy under control. Adding corn or weed or Milo is going to keep the energy level too high for that grower phase.
So people could do hand ads if they're willing to do it. And that makes the most sense. Not, you're right, to find a heritage breed grower or a heritage breed, even developer in the next phase, nearly impossible. And, it's been my frustration, not with the group, but it's been my frustration with feed manufacturers, is they want to lump all chickens into very narrow categories, and this is all they make available. Yeah,
I will say that I'm starting to see. Grower a little bit more than developer. I can't, the holding diet, because I can't, gosh, I don't know when I've seen that.
No such thing. Yeah.
No, I haven't either. And they figure most people with backyard flocks are just going to start feeding scratch or layer feed. And that's their idea. That 16 percent layer feed is their idea of a holding feed. And it's really not I'm working with a few mills trying to get these formulas out, but it's not, they're few and far between and, people just are not very close to 'em.
All right, so along those lines, John's asking, as you're switching, do you mix the different types of feed together when you switch over?
I like a seven day transition. When you're getting close, I'd like to have, still have three or four days worth of starter, three or four days worth of grow or start, mixing them, 50, 50 or so, just so you don't have a sudden transition. But if he's got his own feeds or something for the folks who are making their own feed, we're always using the same ingredients. So I don't worry about a sudden transition.
It's if someone's going from like a neutrino feed to a kombach feed, or if there's a big appearance change, or if there's a big aroma change, then you need to do a slow transition where you're mixing the two feeds together.
All right. Ingrid's got a doozy here. Then would it be wise for people who feed medicated starter to plan on some vitamin B supplementation once they get their birds on the grower feed?
Yeah, actually, they should probably be doing some extra vitamin B supplement the whole time. For folks who have been watching us for most of this two years that we've been going, they've heard me preach against medicated feed, especially folks in the groups where, I'm like, I am anti medicated feed. Sorry folks. There's no need for it. There really is no need for it. Rip, you just started chicks. Did you feed any medications?
I did not. And
how did they do?
Better than anything I've raised before. And that's because I'm feeding a good high quality feed, I didn't even have so much as a sniffle out of these things.
Yeah, good housekeeping, good sanitation, good bedding, that's really where it's at. There's no need to feed a medicated feed. The medications are only to control coccidiosis, and coccidiosis has to be ingested from the ground. If you're keeping your bedding and your litter managed correctly, you're keeping your feeders managed correctly, there's no need, for this.
I can't help it. When you're on your 35th year of raising birds on the tiny property that you have and the way that you can manage. It's hard, it will, it'll
happen, right? There's still ways around it, but they're not easy. I get it, you have such a build up. And with the commercial flocks that I work with, larger scale, but they're still pastured yeah. We're fighting it. I've got places that have been raising birds on the same ground. For, the last 20 years and that we're always being challenged with something, right?
I just want to, just want to say it for the people that literally are doing everything they can to be best by their birds, but they don't have the land. You know what I mean? They don't have it. No, you're
right.
All
right. And our next question, Miss Karen. Question, okay. Is it okay to raise cockerels and pullets together? I don't like to do that. Cockerels are going to wind up bullying the pullets early on. They're going to eat more. They're going to keep the pullets ran away from the feed. They're going to pick the females. I just, I try to separate the sexes as soon as I can tell them apart. I'm with
you, Rip. Amen. 100%. Now, I don't mind them feeding the same pullet developer feed, or, developer feed. But I can live with that, even though I didn't make a cockerel developer feed. But, yeah, as soon as you can tell the sexes apart, you need to separate them. And there's other reasons behind that, but not everybody has the facilities to do it. But if you separate them when it's time to bring them back together for mating, they're a whole lot more anxious and willing.
Then if you raise them together.
Tell me, because the first thing everybody thinks is, I don't know who's who. I can't figure out who's the girls and who's the boys. What's the harm if you try to separate them and you don't get it quite right?
I don't know that there's a major harm there. It's not going to be that many more days until you can tell who's who. Usually by what, 10, 12 weeks old, you've got a really good idea.
I'd say six or seven if you're weighing, but yeah. Yeah,
but if you're weighing, but we just can't seem to get, everybody to weigh, but you'll know the difference after, yeah, you'll know the difference after about four weeks if you're weighing, just because the cockerels grow that much faster.
That's all I want to say. People are always feeling like if I don't get it right, then I've messed something up, but you've gotten it 90 percent and it still helped them out,
oh sure.
All right. Rip, what do
Questions? While I was going to plop this up here from Kerry Blackman, as along the lines of what we were just talking about, Carrie wants to know, is there a way you can till the ground with Lyme or something to help keep down diseases
you can and now this is a great question and I am really glad Carrie brought it up. Now, not all Lyme is created equal. So I'm gonna tell you that I prefer that you use a high calcium lime, which is sometimes known as feed lime or calcium carbonate. It has a better sterilization effect and.
Couple things you can do, yeah, you can work the ground, till the ground up, you can put the lime on, all that's great, think about what you're going to plant, as a cover crop, whether it's for the chickens or better yet, this is where bringing on another species, whether you rent a cow or you get a small herd of goats or whatever, To eat that off and move those nutrients to, somewhere else, right? Let them be absorbed by the animal, sometime later that year, eat the animal. That's great.
Or whatever you want to do with it. Just try not to make it one more pet if you can help it. But that's great, Kerry. That's exactly what people should be doing. And even for people who can't necessarily do it that. Just that application of, high calcium lime after each rotation of birds, you can actually rake that in, drag it or anything just to slightly incorporate it and then get something planted.
I don't care if you're planting wheat, I don't care if you're planting barley, oats, whatever, plant something besides just letting the weeds grow up. Something that your chickens are going to enjoy, something that's going to move nutrients around, from that location to another location. That's a great plan if people can incorporate it.
And they can check with the county extension office to find out what plants grow best in your area. I know way down here in deep sunny South Florida, it's hard to find stuff that does well. Check with your county extension office, they can steer you right.
Yeah. Down your way. Rip. I would honestly, if folks would do it, I think I would bring all the birds in because you get wet, in the fall and winter. And my friends over in O'Brien that I stay with, that's the time when they're work, they are dragging the ground and they're seeding. They're seeding something beneficial. So basically you can do your whole patch, bring your chickens in to a coop area or yard area, and just work everything at one time.
And once it's up six or eight inches, turn in your chickens loose, right? Give them something to eat. It works great. Sun Hemp is a big one down there. Believe it or not, just Ironclay peas or another one. Yeah. So I'd be looking at Sun Hemp, Ironclay peas, Probably some oats some black oats do well in the south as a good mix. Yeah, and I can help folks as well. I, working with so many different regions and territories, I could probably, help them out.
But if you've got a good extension office, like Rip said, give them a call and talk to them about cover crops or, things like that. A blend of cover crops.
I wanted to reach for my phone. Iron clay peas. What a weird name. Cow peas.
Down, so in Florida they like to call them iron clay peas. Once you get up into Georgia and the Carolinas, they're just cow peas. But they're special down in Florida. They're iron and clay peas.
I don't know how we came up with that one. I'll be honest with you. Okay.
My my family grew up in Indiana and they swear that back in the 60s that they called green peppers mangoes.
Yes.
They're like, I love mangoes, and I was like, that's a, fruit versus a vegetable.
Really? How did a green pepper ever get dubbed a mango?
I don't
know. That's a new one on me.
Probably the same way that avocados do. Down here were at first called alligator pears. Really?
That's branding. I feel like some marketing company came up with that.
I hadn't heard alligator pears either,
talking about trivial information, you know I'm loaded with it too.
Alright, so now we've got our bird on grower feed. What's next?
I think Jeff answered this when he was talking about dividing your time period into three and starter, grower, and developer. However that works out for your particular breed, go for it.
Yeah, some of the new hamps, some of the really big dual purpose birds that take six or eight months, you've got to give them that time in each period, right? You can't, it's not one size fits all again, right? I can't say every chick is only six weeks on starter feed, six weeks on grower feed, six weeks on, that's not how that works.
All right, Rip, I'm gonna, and you may have covered it, but I'm gonna, now that I'm, how do people figure out when their bird reaches maturity to divide their breed, right? How are they going to decide how to divide it into three?
Now
remember, I said sexual maturity, which is first day. I said sexual maturity first egg, not full maturity, like one year old, two year old.
And like Jeff said, you got to learn your breed for it to work really effectively for you. A question I used to get a lot when I was judging actively how can I tell if my bird's mature enough to show or not? Or to cull for culler falls? And what I'd always tell them is, As for color, usually by the time they've molted and grown in, they're all their adult primaries. It's okay to evaluate a bird for color. Here again, that's, that is so dependent. Karen, you raised Rhode Island Red County.
I was going to say,
so first egg, right? That's a point in time, right? Now, it can matter whether you're I'm going to Since Jeff is now checking his texts. I'm, first egg time frame is going to be different whether you're raising spring chickens or fall chickens. Would you, would that still, that would still apply though, right? Because there's, it's because of their difference in growth rate, why that moves around, right?
So the still, so you're just going to know it on your second, third, fourth, fifty, seventh year raising chickens, right? It's just not something you're going to know unless your breeder helps you to pick
up on overnight, no. Just takes a little experience.
But ask where you got your birds from, right? Yeah,
ask
your
breeder.
When you expect to see that first egg. Yeah. Alright, sorry, just remembering all the things that messed me up at first. But Rip said, the difference between my Australorps, Leghorns laying their first egg at 19 weeks and my Rhode Island Reds, not, yeah.
Yeah, your Rhode Island should have been what, 24, 26 weeks, somewhere around 24? To lay an
egg? Yeah, a little bit longer than that, but yeah.
Really?
Yeah. Time of year, huge difference. Okay. Yeah. So we're
not all talking about spring pullets. Yeah. Okay.
Cause even if you're talking spring, right? In order for me to hatch enough, the first ones are hatched in February, the last ones are hatched in June. Do you know what I mean? So huge difference there between.
What's our next question, Ms. Karen?
When should I start offering oyster shell pullets? After they've gone to the beach. Oh, jeez.
No. Okay. You're feeling good tonight, Karen. I can tell. I
am ready for bed.
Rip, what do you think?
I honestly, I wait till I start getting an egg or two and then I'll start supplementing with grit. I've, excuse me, with oyster shell. Just want to see if you're on your toes, Karen.
So here's the only caveat to that. And I agree with what you said, Rip, but for folks who can't find a pullet developer feed, I do want to start offering it at that last trimester of development, only because I want to build up bone density. in that pullet. A lot of people don't understand that about half, and that's not a perfect number, but about half of the calcium used to form an eggshell comes out of a hen's bone, right? The other half comes out of what she eats.
So we want to have, really good, strong, healthy bones just before going in to lay. So I would start offering it to them at in the developer stage. Look, they're not, it's not tasty. They're not going to eat it just for fun. So you're not losing anything by offering it to them and you're not going to hurt anything. Also it trains them as to what it is, what it looks like. So when they're later in life, they'll be more apt to go looking for it.
When I had birds, here at the back in the backyard is one group of hens knew exactly what an oyster shell was and they would eat them, very well. The next group, no, they had no clue what this was. They didn't eat any. I have no idea. That's, I would start, somewhere probably week 14, 15, 16. And let them start building up bone mass.
And that's free choice, right? You're not thinking about putting it on there.
Not force feeding it. Yeah, it's all free choice. Oyster shells are getting hard to find. So folks who are listening, I would tell you to stockpile. Prices are going up and availability is getting harder. So if you still can go down to your local store and get them for a reasonable price, get extra. They never go bad. They don't spoil. They don't have a shelf life.
Poor Rip, got all of his questions answered in one easy no,
that's okay, as long as we're getting them covered, that's the main thing.
Sorry Rip, I'm not looking at the cheat sheet.
That's all right, that's all right. Like they said, we already got to this one.
You switch over at the first egg, right? That's, the rule of thumb is you don't go to layer feed until you see the first egg, right? And then you switch the entire flock or that group over.
There's the one for
Rip.
Can oyster shells replace grit in my bird's diet? No. Only by
slip of the tongue.
They are.
One's a calcium source.
Yeah, and the other one's hard grain. The calcium is, it's, the oyster shells are too soft to do you much good. You want that hard granite grit to help grind the feed, work the gizzard, make the feed more digestible, so no don't try to interchange them.
Alright, along those lines, just because we have it, Bill's been mixing 50 50 oyster shell, crust dried egg shells and offering it in a small separate feeder. Any benefits or problems with mixing 100 percent oyster shells?
That's perfect. Not at all. The only thing I tell people if they want to refeed. Eggshells is to make sure and this is only a personal phobia. There is no science behind this. I just assume they not get offered still looking like an eggshell. I don't want to encourage egg eating by the birds. Crush them up good. So they don't have any similarity or to an eggshell, but I don't have any problem with that.
So at my fancy boutique. Chicken store locally. I can buy oyster shell that looks like actual shells. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to the oyster shell at Tractor Supply that looks like rocks, right? So they eat that infinitely better than they do the rock stuff. Anything that they overeat it or. No,
but they will they're going to take a real, a true oyster shell. They're going to take that a whole lot better than, so what tractor suppliants from other places are passing off as a mixture of calcium chips and a little bit of oyster shell blended together. Simply because, back to availability and price, oyster shell is getting hard to find, right? To keep prices down where everybody thinks they ought to be, right? They have now started lending. But, yeah.
I just heard oyster shell in Virginia was up to around 16 for a 50 pound bag. True oyster shell. Yeah. So again, stockpile, but it's worth it.
It is worth
it. I agree, it's not quite, it's up like almost 60 percent from where it used to be 10 or 11 a bag, now they're looking at 16 to 18. And this is buying it by the pallet in quantity. This isn't buying onesies, twosies at the local
So it's probably up to 30 at the
Yeah.
I just remember the first time I put out the true oyster shells and the next day it was half gone and I was like, oh my gosh.
It actually still has some of that sea life smell to it and they can detect that. And it's going to have a small amount of salt to it, so it's got a better flavor and a better smell.
They're just a little bit more exciting than
Okay, Karen, do we have any more
What questions do you want? Yeah.
We have questions, so
Okay, that's done, so we're
Alright.
What causes blood spots on yolk? On yolks?
When you cut yourself.
So Making
eggs.
Sue, take a close look and actually, next time one maybe get a tweezer or something and pull it. Look at it a little closer a lot of times those are actually meat spots and as a hen ages, if it, if there's a difference between a blood spot and a meat spot, but as a hen gets older, parts of her oviduct may slough off and come into the yolk, way up in the oviduct or the, and it'll end up in near the yolk as a meat spot. And typically it's older hens, right?
Now, when some of you listening in, sooner or later, eventually we'll all see this, but you'll see it looks more, it's a blood spot, and it actually looks more like a drop of blood incorporated in the egg somewhere. And it can be by the yolk, it can be somewhere else. And when you see that, it's a sign that, somewhere along the Aviduct, a blood vessel has, ruptured. And look, there's a lot of trauma on that Aviduct as that egg passes down through there. It's going to happen again.
It's an age thing. You'll see a little bit more as the hen gets old, but it's odd to see it in a pullet egg. Unless she's had something traumatic or something, yeah, that's, pullet, generally we don't see it,
I want to say, only because I ignored it for a while, I feel like it's a little bit genetic.
Could be.
I feel like the daughters tended to, so maybe track that. If it's a bird that you love, to see what, cause I mean it's fine to eat and all that, but it's not.
And she said it was definitely blood if it's definitely blood and not a meat spot, then, the egg size may be too big also for the size of the pullet, she might be trying to lay an egg that's, way too big for her if you get a chance, weigh that egg and let me know, but it definitely is a blood vessel along the alvidoc that has ruptured. and secreted blood into that egg. So that's what causes it. Now we have to figure out why. I wonder if it's not egg size.
Could
be.
Shaggy's got a question here. I'm thinking about mobile A frame grow pens. How many square feet of ground would you recommend for each chick one month old and on? Honestly, this is not anything I've had experience with.
A frame, square feet. Mature birds, daily move wait, each chick one month old and on. Shaggy, the right answer is each square foot of ground can support four pounds of live animal weight per day. Okay, that's the only answer I can give you. When they're chicks at a month old, it's going to be four chicks per square foot. But by the time that they're mature, if you're talking about an eight pound hen, depending on the breed, She's going to need two square foot per bird, so it graduates.
The best rule of thumb I can tell you is four pounds live animal weight per square foot per day.
And that's Rotated, right? That's not if you leave your mobile. That's not.
Yeah, that has to be moved.
Okay.
Let's see. Oh, hey, Sue Dobson is on it tonight. You told her to go weigh an egg. She went and weighed it. 1. 9 ounces.
Almost a large egg.
Yeah, it's almost a large egg, but the hen should, or the pullet should be able to manage that. That's not, if she did come back at 2. 2 or two and a half then I could see why there would be a blood spot. Yeah, something in the Aviduc, I don't know, unless she strained too hard or something, but there's no reason for it, Sue. You got me puzzled.
All right, we'd like, and just, Samir's come back. We like Mike's design, right? Okay.
Mike's design.
I won't touch. Okay. Go ahead.
Now I'm done. You can do it.
Samir the mobile A frame like Mike's.
Yes. We
like that design.
We do. It's really nice. Yeah.
And if anybody hasn't seen it, he's got some nice YouTube videos out there of his.
I
haven't seen it.
I will, you may have
to remind me tomorrow, but I'll link to it on our groups. All
right. All right.
You pick, Rip. I won't touch.
No, I don't think we, we don't have another one, do we?
I don't know.
I don't see another one.
Okay. Alright, we're good. We have one from early on that confused me, because I spent six years doing this, ignoring everything that Jeff recommends. But I realized when he read the whole thing that I have yet to do anything that Jeff has recommended. And I was like, oh, me neither. Yeah. But then that has not greatly benefited me, totally changed the meaning of that. Come on,
Karen. You were my best student ever. Yeah.
It took me six years before I listened to you.
I know.
So yeah.
He said he was the
best student, not the fastest learner.
She learned it. She just asked me six different times if it, if that was the right thing to do. So she vets her investments better than most people. There you go.
Indeed she does. Yes. Folks, that's all I've got tonight. Jeff or Karen, do y'all have anything else?
I think we're good.
Okay. By golly, until next time, keep watching your birds. And hey, I know some of y'all are going to be getting some more severe cold and snow and all that kind of stuff out in the Midwest states. So please do what you can to keep yourself safe, you and your birds both, and to be prepared as much as you possibly can.
Keep them warm, but what? Ventilation.
Ventilation. Hey Rip, before you, before we sign off and I don't know if anybody's made the frigid mix that I shared with John, with the oil and the cracked corn and the wheat, but, the other simple easy thing is roughly a tablespoon of just cracked corn. Per hen per day, per bird per day, only when the temperatures go below freezing, okay, don't get carried away. And use it as a supplement, to their regular feeding program. So that's all they need.
Very good. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. Jeff and Karen, thanks for being here with all your support and help.
This brings us to the end of part two of this topic. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode and learned some new information. Be sure to join us next week when we bring you a brand new subject.