¶ Breeding and Selecting Poultry for Success
This is part two of our conversation on beginning your journey to success with poultry . We'll pick up where we left off last week , so let's get started . I want to touch on something that we can lose sight on sometimes , and that's learning how to identify good birds , great birds and truly exceptional birds , and there's a big difference .
If you raise a hundred birds , usually you're going to find about ten that are good enough to help move your flock forward .
And if you find that one in 100 bird , you know it . It doesn't happen often , but when you do .
No good birds . You can produce good birds regularly producing great birds . Those that can have a profound impact on your breeding program come along less frequently , much less frequently than good birds . And the truly exceptional bird is really a once in a lifetime thing .
Those are birds that look like they're supposed to , grow like they're supposed to and lay like they're supposed to . There are also birds . I've been fortunate enough to have one truly exceptional bird in all the years I've been working on poultry , and it was a female .
She always produced chicks that were better than her and , no matter who you made your team , that's the kind of birds you want to look for to build a flock around .
I haven't hatched that bird yet .
Well , like I said , they only come around once in a lifetime .
But you find them , just like you do your good birds , by handling those birds , seeing how they grow , tracking their laying production , tracking their body growth and development and then tracking the egg production but their fertility and hatchability , and tracking their chicks how do they grow out , no matter whether it's a female or a male .
And that's only possible with a very controlled pedigree mating system .
Getting back to record keeping , well , and you want to know where that exceptional bird came from , so you can go back to those individual parents and see if you can hatch another one like that , if you can , yes .
Hopefully it didn't end up with somebody's freezer .
And you can only do that if you were keeping track .
Right , so true , but record keeping to me is really the key . It doesn't have to be extreme details . You need to know the basics of that . We talked about Number of eggs laid , persistency rate , weight toss rate , molting rate , those sorts of things all come into play .
But the more you know about your bird , the better job you can do getting that flock to where you want it to go . It can't be a willy-nilly shotgun approached , throw a male in with 10 , 12 , 15 females . It's hard to make progress that way , extremely hard to make progress that way .
It is , and it adds to the workload of selection , because maybe there were only two or three females in there that were worth hatching from , but you have to sort through all the chicks from the others and then you still don't have confirmation on who your best producers were , because you don't know where those chicks came from .
Right .
And they're going to drag down your overhead , because now you have the ethical dilemma of feeding them out to harvest and , you know , trying to recover some of your investment .
It's what I refer to sometimes as shot in a dart breeding .
Yeah . You know and you'll get lucky , you just wouldn't be able to recreate it .
Right , exactly . I've heard it referred to as blender breeding .
There's a lot of good terms for it .
Yes , but pedigree breeding is where it's at Knowing what rooster and what hen produced what offspring , and if you can backtrack to find out what rooster and what hen produced those rock stars and be able to reproduce that which brings me to something else .
Once we identify those great birds or exceptional birds , how do we build a flock around those ? And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here , because I know Mandy's got another whole show based around breeding .
Yeah , but I really want to hear it .
Well , it's about a space design . Well , you , you've got some basic types of breeding that most but we talked about . Folks read yeah , flock breeding , you know you , multiple females to one male , and then you've got line breeding , which is breeding loosely related birds together .
Line breeding is not just a tool for showbirds , it's a tool for whatever you want to crop . These hybrid birds all come from line bred flock 16 generations to produce a broiler chick . There's 16 generations of parents that have been line bred to produce that one broiler chick . Think about the record keeping that went into that .
It was very scientific .
Yes , billions of dollars invested in the poultry industry at that level and and then some folks do in in breeding , which is breeding together very closely related birds .
You don't want to do that too often , but it's another tool to use on occasion .
It's a very powerful tool for selection . Yes , you're careful with it .
Line breeding will begin to sort out your good birds for your bad birds , okay , and so you can begin to know where they came from . So you , then you can start to really get down to this with your your production , breeding and breeding . That will really sort out the good from the bad .
It'll tell you what's in your flock if you have any skeletons , they're gonna pop up fast .
I did seven generations , a full brother and sister , with my red banners , because I had found brother and sister that were small . My birds were , frankly , where they were too big and I wanted to reduce the size . So I did seven generations of these two small birds and their project , full brothers and sisters , and I was able to fix that small trait .
But you got to pay attention . You got to pay attention to the bigger in your bird Because in breeding can really help you or it could kill your brook .
That's true . I've seen it where it fizzled out quickly and just you know , two or three generations is all it takes to completely get off track and lose some really important stuff , and it all boiled down to the selection of the individuals that were gonna be used , because you can't breed that tight and do that in a big clan environment .
Yeah , I talked about line breeding and and how it can really help you . Mandy and John , are you familiar with ROP Fox ?
No .
They're better known as record of production .
No sir .
Is this a historical term from when they were really paying attention to that ?
it is All right , but most of the farmers had Mongrel flocks . I mean , let's face it , there was a little bit of this and a little bit of that . Whatever was imported , whatever was on it , was brought in and bred in , and and the production was a John's flipping through his book .
I'm going to the next page to Rate this down , because this is gonna be another research there was .
Program by the government federal government USDA To help farmers improve their production in their flock and you could purchase male chicks from record of production flocks .
In other words , that entire flock was Trappinus did and if they didn't meet a certain criteria , those eggs did not get set and so they start using these record of production males and breeding in to these mongrel flocks to grade them or improve them upward and by doing it over several generations they begin to see really good egg production .
They meet production increases .
Well , I mean , so much emphasis is put on the hen and just by the genetic material available she has statistically more control over the offspring . But I don't think enough people put enough stock in their males when it comes to their ability to throw good egg producing chicks .
I agree , and it's funny that I see the exact opposite in a lot of showbird flocks . There's so much emphasis put on the males and how he looks and they'll pay 50% less attention to the females they breed to him .
I always want to know who his mother is , because what he passes forward is coming from her side , and also his father before him and his father before him . Well , and that's why I'm so careful on the eggs I set , so that I know any male coming out of that tray came from the best producing females . It's something I'm going to know right off the bat .
That's exactly what record production flocks were .
Because , I already fell into that trap in Marans . That's where I learned that the male matters a lot for your egg laying , because if you wanted to have any influence over your egg color , you absolutely needed to know the egg color that that male hatched from .
So if you don't , you're going to spend a generation or three figuring out how to get a male from the correct kind of egg so that then going forward , you know , spacing on your males .
Well , that's really important .
Have either of you guys ever experienced a flock with a high rate of prolapse that was not dietary Like ? Have you just had that misfortune to go out into the coop and see another hen with their backside completely blown out and blood all over the place ?
Yeah , if you selected a very narrow male to breed from .
You used to see that in our commercial white leggings . I won't say a lot , maybe two or three percent , but it was not uncommon in that flock to have a lot of birds that prolapse .
¶ Bone Spacing and Bird Evaluation Importance
I was handling all over those birds to figure out why was this happening , where was it coming from ? And I picked up this little pellet who hit that double yolk phase and she couldn't pass the eggs .
She strained , and she strained , and then when I got in there she was only like two and a half fingers wide in the pelvic bone , and then the distance between the end of the keel up to those pelvic bones , that was tight too , and I didn't breed that bird , but it was within a batch I had purchased and I lost half of them to them blowing out their
backsides , and they had very tight pinched up back ends . And that's where I made that connection Like , oh , this really matters a lot , this is a functionality thing .
This is a performance thing .
So now I preach it Handle your birds , check your bone spacing . You want the backside because not only is it where the eggs come out , but when you're processing is where your hand goes up there , when you have to retrieve the innards and those little tight pin bones can dig into your wrist they can .
Sometimes you have to split up the sides of the bird to try to get in there for cleaning them out . So it absolutely matters every bit as much on the males as it does for the females .
Exactly . If you're in a jurisdiction that requires the processor to be wearing gloves , they do cut the gloves and you're replacing your gloves more often because of those narrow pin bones .
It could be every bird , yeah .
Yeah , literally , and that may be a state requirement if you're selling your birds .
Yeah , that's true . I can get passionate about bone spacing now I can fail . I mean where the problems come . I've experienced it hands on . I mean it's a mess already built into the flock .
You may know or you may not , when you're measuring the width on your bird , if you start up behind the wings and work back , you hit the hip bones . That's the , that's the whitest part , right ? Yeah have you ever paid attention to the angle of taper From the hip bones back to the tail ?
Yes and no .
I have a reason for it . And sometimes they get a triangular shaped bird . I call it the Dorito body shape .
They're gone if you have birds with pinched tapes , that a clue they're probably narrow in the back . Okay , but if you'll pay attention to the amount of taper from the hip bones back to the tail , the wider that distance is , the less that angle taper is , the wider the birds gonna be in the rear end .
So handling your birds and assessing their shape and their feel , checking their fleshing feeling for the carriage it's all important part of the ongoing process In my flock .
I'm at the point now to where I'm getting the width more often than not and I'm not really having to call for lack Of width anymore , but I am still having to call for the bone spacing . On the back side there's a little bit of a taper that I like to see , but not overly pronounced because it goes into a too tight little space .
Yeah , but the the straight shot going back . I haven't Seen that accompanied with the width .
Yeah , you don't want it to go straight back . Okay , you still need some taper . But if it's a sharp taper back to the tail they're gonna be narrow , they're gonna have pinched tails . Yeah , more gradual taper back to the tape , but still a taper . Okay , those are gonna be good . Wide bird .
Now I feel like I need to go figure out what that angle is when they have the body with and they go back to like a To finger width on a cockerel , what's that angle like ? I'll probably have to pluck them to get a good look . You know , get out there with your micrometer and protract .
I'm gonna confess I never measured it , okay , but I didn't . When I was doing body evaluations on birds , I'd have some birds up in a pen and I'd handle one birds and I'd go to the next one . Well , is this bird I'm handling now wider than that other one ? This is body depth better , okay ? Well , he just moved up a pig .
He may stay and and I just would sort through them that way , just based on the you know , not actual measurement . That worked for me . You know , measuring , physical measuring , may work better for y'all and I know , with John's scientific background and training , he's probably going to be one of actual measures . He's an actual measure .
I wouldn't doubt it , he's influencing me to go look and ask what was your hand measure . What's your specific finger width ? What are we actually looking at here ?
Well , we've joked about that , because you have people that watch your videos , that have asked you for your hand measurements , as have I , and I have a tracing of my hand on graph paper that I send to people .
But you didn't write down the dimensions .
No , that's not the important thing . Everybody's hand is different , but it's a comparative analysis .
Yeah , when you pick up a bird and check one , you remember that and you go to the next one and you say this is better or worse , and go to the next one and say this is better or worse , and eventually you develop a feel for the flock and you start to self sort .
Now for those who are beginning birds . Yeah , exactly no through . You know just simple familiarity and going through repeatedly . But when you're just getting started and you have this flock in front of you and you haven't ever handled them before , I get the question a lot of well , where do you start ? What am I looking for ?
Well , you start by grabbing the first bird you can put your hands on .
It doesn't have to be any particular bird . You just grab bird one and it doesn't matter which one , because every bird after that one is going to be better or worse . They don't have their differences .
So you just pick one , get familiar with what it feels like , set it aside , probably in your middle pen , if you've got a three pen situation that you can sort into . So then every bird after that goes into the better pen or the worst pen , or if it's really similar , and then you come out of your sore and you see your results .
You don't think about a quota . You don't think about how many birds do I need to find , because I'm looking for five . You'd never put a number on it .
No .
Get familiar , sort through the badge and evaluate what you have left .
Mandy , you're so right that first bird is your baseline information and from there on out , are the birds better or worse than that first bird ?
Yeah , that makes it easier . It makes it a lot less daunting . It's just bird against bird and you don't want to worry about what's the breed known for . What are the other flocks doing ? It's not about that , because you don't have those birds . You have the birds in front of you . So it's arrogance peer in your own flock .
Right , don't go by what somebody else tells you . Okay , watch how many fingers to look for how wide the back should actually be . Their birds are not your bird . Your birds are going to be different .
Yeah , they might already have a decade of hard selection and then they might be the result of a line cross where it's going to get weird from there .
And , as we've seen firsthand , environment can drive epigenetic expression . Here's a fancy term for you , but if we take the exact same eggs from Ohio and ship a dozen to Alaska and a dozen to Florida and grow them out , they are going to express differently based upon the environment that they've been grown in . Absolutely .
And the husbandry practices . And the feed and everything else . They're going to be the result of their breeding , but also their environment .
So it's finding the bird that does best for you in your environment , with your practices and in the totality of things .
It goes back to the title of Ralph Sturgeon's book Start where you are with what you have .
Well , the second part of that statement I found later in the book is to learn the techniques and processes . I think is the rest of it . I don't have the book here , but check me on that . It's very similar to that , but I found where the title came from and I'm like huh , it's really great for finding out what's going to work for you .
Well , that's going to tie in with what your goals are .
Yeah , and I apologize , I've got us pretty far down at Red Bell one year .
But listen , the best stuff comes out . It really does .
Let's talk just a little bit about A bird's need for light to be productive , to lay egg . John , what do you say ? How many hours of daylight do they need to be good egg-layer ?
Ideally well . I time my hatches in the late fall , early winter so that I'm able to come off supplemental lighting and get them onto natural lighting so that they're coming into production just as we're hitting 14 to 15 hours of daylight .
I want to delay that first egg a little bit , to build more body capacity If I can , and I don't want it to cost me more in electricity for artificial lighting . So I want to get them off artificial lighting as early as possible and off supplemental heat .
Mandy , what about your flock ? How many hours of daylight do they need to lay good ?
Well , so I was just thinking about my process there , and what the reality is is different than what my intentions were . So , we bought a timer . We installed it into the barn . That way the lights would kick on at whatever time I chose in the morning and it would stay the same year round because production .
But it didn't work out and the timer didn't work . So we swapped it out for another timer and that one didn't work . And my husband's a plumber and not an electrician . So a short story is I go out to the barn when I get there and I flip the light on . It's not the same every day .
They do go to bed when we go out and we close all the doors and I turn the light off . It's not rigid . I don't have them on a schedule . It's when I get out there and then it's when we go back out there , so their hours per day can vary day to day .
So when the birds are producing , as if they were on a schedule , that's pretty neat and it tells me a lot about that bird .
You do Some of them .
Maybe that's why some of my girls end up taking a break for five months because her body doesn't even know what the light cycle is doing in them , causing some of my own problems .
Well , I was like I'm right out of the mull and start getting productive again very early in the fall so that their egg sizes are hitting 65 grams in early December to early January at the latest , and I start hatching from them because I want winter producers . That's when most people don't have laying eggs because they haven't started laying yet .
Exactly that's kind of my thing . I got winter producers . You want eggs in the winter ? Come check out the Chanticleer .
You know some people like the idea of adding supplemental light . I know some folks prefer it to be on a more normal schedule . But if you do add supplemental light , set your lights to come on earlier in the morning but go off at sunset .
You don't want to cause a pile up if those lights click off and it's already dark outside .
Yeah , they'll panic .
That causes a lot of stress on them too . You want ? Them to have a natural bedtime .
Yes , yes .
¶ Managing Light and Growth in Poultry
So I usually try to be out there right at dusk to turn off the barn lights . So that changes . But I think my flock balances out to a minimum of 12 hours a day of light .
Yeah .
And sometimes it might be 14 , might be 16 , you know whenever I get out there .
One of those little bathroom lights for nighttime inside the henhouse , just so long as it's the the brightest thing on after the lights come off , they're going to be attracted to that last late of the day .
Yeah , what about ? What time of year do you find your chicks grow best for you ? We're going to pause right here and we'll bring you the final part of this conversation next week when we wrap up our discussion on beginning your journey to real accomplishments with folks . Until then , make sure to keep your flock happy , healthy and productive .
Thank you so much for listening to the Pulsar Deepest Podcast .