Flock Talk

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, folks, and welcome to Poultry Keepers 360 Live. Hey, I got a question for you. Have you ever wondered does grit wear down when chickens eat it? Does it get smaller? Does it stay the same size? Well, coming up in just a few seconds, we're gonna pitch that very question to our good friend Jeff Maddox, and he's gonna share it all with us. So, Jeff, how about it?

SPEAKER_07 0:26

Absolutely. It goes in big and it comes out small. Depending on, you know, like I sent you a picture. You got some pictures you're gonna see with folks.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I'm trying to I'm trying to pull them up right now.

SPEAKER_07 0:39

You know, it it goes in just about the size of a maybe a pinto bean, and it'll come out, you know, smaller than a pea.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

So the turkeys do the same thing?

SPEAKER_07 0:55

Oh, every bird. All right, so here's the thing, right? The opening going the opening. It is, but the opening going into the gizzard is bigger than the opening coming out in the proventriculus and the intestinal tract. So it'll go in, you know, like you're amazed at some of the things your birds will eat, right? Because of the size of it. And once it gets down to a certain, you know, diameter, once it gets down to a certain size, it gets pushed out by the activity of the gizzard and starts to work its way down through the the rest of the digestive tract. So completely normal. But yet it in most cases it'll lose at least 50 to 60 percent of its size in the gizzard, and that's why we choose granite because it'll stay in there longer. Being one of the harder or hardest stones, you know, stone material out there, it it will last longer than limestone and sandstone and other types of rocks. So just has the better staying power.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So got uh some pictures you sent. These are your pictures. Right. This is turkey. Okay, this is turkey.

SPEAKER_07 2:20

This is turkey. So, you know, I took the pictures of the grit, and you can see, like Carrie was talking about, you know, that's three-quarters of an or it's half-inch turkey grit, half inch long, three-eighths of an inch wide, you know, and it'll come out about the size of a pee, you know, when it's all said and done. And that that's the inside of the gizzard with contents. So for the folks that ever do a necropsy or process their own birds, it's really good to look inside the gizzard. A good gizzard will be almost 50% rocks. Okay, for it to be fully functional, really healthy, you know, that gizzard should be about half rocks.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

So, pretty much what we see in this picture then.

SPEAKER_07 3:07

Right. Yeah, the folks who sent me that picture down there in Central Florida, you know, not far from you. Um, you know, they they're always amazed at the amount of grit inside of a turkey. They're also, you know, it it's really good southern entertainment to watch them swallow those stones, right? Because you can see it going down their esophagus towards the towards the crop. I mean, it looks like a lump going down their throat, and and they'll eat it free choice, right? All on their own. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

And they're happy to do it. But I mean, with turkeys, you you just put it in a five-gallon bucket. And I have I have drilled a couple small holes in the bottom and put a screen down there because just to let the water drain out, yeah. Yeah, and you know, the the full grown ones just about stick their head down in there when it's almost empty. But like when you when it when it's been empty and you don't get any grit in there for like four or five days, and then you go in there and like fill the bucket up, it's like you haven't fed them in a month. They just eat the grit.

SPEAKER_07 4:34

And I'm like, Yeah, turkeys are much more dependent upon grit than most other fowl.

SPEAKER_06 4:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_07 4:41

Um, they have a huge you know, I know on the on the on the commercial side, not the commercial side, but the people that are growing them for meat to sell them. It's a pretty close cage that what the turkey will weigh after you process it, say a 16-pounder, yeah, will have consumed roughly 16 pounds of grit in its lifetime, yeah, during that time frame.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

That's that's interesting. I I would not have thought it would have been that much.

SPEAKER_07 5:13

Right. Now, like, you know, for this show, people with laying hands, the best we can determine your average large fowl laying hand is going to consume about 1.6 to 2 ounces of grit per month. Right. On our own. It'll be more if it's soft grit, but if it's good granite grit, like we're showing here, it'll be it'll be right right around just pretty close to two ounces if it's the right size, right hardness, that sort of thing. So you can almost figure on each hand eating about a pound and a half of grit in a year, roughly. So if you need to it it doesn't spoil, it doesn't go bad. So, you know, if you want to get the 50-pound bag delivered, you know, off of Amazon or somewhere, if your feed mill doesn't have it, uh that's one way to go about it. So you know it lasts for years.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So the best way is to find your friendly Vermont grit dealer. There's a good one located in Pennsylvania that'll ship it to you. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_04 6:27

Yeah, and you're not you're not talking about the red.

SPEAKER_07 6:33

So you know, some people can only get the red, which is the cherry stone.

SPEAKER_06 6:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 6:39

Um learned this purely by accident, but a good friend of mine out in Washington state, and he had the red out beside the white, you know, he offered both to the birds. Same size, same, same location, same everything. And his birds ate all the white completely gone before they start eating the red. So that's just the bird's preference. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I could see that because like when you put even when they're chicks, if you put milk in like a styrofoam cup, or you know, if you cut down a Dixie cup or whatever you want to do to put it in there, it takes them a minute. But if you put it in a pie pan, right after you finish your lemon ice box pie or your pecan pie, and you put it in there, the the shininess, yeah, they're like curiosity.

SPEAKER_07 7:44

Well, and the and the granite, the white granite like this, just evidently has more appeal to them. So I you know, I haven't figured out why. I I can't tell you, this is just this is off the point and a little bit weird, just bear with me. But granite and quartzite, like the red two that you asked about the cherry stone. Yeah, I never realized it, but we had an old guy show up with uh with a machine called an erg meter, little, little, little machine. These actually still have minute amounts of radiation to them, and different deposits will have different amounts. So I wonder if the bird can actually detect it. I wonder if the quartzite from the cherry has a higher, higher amount of ergs and or residual. I I don't know. You know, so just things you learn. I can't explain it. I'm only going theory here, so nobody write this down. I don't want to see this posted on Facebook tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yes, said you see, I I just thought it because I just thought it was because one was shiny and one wasn't.

SPEAKER_07 8:54

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

We don't know. It does.

SPEAKER_04 9:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

I mean, you know, my birds are not not fans of the red at all.

SPEAKER_07 9:10

Right. Um, you know, the granite will last longer. You know, the white, you want a white granite, but the granite lasts longer, stays in the gizzard longer. And then, you know, if you could blow it up the picture, you'd see that the granite has a lot of texture and rough edges to it, yes, versus being smooth. So it's much more efficient at grinding grain particles and feed in the gizzard.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Okay, let's go on to our next question here. I have four young birds of one breed that are two and a half months old, and three hens of another breed that are nine months old. How soon can I combine the two groups? What's y'all's thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I mean, it depends on your process to me.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Yeah. That's a that's a pretty far age gap to be blending them without trying to introduce them first.

SPEAKER_07 10:12

Yeah. Yeah, that's where you gotta get that wire dog creep, you know, and put them side by side to let them kind of get to know each other through a fence in a protected manner for two, three, four weeks. You know, it's gonna take time. You'll know, you'll see behavioral changes when they're ready.

SPEAKER_04 10:33

But even then they're gonna be, you know, jostling around for the first week or so second order set. Right.

SPEAKER_07 10:47

Well make sure that they have a place to hide.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, that that comes with number one, knowing your birds. Number two, really knowing your birds, because you know, like with my reds, if I went in and had some reds that were the same line, which I wouldn't mix them if they weren't, and I only have one line, so kind of stuck on it. But I could take them and is it my my yard is dark at night, so I could just go in there at nighttime and throw them in there. I mean, they would do the whole pecking order thing the next day a little bit, but that'd be it.

SPEAKER_05 11:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

It don't matter if there's a year difference in rate.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Some of it I think is very breed dependent.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Very um, well, I I think two breeders you know, some people if they have birds that aren't calm, they'll call them.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Okay, let's see. Our next question. I have my first broody hen. He's sitting on eggs in the most popular nesting box. I've already seen two hens crowd in on her to lay. One egg has broken. Should I move her and the eggs or try to block her off? Should I worry about her sitting on a goop? My first thoughts is if you've got room in that nest box for two chickens to get in there, your nest box is a little bit too big. That's one thing I would look at addressing.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

I would I would um like find some pieces of wood or something to put along the sidewalls to make it smaller. I wouldn't move her though.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

No, if you move her, you're liable to upset her and then she'll come off being broody.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

Um the what I would do would take the other girls and move them into a different cage.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

You know, put them someplace else.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Be like, y'all want to act like heifer? We're gonna put you in timeout.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:06

The other thing is you don't want all that egg goop on those other eggs of the ring. So to me, this is a failed brood, right? So you you know, you need to take all the eggs out that have goop under them.

SPEAKER_06 13:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 13:21

Right. I don't again depends on the breed because I've I've had people move a broody hen with the eggs and lock her in so she doesn't have a choice, and she'll go right back to brooding.

SPEAKER_06 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:34

But yeah, for sure, the nest box is too big, and I kind of hate our world here that you know we it nest boxes are one size fits all.

SPEAKER_05 13:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 13:44

We don't really have a lot of choices.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

You know, a lot of chicken folks, more is better.

SPEAKER_07 13:51

You know, a nest box should be just right that a hen struggles just a little to turn around. She comes in, she turns around, she sits down. Right? And that's it. There should never be enough room for more than one hen in the nest box.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

I mean, if 12 to 14 inches is enough for a turkey, yeah, then you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

And that's really all it takes for one of those big birds.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Well, Frank Reese, I asked him what he uses, and in his huge laying house that they go in, they're 14 by 14.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah. And no tops on them.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Open top. And you know, they go in now, he does have it to where there's it's shaded, but that's because he's got shade cloth along the walls of the building where the opening is to let air flow and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_07 14:55

You would think Frank would know better. I mean, a proper nest box has a top, has sides, it has a catch rail on the front.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

He said they laid less when they when he did that. He discovered the open box thing by accident.

SPEAKER_07 15:16

I'm gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

He's got more experience than me, but the only thing I can equate that to, Jeff, is uh have you ever seen a turkey nest out in the wild?

SPEAKER_05 15:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:27

Well, they're open tough.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, I mean, there's not they don't have a choice ever around them.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah, I mean that makes sense. I I know I use a milk crate in my turkey. Carrie, you were talking turkeys or chickens? No, I was talking about Frank for Frank turkeys.

SPEAKER_07 15:48

Okay, yeah. Sorry, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

I mean, that's how that's how big one is for a turkey. So you know, a chicken one should not be that big, but like Rib said, they are.

SPEAKER_07 16:00

Yeah, I mean, eight inches should be enough, even for a big, you know, Rhode Island, right? Eight inches wide.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 16:09

Should be enough for them to get in there and just squeeze around.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

I should have taken a picture of it, but you can actually get three of them into that.

SPEAKER_07 16:19

Into an eight inch wide nest box.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 16:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 16:22

If they're broody enough, yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Okay. They do have a one-track mind at that point.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

Yes, they do. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

And it don't matter if there is a nest box identical to it right next to it. Yep. That's their favorite.

SPEAKER_07 16:40

Once they lock in, yeah, once they lock in on our nest box, that's it. That's all they know.

SPEAKER_06 16:46

Right.

SPEAKER_07 16:46

They are creatures of habit.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

We've got a question here from it's not related to anything we're talking about, but Esther Feathers sent us a question. What are your thoughts on these mixes? Black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, red chili flakes, oregano, and flaxseed. Should you use them as a temporary supplement or permanent addition? And I'm assuming she's talking about, I know she mixes her own feed. I'm putting it in context of that, I think.

SPEAKER_07 17:20

Yeah, these is these should be used periodically for short periods of time. You know, maybe you're on it for three or four days a month, that sort of thing. Definitely not a permanent addition. You know, I I would say do it one week quarterly, and that should be plenty. Right now, I would alter the mix. Black pepper doesn't really belong in a chicken mix. Uh the cayenne's good, garlic's good, the chili, the red, the red pepper flakes is good, oregano's good. I'm not a big fan of flaxseed, but it's not gonna hurt anything, right? But I would pull the black pepper out of that mix if it was me.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

But there you go, Esther. Now you know the rest of it.

SPEAKER_07 18:08

I would go quarterly and you know, run it for about a week. So, you know, you're gonna get some warming action out of it. You're gonna get some, you know, you're gonna get some gut conditioning out of it. Gonna reset the gut.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

And our next question here is we have put an offer in on a house, and I'm worried that we will have major predator pressure from critters we haven't had to worry about. We will have a pond, and there's an old chicken coop behind that tucked away in a wooded area. This coop needs some work or maybe just to be moved altogether. Would it be better further from the pond and closer to the house? Our current coop has a predator skirt around the entire coop and run. Would this be sufficient or we did do we need to excuse me, do we need to bury something as well? You know, and I think to me it it depends on what are the primary predators in your area. You got you got to bill for what uh to what's local to you. If you have any doubt, contact your local State Game and Fish Agency and they can tell you the more common predators in your area. I know I've heard some people talking about a pond. They see problems with mink or weasels more associated with that. That's something I don't know. All we got is sand hills around here, no ponds.

SPEAKER_07 19:42

Yeah, she could have issues with snakes as well being that close to the pond. Yeah. Snakes she doesn't want to have to deal with, not just your typical, you know, black snake or bull snake or something like that. But I would get it out of the wooded area or make accommodations in the wooded area. But any more, you know, ripped coyotes are everywhere, skunks, skunks, raccoons, possum are everywhere. So she's gonna run into them. The only nice thing about being in a wooded area is there's less chance of aerial predate predation. Hawks and owls can't get the flight path to swoop in. So yeah, it would eliminate some of that. But I'd move it closer to the house if it was me. Yeah. With the distance to the pond. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Yeah, and I mean that would be a personal thing to me because you want to go button your chickens up late at night or go check on them. You don't want to walk way over yonder. You want to be convenient. Or if it's pouring down rain or freezing.

SPEAKER_07 20:56

I wouldn't do the predator skirt. I would probably nowadays it's easy to get those automated coop doors that open and close on their own. And I'd probably go that route. That way you don't have to worry about being home at sundown. Right. And the coop door will close, you know, 30 minutes after dark. Just let it, yeah. Pay for the automation, I think. And that's my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Esther had a follow-up comment. She said, these are the advertised brands claiming to cure everything. Going back to her supplement question.

SPEAKER_07 21:39

Yeah, I I see them out there too, Esther. It drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

I just kind of shit, ooh, kind of sit and shake your head. Sorry about that, guys. I understand.

SPEAKER_07 21:55

You know, if you don't have a problem, and I I haven't heard of S. Or having a problem. But if you haven't had a problem, you know, don't use this stuff, right? If you got good feed, you got good management, just roll with that until you got until something, you know, something shows up problem-wise. I would just let it be.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Because I mean, I'm pretty sure that you wrote her feed formulation.

SPEAKER_06 22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

And if she's measuring this and mixing that, like you said, them birds should have enough amino acids and vitamins to have rock solid immune systems.

SPEAKER_07 22:36

Right. So currently she's up there more predator than than health related. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Okay, let's grab our next question here, and then we're gonna take a short break. Jeff, this one is for you. I can tell by the picture with it. I remember in a past PK 360 podcast, Jeff said you can tell a lot by the position a bird passes in. This bird was totally fine yesterday. This morning she was lethargic and had a muddy purplish pale wattle. Any clue what her position says?

SPEAKER_07 23:17

So uh the quick rule of thumb is if they're upright, like feet in the air, they died of heart failure, heart attack, heart failure. Right? If they're laying on their back, you know, feet up. This bird probably also died of heart failure, but I would bet you 10 to 1 that this bird was overweight and more than likely died of too much internal fat, fatty liver, and the heart just finally gave out. Right. Um too many of our birds were killing with kindness. But when I see them face down, I usually it it's gonna be something more metabolic, like digestive tract. Sometimes I'll see a Merrick's bird die this position. But just the combination with that purplish pale wattles tells me that there was a circulatory problem. I think the bird just passed, you know, in its sleep and the heart finally gave out.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Okay, let's take about a 45-second break here, and we'll be right back. We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Protrail Company for their sponsorship of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live programming. For Trail has been a trusted name of sustainable farming and oak industry for decades, and their commitment to providing high-quality, natural products aligns perfectly with the values we hold there in our poultry community. Thank you, Protrail, for partnering with us to empower poultry keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support. That is for sure. Now, folks, I want to tell you something. For about a week or so, Sue has been teasing me or threatening me or warning me, I'm not sure which it is, that she has a secret question. So, Sue, I can't stand it any longer.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Lay it on us. What it what it is.

SPEAKER_04 25:45

Okay. So I have some birds that just live out in the yard. They sleep in the trees, they run the yard, they do their thing. If they make it fine, if they don't, that's fine too. And one of the young cockerels who looks like a white roadrunner, who's skinny and tall and lanky, and so I was sitting out on the deck the other evening as the sun's going down, and this little googer caught him a cicada. And so he's running around the front yard with a cicada in his beak, and the cicada is doing the, you know, as this little man is running the front yard. And I couldn't help but just sit there and be amused and laugh at this little guy. Mainly because nobody was even chasing him. He was like the last one to go to bed, and he caught the cicada, but it reminded me of a little child out in the middle of the yard in the middle of the night with a kazoo.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

I could say that.

SPEAKER_04 26:47

Yes, yes, because it it buzzed the entire time he had it. So anyway, I was telling my friend Angela about that, and we got to talking. Why in the world do chickens exhibit this kind of behavior where they find a tasty bug or a big worm, and all of a sudden they're off to the races, running around the yard being chased? Why don't they go to a corner all secretive and eat their juicy little tidbit? Why do they make this crazy run?

SPEAKER_01 27:21

The same reason little kids do. They get something like that and they don't know how to act. And they gotta rub it in everybody else's face.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

Yeah. Well, I mean, nine times out of ten, if they do it in the daylight, somebody's gonna come along and take it away from them.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Or try. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the entertainment for you.

SPEAKER_04 27:45

It is, it is. But I'm I'm just curious if anybody has any historical, you know, why why this behavior. Every every chicken I've had does it.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Um I I would like to know that too, because that same reasoning could be used to tell me why my toddlers do it.

SPEAKER_07 28:09

It's purely instinctual.

SPEAKER_06 28:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:12

Um so you know, in nature, if they found something unusual and tasty that they want to eat, right? They they and they're stupid about it because they make a weird noise.

SPEAKER_05 28:25

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 28:32

Yeah, they they they run around playing keep away or trying to. But yeah, it's it's instinctual because it'll happen to chicks. Like if you do the same thing in the brooder, yeah. Oh, yeah, it happens even in that first week of life, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 28:50

Little chunks of liver.

SPEAKER_04 28:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Or a fly happen to come by.

unknown 28:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

You let it get down to one or two little chunks of liver, and one of them gets the last one off the little plate, he'll take off. Yeah, and the other one's a chasing.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Got some questions that have come in while we were talking here, and I think they're pretty good. Let's stick them up here. This one is from Kelly. Yeah. And he says he had a hatch tag and a four by four, I'm assuming, foot. Went into our home, came back out, and about 30 minutes seconds later, he was dead on the ground, face down with wings spread out. Nothing the matter with him other than he was dead.

SPEAKER_07 29:37

Yeah, it was a heart attack and more than likely stress-related. Yeah. But, you know, he already had the, he was predisposed to the condition, you know, it just something happened, strange environment, you know, whatever, something finally triggered it.

SPEAKER_04 29:56

That's interesting. I've actually had some of my cribs, you know, because they have the crest on top. They don't see well. And if you startle them, they'll jump straight up. And they I've I've had it a time or two in the past nine years, but I've heard other people say they jump up, hit their head, and fall down, they're dead.

SPEAKER_07 30:15

Yeah. You know, because they have that quail do it all the time, but they're oh yeah, you know, sounds like the crib instinct is to to fly straight up or flush straight up.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, that's that's why with a with a quail pin, you you don't build your cage more than like eight to ten inches unless you're gonna do it a couple feet so they can actually hop and fly.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I have encountered that with crested breeds of all kinds, polish crabs, particularly if they have a big full crest and it comes down, those birds are literally blind, and so they can't see you coming. And when you touch them, they'll go ballistic.

SPEAKER_05 31:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

So my glass is knocked off more than one time.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yep. Got one here from Melissa. I've noticed during my five-minute observation a couple of birds in each of my coops are missing facial feathers and appearing slightly pale in the face and the comb. They are behaving and eating normally. And then she says, could this be localized feather loss and mild paleness to be the start of a seasonal molt, or should I be actively treating for external parasites?

SPEAKER_04 31:49

It could be the molt, but I would check them, I would check them over before I'd you know make a decision, but mine are starting to molt already.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Well, it's yeah, I'd I would be curious if number one, if the feathers were totally MIA or if she can see the feathers. If the feathers were MIA, I would be and that I mean missing by missing in action. And then I would want to know what they were eating. But if I have had birds, like I do have some birds that have started the molt, but you know, I I would with the facial hair, especially, I would be more curious about that.

SPEAKER_07 32:45

I mean the paleness suggests that there's not enough oxygen or air moving through there, but they also get pale at the early onset of the mold just because their body temperature changes goes up and they start to be a little feverish. So you know, the combination of the mild paleness and the feather loss, if they're not eating the feathers, I'm gonna go with seasonal mold, and the mold is kicking in in some places, right? Especially if you're in an area with a heat wave. You know, the birds are definitely yeah, they're definitely you know starting to shed.

SPEAKER_05 33:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Like, you know, anywhere south of Tennessee.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Here's um question from Linda McPherson. She's looking for a winter water that only needs to be changed one time a week. I only have nine hands. What's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_07 33:50

Can you still get the incandescent light bulbs? Uh Linda, for mine, I build a box, you know, eight-inch box, eight-inch high box that was the same size, you know, as the three and a half gallon water at tractor supply, the fountain type water. I put an incandescent light bulb inside with a light fixture, ran an extension cord. It kept my water very nicely warm all winter long, and I'm in Pennsylvania. So, you know, and then even when it got down to 20 or 15 degrees, you know, I still had nice warm water and only needed to change it once a week.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Uh I would also suggest a look in look if you can't find an incandescent light bulb and wire all that stuff up. See if you can or get on Amazon and look at the different aquarium heaters. Yeah, some of them will go all the way down to 62 degrees. Get one of those and stick it in there, and your chickens will love it.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

They also make heated uh bases for water as well. I don't have any expansive those.

SPEAKER_07 35:15

I wouldn't I wouldn't think you would need it. The heated bases back in my day when I had chickens, you know, they they wouldn't last, right? They were unpredictable. I you know, I don't know the quality wasn't there in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

So now we have a friend that has got the ones from Premier One that have the nipples on the side of the bucket. Yeah. And he's had pretty good luck with those in Alaska. Yeah, yeah. But that's right, they're they're also not the cheapest thing on their website. But if it works, it works.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Right.

SPEAKER_04 35:57

Yeah, no kidding.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Okay, let's see if we can't grab another question here. Uh let me enlarge that so I can actually read it. I mix my own feed, so I don't really pay attention to the cost of store-bought feed. I've seen a lot of posts lately on chicken pages from people wanting to mix their own because they want cheaper feed. I have made many recommendations to follow this page and to pursue the niche poultry book. Are vitamins and minerals still in short supply? I know something happened a year or two ago to drive their cost up. If memory serves me, there was a fire somewhere.

SPEAKER_07 36:39

Yeah, a couple years ago there was a fire in Germany that burnt down a vitamin A and vitamin E manufacturing. And prices were more than double there for better than a year. It took them over a year to rebuild the plant. But they vitamin prices are pretty stable for the most part. They fluctuate every month, you know, to some degree, depending on supply, demand, and and things like that. But for the most part, we haven't seen any major you know flip-flops. Commodity prices and trucking are driving up store-bought feeds. The cost of diesel fuel and manufacturing costs and moving the commodities around, I would bet that the majority is that. You know, Carrie and I are looking at feed tags on a regular basis, and you know, I'm now seeing the Perenas of the world, um, you know, and the Targills, etc., they're starting to offer feeds more in line with what we would recommend here on the show. Right. So they're starting to have the higher quality, higher. They're still not great.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

I mean, they're not perfect, but they they are they're at least putting forth an effort.

SPEAKER_07 38:05

Right. They're starting to improve, you know, they're hitting the amino acid levels, they're hitting, you know, you know, they're getting higher vitamin levels, they're making better feeds. You know, so some of those are definitely someone shared run with us the other day, tractor supply, and it would look pretty good, but it was $30 a bag, right? And that was for I think a 40-pound bag, if I remember right, but not sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

A lot of people are going to the 40-pound bags because when you cross 42 pounds, UPS is charging you a $19 and some odd cent tax because they're drivers that make a ridiculous amount of money have to pick something up that weighs more than 40 pounds.

SPEAKER_07 38:53

Yeah, FedEx joined that bandwagon as well. So if you're over a certain amount, FedEx is charging extra. You know, the Chewy workers, they don't want to have to lift 50 pounds either. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

I've had them back up in my front yard and just kick kick the boxes out of the back of their truck.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Okay. Here's another one. If I need to crop feed a hen, what is best? I continue to make mash out of feed, but often struggle getting it through the tubing. I want great nutrition with added calories.

SPEAKER_07 39:35

This person's going the extra mile because you know, not too many people are doing crop feeding. It must be a really special hand. So, yeah, I mean, really, all you can do is turn it into baby food, you know, with a food processor and add even a higher level of liquid to make it flow better through the tubing. If that still doesn't work, you know, then we're gonna be making a mixture of, you know, you're actually using like wheat flour, cornmeal, probably a little bit of milk, and you know, you can add the vitamins and minerals to that because they're fine dust anyway. And that's about as good as you're gonna get as far as making it fine.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

I was gonna say, I'd I'd almost be tempted to get some yogurt and some wheat mids and some of your breeder supplement and see if she'll eat it. You know, mix it up and see if she'll eat it and she won't eat it. Go to a ag supply store and find you a ginormous syringe and use that to put it down the hatch. No, I I pull the needle off and just use the syringe, but you know, though those the one that I'm thinking of has a tip on it that's about three inches long for the plastic part before you screw the needle on. So take that needle off, make your concoction, pull it up in that syringe, and it would be a lot easier than fighting with a tube and a chicken that don't want you to stick a tube down its throat and everything else to try to take care of your baby.

SPEAKER_07 41:23

Yeah, this is the first time I've heard of anybody tube feeding a chicken. So I I'm learning new stuff tonight.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

I mean, it it is a thing, I could see that, but I could also see it being a pain in the rear to do it by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Okay, we got a comment here.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Oh, yeah, Melissa had said that she was w wondering about the the water situation, and she pointed out that she was in Florida, so I shared with her the aquarium heater that I used. Oh, okay, okay, gotcha, gotcha. I shared that with her and I didn't have any problems last year. Very good. I knew that. And I think that I mean, I it's like 10, 12 bucks. Real cheap. I I did I do have a couple extras just because when you're running a a water system like I'm running, and you have to source your stuff off of Amazon because I don't have a clue where you can go buy aquarium stuff around here anymore. So I have extras.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

This person has a nutrition question. She said a friend came across an article in the chicken magazine from 2018. The article mentioned that in the heat, laying hens should be fed a high protein feed because they drink so much water, which in turn would reduce their protein intake. Is there any truth to this? Or what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_07 43:06

Part of it's true in the heat of summer, you do actually increase the protein and you want to feed a higher protein feed. And this is because feed intake goes down. The hen wants less calories when it gets extremely hot through the hottest part of summer. It's not related to the additional amount of water that they drink. Yeah. So think of it this way, folks. You know, you if you if you like doing math like a person like me, okay, so for whatever the hen is eating, we need to get between 20 and 22 grams of protein, actual protein into the bird. Right. That continues to supply the bird metabolism, protein, as well as lay an egg. Yeah. But when their diet goes down, often heads will go down. Below two ounces in the summertime, as far as feed, when that feed intake goes down, they're not getting their 21 grams of protein with a 16 or 17% protein fee. So, you know, people in Texas, people in mid to South Florida, you know, hotter, hotter climates that stay there for an extended period of time. Yeah, running a 20% protein for laying hens is not a bad idea. It all depends on what their feed intake is, you know, how much are they eating? You know, now older and large fowl seem to continue to eat that, you know, three and a half, four ounces of feed every day. So they're getting enough, they're getting enough protein intake to keep the egg size there and keep the laying going, you know, even through the heat of the summer.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Very good. And let's see here. I have a 10-week flock of black osterlorts and barred hollands that we have hatched. They're getting a chick crumble, 24% protein, with whole oats that are fermented. They also get a little bit of extra protein treats like boiled eggs once a week. I gave them some shredded leftover steak last week. Not a lot of treats. They also get like the watermelon rinds to pick at, especially now that it's hot. My question is, how much dry food should a 21-week, should 21, 10-week old chickens be consuming? I've done the math and it seems like eight cups can cover them. But the little stickers are now going into the duckhouse and eating their dry pellets. One other question, at what age do you not make sure they have food all the time? I'm going out morning, early afternoon, and evening to top off their bowls, which they completely empty up until two days ago when they got so darn hot.

SPEAKER_07 45:59

Okay, so the protein is is way too high for 10-week-old birds, right? So they should be down around an 18 or 19. A. B 10-week old, those two breeds should be eating about two ounces per bird. So about 20 or 42 ounces a day. So you're getting pretty close to three pounds a day is what they should be consuming slash cleaning up. Now, I don't know what the density of the feed is, so trying to convert it to cups. You know, when you start talking about three pounds, eight cups, cup, maybe six ounces. She's gonna be really close, right? Um the number should be right. But they're look, they're gonna be little stinkers and they're gonna go eat other food. So uh it's not that they're doing anything wrong. It's just, you know, they want to go try somebody else's food too. I like them to be cleaning up their feed. Not so much that you you don't take the you know, I I like them to clean up their feed, you know, by the end of the day before they go to the roost where there's only about a five percent remaining. We don't want to feed the rats and the mice. So yeah, I pretty much want an empty pretty close to feed or pretty close to empty by bedtime. So that's kind of my measuring stick. But you don't start limiting feed until they hit puberty. So somewhere right around 20 weeks of age is when you're gonna start limiting feed and controlling how what their intake is.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Okay. I bought a bag of pellets that have a greenish tint. The CEO, and I'm assuming she means saying co-op states the feed has herbal blends of oregano, marigold, rosemary, and anise. Anis. The pellets are somewhat soft too. I'm unable to tell if it's mold or herbs. The food is not clumping. Should I feed my girls this? I don't notice a musty smell.

SPEAKER_07 48:26

You know, there's not enough oregano and rosemary in there that it should look green. So chances are it's moldy. And they don't want to admit it. Yeah, right. And this has been a problem, you know, for one or two of the major, you know, commercial type companies getting feed shipped, you know, the feed sweats, and it'll it'll do this. And if the pelleting machine is off a little bit because they add steam, steam and moisture, if it's not functioning perfectly or the person running it, then it's gonna be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Okay, that's all the questions we had. Carrie, we had any more come in. I haven't been I have not seen any come in through YouTube. Okay. Do I just had a thought and it just went away too? I know Jeff, get my notepad. You guys have anything else that you'd like to share tonight? Anything exciting going on in your neck of the woods, Sue?

SPEAKER_04 49:41

I have some very nice birds growing up.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Good.

SPEAKER_04 49:45

This this year's breeding has been very successful. I uh processed Rhode Island Red Cockerel and a crib cockerel, both of them the same age, and there's a pound difference between the two boys. And but I sure made uh some good broth. I canned up five pints of chicken and broth and nice fed myself and fed the dogs, so yep. Good deal. Y'all ain't good deal. I like cockerel, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Not bad.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Yeah, good stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Carrie, what have you been up to, bud?

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Well, so last this past weekend, I went to go meet up with a dear friend of mine for our quarterly meetup, and I was blessed with a direct descendant of your namesake chicken. I got I got one of Ripalicious's sons.

SPEAKER_05 50:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

And good bird, he looks good, and I got some hens for him to have some girlfriends.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

I was really excited to get those. Yeah, Sue Sue is she's a dear friend, and I love the woman, and I just we're both able to travel sometimes, so you know, uh roughly here lately, it's been about every quarter. We either see each other at a show or somewhere in and around Memphis.

SPEAKER_04 51:27

Yep. I do want my dog candles back.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Oh, I'll bring them to you for our next visit in Ohio.

SPEAKER_05 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Jeff, what about you?

SPEAKER_07 51:41

You know, I'm just running around chasing my tail, you know, preliminary doctor's appointments and stuff like that. No, no excitement in my life right now. I mean, other than getting back from the Philippines last Saturday. You know, I'm finally sleeping at night when I'm supposed to. So I'm happy about that. Yeah, very good. Yeah, but I gotta drink coffee to stay awake past seven o'clock.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

So oh Rip, could you imagine if we were able to get the kind of sleep that Jeff gets? I can only dream of it. Like I could I could set my clock either by the time he goes to bed or by the time he gets up. And I'm happy with four hours. If something happens and I get six or seven, whoa, y'all better watch out. Nope, that dog don't hunt if I don't get seven or eight.

unknown 52:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:45

And and this is what I've been drinking coffee out of since about 4 30 this morning.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Oh, Jeff, for trailer has an anniversary or something coming up here pretty soon, don't they?

SPEAKER_07 52:59

Oh man, and I would love to see lots of the listeners show up. But October 3rd, all right, for trail at our premise, we'll be hosting basically a customer appreciation/slash open house. But it's gonna be more of a fun day. We're not doing educational type stuff. You know, we're gonna have stations with games, dunk tanks. I'm gonna be sitting on the chair for the dunk tank for two hours. Here's your big chance. All of the proceeds for that are going to uh, you know, a local charity, right? So we're not keeping anything from any of the games, got a bunch of games set up, tour set up. I'm on saving my money now. We are roasting two pigs.

SPEAKER_06 53:47

Nice.

SPEAKER_07 53:48

We're we're gonna be barbecuing up like uh 150 chickens, you know, all lake quarters. We got like 200 pounds of lake quarters or something like that. I don't know. It you know, so lots of food, lots of games, good times.

SPEAKER_04 54:05

Where at Jeff?

SPEAKER_07 54:07

Right, we're so our plant is in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania. So we're about 10 miles down the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg.

unknown 54:16

Right.

SPEAKER_07 54:17

So yeah, come on in. October 3rd, gonna be a big day, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:22

So and and uh how old is Fortrail going to be then?

SPEAKER_07 54:27

We are celebrating our 80th anniversary.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 54:32

That's awesome. Thanks. We started in 46, so this is gonna be our big 80th chindig, uh big picking, whatever you want to call it, depending on where you come from. But we're just gonna have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

Now, Sue, if you decide that you want to go there, come in on Thursday and Friday. I will take you to an absolutely amazing pizza place right down the road. Right down the road. Yeah, they get pizza salad, which I'm not a rabbit, but their pizza is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_04 55:13

Looks like we've got a couple of questions there.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Yeah, let's see here. Melissa spoke with Jeff's guy in Florida, and it is two and a half hours one way to get feed. I have a local mill 30 minutes, looking for quality feed, and would love to know what information to provide them. So, for that, if you want to get the feed mill near you to make feed for you, gonna need a list of the minerals and the grain commodities that they have to mix with feed. You should probably also first ask them what is their minimum requirement for a custom mix. Some people are two to five tons is their minimum, and that may not be in your budget all at one time or enough feed to last you six months, and it may not be good. But if the guy in Florida is who I'm thinking about, it is, then I would say go there and get enough feed for four to six weeks easily at one time and bring it back because that feed was probably made three days before he got it. So it's super fresh.

SPEAKER_07 56:49

Yeah, if you catch it when he's getting a fresh delivery, and for sure it's it's less than a week old when it comes in. So but you know, it's a distance. If she had room in the freezer, I'd say she could get three months worth, put two months in the freezer, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:10

You know, then I mean they got they they sell deep freezes on marketplace pretty cheap.

SPEAKER_07 57:14

Right, yeah, but yeah. Caleb also has an outstanding like farmers market, you know, store with fresh produce, sandwiches now, fruit, vegetables, all kinds of stuff. So he's got the whole nine yards. Yeah, he does. You can make it a nice trip. So he's good people. The other thing is, Melissa, is so you know, I put together what is called the perfect feed formulas, and they are they're in the file section for poultry breeder nutrition. I think are they in poultry keepers 360 or not? They are okay. But so there's like, you know, you can see what would go into a perfect feed formula with the nutrient specs, you can print those off, you know, take them in with you, or maybe that'll encourage you to start making your own feed at home.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

I was gonna say another an option would be to find out what grains they have and email that to livestock at for trail.com and say, I have a meal 30 minutes up the road from my house that has these grains available. How much poultry neutral balancer would I have to put in there to make a great feed? Right. And they'll send you back, you know, a formula, this many pounds of this, this, this, this, this, and this much P. And you take that up there and and the bag of poultry neutral balancer, or have them, they may even ship it directly to them and get them to make it for you.

SPEAKER_07 58:58

I'm guessing she's not gonna get a ton at a time or two tons at a ton. So there's not many mills left that'll only make like a 500-pound mix, and even that's a lot for most poultry people. Yeah, it's just hard to manage 500 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Okay, she she wasn't sure what to ask the meal.

SPEAKER_07 59:20

So in the file section of both groups, poultry breeder nutrition and poultry keepers 360, there's PDF files of perfect feed formulas, right? So for chick starter, grower, developer, and layer. You can print those off, you know, and you can take those with you to the mill and use those as a comparison or you know, figure out how you can make those as well.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

She's got 150 burrs, she'd go into 38 to 40 pounds of feed a day.

SPEAKER_07 59:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 59:56

So that'd be a thousand pounds, a little over a thousand pounds a month is what she'd be using. So yeah. They might they might. Yeah. She might get lucky. And we can make her a custom formula if they've had the right ingredients.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

You know, you're muted, Rip.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

Question this question says, What do you recommend for bedding in a chicken run?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:28

Sand.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:29

In the summer I'd use sand.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

I d I'd want to know what your budget was. Well, it all because I know I know what I'm what changes I'm fixing to make. And it's because I live in Alabama and I have clay, and it don't matter if you're on a hill or where you are, when we get a nice good, solid rain, it turns to crap really quick. And I have to go put down stall pellets, put down lime, and all that. So well, I'm fixing to put down an irrigation system for a lot of my birds.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:14

You can you can also deep pet them. Yeah, like Andrew Perkins just posted there, six to twelve inches of natural litter, and that could be a combination of leaf, wood chips, you know, peat moss, peat moss, shaving, straw, all of that works, right? And actually, if you can blend it, you know, and change it from time to time, you end up with a lot nicer compost when you do the cleanup.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

Like, and I will say you can do that. I've used peat moss, stall pellets, lime, sand mixed together, and I've got my little electric rotor tiller that I use to mix it all up. The downside is when you do that and it rains, it smells like a porta potty. It's rough. So my wife said, Hey, what can you do about this? I told her I need to scrape it all out, put some rocks on it, put a drainage system in it, yeah, put some rocks over that, then put down some fabric, then put down some sand.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Okay, well, that gets us to the end of our show. And folks, we appreciate you being with us this evening. I hope you've learned something, and I know we have on a couple of these questions. So, you know, we'll be back in two weeks with another Poultry Keepers 360 Live. And until then, keep enjoying your birds. Thanks for listening, everybody so long.