¶ Choosing Chicken Egg Colors and Breeds
Hi , i'm Rip Stalvey . In this episode of the poultry keepers podcast , my co-host , john Gunerman , and I will give you more tips and advice to help you start your flock . So , john , continuing on with things you should think about . What color do you prefer ?
Amazing , that's a weird decision , but in certain geographical areas , there's a preference for one egg color over another , and it's usually between white and brown .
Well , i remember growing up . The jingle is still indelibly burned into my head Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh Was the commercial on TV and on the radio and everything . So when you went to the grocery store you didn't touch white eggs because those were shipped in . You wanted the brown eggs .
Any difference in the egg itself , nutritionally , flavor wise , any , it's all the same .
And you can also . you know some folks are after blue colored eggs and you get these from Americana leg bars and there's some other ones out there I've seen none that they look like Easter eggs .
Yeah , some of them looking like they were painted .
And I'm going to throw a little trivia on you here , john . If you break open a white chilled egg , what's the color of the shell on the inside , white , okay , you break open a brown chilled egg , what's the color on the inside , white ? You break open a blue egg . What's the color on the inside ? Blue ?
Exactly , they have a unique characteristic in that the egg color permeates the entire shell from the outside to Okay And he took me back to my animal sciences class there And because of a retro virus , and I've actually heard predictions that eventually all the eggs will become blue as the retro virus works its way around the planet .
Oh , just changes the color of the egg . Believe it or not , you can get designer egg colors .
Can an egg be two half and half , two different colors , swirl , swirl .
For example , you cross a blue egg layer with a brown egg layer And that produces a green egg layer , because the brown pigment is deposited on the outside of the egg shell as it's being laid . So since the egg shell starts out blue , you add that brown color in there . Okay , so it's like a glaze on a porcelain Yeah .
Exactly , and you can get them in in light greens , you can get them in dark greens . Some of the more recent colors that are being advertised are olive eggs or sage colored eggs .
The people that are selling the dozens or 18 packs . They're all different colors .
They're the first ones to sell out at farmers market , Absolutely , And I missed one because while we were on brown shell eggs I should have mentioned you can get extremely brown , dark brown egg . These are usually from breeds like morons , typically , or a couple of others .
Barnabelers used to , but they're not so much anymore And well , summers lay more of a terracotta colored egg , but the morons can be very , very dark to the point that they almost can look black . But it's funny , people who breed morons are after that extreme dark egg . They grade those eggs by color , four being the very lightest , nine being the very darkest .
But if you take them to the farmers market and you lay them out there , people will invariably go for the number fives and number six . Then they will for the very , very dark eggs . We talked about geographical location and we talked about better type .
We talked about calm type , but some of the breeds are better for some things than they are for others And we alluded to that a little bit . But just kind of bring us up to speed on that .
Well , i personally try to steer myself towards what we consider the dual purpose breeds the chicken that's going to be a good egg layer and a good meat producer . They're not necessarily going to be outstanding either , but they can go either way And I kind of like that .
So at hatch and when I'm sorting any male that's not absolutely tip top to breed with goes to freezer camp . I like to utilize my flock therapy their pets a little bit , but they're also food , so I like a bird that I can count on . I'm very passionate about , about the genetic preservation and preservation of the breed .
I seem to get drawn into these weird little side things . Here's some . You know old English fizz and prowls . Yeah , you can have these for free . They're a little weird , they're downright insane . But we'll figure them out and they may stay or they may not . Yeah , i've gone through the hatchery birds .
They were fun , they were nice , they did really well for the first 18 months And then they fell off . They went into their first mole and when they came back around their performance was horrible . It's hard to justify when feeds $25 for a 50-pound bag and then you count how many eggs you're getting out of the bird on her third year .
It doesn't make sense to keep a third year bird unless it's a standard bred bird that you're using for breeding . If a bird made it to her third gear on my farm , she's pretty spectacular , or he is pretty spectacular .
Excuse me , but that's one thing I want to point out about the advantage of standard bred poultry over the hatchery birds . Hatchery birds are not selected for longevity . Standard bred birds will go . I've had females seven or eight years old that I was still hatching eggs from Hatchery birds .
Like you said , they hit that 18 to 24 months wall and boom , that's it .
But the nice thing is it's not specific to hatchery birds . All birds will do that when they're hatched . You're usually going to get 18 to 24 months out of lay out of the first laycycled bird , because they don't molt during the first molting season with the rest of your flock .
So if you always have new generations coming back behind the older birds , you can keep yourselves in eggs and just rotate them out .
There are breeds that are not designed specifically for egg production , or specifically for meat production , or for dual purpose Breeds like Polish , you know . so what about ornamental breeds ? What's your thoughts on ornamental breeding ?
That takes a lot of breeding knowledge . I tried crested birds our first year here . No single crested bird lasted more than 48 hours on open
¶ Starting a Chicken Flock
pasture .
One of the things that we haven't touched on and I think it's important that when you're considering breeds is temperament of the birds . Nobody likes an aggressive rooster , so that's one of the things you want to evaluate temperament of the breeds . The best way to do that is to talk to somebody that's got them , and I'll give you an example .
There's no secret that Rhode Island Reds are my favorite breed . I have never had an aggressive standard bred Rhode Island Red male ever . I have had Rhode Island Reds from hatcheries that would fight a chainsaw . If they had an opportunity , they can be extremely aggressive .
So those are the sort of things you want to take into consideration , especially if you've got young kids or grandkids .
That's sure It can be a traumatic event to have a bird fly up in your face , even for an adult who's used to it , And those furs are dangerous And the claws can cut . So that does bring up a good point about safety .
If you have youngsters or domestic animals that aren't used to being around your fowls , Those are both directions you need to protect from them and them from your fowl . Correct Temperament to me that's number one . I will not tolerate an aggressive bird .
So there is no need of whatsoever to keep an aggressive male . And if you do keep an aggressive male and you use him as a breeder , i guarantee you you're going to get a certain percentage of his sons are going to be aggressive birds , because temperament will breed forward .
No , I mean , i can't in good faith breed a bird that does that , no matter how good they are . you know , i have grandkids myself , so you know .
I just get tired of looking over my shoulder , wondering when is he going to grab me , because sooner or later it's going to happen if you got an aggressive bird . But how do we go about getting started ?
Well , as I mentioned , I started initially with hatchery stock . I ordered day old chicks and I ordered some hatching eggs and you know , like everybody , it was the learning process . Speaking of hatching , eggs .
That's the way a lot of us get started . That's the way a lot of us pick up a new breeder , a new variety of hatching eggs from a friend . But if you've never run an incubator before , i don't recommend you start out with hatching eggs because that is a big learning curve to run learning how to run an incubator .
That's a time and educational and financial investment . Not only that . I think you'd be better off , you know , talking with the breeder that you were thinking about maybe getting your eggs from and saying , hey , could you give me some started chicks ?
Some will , most won't , most only will sell . You're going to get their culls , adult birds , okay Okay . But the advantage of getting an adult bird is what you see is what you got . You know , with baby chicks or with eggs It's a crap shoot . You don't know how they're going to develop and turn out . But lottery 200 , right , if you're lucky .
Oh yeah , with adult birds , what you're holding in your hand is what that bird is going to be Now , depending on the breed , he may still be maturing size-wise , but you got an idea of the body . Shape is right , the comb is right , is the color right ? You can pretty much tell . So that's an advantage to start at night .
It's also the most expensive way to start .
But all the hard work has pretty much been done in the expensive part the feed .
Most folks like it . It's the expensive way to start . It's really not . You're saving yourself a lot of money . You're not having to raise 50 chicks to get five to keep .
Okay , If you keep five out of 50 , you got to take into account those other 45 little eating at the same time , So that you got to add that expense in So adult stock , even though they may set you back anywhere from a hundred to $300 for a trio . But it's the best way And , trust me , you'll have a lot less invested in those birds .
And you're , having gone through this myself , i am easily five to 10 years ahead in my breeding program by investing upfront in the best possible quality stock I could find From a breeder in my local area who had similar goals for his flock , and they stand on the backs of other breeders before them . I can trace my line back 50 years .
And I think that's important . I mean , some of the breeders that handle them are no longer with us . I can look up their show records . It's all in the journals . And if your breeder is not willing to share with you the provenance of their birds , maybe you don't want them .
Because I think the reputable breeder , the person who's done their research and done their work over the past five , 10 , 15 or 50 years , is going to have this information readily available for the person that's considering taking over their breed .
Yeah , and a lot of times that that is the relationship that builds is sort of a master apprentice relationship , because I know I'm personal to my birds . I want to see the people that get them start off the best possible . So I say you know , you can benefit from my experience or you can do it your way .
Some people choose to do it their way And they usually come back after six months or a year and say , okay , what am I doing wrong ? And then we can massage the process a little bit .
John , and this is something you're dealing with right now , and that's infrastructure . Yes , tell the folks a little bit about what they're going to need for their infrastructure .
Well , it depends on where you're starting , but at the very minimum you're going to need some sort of a chicken coop or house to keep them out of the elements , away from predators . Around that , some sort of a fence . Usually , again , keep the chickens in and predators out . It's more to keep predators out than chickens in .
On that I have a layer of electric fence , not because we're in a high predator area . I keep saying the word predator a lot , but that to me , is the single most thing about infrastructure is looking at ways threats to your birds can get in and ways your birds can get out
¶ Raising Chickens
. So what do you have available for buildings ? You know , can you put up a chicken coop ? Can you buy a chicken coop locally ?
I was able to find a really nice locally Amish built coop before COVID for a very reasonable price and they actually I was a men and I delivered it for the Amish Kind of an interesting relationship up here And then I had them build a barn for me later because I was so impressed with their work .
So that was about $600 investment and that'll house about 18 birds . Off the front of that I saved a little money and got two 10 by 10 dog kennels , the chain link kennels , and if you assemble them in to end , you can get a 30 by 10 foot run for the birds , which is more than adequate space for that size housing 18 birds .
30 by 10 run And then they have access to well , basically an acre on my property And when they do go over the fence and they do they can go anywhere they want in the neighborhood , where thousands of acres of unrestricted excess And folks if you're going to start with baby chicks , you're going to need a brooder or some keep them warm If they're coming out of
the incubator . You got to keep them warm . You got to keep them dry food water .
That's another learning curve . What about feeders ? What about waterers ? Do you have adequate feeders for the number of birds you have ? We'll get into this on a later show , but for ever so many birds , you need so many inches of feeder space .
Well , one of the best things I found is when you're going to have a feeder space , when the birds first get home , just lay down some newspaper and dump the food right there and put the birds right on top of the food . So they're standing ankle deep in it .
Speaking of food , you're going to have to have some age appropriate feed starter . You want to feed your chick from day one to about the time they're eight weeks old And you're looking at something that's about 20 to 22% protein .
And something that we're going to harp on a lot later . I'm sure is , but don't get that M medicated if you can avoid it , some areas you just have to get it .
If you can avoid it , it's best not to , because you're actually pre-treating against something you probably don't need to worry about anyways , and probably folks is used to treat or not treat , but prevent coxidiosis , which is a little protozoan that gets in the intestinal lining of young birds . It can actually lead to death .
but if you're not in a wet , humid area you're probably not having a huge problem with coxidiosis And we'll cover this more in a later show . but you can do the same thing by feeding them yogurt for the first four weeks of their life and what to eat .
Simple concept of beneficial exclusion . Let's put some microbes deposited on their intestinal lining to fill up the void , so the coxidiosis protozoans can't attach And we don't need to worry about it .
After your chicks hit that eight-wheat mark , you need to transition them over to a grower feed , which is around 18 to 20% protein , and you maintain them on grower feed until they start laying .
Another thing that we kind of skipped over I think is hugely important is grit . I actually have grit in my brooder . On day one I screen it down to 1.25 of an inch because I have a little that most gardeners have for sieving their starting soil , and day one they're on the smallest gray that I can give them .
Folks what John's talking about . grit is actually crushed granite And the reason you feed them that birds and just feed it goes into the crop and it gets some enzymes added to it and then it slowly works its way into the gizzard , which is that big muscle that actually grinds and helps pulverize the feed so they can absorb the nutrients in it .
Birds have a beak for tearing and ripping , but they swallow their chunks whole And then the mastication happens down in the gizzard that basically the grit becomes their teeth . It would be like giving me a beautiful eight-ounce filet mignon and then making me take out my dentures and try to eat it .
I always keep grit in front of you . Birds , whether it's baby chick or layers , they all be grit all the time . It comes in basically three sizes There's a size for baby chick and there's a size for growing birds , and then they transition into the layer size .
You may be wondering why feed them grit if it's an insoluble material And granite is certainly insoluble . It will get worn down in the birds , gizzard and become smaller and smaller until it finally passes out through the intestines and through the poop .
So that's why you always want to give them grit And don't fall into telling you that , oh hey , my birds pick up all the grit they need , free ranging .
So I live in Vermont where 99% of all the grit used in the poultry industry comes from . There's a place called Northeast Material Handling down in Berry . That's called the Rock of Ages Quarry And we have some beautiful pink granite .
So if you ever get that pink granite , it came down the road from us And I live on top of a pile of what we call glacial tillage . Here I don't need to buy grit . I'm one of the few people in the world that probably doesn't need to buy grit and I still do .
I live basically on a sand mound here in Florida . we got , all we got is sand And we don't have any particles big enough once you get them past the chick stage .
That's important too , because I didn't realize this till . We were talking with Jeff Matt a couple of weeks ago And I thought the grit basically went in and passed through with the food , but he said the larger particles stay in there until they're worn down enough to pass .
So grit I like to refer to as the most underutilized supplement propulatory .
It is , and it's probably the least expensive way to unlock the most amount of nutrient value from your food . Yeah , definitely more so than fermenting , and I'm making air quotes when I say ferment .
I may even say it with a little disdain next time , but if we want to talk about the year I spent in a college research environment with nothing significant to report from the great fermentation experiment , we can do that .
Don't forget yourself , because you're the key element in keeping poultry , and by that you need all the education you can find , because you don't know what you don't know , and when I first started I didn't know a lot .
Trust me , right , right , you know I started in heritage pasture poultry at the college . We were raising meat birds to serve in the cafeteria . I didn't really know .
Well , the first time I heard about the standard of perfection , somebody mentioned oh , that's covered in the SOP , and I went to the warm room to look at the bookshelf for our standard operating procedure . And I went no , no , no , that's the standard of perfection . We don't have one .
But you know , they knew my military mindset and said you can use that like a standard operating procedure , because everything you need to know is in that book . So I got myself a copy of that book And they're absolutely right . The only thing I need to know is right there , written by the people who designed or built the birds in the first place .
This is how to care for the bird that I built for you . It's like the owner's manual to your car . You used to be able to go get a hill Haynes , haynes or Chilton manual at the auto parts store . Yeah , you can't do that anymore . No , this is like that for your bird .
This is the owner repair service manual for your bird , even if you run up against management questions or you know coop designs .
Check with your local Ag Extension office . They probably got a ton of publications they can point you to . I know there's a lot of resources available online .
Your local Ag agents going to have the advice that's more pertinent to your area . They're going to know what does well there , what doesn't do well , what your neighbors are being successful with or not , and be able to guide you in the right direction .
I talked about information available online and there is a lot of good information online but sadly there's a lot of poor , non-trustworthy information online . There's a lot of group and they start getting off into the emotional aspect and that's not going to do you any good in learning how to keep poultry .
It's hard to find a good group , but once you do , stick with it . That's why I started the poultry keepers 360 group , because I wanted to be based on scientific information , on personal experience , information that folks could trust .
Being able to say I've done this and I'm here to help you get through it is hugely enabling to people as well .
People find a lot of information that you can use in historical publications . These birds that we created a lot of them are just like they were in the 40s or 50s and you can go back . I love to go to a site called archiveorg and you can find hundreds of poultry publications online there .
That was the heyday of what I consider citizen science . Poultry's were communicating through the monthly or by yearly breed journals . Somebody would write a letter in . It would be published and mailed out to all the other breeders that got that journal . Other people would be compelled to write back and share their findings .
The whole community really raised itself up and it was a beautiful breeding ground . Excuse the pun for this sharing of knowledge and acceleration of the process . It happens online now on a lot of the online forums .
You just need to be able to sift through the flotsam and the jetsam , best advice I can give you if you're on a new group , just sit back and watch and listen what's being posted . The advice is being given . If it makes sense , okay . if it throws up a red flag for you , it's like I don't know so much about that .
Well , might be time to search for a new group .
Well , i also tend to find that if I tend to ignore posts that have a lot of exclamation points and all capitalized words , i just go whatever it is . There's too much emotion . I probably don't even want to read it anyways .
And you know there's some good information available on YouTube .
There's some fantastic YouTube channels out there . Yeah , i found you guys through poultry keepers 360 YouTube and I got there originally from the old sustainable poultry network . I've recently found Boiles Wow , i mean , her video series on raising the American breast is fantastic . Yeah , she's a good gal .
Yeah , the videos on the comparative anatomy between the birds is one of the best I've ever seen .
So listen to her talk about what's important in a dual purpose bird for her is just spectacular . You know , I just want to reach out and hug her neck when she gets into those kind of tight tribes , but I love it .
Well , she's very specific about what she wants from her flock and she is . I think she , like all of us , gets a little sidetracked . You know , we get a bird that catches her eye and like , ooh , this is the one , this is the one . You know we're all guilty of that . Her birds are fantastic .
I'd be proud to have any one of them in my flock , even the one she had for dinner last night , but that was another outstanding video . I mean , other than you know , not being able to show the actual dispatching act taking a bird from you know , from basically from choosing that this is the bird that's going to be dinner , to serving dinner .
Well , folks , you know we've covered a fair amount of ground .
Oh man , these are just the basics to get you started .
And just literally scratch the surface of the soil here with a toothpick . But that's what our podcast is all about . We want to make it informational for you , we want to make it fun , but we want to make you a better poultry keeper .
Now , if you have any comments or suggestions , things we could talk about , or if you have any questions about things that came up on the show , you can send us an email .
Please , please , reach out to us . We really want this show to be of use and of interest to the listeners . Otherwise , there's no point us doing it Exactly . So , what do you want to hear ? What do you want to know Next ?
So until then , John , what are we going to do ?
I don't know . We keep scratching and pecking and clucking or something like that .
Until then keep your birds scratching and pecking . We'll talk to you in the next episode . Folks , bye-bye , bye-bye . Email us at poultrykeeperspodcastatgmailcom . You will find our email address , plus other useful links , in this episode's show
¶ Chicken Breeds and Egg Colors
notes . You may think that's a weird decision , but it's funny . In certain geographical areas there's a preference for one color over another , and it's usually between white and brown .
Well , i remember growing up the . The jingle is still indelibly burned into my head Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh . That was the commercial on TV and on the radio and everything . So when you went to the grocery store you didn't touch white eggs because those were shipped in . You wanted the brown eggs .
Any difference in the egg itself , nutritionally , flavor wise , it's all the same .
You can also . You know some folks are after blue colored eggs and you get these from Americana leg bars and there's some other ones out there .
I've seen them that they look like Easter eggs . They come out of the chicken looking like they were painted .
And I'm going to throw a little trivia on you here , john If you break open a white chilled egg , what's the color of the shell on the inside ? White , okay . You break open a brown chilled egg , what's the color on the inside ?
White .
You break open a blue egg . What's the color on the inside ? Blue , exactly . They have a unique characteristic , isn't that ?
the egg color permeates the entire shell , from the outside to the outside , and he took me back to my animal sciences class because of a retro virus , and I've actually heard predictions that eventually all the eggs will become blue as the retro virus works its way around the planet .
Just changes the color of the eggs . Believe it or not , you can get designer egg colors .
Can an egg be two , half and half , two different colors , swirl .
For example , you cross a blue egg layer with a brown egg layer and that produces a green egg layer , because the brown pigment is deposited on the outside of the egg shell as it's being laid . So since the egg shell starts out blue , you add that brown color in there .
Okay , so it's like a glaze on a porcelain . Yeah , yeah .
Exactly , and you can get them in light greens , you can get them in dark greens . Some of the more recent colors that are being advertised are olive eggs or sage colored eggs .
The people that are selling the dozens or 18 packs that are all different colors . They're the first ones to sell out at farmers market .
Absolutely , and I missed one because while we were on brown shell eggs , i should have mentioned that you can get extremely brown , dark brown eggs . These are usually some breeds , like morons typically , or a couple of others . Barnabelers used to , but they're not so much anymore .
And well , summers lay more of a terracotta colored egg , but the morons can be very , very dark to the point that they almost can look black . But it's funny , people who breed morons are after that extreme dark egg . They grade those eggs by color for being the very lightest , nine being the very darkest .
But if you take them to the farmers market and you lay them out there , people will invariably go for the number fives and number six . Then they will for the very , very dark eggs . We talked about geographical location and we talked about feather type and we talked about comb type .
But some of the breeds are better for some things than they are for others and we've alluded to that a little bit . But just kind of bring us up to speed on that .
Well , i personally try to steer myself towards what we consider the dual purpose breeds the chicken that's going to be a good egg layer and a good meat producer . They're not necessarily going to be outstanding either , but they can go either way and I kind of like that .
So at hatch and when I'm sorting , you know , any male that's not absolutely tip top to breed with goes to freezer camp . I like to utilize my flock . They therapy their pets a little bit , but they're also food , so I like a bird that I can count on . I'm very passionate about genetic preservation and preservation of the breed .
I seem to get drawn into these weird little side things . Here's some you know old English treasured fowls . You can have these for free . They're a little weird , they're downright insane , but we'll figure them out and they may stay or they may not . Yeah , i've gone through the hatchery birds .
They were fun , they were nice , they did really well for the first 18 months and then they fell off . They went into their first mall and when they came back around their performance was horrible . It's hard to justify when feed's $25 for a 50 pound bag and then you count how many eggs you're getting out of the bird on her third year .
It doesn't make sense to keep a third year bird , unless it's a standard red bird that you're using for breeding . If a bird made it to her third year on my farm , she's pretty spectacular , or he is pretty spectacular .
That's one thing I want to point out about the advantage of standard bred poultry over the hatchery birds . Hatchery birds are not selected for longevity . Standard bred birds will go . I've had females seven or eight years old that I was still hatching eggs from Hatchery birds . Like you said , they hit that 18 to 24 months wall and boom , that's it .
The nice thing is that it's not specific to hatchery birds . All birds will do that when they're hatched . You're usually going to get 18 to 24 months out of lay , out of the first lay cycle of a bird , because they don't molt during the first molting season with the rest of your flock .
If you always have new generations coming back behind the older birds , you can keep yourselves in eggs and just rotate them out .
There are breeds that are not designed specifically for egg production , or specifically for meat production , or for dual purpose Breeds like Polish . So what about ornamental breeds ? What's your thoughts on ornamental breeds ?
That takes a lot of breeding knowledge . I tried crested birds our first year here . No single crested bird lasted more than 48 hours on open pasture .
One of the things that we haven't touched on and I think it's important that when you're considering breeds is temperament of the birds . Nobody likes an aggressive rooster , so that's one of the things you want to evaluate temperament of the breeds . The best way to do that is to talk to somebody that's got them . I'll give you an example .
There's no secret that Rhode Island Reds are my favorite breed . I have never had an aggressive standard bred Rhode Island Red male ever . I have had Rhode Island Reds from hatcheries that would fight a chainsaw . If they had an opportunity , they can be extremely aggressive .
So those are the sort of things you want to take into consideration , especially if you've got young kids or grandkids .
Sure , it can be a traumatic event to have a bird fly up in your face , even for an adult who's used to it , and those spurs are dangerous and the claws can cut . So that does bring up a good point about safety .
If you have youngsters or domestic animals that aren't used to being around your fowls , those both directions you need to protect your from them and them from your fowl . Correct , correct Temperament . To me that's number one . I will not tolerate an aggressive bird .
So there is no need whatsoever to keep an aggressive male . And if you do keep an aggressive male and you use him as a breeder , i guarantee you you're going to get a certain percentage of his sons are going to be aggressive birds , because temperament will breed forward .
No , I mean , i can't in good faith breed a bird that does that , no matter how good they are . You know , i have grandkids myself , so you know .
I just get tired of looking over my shoulder , wondering when is he going to grab me , because sooner or later it's going to happen if you got an aggressive bird . But how do we go about getting started ?
Well , as I mentioned , i started initially with hatchery stock . I ordered day old chicks and I ordered some hatching eggs and , like everybody , it was the learning process . Speaking of hatching , eggs .
That's the way a lot of us get started . That's the way a lot of us pick up a new breeder and new varieties from hatching eggs from a friend . But if you've never run an incubator before , i don't recommend you start out with hatching eggs because that is a big learning curve to run learning how to run an incubator .
That's a time and educational and financial investment Not only . Yeah , i think you'd be better off , you know , talking with the breeder that you were thinking about maybe getting your eggs from and saying , hey , could you give me some started chicks ?
Some will , most won't , most only will sell .
You're going to get their culls .
Adult birds Okay , okay . But the advantage of getting an adult bird is what you see is what you got . You know , with baby chicks or with eggs , it's a crapshoot . You don't know how they go to develop and turn out .
It's a lottery , one in a hundred , right , if you're lucky .
You're lucky with adult birds . What you're holding in your hand is what that bird is going to be Now , depending on the breed . he may still be maturing size wise , but you got an idea of the body . shape is right , the comb is right . Is the color right ? You can pretty well tell . So that's an advantage to start it Now .
it's also the most expensive way to start .
But you know , all the hard work has pretty much been done and the expensive part to feed .
Most folks think it's the expensive way to start . It's really not . You're saving yourself a lot of money . You're not having to raise 50 chicks to get five to keep .
Okay , if you keep five out of 50 , you got to take into account those other 45 little feet and at the same time , so that you got to add that expense in So adult stock , even though they may set you back anywhere from a hundred to $300 for a trio . But it's the best way And , trust me , you'll have a lot less invested in those birds .
And you're , having gone through this myself , i am easily five to 10 years ahead in my breeding program by investing upfront in the best possible quality stock I could find from a breeder in my local area who had similar goals for his flock . And you know they stand on the backs of other breeders before them .
I can trace my line back 50 years and I'm in that support . I mean , some of the breeders that handle them are no longer with us . I can look up their show records It's all in the journals . And if your breeder is not willing to share with you the provenance of their birds , maybe you don't want them .
Because I think the reputable breeder , the person who's done their research and done their work over the past Five , ten , fifteen or fifty years , is gonna have this information readily available For the person that's considering taking over their breed .
Yeah , and a lot of times that that is the relationship that builds is sort of a master apprentice relationship , because I know I'm personal to my birds . I want to see the people that get them start off the best possible . So I say you know , you can benefit from my experience or you can do it your way .
Some people choose it to do it their way and they usually come back after six months or a year and say , okay , what am I doing wrong ? and then we can massage the process a little bit .
Mm-hmm , john , and this is something you're dealing with right now , and that's infrastructure . Yes , tell the folks a little bit about what they're gonna need for their infrastructure .
Well , it depends on where you're starting , but at the , at the very minimum , you're gonna need some sort of a chicken coop or house to keep them out of the elements , away from predators Around that , some sort of a fence , usually , again , to keep the chickens in predators out . It's more to keep predators out than chickens in Around that .
I have a layer of electric fence , not because we're in a high predator area . I keep saying the word predator a lot , but that to me is the single most thing about Infrastructures looking at ways threats to your birds can get in and ways your birds can get out . So what do you have available for buildings ? You know , can you put up a chicken coop ?
Can you buy a chicken coop locally ? I Was able to find a really nice locally Amish built coop before COVID for a very reasonable price and they actually I was a men and I delivered it for the , the Amish It's kind of an interesting relationship up here and then I had them build a barn for me later because I was so impressed with their work .
So that was about $600 investment and that'll house about 18 birds off the front of that . Off the front of that I saved a little money and got two 10 by 10 dog kennels , the chain link kennels , mm-hmm , and if you assemble them end to end you can get a 30 by 10 foot run For the birds , which is more than adequate space for that size housing 18 birds .
30 by 10 run great . And then they have access to Well , basically an acre on my property , and when they do go over the fence and they do , you know they can go anywhere they want in the neighborhood where thousands of acres of unrestricted access And folks , if you're gonna start with baby chicks , you're gonna need a brooder or
¶ Raising Poultry
some .
Keep them , yeah , if they're coming out of the incubator .
You got to keep them warm . You got to keep them dry food water .
That's another learning curve . You know , what about feeders ? What about waterers ? You know , do you have adequate feeders for the number of birds you have ? we'll get into this on a later show , but forever , so many birds , you need so many inches or feet of feeder space . Well , one of the things water .
Best things I found is when the birds first get home . Just lay down some newspaper and dump the food right there and put the birds right on top of the food So they're standing ankle deep in it .
Speaking of food , you're gonna have to have some age appropriate feeds . Starter , you want to feed your chicks from day one till about the time they're eight weeks old And you're looking at something that's about 20 to 22% Protein and something that we're gonna harp on a lot later , i'm sure , is don't get that M Medicated .
If you can avoid it , some areas you just have to get it .
Yeah , if you can avoid it , it's best not to , because you're you're actually pre-treating against something you probably Don't need to worry about anyways , and and probably in the folks is used to treat or not treat but prevent coxidiosis , which is a little protozoa , and it gets in the intestinal lining of of young birds . It can actually lead to death .
But if you're not in a wet , humid area , you probably not having a huge problem with coxidiosis and we'll cover this more in a later show . But you , you can do the same thing by feeding them yogurt for the first four weeks of their life and once a week .
Simple concept of beneficial exclusion . Let's put some you know , microbes deposited on their intestinal lining to fill up the void . So the coxidiosis protozoans can't attach and we don't need to worry about it .
After your chicks hit that eight week mark , you need to transition them over to a grower feed , which is around 18 to 20% protein , and you maintain them on grower feed till they start laying Again mm-hmm .
another thing that we kind of skipped over I think it's hugely important is grit . I Actually have grit in my brooder .
on day one I screen it down to 125th of an inch because I have a little that most gardeners have for you know , sieving their starting soil , and Day one they're , on this , the smallest great that I can give them folks what John's talking about .
Grit is actually crushed granite and The reason you feed them that Birds and just feed .
It goes into the crop and it gets some enzymes added to it And then it slowly works its way into the gizzard , which is that big muscle that actually grinds and helps pulverize the feed so they can Absorb the nutrients in it birds have a beak for tearing and ripping , but they swallow their chunks whole and then the mastication happens down in the gizzard that
the basically the grit becomes their teeth .
It would be like giving Me a beautiful eight ounce filet mignon and then making me take out my dentures and try to eat it .
Always keep grit in front of you birds , whether it's baby chicks or layers They all need grit all the time . It comes in Basically three sizes There's a size for baby chick and there's a size for growing birds and then they transition into the layer size . You may be wondering why Feed them grit if it's an insoluble material and granted is certainly insoluble .
But It will get worn down and the birds gizzard and become smaller and smaller till it finally passes out Through the intestines and through the poop . So that's why you always want to give them grit and don't fall into folks telling you that oh hey , my birds pick up all the grit .
They need free range and So I live in Vermont where 99% of all the grit used in the poultry industry comes from . There's a place called Northeast Material Handling down in Berry . That's called the Rock of Ages Quarry And we have some beautiful pink granite .
So if you ever get that pink granite , it came from down the road from us And I live on top of a pile of what we call glacial tillage . Here I don't need to buy grit . I'm one of the few people in the world that probably doesn't need to buy grit and I still do .
Well , they've basically on a sand mound here in Florida . All we got is sand And we don't have any particles big enough once you get them past the chick stage .
That's important too , because I didn't realize this till . We were talking with Jeff Matt a couple of weeks ago And I thought the grit basically went in and passed through with the food , but he said the larger particles stay in there until they're worn down enough to pass .
Yes , so grit I like to refer to as the most underutilized supplement for poultry .
It is , and it's probably the least expensive way to unlock the most amount of nutrient value from your food . Definitely more so than fermenting , and I'm making near quotes when I say fermenting .
I may even say it with a little disdain next time , but if we want to talk about the year I spent in a college research environment with nothing significant to report from the great fermentation experiment , we can do that .
Don't forget yourself , because you're the key element in keeping poultry , and by that you need all the education you can find , because you don't know what you don't know , and when I first started I didn't know a lot . Trust me , right , right .
You know , i started in heritage pasture poultry at the college . We were raising meat birds to serve in the cafeteria . I didn't really know . Well , the first time I heard about the standard of perfection , somebody mentioned oh , that's covered in the SOP .
And I went to the warm room to look at the book shelf for our standard operating procedure And I went no , no , no , that's the standard of perfection . We don't have one . But you know they knew my military mindset and said you can use that like a standard operating procedure because everything you need to know is in that book .
So I got myself a copy of that book and they're absolutely right . Everything I need to know is right there , written by the people who designed or built the birds in the first place . This is how to care for the bird that I built for you . It's like the owner's manual to your car .
You used to be able to go get a hill Haynes , haynes or children manual at the auto parts store . Yeah , that I'm . Yeah . You can't do that anymore . No , this is like that for your bird . This is the owner repair service manual for your bird .
¶ Poultry Keeping Resources and Communities
And if you run up against management questions or you know coop designs , check with your local Ag Extension office . They've probably got a ton of publications they can point you to . I know there's a lot of resources available online .
Your local Ag agent is going to have the advice that's more pertinent to your area . They're going to know what does well there , what doesn't do well , what your neighbors are being successful with or not , and be able to guide you in the right direction .
I talked about information available online and there is a lot of good information online , but sadly there's a lot of poor , non-trust worthy information online . There's a lot of groups and they start getting off into the emotional aspect and that's not going to do you any good in learning how to keep poultry .
It's hard to find a good group , but once you do , stick with it , you know . That's why I started the poultry keepers 360 group , because I wanted to be based on scientific information , on personal experience , information that folks could trust , and just being able to say I've done this and I'm here to help you get through it .
Yes , It is hugely enabling to people as well .
You'll find a lot of information that you can use in historical publications . You know these birds that we created . A lot of them are just like they were in the 40s or 50s , and you can go back . I love to go to a site called archivearcivearchiveorg and you can find hundreds of poultry publications online there .
Yes , i mean , that was the heyday of what I consider citizen science Different . You know , breeders were communicating through the monthly or , you know , by yearly breed journals . Somebody would write a letter in . It would be published and mailed out to all the other breeders that got that journal .
Other people would be compelled to write back and share their findings and the whole community really raised itself up and it was a beautiful breeding ground . Excuse the pun for this sharing of knowledge and acceleration of the process . It happens online now on a lot of the online forums . You just need to be able to sift through the flotsam and the jetsam .
Best advice I can give you if you're on a new group , just sit back and watch and listen what's being posted . The advice is being given . If it makes sense , okay . If it throws up a red flag for you , it's like no , i don't know so much about that . Well , might be time to search for a new group .
Well , i also tend to find that if I tend to ignore posts that have a lot of exclamation points and all capitalized words , yes , i just go . Whatever it is , there's too much emotion that I probably don't even want to read it anyways .
And you know there's some good information available on YouTube .
There's some fantastic YouTube channels out there . Yeah , i mean , i found you guys through the poultry keepers 360 YouTube and I got there originally from the old sustainable poultry network . I've recently found Boiles . Wow , i mean , her video series on raising the American breast is fantastic . Yes , she's a good gal .
Yeah , the videos on the comparative anatomy between the birds is one of the best I've ever seen .
To listen to her talk about what's important in a dual-purpose bird for her is just spectacular . You know , i just want to reach out and hug her neck when she gets into those kind of tie tribes , but I love it Well she's very specific about what she wants from her flock and she is .
I think she , like all of us , gets a little sidetracked . You know we get a bird that catches her eye and like , oh , this is the one , this is the one , and you know we're all guilty of that . Her birds are fantastic . I'd be proud to have any one of them in my flock , even the one she had for dinner last night , but that was another outstanding video .
I mean , other than you know , not being able to show the actual dispatching act taking a bird from , you know , from , basically from choosing that this is the bird that's going to be dinner to serving dinner .
Well , folks , you know we've covered a fair amount of ground . Oh man , these are just the basics to get you started , and just literally , literally scratch the surface of the soil here with a toothpick . But that's what our podcast is all about .
We want to make it informational for you , we want to make it fun , but we want to make you a better poultry keeper . Now , if you have any comments or suggestions , things we can talk about , or if you have any questions about things that came up on the show , you can send us an email . Email us at poultrykeeperspodcastcom .
You'll find our email address plus other useful links in this episode's show notes , please please reach out to us .
We really want this show to be of use and of interest to the listeners . Otherwise there's no point us doing it . So what do you want to hear ? What do you want to know ? Excellent .
So until then , John , what are we going to do ?
I don't know . We keep scratching and pecking and clucking or something like that .
Until then , keep your birds scratching and pecking . We'll talk to you in the next episode . Folks , bye-bye , thank you .