Don't Breed That Chicken Until You Check These Traits!

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome back to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. I'm Rip Stal vey, and today we're talking about smart selection, thinning your flock with purpose and precision. John Gunterman and Mandelyn Royal and I will be diving deep into one of the most powerful and most often misunderstood tools, flock selection. Now, whether you're raising birds for eggs, meat, or show or simply to preserve a heritage line, how you thin your flock during grow out can make a can make or break your progress. In this episode, we'll talk about what to look for, when to start evaluating, and how to use your own birds to make better decisions. Peer against peer. So grab a cup of coffee, maybe even a notepad, and let's dig in because we're ready to go. Madeline, John, good morning. Good to see you guys again.

Speaker 3 1:02

Good morning. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 1:04

It is a fun day in paradise today. I'm looking forward to the show. Oh, yeah. Yep. It's it's probably one of the most misunderstood topics that people come across, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 1:17

And I really hope we're going to simplify that. And distill it down to make it the easiest topic to understand.

Speaker 1 1:23

Absolutely. I like to think of it as every time you feed your birds, it's a vote for your flock's future. And the question I always ask myself, who deserves my feed today?

Speaker 3 1:38

I always pause and reflect on the pen I'm feeding, or maybe I'm just swapping out their drinker or putting them to bed at night, but I just stop and look at that group, specifically looking for anyone that probably shouldn't be in that group every day.

Speaker 2 1:55

I just look for any characteristic that I don't want to carry forward. And they're deselected for future breeding. Simple as that. You may be 95%, and we're going to keep you around just in case 95%'s good enough for who it's for. But if you've got a feature that I don't like, I'm not even considering you. It takes a lot to get up the hill to the main hen house. Most of my birds live out their lives down there in the pasture overlooking the pond, and they don't ever go up the hill.

Speaker 1 2:25

Yeah, I think there's a big difference, and many folks don't realize this, but there's a big difference between maintaining your flock versus improving your flock or your breed. And we've talked about this before, and we see it all the time on online eBay and whatnot, but people are just throwing birds together and mating them and trying to make a quick buck off of them. And man, that never works out.

Speaker 2 2:53

I love it when I see show quality chicks.

Speaker 3 2:56

Well no, no how are show quality hatching eggs. That's always a nice selling point.

Speaker 2 3:02

I can tell you who the mom and the pop was and tell you how many eggs that mom laid in the past year and what her survivability rate has been for the past year. But other than that, no, I can't guarantee it's gonna win any awards.

Speaker 1 3:15

People forget that breeders have culls at the same rate that anybody else does. And maybe 10% of their birds are gonna be worth keeping and moving their flock forward.

unknown 3:25

Yep.

Speaker 3 3:26

At the end of the day, it boils down to percentages. And if you paramated, it's gonna give you a more clear understanding of how your percentages are actually breaking out into what's a good breeding quality bird, what's a possible show quality bird, and what's a bird that should probably only be doing breakfast egg production. And when you flock me and you increase your pool diversity, it gets harder and harder to track your percentages of what your actual coal rate is versus your rate of keeper birds. It makes more sense to shrink down what you're breeding from, and selection is how you do that, and it helps guide and steer that flock to being better to get past that maintenance phase.

Speaker 2 4:14

And if you do start seeing certain characteristics popping up that you don't like, you can go back and root them out. Sometimes sometimes it's not a retreat, but an advance to the rear.

Speaker 4:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:24

And that's where your records are going to come in handy, and you're gonna be able to say, you know what, with this hen with this rooster gave me this, but this rooster with this other hen gave me these other chicks that had these really desirable qualities. Maybe I should focus in that direction.

Speaker 1 4:38

I think that most people tend to keep too many average quality birds in their flock.

Speaker 2 4:48

If you have an overall average flock, that's all you can ever expect to have.

Speaker 1 4:53

Exactly right. You can't improve your flock, build a stronger, better flock using just average quality birds. Y'all don't have to be a few.

Speaker 2 5:03

I'm only setting eggs from hens that lay a minimum of five eggs per week consecutively before taking a pause. That's my minimum threshold for production going forward. If you're not laying me five eggs a week, you have no place on anybody's farm that's going to depend on you for food, sustenance, and a good return on investment, the amount of food going in versus the amount of food coming out.

Speaker 3 5:27

The way it was explained to me that made it really easy to understand was an old-time farmer sat me down and said, You can raise a $10 chicken or you can raise a $100 chicken. They need the same space, the same feed, the same daily care. You get to pick what kind of bird are you raising? And putting that to me that way made it go, it boils down to making poor selections, waste your time, your space, and your feed.

Speaker 1 6:03

Even if you're working with great genetics.

unknown 6:06

Sure.

Speaker 3 6:06

Because those good genetics need to be upheld. They need to be it's continual work. The work doesn't stop because you bought good birds. It just gave you a solid beginning to work from.

Speaker 2 6:19

And you should always be working to improve. If you're not moving forward, God, all these military cliches just keep coming into play. I'll stop. But it's so true. It's so true. You're it's a constant process. And if you slack off for even a generation, things can slide real fast in a direction you may not like.

Speaker 1 6:41

Let's talk a little bit about, I guess for lack of a better description, the timeline of thinning, what to watch for and when. I start looking for reasons to call birds as soon as I take them out of the hatcher. I don't wait. I don't want to overdo it, but I also don't want to leave an obviously inferior bird to have to carry it forward, beat it very fortunate, invest money into it.

Speaker 2 7:08

A navel not fully sealed even. Yep. Deformities of any kind.

Speaker 3 7:13

Pretty much any kind being the thing to harp on because I did for a while spend my time trying to save everyone for sentiment.

Speaker 2 7:24

Yep, you're weaking we're weakening your flock by doing that.

Speaker 3 7:27

Yeah, that eventually became really apparent. And those issues, you need to really spend your time doing your homework on getting to the bottom of why you saw those problems. Was it incubation? Was it nutrition? Was it genetics? Do your due diligence to figure out why you saw that, and it makes the decisions easier to manage later on.

Speaker 2 7:53

Oh, yeah, folks. You should be getting it. I'm really inspired. I want to start hearing back from the folks that have been listening for a while and been applying some of these concepts. And give us a reality check. Are your birds looking better today than they were two or three years before this podcast?

Speaker 3 8:12

Mine are.

Speaker 2 8:13

I know, mine are because I'm constantly learning and I'm constantly improving. And if there's a mistake to be made, I've made it and I probably will make it a few more times because I've taken a couple knocks in the head and I learn hard.

Speaker 3 8:25

Here in another 10, 15, 20 years, I expect to still be learning.

Speaker 1 8:28

I've been at this chicken business since I was three and I'm 74 now, and I still learn something new on a regular basis.

Speaker 3 8:38

Me too. I started at seven, I'm 42. There's still a lot more to learn.

Speaker 1 8:43

It's a lifelong process.

Speaker 3 8:45

And every time you start with a new group of genetics in your birds, you're starting over with how they're going to be and what's included in their genetics. It's a whole new adventure with every type you try.

Speaker 2 8:58

I I thought we've talked people out of crossing by this point. But seriously, if you want to look at your long-term sustainability and line consistency, that's what it's about. It's all about selecting and having a homogenous flock and just being very critical and attention to all the important details. Sorry, military folks.

Speaker 3 9:23

Well, that first couple of weeks, let's say the first four weeks, that's pretty universal in what you're looking for. Selection. You're looking for your most robust, you're looking for your healthiest, you're looking for the ones with the most energy, and the ones who kind of sit under the light too often in the brooder that don't get up and eat as often as the others do. Like those are the little notes you can start looking at in the beginning. And that's universal in all brooders. Someone's gonna be the leader, someone's gonna be the dud.

Speaker 2 9:56

Sure. And if you're interacting with your birds regularly, which you should be doing, again, if you weigh your birds every day for the first three weeks, that information is incredibly valuable to us the selection process. And just that level of interaction with your birds, even if it's for 30 seconds every day, just handling them, you're gonna be able to start sorting them and they're gonna start imprinting on you and them, and there's all sorts of helpful benefits to that. But in the selection process, you're evaluating bird against bird in a cohort, which you're always doing.

Speaker 1 10:32

John, you were talking about weighing your birds, and that is so important. I pay attention to the size that hatch. But by regularly weighing them as they grow during that first four weeks, I get a really good idea about their feed, their response to the feed that I'm using. I know I'm using a good quality feed, and I hope y'all are too. So if you know you've got a good quality feed, how they respond to that feed, how they grow is so important.

Speaker 2 11:02

I had a watering problem that I didn't realize until I was doing daily weights, and I had flushed the watering system and I weighed everybody. I cleaned the watering system, weighed everybody, and then put them back in, and I forgot to flush the system. And the very next day I noticed there was like no weight gain across the board. And I went, whoa, so something's wrong. And I realized that they weren't drinking because it still had some hydrogen peroxide-based cleaner in it. And I drained the system and flushed it, and they immediately started drinking the next day. The weight gain came. But even seeing that very slight, I'm used to a two to three gram gain at that phase of life. What is that gonna cost me at harvest time? It's super important during that phase of life that you always have feed and water in front of them at all times. And just being off of water makes them go off of feed. And then it affects the gain and affects the eel. So that whole hatch I consider just meat birds. I'm not even looking to move them forward just because they didn't drink water for 12 hours.

Speaker 1 12:07

And for the folks that are listening, that's so important. And you probably never would have picked up on that if you hadn't been weighing your birds on such a regular basis.

Speaker 2 12:16

If that had gone two days, I would have had dead birds in the brooder.

Speaker 1 12:20

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 12:21

Because at I think they were four or five days of age, they can't go two days without water.

Speaker 1 12:26

And you'd have been scratching your head trying to figure out what the problem was.

Speaker 2 12:30

Oh, I knew exactly what the problem was because the drain bucket was sitting right underneath the tap that I installed in the system. If you had ignored it, if you hadn't had a diagnosis problem, you would have wound up with dead birds. Absolutely. Especially at that stage of life.

Speaker 3 12:48

Sometimes I get a little frustrated when I see stories about catastrophic loss where a problem went unnoticed and now they have birds no longer in existence. And a disproportionate number of people sometimes seem to blame the source when they missed something that was it happened on the farm when they had the chicks. It wasn't the breeder, it wasn't the hatchery, it was a mistake that happened, but they didn't see that mistake, so they put the blame elsewhere.

Speaker 2 13:16

I would say that if you get a bird past uh day five without any deformities, it's all on you.

Speaker 1 13:25

Anytime that I would lose a bird or two, all right, and during the brooding stage. I knew I was feeding good feed, that wasn't the issue. I knew I had good genetics, that wasn't the issue. So the next thing it can be is something I've done management-wise that's caused that problem. But most folks just don't see themselves as being prone to making mistakes. I know I was. And boy, that can bite you big time.

Speaker 3 13:55

It can really frustrating for sure.

Speaker 2 14:00

Because ultimately, you come back to something there, Rip. Ultimately, it all comes back to one thing. The chicken tender. The person absolutely so you have to take that res I consider my chicken my junior enlisted. It's my job to get them through boot camp and deployed to the field and bring them back home. Yeah, for their welcome home barbecue or roast or sauce or whatever.

Speaker 1 14:25

After I get my birds out of that first four weeks, that first month, then I start to focus on feather growth and development. I'm still focused on vigor.

Speaker 2 14:38

I always don't necessarily want the first or the last.

Speaker 1 14:42

No. But you can also begin to check for structural alignment, body structure.

Speaker 3 14:54

This is when you're into that five to eight week point, is where I'm looking for mine to start widening out.

Speaker 1 15:00

Yes.

Speaker 3 15:01

And if they don't, then I know they're on the call list.

Speaker 2 15:05

How many body types do you think you can s distinctly differentiate in your flock?

Speaker 3 15:11

In my own flock? Yeah. Oh, like five. Because I have some diversity alongside my line bred birds and my experimental breeding let me see the range. And that range just in one breed, fascinating. It is in lots to sort through.

Speaker 2 15:31

Right. So the less of a sample set you start with, like having a rooster and a hen, or a rooster and a hen or two.

Speaker 3 15:40

That would tighten it up.

Speaker 2 15:41

You're going to have a much tighter genetic bottleneck. And as long as you maintain with enough rotational diversity, we've we've talked about that to keep it moving forward, you're moving more towards a tighter flock, I think. But yeah, that diversity, I would say about four or five distinct body types I can recognize out there. Even in the chicks. I'm like, oh yeah, I know you, and I know you.

Speaker 1 16:07

I've been very fortunate in that I'm working with a line of bread that's very old. They've been bred the same way for decades, and they are very consistent.

unknown 16:18

Yes.

Speaker 1 16:19

And so I can tell it at a glance when there's grow out that doesn't look like it should. I don't see it very much.

Speaker 2 16:28

Yes. And they've been grown in your general area with your general feed and water and husbandry practices. They're gonna get imported from some cold place and have to acclimate.

Speaker 1 16:42

And I say that to encourage people to really focus on the consistency of your flock because the more you do that and the more consistent your bird gets, your culling decisions are going to be much easier because you'll spot something that's out of the norm right off. Differences will be more dramatic. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 17:05

It's like the old system street song. Can we sing that without getting Probably not by the I can't sing anyways? One of these things is not like the other. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 17:15

And some of this is what we're talking about is going to be influenced by the breed itself. Do you have a very fast developing breed? Or do you have something that's more towards the longtime slow development like coaching or Brahmas or some of the Asiatic? Madeline, one thing I've always been impressed by your birds is they develop really good for a dual-purpose bird.

Speaker 3 17:47

That's great for impatient people. They'll tell you pretty early.

Speaker 1 17:52

One thing I see in John's birds is the consistency.

Speaker 3 17:56

Oh yeah. Not only the address interrupt.

Speaker 1 18:01

But the chicks. You can spot their type just bam. Even as chicks.

Speaker 3 18:07

I have some birds in my little project pen that even though they're 75% American breasts, that level of breeding that went into the Schintepler outcross, it's it's still there just as strong. I'm like, these are 75% a completely different breed. Why do they look like the one 25% parent? Wow.

Speaker 1 18:32

Yes.

Speaker 2 18:33

The horse is breeding and of yeah, it's generations and generations of selection. Now that you've met my upstream breeder, I get goosebumps thinking about you getting some hatching eggs straight from them. I get goosebumps. In fact, I've got a rooster out here named Hale that came from him. He said, Hey, I've got a rooster that I heard you desperately need. And I'm like, Uh oh, okay.

Speaker 1 19:08

And wow. See great. After we get through the second month and start into that nine to twelve week period. Even with the slower growing ones, you'll begin to see early hints about what their brood type brood, their breed type is going to be.

Speaker 2 19:26

Definitely.

Speaker 1 19:26

You're gonna see temperament and postures. And this is when you can really start to see the width of body on it. At least you can on my bird.

unknown 19:35

Yep.

Speaker 3 19:36

Mine too.

Speaker 2 19:37

John's I've got some that I'm looking at with I've got a particular line. The bird is more of an upright head posture, like a cornish posture with a stout chest, kind of like standing at attention. Versus there's a bird that's got a slightly slouched shoulder-looking thing. And I'm like, okay, I like you better because you just look better, stronger. You're looking too many potential predator.

Speaker 3 20:01

I'm looking for a level stance, nothing too upright because some of them are pretty posty, and it almost implies they're not going to get the length I need them to get, uh-huh. Just by that early expression of the structure they're developing. Like I know they all have a long time to grow and to keep maturing.

Speaker 1 20:22

Mandelyn, I've got a question for you. Those very upright chicks, do you also find that they are very shallow in their body with very little breast?

Speaker 3 20:33

A little short in the back. They're more penguin than chicken sometimes.

Speaker 2 20:36

That's a good description. Yeah, I'm looking for the bulldozers. So when they're out there at this level of age and they start doing their little chest bump and wing flapping thing, I'm looking for the guy that's got the chess and the mass behind him. I almost said the word without the M to win these little chest bumping contests. That's the natural progression. That's how they would naturally choose who's uh it out there. So by observing this and going, Oh, obviously, that's the leader of the pack. They've established themselves to the pack and to me.

Speaker 1 21:09

I think by the time birds hit around 13 to 16 weeks for months of age, you can get a really good idea about how they're going to finish out, what your condition's gonna be.

Speaker 3 21:24

Yeah, that's right before another molt that'll change them, and you have to give them tolerance anytime they're in a molt because you're not seeing the real bird while they're transitioning feathers.

Speaker 1 21:36

Yeah, and that's something I d I don't know if we've ever mentioned on this show. But chicks will go through three molts before they mature. You have to be tuned into that, and you have to learn about when your birds, your breed, and your line will go through that process because it can vary from breed to breed and line to line.

Speaker 2 22:00

The collection process starts at chick down. I'm looking for the silvery down chicks, not the golden yellow down chicks. And that goes away very quickly. But wing banding at hatch when they go in the brooder and making note of that on day two, when they dry out really well, it's pretty obvious. And now I'm gotten more and more silver chicks and less gold chicks.

Speaker 1 22:23

Fast feathering and slow feathering. If you don't check that early on, by the time they hit about three and a half to four months, you won't be able to know who it is. If you're working on improving the feathering rate, if you don't mark those slow feathering birds, you're gonna wind up getting some of them.

Speaker 3 22:43

They become pretty apparent at about five weeks, depending on how they're feathering in. That's a pretty early thing you can see. The first set of feathers will tell you a lot.

Speaker 1 22:55

Yes. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 22:56

And then the second set. And then the third set. And then the one year mini molt.

Speaker 2 23:02

And then you if you're looking a show, you get some odd color feather pop up and you go, oh, darn barn. I'm out.

Speaker 1 23:09

Yeah, I don't really cull for color until they go through that first adult mold. Because then it's pretty well said. Well, unless it's a black or white or something like that. But on on party-colored birds with more than one color in their feather patterns, they gotta be mature before you can cull for color.

Speaker 3 23:30

Now for the dull purpose thing, because I always want to have my bulk harvest done at 14 to 18 weeks, I spend a lot of time with um 12 weeks really looking at who's meaty feeling now and who's lanky and bony focused on structure growth because those birds focusing on that structure growth where they have like that heritage turkey growth rate where they gain their height and their frame before they flush in, that lets you know they're gonna be a slow burn. You're gonna have to give them some time, and you're not processing at 16 weeks, you're gonna have to wait. So, my breeding focus is on those who are meaty for the duration of growth. And I've noticed some structure notes there between the length of leg and stuff like that. It those are all your indicators on what type of growth they have. So you really want to get in there and spend time with them and handle them and weigh them and feel them and figure out which growth trajectory they're following. And if it's what you want, that's your possible breeding bird. And if it's not what you want, then it's not going to be a breeding bird because the whole point breed them for what you want them to be while monitoring your breed standards so you don't stray outside of that for breed integrity.

Speaker 1 24:51

I think one thing that the three of us have done, and I'm not bragging on myself, but no longer than you have been into the game compared to me. I'm very proud of what you two have accomplished. But is you've learned about the inherited potential of your birds, and by that I mean you've learned what your line's going to do. You could look at a bird at a certain age and you can see in your mind what it's going to look as an adult.

Speaker 3 25:19

And you only get that from spending time with them.

Speaker 1 25:22

That's right. And spending time is not going out there and feeding water and then cutting out and going and eating or do something else. Or throwing a hand on a bugworms at them. That's right.

Speaker 2 25:33

Yeah, every morning now I'm taking my brooder out of the brooder, putting them in a catch cage and carrying them out to a little kid playground pen that I put in the front yard and letting them cheap around in the grass with water and food. And every night I put them back into the brooder.

Speaker 3 25:49

And you get to handle each one.

Speaker 2 25:51

Yeah. I got to the point now where if I lay the catch cage down and open the door, they'll run into the cage. I actually have to like only let half of them in because it gets a little too heavy for me. But the five turkeys and ten ch I don't know, four, three and a half, four-week olds. They really need to come outside. I'm waiting for somebody to come pick these up Saturday.

Speaker 3 26:12

They love routine.

Speaker 2 26:14

They do. They do. And the turkeys are so cute. It's gonna break my heart to lose three of the five.

Speaker 3 26:21

This doesn't have much to do with selection, but a couple of days ago we did have to march our nine teenage turkeys into a new area. And if I was assigning their demeanor into selection, there's one male who is better at being a leader and listening to me and leading the flock where I want them to go. And the other two got distracted, wanted to do their own thing, they made the whole thing more difficult than it needed to be. But there was one male turkey. Man, he's I could go hiking with that bird probably.

Speaker 2 26:55

And it's you can. I don't know enough about turkeys and especially about these turkeys to tell them apart yet. Then this is part of the selection because these are being used to seed somebody else's flock. I'm inherently going to keep the two smallest, least desirable birds, and the other three are going with them, and hopefully we've got a male and a female and something else in that. But we've gotten till Thanksgiving to back out and get a male and a female together to get their flock started. My thing is I just want Christmas dinner out of the deal and good local supply of genetics. So 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 husbandry practices will affect the development of that bird. So the longer they spend here, the worse 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 there that specific care and management regimen because that will affect their development, especially at this early age.

Speaker 3 28:02

Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 28:03

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 breed type birds. It's not all the same. It's the information on the internet makes it sound like the birds are gonna be all mature at 20 weeks and yada yada. And that's just not true. Does not work that way.

Speaker 2 28:34

It'll vary depends on where they came from.

Speaker 1 28:37

Yeah.

Speaker 3 28:37

It'll vary within the same breed.

Speaker 1 28:40

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 3 28:41

What lines of bloodline? They're gonna be a little bit different one to another.

Speaker 1 28:45

And the reason is because one breeder is 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 are gonna show earlier, and some are gonna wait until much later. They're not all gonna be at the same rate.

Speaker 3 29:07

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

Speaker 2 29:14

Yes.

Speaker 3 29:15

Because they have all that information from all the previous generations.

Speaker 1 29:19

Definitely. 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.

Speaker 29:35

This concludes part one of Smart Selection, and we thank you for joining us today. We hope you got some good information to help you better understand this important poultry keepers tool. But we didn't cover it all today, so that means we'll finish this up next week. So be sure to join us then. Thank you for listening to the Poultry Keepers Podcast, and we hope you'll share this episode with a poultry friend who could benefit from learning about smart selection. Until next week, keep learning, keep growing, and keep enjoying the birds you love.