Smart Selectioon-Part 2

Welcome to another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. Today John Gunterman, Mandelyn Royal, and Rip Stallvee finish their discussion on Smart Selection tips. So, lets get right to it, we'll pick up where we left off last week.

I do think it's important to get them being raised at their destination farm as soon as possible. Because the local environment and your husband's reef practices will affect the development of that bird. So the longer they spend here. The worst for the breeding process going forward. If they're destined for that farm, they need to get there as soon as possible and get under their, that specific care and management regimen, because that will affect their development, especially at this early age.

So Gwyneth, come get these turkeys.

I, I think one thing that folks who are fairly new to breeding. Need to remember is that there's a difference in maturity rates. Maturity rates between meat type birds, layer type birds and standard bread type birds. It's not all the same. It's, the information on the internet makes, it sounds like the birds are gonna be all mature at 20 weeks and yada yada, and that's just not Nope. True. Doesn't work that way so much. It'll vary.

Depends on where they came from.

Yeah.

It'll vary within the same breed.

Oh, absolutely.

Bloodline's a bud line, they're gonna be a little bit different one to another.

And the reason is because one breeder's selecting for something and the other breeder may not be selecting for that same quality. But by spending time with the birds. We can learn within our breed. Some traits you're gonna show earlier and some are gonna wait until much later. They're not all going to be at the same rate.

And hopefully the breeder you source from is also willing to mentor on the genetics you actually have.

because

they have all that information from all the previous generations.

And speaking of having all the information one thing I would encourage listeners to do is to keep a journal. When you're sit out and you're observing your birds make notes, just jot down what because I guarantee you, you're gonna forget it if you don't.

Oh, we're a podcast. You can't see the binoculars that are in my hand and my window overlooking the yard. But the the a BA wing sorry, leg bands you really can't see with the binoculars. Can't read the numbers. But I do mark my birds with alcohol-based gel food coloring. And they're distinctive out in pasture 'cause they're white birds. And if they're running around with pink plumage or green plumage or blue plumage in a big splash, I'm like, oh, I know who you are from a distance

makes a difference,

especially when I've got a hen going over the wire and laying out in the wild. And I want those eggs for several reasons, which we've already covered one of the,

I'm your notes here.

Where you're talking about late maturing bloodlines, we kind of touched on that a little bit, but then also the early bloomers that fade out in quality.

a trap I have encountered, I've seen that where I pick an early favorite and we go through the duration of growth and the next thing you know, there's 10 other birds that are better than that one.

You're exactly right. It's, I find that I wind up picking my birds that I keep from that sort of middle group of the flock.

early, early bloomers. Early matures, fast growers and not the nedo wells over here, but those in the middle of the flock tend to give me the most consistency down the road.

Sure. And if you take that weekly growth or daily weight data. On each bird and chart it in a bell curve. You're gonna know exactly where the center of your flock is, and you'll be able to make your selection from the middle of that bell curve and at three weeks. And there's a lot of consistency to their later growth rate based upon their early growth rate. It's almost an exact mirror, just enlarged. It's pretty cool and

you can't take too many notes. Nope. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make.

Very true.

And we've talked about doing this criteria on a cohort basis, right? Having birds of the same age together, even a week different in hatch date, can make A difference later on down the line. And there are times where, I do band, wing band, everybody with a different color wing band based upon hatch. And eventually I will take the slower maturing birds and throw them in, a week or two back, you're being held back in first or second grade to develop a little bit more 'cause they're not ready,

but you banned 'em. So you know the who they are.

I know who they are and they've already been disqualified, but they're still gonna make maybe a good layer or maybe a good meal.

not gonna breed with 'em. 'cause the development wasn't right.

And something, I'm gonna

look at who the parents were and go, do you constantly throw birds that do this? Or is it on a 10% basis, 50% basis? Maybe. I don't wanna breed with you too, as a pair anymore.

Oh, I know what I was gonna say and I've thought about it and then I forgot it, but with getting old, y'all. By consistently observing your birds, making notes and studying those notes, you're gonna be able to spot when your line is starting to drift away from the breed standard. And it's going to happen, I promise you. They'll drift on you from year to year. I'm going

through that now. You know that little saying of never, ever made extremes. Also I did some dabbling.

It's approved theory. Yeah. As it turns out, don't do that because they compound on themselves and hit stronger that next generation and the next thing you know, you just wasted. Heterosis is great.

No, the heterosis is great, the hybrid vigor, but by the time you go

full circle with it, it's a full two years you've wasted on that scientific experimentation. So I'm glad I got it outta my system. But also,

You get, you got to see a punt square in action develop. Boom, there it is.

And it tickled my little peanut brain, which is great, and I'm glad to be past it. But

it's good that you did that now and not. Four or five years further down the road.

Now I can really confidently say any outside cross you do, whether it's into a different genetic family within the same breed or a complete outcross into whatever, know that you're gonna bring a potential of seven years of ramifications by having done that. And some of 'em aren't gonna become apparent until you've already spent. Generations.

This is not quick, fast, easy stuff. This is compounding generation to generation and adding that diversity to see your genetic persuasions and what all's in there know that you're not making as good a progress as you could have made by doing a different approach. You're not gonna reinvent the wheel, you're just gonna learn a whole bunch. On how those traits actually move forward through the flock and which things will skip a generation or two.

Yep. Yep. One thing I want to talk about and Mandelyn, you and John are really good at this, is when you evaluate your birds, y'all evaluate them peer to peer.

It's the only way. Same

hatch, same age, same type.

When Madeline, I, you're probably as thorough as anybody I know, but how do you do that? What? What's your thought processes when you go through that?

So a lot of people seem to get hung up on what am I basing my decisions on? What's my example? So to streamline it and make it easier on myself. I don't agonize over which bird I'm going to do first. I walk into a pen. I review that pen and I try to find my favorite visually while observing. So when I pick that bird up and I handle to confirm what I think I saw, that bird will become like my baseline bird. Every bird I pick up after that is either better, the same or worse.

But some other important factors, I think is your sorting station. You've got everything up at the proper level. You've got good uniform lighting all around, and that, that was one of the things that impressed me the most about the time I was able to visit your farm is well, and I have I, a scale and a

notepad and everything's waist height, so I get a good head on view.

Everything is there to make the evaluation process as easy as possible on you and on the birds where, I've experienced this. My birds actually look forward. They'll jump up on the scale and pose for me

with routine. They make it pretty easy.

They do. They do. And

Having those little cardboard cutout silhouettes of your breed standard and the shilling photos are great for that, for a fluffy bird 'cause you've got a general s silhouette, but it still requires hands-on to make sure what's under there is being telegraphed out in the plumage. Mitch,

and you

talked about, I've got a friend who's a morons breeder who goes outside with color cards at two 30 on overcast days to grade her eggs because that's lighting is important. Like the standard. That's the standard for the moron egg, or it might not be two 30, but there I remember distinctly something about it has to be an overcast day outside with the color card.

Yeah. Direct. I'm not changing or change the

saturation.

Yeah.

Makes it natural.

I lost point, to me, I see a dozen really brown eggs to her. She's oh no, this one no. That egg and that egg. I'm like, okay. So she already selected down to two from a dozen before they even got set.

Is there anything that you two use. That could be a tip for our listeners. When you're doing your peer-to-peer selection like

sure you're using consistent lighting. Even the surface I learned from you zone can make a difference

right from the beginning straight down on the head from hatch. Yeah. What's their skull width? How do their eyes set?

Having 'em at waist height really makes a big difference. Like I, I can host my own chicken show in my own barn every day if I wanted to.

I do pretty much. The other thing I'm lighting, and I know I've talked about this before, is making sure it's a f. Flicker free light source. Oh yeah. And you can check it very easily by using your digital camera on any pocket device and recording in slow motion and playing it back. If you see a strobe, your lights are doing that to your chickens. It's so fast we can't see it happening, but they do. It stresses the birds

stress amount.

It does. Nice subdued ambiance. You don't wanna open flame in your barn and you can't really get incandescent bulbs anymore, but you can get flicker free bulbs, and I do recommend that. And it's not a strong, harsh light either. It's easier on you and your birds.

One thing that I. Find is that it's much easier to evaluate your birds if you've been handling them all along as they're growing up. So they're used to that. They're it. They're not flipping out and panicking because they're not. This is a whole new situation because

when birds are stressed or excited, their whole body type changes guarantee you.

Yes, it really does. And that can even include a complete change in their silhouette because when they Oh yeah. Stress. And when they feel on alert, they pull their feathers in tighter. Not their natural carriage, but like when two boys are getting ready to face off, you can watch 'em, those feathers pull in and tighten because it's a protective measure. And then they'll stand up taller. They'll stand up on alert. And that's a completely different bird than the relaxed bird.

Every animal, if you observe them, has a similar pot horse. Horses will stand up with their ears pinned back. Same with canines. They all do it. Another one affects development. Everything affects development.

Another thing I've noticed, I've seen people who are raising their birds out on range, but they bring them in and they put 'em in wire bottom cages to try to evaluate 'em.

They don't even know how to stand on that surface.

They don't it, it throws 'em off. It looks like a totally different bird. Yeah.

If they're not used to it. And mine are raised on use

wire bottoms to break a broody. That's all I ever use 'em for.

And they're, mine are raised in the hitching time system. So they're always on wire. It's plastic and it's especially shaped plastic. There's a lot of engineering, but it's a lot of plastic. So I try to get 'em off of that as soon as possible, and onto grass and dirt and soil, and en engaging with the natural environment.

Now, what method are you guys using to protect yourselves from emotional bias when it comes to picking favorites? Like you're focusing on the bird, not your sentiment, right?

Yeah. Oh, you

have to.

You have to I come from a culinary background and then into a agricultural and farming background to feed people. So every bird eventually is going to feed us in some way.

I think one thing that helped me Mandelyn was getting my judge's license.

Oh, that would do it, wouldn't it? Because now you're judging for strangers.

You, I cannot look at a bird without thinking, okay, this is wrong, that's wrong, yada, yada, yada. And then I try, I force myself to do that. When I'm evaluating my own bird, I try to go at it from the standpoint that I have never seen that bird before. So I wanna, sometimes

I have to spend an extra day on my selection to make sure the choices I made were the right ones.

Yeah that's normal. That's normal.

Sure. And we've gotten until week 16 or 18, and I've actually found by holding things over and, some birds are ready to harvest early. I know where they've reached a point where they're not gonna be putting on any more usable. Meat in relation to feeding them more. They could come out at 16 weeks and there's some birds that, they're out of breeding potential, but they may need to go to 18 weeks 'cause they're still putting on mass in relation to the amount of food going in versus coming out.

Mandelyn said something earlier, and I wanna say it again because I think it's important, and that is, she doesn't rank her bird's keeper or cull. It's not a either or situation. With her,

it's variable.

It's 1, 2, 3. Good, better, best, or not so good, better and best.

we won't settle till our better is best. How's is that saying? But that's really what it's about. It's about improving the overall quality of your flock.

My worst birds come from my most diverse genetics. Imagine that.

Ironic how that happens. So when are you making that big jump from pen mating to pedigree mating.

When I have sourced a fleet of appropriate size cages to organize it pen by pen,

I'm working on something, it's gonna be

a $1,500 investment

Mandelyn. I'm working on something that could solve your problem.

I'm working on a design for a pair mating pasture tractor, but we've gotta get the material for the prototype uhhuh, but it'll hold eight females, one male out on pasture with a slide door system for exposure. An a collection by the hen, so I can label it by the hen as it comes out. But that prototype we haven't built yet.

I have designed a trap, nest front, retrofit

onto any nest box standard size opening. Yeah.

It's very simple to use, is basically just a three part system.

But then you have to go retrieve, do you need a nest box for each 10 then for No. Let's

No. Once you go and let them out and collect their egg, it's reset for the next 10. Yeah. So if you have a row of them, naturally what's gonna happen is they're all gonna get stuck. Hopefully not in the same box. 'cause they do like to pile.

You, that's, you can't overdo the box size. That's for sure. I'd rather you, you may need a deeper box. But not a wider box. And I say deeper box is because when the hen lays her egg, she will come to the front of the box. There's a gate there that she can't get out of. But she's moving to the light. That's normal. And if she's standing in where the eggs are, she could break an egg. So you want to give 'em a little more depth to work with.

So my thought was, because I like to use really fresh hatching eggs. Seven days old, no more. Yeah. So if I remove hens from their home pen and put them somewhere else, they might stress out and quit laying.

Yep. They gotta be used to this. But

if I had a tower inside of their home pen and made it a matter of routine to where, let's say I had a stack of three cages with automatic water. Feed cups, everything. They are adequately equipped to stay there for six days. 'cause I expect five to six eggs a week from my girls.

then by doing that, I know their daily rate for those hens I put in there, I like my pens to have less than the number of birds they could fit. So my pens can fit up to 15. But for management and cleanliness, I prefer 10 or less. So nine females. One male, three females in hatching collection and rotate that. So three hens go in and then at the end of the week, I swap 'em for a different set of three. And it becomes a matter of their routine in theory.

And anybody who doesn't lay five eggs on their past, I pull them outta.

Yeah, I would say without knowing. So we need to, knowing know without what your daily production for each hand is that's critical to know. Absolutely. But then

it's set up on a weekly rotation, which makes my life easier.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you get,

With three hens, I can tell the difference between my five I have six pens all

had nine,

but each egg I know which hand laid that egg now just by looking at it and feeling it and going, oh yeah, I. It's her because they're like fingerprints to me. Even the eggs, bells,

I don't know. I'll figure it out once the budget allows for it. Yeah.

I can set you up with trap nest front. It's cheaper than you can buy coops.

There you go.

I'll pick your brain on that later.

Yeah. Yeah. Not a problem. I've gotta get it all put together, but I had the first part of the prototype made yesterday.

Now what would be great is if you had some, it's a, I forget what the file is called, that you can take to a library and have 3D printed for all the functional parts,

the CAD drawing.

I think there's a special file that they have that

Oh or those

printers that you just say, Hey,

yeah, nah, got that. People who do that,

People who do that maybe could step in and help us out. For folks that don't. Have access or is this gonna be a product that you're selling? What's going on? Maybe,

I don't know. I haven't decided.

Alright. I'll be your Guinea pig.

There you go. For a long time, the only ones you could buy were like 80 bucks a piece.

Is this the pictures you sent me a couple years ago?

Yeah.

Ah, okay. Yeah, I gotcha.

And I know where you're going. Then somebody else started making the identical thing for $39, and I'm going to have less than $25

into making one. So I can beat that price if I do decide to sell it. Yeah. Anyway, we digress and get off of, we do that very

well.

Let's talk about flock gold in the selection process.

Basically we're waiting on the flock to tell us what is and isn't working.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But before you even put birds in a, the cage to start evaluating them, ask yourself, what's your goal for this group of birds? Are you looking for egg layers? Are you looking for meat? Birds? Show birds. Do you want birds with broody tendencies or not? You know what? What do you expect from this group of birds?

That should be fall in line with your overall flock goals. Yeah.

And then you go digging through that flock, looking for the birds who meet your standards. That hopefully also reflect their breed standard.

Exactly. And the more you do it, the more it's gonna self repeat and it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the world will be a beautiful place.

Let's talk about some tools and tips and techniques that we've used that makes for a better evaluation. For example, when I'm doing it, I want a clipboard. I, I. I used to use a camera, but now I've got my cell phone. I use that. I usually print out a spreadsheet and I can make notes on that spreadsheet and then I can enter it into the computer at a later time. And the other thing that I have found handy for me works well for what I do, is some various colored leg bands.

Oh, leg bands, wing bands. That's, you gotta start there. You gotta differentiate 'em permanently. Something else you didn't mention that I do wanna bring up, which was a great investment is a plastic caliper, veer caliper scale. It doesn't matter what the scale is. In fact, I've got a couple different colored ones and I put some masking tape around the handle. So if I'm like measuring skull width, I gotta go no-go gauge. I've got a green one and a red one.

John, something I've used those for too is to gauge feather width on my birds.

Yes. And shaft diameter. I wonder

how many people actually get into those wings and actually look at the width of the individual feathers.

There are. I didn't start

doing that until three years ago. I was like, what? Really? That matters.

Those are the real sh the feather snickety breeders the super showers. I wanna get some of them. I'm on here to talk about their techniques.

That's the people that have learned the value in paying attention to the little bitty details,

attention to detail,

because they make, now when I use my thumb

to check the back of the skull with, I count the lines on my knuckle,

but it's a comparison and it's in a cohort. They're all the same age, so they should be at the same level of development. So having a clear indicator of good, better, best, medium, average. Too big, too small, whatever you wanna call it. You have a differentiator that's always at hand. Therefore, your hand and, but it, these are cheap, they're disposable, they're plastic. You can throw 'em in the dishwasher, whatever.

No, no matter what the tool is, use it over and over. It doesn't matter whether it's John's Caliper or Mandy using her thumb, as long as she uses it consistently. Year, after year, she's gonna make progress.

Because it has nothing to do with birds anywhere else. It's only mine in my area with my hands. I'm not looking at the hand size of anyone else. I'm not looking at the birds of anyone else. I. Peer against peer. They're either better or worse than the bird you handled before 'em.

And it's this year, this particular grow out, this particular hatch,

and then you, because they're all

going to be slightly different

because your notes let you know next year if you made progress or not.

Oh, we're getting fired up today.

I'm living the life right now by just being in the middle of grout season. Like I'm sorting birds weekly.

one. One thing I had to go through early on and it was very hard to break myself, and it was something I called the collector's curse. And I felt like I needed to keep every bird possible. That's the quickest way I know to fail.

You think they're gonna show you something at the very end, but really they're not. If they've already showed you that they're not. The outstanding bird's going to be outstanding. Its entire lifespan.

And folks, it's okay if your goals are different. Than somebody else's. They don't have to be identical. Okay? Because what I look at Mandelyn and John May not give it a second thought and vice versa. So it's okay to have different goals that doesn't make, and you have different birds, them right, and you wrong. It just makes it different. That's all it is different.

My Santa Clara would be miserable in Florida. They don't have a comb or waddle to shed heat.

They're a little miserable in Ohio. And summers got trickier with adding that new breed here. Yeah.

And they're miserable here. When it gets above 80, they just seem to melt into puddles in the ground.

But man, can they lay in the winter? Yeah.

That's what they designed for they take

off. So when my, they're taking off the winter. The chantic clear fire up and in the summertime when the chantic clear, get lazy and don't really wanna lay that much, my breasts are still laying. So between the two different types, I get year-round eggs more so than just having different ages in my flock.

Because I like eggs. You can do that by doing fall hatches for spring production and spring hatches for fall production for eggs.

we which we have talked about. But that brings up a really good point about regionalities. I was talking with somebody at an event last week and I told em to look you up, Rip, because you would at least be a good resource. They live down in southwest Florida. And they're like, what breed should I get?

Something I wanna mention, and I, we just published our hundred and 14th episode, I believe and I think we probably mentioned it just about every show, maybe not every show, but almost every show is that Handle your birds regularly. It is gonna develop your hands and your eyes to work together to determine what's going on with your bird's body.

And I think it helps to spend time learning what does make them different from each other. Because finding those differences helps you see. Who is the stronger one? Who is the biggest one? Who is the whitest? Who's the most like, just look for those differences before you look at those similarities. 'cause you can get lost in the similarities. You can get flock blind pretty quick, especially if they're all the same greed. What is making them different on an individual basis?

I want to get to a show. Actually. I wanna see a lot of birds that are representative of a specific type on display. So I can actually look at the differences and see them displayed, see it from the judge's perspective,

and then go cruise champion row. What made those birds similar? What made the winner? So what got them

there? Yes.

Yeah.

Or what got them there that day. So going to a show, even if you don't ever planning plan on showing can be amazingly informative and educational and great for building the community comradery, the flock in general. And when the flock in general, I mean our planet, so to speak.

And when you're doing selection, folks, you gotta remove the emotion from it. Select with attention, not emotion. Frank says, every time I had found myself selecting on emotion, I made a mistake. Nope.

Takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.

That's right. Hey, we're at the end of our notes here, but I just want to thank everybody for joining us today. I ha I have had fun. I think I've enjoyed this episode about as much as anyone we've ever done, y'all.

This is really what it's all about.

Yeah. Yeah.

And this is where we wanna put it out to the listeners too. And we all know the genetics are the blueprint, but we're the builders. Absolutely. We control what goes in and what comes out. What do you want to talk about online? Let's drive some discussion here.

If you're not a member of our Facebook group Poultry Keepers broadcast Facebook group, you need to be on there. We're posting information there almost daily that we don't talk about here on, on the show. But yeah. If

Yeah. There's more time for interaction. It, the feedback would be good for us to gauge, where all y'all are at and what you want to hear. 'cause we can just sit here and talk about chickens and what entertains us all day long. And it seems to be working. But I'd really like to focus in on what the listeners want to hear. Yeah. And listen or flock. We've got a, nobody knows everything, but together we know so much. So share some photos of your chicks and your grow outs. Know,

and maybe what you look for in your flock. What are the traits that are important to you, and what are you steering your flock towards?

What are your top three selection criteria this year? What are you looking for? If nothing else, it helps to formulate the thought and write it down and put it out there for the world. View it as some level of self-accountability. Nobody's gonna chastise you for it, but you just you're putting it in writing and you're committing to it, and I think that's important.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And

we're here to help you get there.

You can change a lot in three generations.

We're like the government, we're here to help. No,

And if you don't wanna type and talk and you feel conscious about that, we do have a way that you can like, call in and leave a voicemail.

You can give us a voicemail Yeah. On our website. And we can

use that on air, so to speak. Or if you don't want, just say, please don't use us on the air and we will respect that. But we will be happy to revoice your questions and answer 'em online.

So before we go. I want to leave y'all with this one statement. Great birds don't happen by accident. They're the result of smart decisions. And with that, thanks for joining us. We've had fun. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks for listening everybody.