¶ Find Trustworthy Information for Poultry Rearing
Developing and having trustworthy informational sources are crucial to your success . Coming up , we share where and how to find those resources .
That's right , mandy , and I think one of the biggest expectations , before we get too far into this , is that we need to learn to manage our expectations . Mandy , what were your expectations ?
Initially I didn't have any , but it quickly became apparent as I started collecting birds that there was a lot I didn't know . And there's so much information out there now , in addition to some of the historical references , that you can go down into a wormhole of information and some of that's going to help you with your flock .
As far as your husbandry methods , your breeding methods , nutritional aspects , every angle of the bird , all the way to developing the birds and moving forward in a breeding program , there's a lot to know .
So having your goals really helps and finding out what information you need to keep them going , and then you can just grow it from there and you'll learn more than you ever thought there was to know .
Oh boy , that's for sure . John , what were your expectations starting out in poultry ?
Well , there was a whole lot I didn't know . I knew that poultry were a very efficient way to feed people a healthy and nutritious diet if they were tended properly .
But husbandry methods and raising the birds played such a crucial role in producing a quality bird and I saw that the way that the commercial industry was going was not the direction that I wanted to be with cornish crosses . So I kind of knew that I had an uphill battle to get there , to get a heritage breed to perform acceptably and economically .
I think we all had similar backgrounds . I came into the standard bred poultry hobby from a commercial background and I quickly realized that there was a world of difference between those two aspects .
So I really started with no real expectations for standard bred poultry , partly because of my age I was I was still young then and partly because I knew I didn't know anything . I think the one piece of advice I could give folks is to go into this hobby like you're a sponge , wanting to soak up everything .
But you got to have really good information filters , because there's so much bad information passing around today and internet groups and chat rooms and some of the YouTube videos Some are good , some are not so good .
So you got to be able to discern for yourself what's good , what applies to your situation and even in some instances farm pages and websites have bad information on . So just be careful . You know if you have a problem you can contact a friend or in the fancy that you trust , or send us an email . We'll help you out .
Try to avoid claims that sound too good to be true , because they usually very well are not true . Try to avoid information that shares only the good parts . You know you get on a lot of breed pages and everybody's hitting the good is this , the good is this , the good is this , the good is this .
But they don't tell you that there's a downside to some of those breeds . Try to avoid information that approaches poultry keeping from an emotional point of view . Chickens aren't people . We don't need to be treating them like people . We'd need to remember that poultry , first and foremost , is livestock .
Try to avoid poultry drama and you have to sort through that with a grain of salt because you can't go into that drama thing and participate . It's counterproductive , it doesn't help the hobby , it doesn't help the birds . Just keep your distance from all that .
Yeah , and at the end of the day , we all have to remind ourselves they are chickens . You know , it's not worth getting emotionally involved or getting feeling hurt or starting fights and squabbles . Chickens aren't worth that , because we need to be able to learn from each other help , encourage and not fight and squabble . That's foolish , I'm sorry .
So going on from there , mandy John , did you have something you wanted to say ? It doesn't move forward .
Well , I was just saying it doesn't help to move the breed and the hobby or the fancy hobby business forward .
It's not helpful at all , it's more than a hobby .
So , you know , having reliable information that you can trust was very difficult for me . First and foremost , that's why I reached out to some experts who you know , people who knew more than me , people who have been involved in it a lot longer than me , who can go Mm-hmm , yep , done that . So when you do that , this is gonna happen . And yeah , it did .
¶ Resources for Bird Breeding and Standards
Let's talk about some resources that people can refer to that we have found helpful to us . So , John , let's start with you . Watch out there . What have you found helpful and what would you encourage other people to look for ?
Well , coming from the academic background , I spend a lot of time on ResearchGate and ScienceDirect and places like that , actually looking at peer reviewed scientific publications . And the industry has put a lot of research and funding into developing birds and we can ride on a lot of that information .
I mean , just because our birds aren't exactly the same , they still have the same physiology and the same needs . So let's take advantage of that wealth of information and it's out there and it's free .
You know , somebody else has already paid for it and we can trust it , I believe , because they've put millions of dollars into this research , mapping out every second of that bird's life , from egg to customer .
It's really interesting when the university studies take a look into parasite problems , disease problems , what causes the nutritional deficiencies and what that looks like .
There's a lot of really good information that can help you potentially get an idea of what may be going on with your flock if you do encounter problems , and those sources are a lot more helpful than just taking the social media and asking what's wrong with my bird , because you're gonna get an entire assortment of responses that may or may not be helpful and it
can be a lot to muddle through versus if you have an idea of where to look , you could do more research and then also a lot of the universities . If they have a veterinary extension , they can help you out more with diagnostics and you can also reach out to your local agricultural contacts .
Every state has a department and they can help a lot with what's common in your area .
What about historical books ? Do y'all see any value in historical publications ?
Absolutely . I haven't read as many as I would like to have , but that's where the methods were at the beginning of their development , especially coming out of the late 1800s and the early 1900s when a lot of varieties were still being developed . How they got where they got to can be in those publications .
Definitely . I think everybody who's serious about breeding needs to have a copy of the standard of perfection , the current one , but also , if you can get a hold of it , a copy of the year that your breed of choice was admitted , because that's probably gonna have the most information on the breed .
That's when everybody sat down around the table and said , okay , this is what makes this bird . And things can fall off along the YA as preferences shift or they also have a new addition coming out , so what ? Was occurring . Yes , reserve yards now .
Yes , the special 150th edition and there's probably some breed amendments in there as well , if I've been paying attention to that correctly where they went in and fixed some errors that were in the prior edition , which is the edition I have . So I'm curious to see what changed .
But that brings to the question do we wanna breed to the old standard or the current standard , or pick a standard and stay with it ?
I guess , Maybe it depends on which standard suits your flock goals better .
Well , if you were showing your bird , then you gotta go by the most current standard . Okay , breed standards will change , have change in the past . They don't change frequently and it's not an easy thing to get a breed standard changed , but it is possible .
But I think the most important information we can get out of the standard of perfection yes , the breed standard is important , but I think even more important is those first 38 , 39 pages of definitions and terms . What are defects , what are disqualifications , how are they described ? Or something more important than others ?
It's important to have the most current standard because that has the most up-to-date and approved information in it .
Now , when folks have a variety that's not in the standard , because , if I'm thinking of it correctly , there's 53 recognized large-fowl varieties in the standard , and then there's some breeds out there that are popular but they're not in the standard .
Right and mandolin . I'll use breads as an example because I know you're probably more familiar with breads than some other breeds .
But in that case where you're working with a breed that's not approved , hopefully you have a breed club or a working group established that has created a proposed breed standard describing to birds what they should look like , what their economical qualities are and so on .
So if it's not an approved breed , go to the breed club or group that's working with that breed . If there's not a breed club or group working with that breed , for example , you kind of have to find a breeder who's willing to mentor in that situation .
Well , oftentimes , if they were imported to the US from other countries , it is possible that for many of them you can go to like and I forget the one in Europe .
But go to the European countries and look for their breed standards that have been approved , that can guide you and in many cases they wind up being and the American standard winds up being very , very close to what they were in the country of origin .
For example , in morons the American standard you could have bred birds to the French standard and the American standard and been successful . You know those two standards are very , very close .
Yes . I think they should be , but yeah , there shouldn't be any significant changes to a variety the moment it changes geographical location . They should still be similar .
Yes , I agree , because that's what attracted us to them to begin with . Well , that's why they're standard bread . Maybe that's not because we like to look something , but we like the way they perform , or they productive birds .
Marams get tricky because the UK standard , I believe it calls for a clean leg instead of a lightly feathered shank .
It does in some varieties but not in others . I know cuckoos in England have clean shanks , but I believe and I may be wrong here , but I believe black coffers have feathered shanks . Well that's weird .
Yeah .
At one time there was a group here in the US that wanted to have feathered shanks and non-feathered shanks of the same color variety .
Let's split the variety . Yes , well , that's not confusing at all .
Well , if you stop and think about it , in a sense it's no more confusing that we have single comb white legged and rose comb white legged .
That's helpful for cold environments . Yeah , cold horniness . I can see where the comb differences would have a tolerance Does the rose comb leg horn have smaller waddles as well ?
Nope , they should be identical . They should be identical in type , with the exception of color . That should be the only difference .
I was fascinated going through .
Sorry , John .
I was just thinking . Waddles in the water when they're drinking in the winter is a bad thing .
This is true , but I was just thinking about all of the differences in the varieties . When you break that standard open , the beginning of the book is really useful . The first 38 pages is not read specific . That is some valuable information . It doesn't even go into everything , it just lightly touches on some things .
Then after the beginning it breaks down into each individual breed . What caught my eye about it is when I started going through the dual purpose varieties . There's a lot of words that are similar in what the frame should be when it describes the bird . That was really interesting . The commonality is between the .
Some say that the show type is not performance bred , but when you actually get into that breed standard it reads like they're supposed to be . Well , that's exactly right , backed by utility , yeah .
Yeah , breeds , and particularly American-class breeds , were created for a specific purpose Initially . That purpose was not exhibition , that purpose was production .
You enter a hen for a show , you should enter her laying record for the previous six months along with her .
Well , they only have so much time to judge . You can't put so much in there that it slows down the process , because even getting people together for a two-day show , taking up the whole weekend , there's a lot of logistics in there . So I can understand when things fell off . For the sake of efficiency .
But if there was a spot on the Coupe card for a number of eggs per weekly , yeah , but what's your proof ? People could fill in . Kind of an honor system . There isn't . But I think poultry people are most , for the most part , honorable people . There isn't feather plucking and faking going on .
There's a way to kind of work around that . I know Mr Reese , who was my mentor in Rhode Island Reds , used to have a little . It was probably a four by six piece of heavy card stock , but he had printed on there the fact that his birds were tratenisted and bred for production as well as for their exhibition quality .
I wonder what his rate of call is when he's getting more stock for himself .
Pretty heavy , I bet .
Well , it would have to be .
That's something we never talked about His birds . He had learned the trick to breeding them to be extremely uniform . I mean it was like literally looking at peas in the pod . You could put a group of females together and they all looked the same outwardly . They all had the same shape , same color , the same view of color . It was unbelievable .
I think that's one of the biggest compliments a breeder can get is hey , your bird is extremely uniform . That's a huge compliment .
¶ Educational Resources for Poultry Keepers
His rate of call was probably far less than my rate of call with his birds simply because I put which is a normal thing , I put selection pressures on different areas based on what I thought the standard said or how I interpreted the standard , but to get him there he had to be extremely selective . Oh yes , yes , and that's the one thing he hammered me .
He said when you're starting , you need to be keeping 10% or less of all the chicks you raised to adulthood , because it's those high quality chicks that are going to produce your best birds and help move your flock forward .
Well you turn me on to an excellent book by Ralph Sturgeon that talked about that and it said you want to start your flock , your foundation , with the one in a hundred , the truly outstanding specimen . That never throws a bad chick .
I haven't found that bird yet in my flock .
That bird can be hard to identify . I can be hard to identify , yeah .
But if you're hatching out hundreds of chicks , you do have a pretty wide genetic pool to be searching from , and it just takes years of training your eye in your hands to get you there .
That's the one thing that I like about standard red poultry is it's always a journey . It has never been a destination . You never get them to the state of perfection that you want , so that drives you to learn more , acquire new skills to improve your birds along the way .
I find it ironic that it's called all this action , and anybody who breeds birds says there's no such thing as a perfect bird .
And there's not .
It's just something to aim at .
Yeah .
It's fun .
It's that big , hairy , audacious gold somewhere down the road that we're going to Sure but never quite make it .
So what other resources can we use to guide us on our journey ?
I think historical resources for standard red poultry folks are really important , because what happened in America is that for many , many years standard red poultry were production poultry . They were the ones that hatcheries were using . They were the ones that hatcheries were promoting .
They were the ones that were on the farms producing eggs and meat for sale that drove a good portion of a farmer's income . And then that was the case up until the 1940s , when we begin to see the introduction of hybrids , especially in layers , you know , and then ultimately in thanks to the bird of tomorrow contest .
That was a really driving factor behind creating the Cornish Cross , and even back then the Cornish Cross is not what it is today , but I kind of digress there .
So if you can find some good historical references , a good place to go is Internet site archive , archiveorg , and there's some books there I would encourage you to take a look at , to really study , and you can download free PDF copies of these books .
That way you can print them out or you can just have them at your beck and call anytime you want to fill them up off your computer . But a good book that has helped me a lot in learning how to use my hands is called the Call of the Hand by Walter Hogan . It will teach you how to use your hands to better evaluate birds bodies .
Because , let's face it , what we see it's a feather outline . It's not the actual birds bodies . And birds bodies are really really important .
If you don't have a good body , you don't have a good skeletal systems to support weight , you don't have good body capacity for efficient transfer or efficient digestion of food and and room for a really good reproductive tract . You don't have a good chicken . But I Will say one thing . I need to throw a disclaimer in there .
Oh , walter Hogan , it was a phrenologist by training , and If you don't know what a phrenologist is , is it somebody who thought they could predict a person's personality traits by the way , just by the bumps of their skull ? And ? And he , he starts out really good in that book .
But when he gets over to the part about predicting a bird's ability to lay eggs by feeling the bumps on their noggin , just , maybe take that part out of the book .
So , but there is a lot that you can tell about the bird from its skull . Oh , yeah yeah , just not how many eggs it's gonna lay , based on the number of bumps in certain areas .
You can see how wide the body is gonna be , and that'll help with production .
That's right . You know why it's gold give you wide bodies , and there's gold to give you narrow bodies .
Have you talked about the eyeball trick yet I ?
Was saving that for later . Well , we can do that later since you baited the trap , I'll fall into it . But when you hatch baby chicks or and this works with whether the baby chicks are or further down the line , but you can look straight down on the top of their heads and if you can see the eyeball they have a narrow head .
If you can see a portion of the eyeball , it's a little bit wider head , but if you can't see any eyeball , that's a wide hit which will give you the widest body .
But it all has to be relative up until how old is this inaccurate indicator ?
From the day they asked , of the day they die .
So I can go out to the flock right now and blow through that entire barn full of all the age groups and Sort them by head width , and every single one with a wide head is gonna have the matching wide body .
My handy-dandy calipers .
Of course we're gonna talk about tools in a later episode and something like that . I use my hands and remembering to grab that tool . That'll be tricky , but I'm gonna try .
Your hands are always at the end of your arm . You never know , I look for .
While we've really digressed here . If you want to improve feather width , measure the width of the primary feathers . The wider the primary feathers , pretty much the wider the feathers gonna be on the body .
Oh yeah , that would be true . I Back to the books , though back to the books .
Yes , another period reference I'd recommend is called breeding and mating poultry by Harry Lamont , and Again , you can get that free on archiveorg . Throw a little trivia out here , but why ? What is Harry Lamont Known for rather other than being a poultry scientist and a good poultry rider ? Anybody know I ?
Don't know , without asking the Google .
Got none . He created a breed of poultry called , among us , l a m o n a s . His name is Bill L a m o n .
I've heard good things about that variety , but they're not common .
They're not . They were basically extinct at one point and somebody took the time to go in and recreate the breed .
I Bet , I'd like that person now here's .
Here's a bit of trivia about Lamont's . What's different from Lamont's ? Then other American breeds . We're going to conclude part one of educational resources and stop right here . Do you hear my answer to that question ? And to get more information and educational resources , be sure to listen to part two next week .
So thanks for listening to this episode of the poultry keepers podcast . Until next week , may your birds be happy , healthy and productive . So long ,