Is Your Chicken Coop Ready For Winter? Don't Forget The Air!

unknown 0:00

Nämä.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Poultry Keepers 360 Live. You know, when cold weather gets here and it's not too far off, believe it or not, it seems that keeping chickens warm often becomes a priority for everybody. But you have to be careful. When you close up the coop too tightly, it can create problems of its own. Tonight that's what we're going to talk about, those problems. We'll talk about winter air quality, ventilation, ammonia, moisture, and what can your fluff teach you about conditions inside the coops. So, Jeff, uh, you're always fun to kick it off with, and you ought to get a school. Yes, sir. What happens when we close up our chicken coops too tight?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

You know, we we lose sight of everybody, not everybody, but uh too many people coddle their chickens and they believe that making it airtight and making it warm and insulated and all that is a benefit to their birds. And if they actually understood that high quality airflow, you know, good airflow is way more important than their temperature, you know. And we talked about that a little bit on the last show. Is that you know temperature is not that as critical, but air quality is the most important aspect of raising a chicken? The most, it is the top tier of importance for raising chickens.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

I agree. But how important is the cold itself compared with wind and moisture for our birds?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

How important is what?

SPEAKER_04 2:30

The cold itself. Which is more important? Which do we have to be worried about? More about cold or about air movement.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, the cold is hardly a problem. All right, so I live in Pennsylvania, we would hit 15, we would get below 20 degrees, right? And my chickens would still go out to eat and drink at 20 degrees, right? Not a problem. So as long as you keep them dry, okay. So chicken with wet feet is a surefired recipe for killing a chicken. Okay, yeah, yep. I agree. Keep their feet dry and insulated.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

So a question I get frequently is what's the difference between a draft and good ventilation?

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Location, yeah. Draft comes in down at ground level, right? And ventilation should be removed from the top of the living quarters, right? So you should have your vents and fans up near the top of the coop. And they should actually be set on a timer to run every four or six hours and run long enough to get the the air completely exchanged. Right. It'll save you money on bedding. You'll get your electricity money back in what you saved in bedding in the coop.

unknown 4:11

Right.

SPEAKER_04 4:12

I have not heard that expressed before, so I appreciate you, Sharon.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

If the air doesn't move, all of the ureth and driver is gonna stay right there. Right. You've trapped it inside of an enclosed space. You're building your own petri dish. So if you if you exchange that air properly four to six times a day, okay, your bedding will stay dry. Dry or dry error, okay. So you'll extend the life of your bedding by exchanging your air.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Jeff, I got a question.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Let's say you were going to do this in a brooder, because obviously that's where you'd have the bedding. Would you want to put that fan in the top of the brooder and pull air out? Or would you want it to blow air straight down, but not fast?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

You're always pulling air, right? So no matter what age the bird is, you know, and let's back up a second. So when I had my flock, okay, I kept in the wintertime, I kept about four inches of chopped straw in the bottom of that coop. Right. Right. And I would add more as you know, as needed. Okay. I would add a little lime, sprinkle it with lime, add a little bit more chopped straw, and I would layer it up as we go. But ventilation is, in my opinion, best done up within a foot of the ceiling, right? And it should be on a sidewall. And across from it, you have an inlet vent. So when the fan runs, it's pulling in fresh air. Now, you don't want the air to go straight across. So you need to hang some sort of baffle or something that will deflect that air and cause it to stir and mix within that coop. Okay. So you don't have all of a sudden chill on the birds because the air temperature is changing fairly slowly because it's mixing with the air that's already in there, right? You know, with the new air coming in. But even still, 10 minutes of that colder temperature is not going to affect your birds. Okay. Not going to bother them a bit. Okay. So, you know, so if you you got your inlet vent, you come in a couple of feet. If you hang something like even a thick piece of cardboard that blocks so the air can't move straight across the top. And then I tell a lot of people, just use a bathroom exhaust fan from Lowe's, Home Depot, whatever, Amazon, wherever you want to get it, right? And you wire that into a timer, a pin timer, so it'll run every four to six hours for 10 minutes, right? You know, figure out your cubic feet per cubic feet per minute, how big is your coupe? All right. It's a little bit of math. Calculate all that out. Calculate that. And have it run just longer than your cubic feet of your coop. Have it run at least four times a day.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Now, would you do that based off of cubic feet or cubic flat?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Cubic. That has to be, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

That's the three and not the tube, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Right. Length, width, right? So 10 by 10 is 100. And then if you're eight foot tall, that's 800 cubic feet, right? So people know that need help with that, they can give send me their dimensions and I'll tell them how many cubic feet they got.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

That's why I asked the question, is because I know that somebody, somebody watching at some point, whether it be live or sometime they're you know, they're gonna calculate it. Well, it's a 10 by 10. So that's a hundred. So I don't need to run this fan but five minutes. But you know, I I wanted them to know that they need to calculate the height as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Height as well. Yeah, all the measurements come into play. So most most exhaust fans, like bathroom type exhaust fans, 125 to 150 cubic feet per minute, right? You can get really big ones at 200, you can get really little ones at 100, but it's gonna be somewhere in that. So even if you got the hundred, you know, in a 10 by 10, 8 foot high area, it has to has to run a minimum of eight minutes. But like I said, it takes longer to tumble it and mix it. Yeah, so you really want it to run more like 15 or 20.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

You run it 15, 20 minutes a couple times a day. Yeah. And you'll you'll have less smells.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Oh dry. It'll be really it'll be really nice in there. I just I I don't know. I think I would skip when the birds are on the roofs. Okay. So I don't know how much I would run it in the middle of the night. I would run it first thing in the morning, like when the lights come on if you're lighting your birds. But I would run it first thing in the morning when you expect your birds to wake up and then split that up at least four, you know, four intervals throughout the day to get it out of there. Now, the first if you do it that way, the first run needs to be much longer than the other runs. Okay. Just because it's because there's more buildup, right? But I don't want to wake the birds up in the middle of the night, okay? So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:49

I I was gonna I want to circle back to something you said earlier about a bathle, and I distinctly remember in my mentor's poster barn, he had ventilation windows. There really weren't windows, they were just covered over with the wire, uh, about 18 inches wide. And I I didn't pay that much attention to it, so I don't know how far apart they were. But over that, he created a probably 8 by 24-inch channel made out of wood that over the top, went all the way down. The air had to go come into the top, go down that channel to the floor, and disperse from there.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

He really overthought it. I mean, he did a great job, and that's what you should be doing, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:45

And well, that that was it greeted. He died.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

So, you know, he thought it through, and there was a lot of trial and error to come up with that right combination. But yeah, he's right, you know. So instead of just having air come in at, you know, above our waist height kind of thing, and just pass straight through, you're completely missing the bedding and the floor, which is where you need the drying out. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

And I I remember asking one time, I said, Mr. East, why do you do it that way? And we were in this cockpit house, he said, look around. I said, Okay. He said, What do you see? I said, that bucket roof. He said, No. Do you see any frostbite on any of these cones? I said, No. He said you won't either because of the way I did the ventilation.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah. Yeah. Low-level draft air is gonna be more likely because there's too much moisture down there at the bottom. You're gonna be more likely to have those frostbites.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

So you want to pull the air from the bottom out the top.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Okay. He's pulling the air from the midsection of the building, not bringing it in directly at floor level. He's pulling it in two, three feet off the ground, but he's forcing it through a channel box to go downward and mix down there. Right. He's not pulling, he's not, he's not creating a draft. Yeah, he's still pulling the air from an upper level, right? But he's forcing it to go down.

SPEAKER_04 12:30

This velocity was it was forcing that, as he called it, the bad air out and bringing the good air in.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah. But he didn't bring it down at he didn't bring the air in from ground level.

SPEAKER_04 12:43

No, no, no, no. Yeah, it may have been four or five feet off the ground.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

How far did he drop the channel? How close did he get to the floor?

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Foot off, two foot off about a foot off, about above the bedding.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

About 12 inches. But the way he was about running cells tonight, man.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

I can't but the way he was bringing it in, it would actually then at 12 inches off the bedding, it would go down, hit the bedding, right, and disperse before it left. So he was actually doing a better job of managing his bedding in the floor, you know, than even what I described. But that was a lot more elaborate and it's gonna take a lot more work to do it.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

He he was a very accomplished woodworker, and he took those kind of things as a serious challenge.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

That I mean, that sounds real intriguing, especially for somebody that has like a barn, you know, where they're lucky enough to bring their birds inside and they want to do it long term, you know, over the winter months or whatever, to be able to bring them in and manage their bedding.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

Okay, I will tell you that he cut no corn and spared no cost when it came to raising the best chicken, he probably could.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

It's uh it's enough to get my curiosity up.

SPEAKER_05 14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Because this winter I will have a barn that is able to house some of my chickens with the bigger so they don't get the little spots on them.

SPEAKER_04 14:35

Since your curiosity is up, I got a question for you, Carrie. All right. Where does moisture inside the coop come from during the winter?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Aside from people that feel like they need water when they're in bed. Heat the the off gassing of the manure, you know, not keeping the airflow in there and the humidity, which you think wintertime, why is there humidity? But uh if you got it people that use the the plastic sheeting and seal them up tight, you know, those those birds are in there breathing.

SPEAKER_05 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

And they the the off-gas that they have causes humidity, just like if you were to sleep in a car overnight with your windows rolled up all the way, you're gonna have condensation on the windows.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

That brought me to my next question. What happens when warm, moisture, rich air uh comes in contact with windows or walls? What can happen?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Condensation. And then, you know, if if the bird does feel the need to drink, they'll try to get them ripples off of the glass. Then they might break the glass because some ways chickens are smart, some ways they're not so smart. You know, it's it's asking for trouble.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Sue, here's one for you. And and this may be it may not be a fair question for you because I know you're in the situation. Can poor air quality become a problem before we can smell it?

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Yes. Yep. By the time you smell it, you're behind. You're way behind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

You know, and I've heard Jeff say this, I don't know how many times on the show, that if you can smell the ammonia, you're burnt, you're suffering at that point. Because they're more sensitive to ammonia than we are. If it did I get that right, Jeff?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

You did. Uh now I've heard, I I recently heard, just recently heard this, okay, within the last couple of months. The commercial industry has moved the dial for acceptable on ammonia levels. Now, my mentor said 10. Right? The old numbers when I was starting out in this was 10 parts per million of ammonia. Okay, and you can buy ammonia detectors, and people with larger flocks and larger barns probably should invest in an ammonia detector. And the human nose is unable to detect it until 25 parts per million. So by the time we and some people, that's on average, right? There are people who can smell it at lower levels and people that can't smell it ever, right? Could be you you can become nose blind in your barn, right? In an enclosed space. So yeah, so but the average human cannot detect ammonia until 25 parts per million in the air. And that's a really, really low amount, right? And poultry respiratory tracts begin to damage their bronchial tubes, their air sacs, you know, their little bit of lungs, etc., will start to become irritated, sore, and raw at 10.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

And you made a comment kind of offhand. You said they're a little bit of lung. And a lot of people don't realize that chickens don't have lungs like him.

SPEAKER_05 18:46

They're they're small. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 18:51

So it doesn't take much to to really mess those lungs up.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Yeah, they work mostly on air sac. Yeah, they've got it, yeah. They've got a little bit of lung up in there, but it's it doesn't function the same way as ours does. So it's no okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:10

I'll anybody who wants this one. How important is litter management to maintaining good air quality?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I think they go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Very important. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Because if your air quality is kind of hoopy, so is your management.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

I think what people miss too is, and I only know this because you know, at work at Fortrell, we also do the agronomy side of things. Okay, so what manages your ammonia, which is nitrogen, is the carbon portion of your bedding. The more dense your carbon is, the less effective or the less able it is to absorb that ammonia out of the manure. So the softer or the less dense your carbon is, or your bedding, let's use the word bedding, but the less dense your bedding is, the more easily it can capture and control the ammonia and the moisture. So I'm gonna say this out loud and I'll get hate mail tomorrow, and I don't really care.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Jeff Maddox hat for trail.com.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

But wood chips, wood chips and pine shavings suck. They are way down there. Okay, anything that's made of wood, the fiber is so dense and so hard that its ability to capture nitrogen is very low. Okay, just this so you know, right? So if you grab a hold of whatever your bedding is, the softer it feels in your hand, the better it's going to manage your ammonia.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

So I that brings up a question that I have, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Can you put act how would it do if, like, maybe before you put your peat moss in your brooder, you put some activated charcoal in there?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Activated charcoal is awesome if you can afford it. Okay, so like if if if someone wanted to make their own biochar, you know, somebody that you know, like Sue, who likes to do her own thing as much as possible, right? And I thought everybody loved a good one. No, so if you making biochar, making biochar is not hard, but if you make biochar or activated charcoal as you call it, right, that is exceptional because you have stripped a lot of the lignin out of the wood and you've made it softer, right? So it is very active. In capturing that ammonia and that nitrogen, right? And so is the peat moss, right? That's why I'm a big fan of peat moss. However, it makes your coop dusty. And I mean the chickens are happy. The only people that are unhappy are the humans, right? I have never seen an unhappy chicken in a bale of peat moss. Never ever in my life.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

I think it's the best thing in the world.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

I know.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Well, unless you're the chicken that's like at the bottom when you leave the clumps in there and they don't get to get on top because you know one or two are hogging it, they might not like it that way.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

But that is hilarious when chicks play King of the Mountain with a couple of peat moss. So we can tell you if people would keep their their okay, if you use fresh peat moss every time you brooded a batch of chicks and you kept that, okay, there's no reason why I couldn't use that peat moss again for winter laying, you know, wherever the coop is for winter. Okay. There's no reason why I could not reuse that. There's still a huge amount of absorption capacity and a lot of active carbon there. That you know, if you had a place to keep it, there's no reason why I could not use it a second time.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

Yeah, let me circle back just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

You can't recycle wood chips.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

How much are it or is there a ratio that may not be bending to biochar, would you need to have an effective litter system?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

I don't know the number right off the top of my head, Rip. Usually, when you make when you take any kind of wood chunks, like you're making charcoal, basically when you make it's the same process as making charcoal, right? You you heat it in an oxygen-deprived place. Often you assume that you're gonna lose, and this depends on the type of wood and all that, but you're gonna lose roughly 50% of your total weight and probably 30% of your volume when that when you make that biochar or charcoal, but its ability to capture that nitrogen and ammonia that we talked about is far superior than to when it was just a wood chip.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

Okay, very good. Stu, in your experience, how does wet litter change conditions inside you?

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Well, it the wet litter increases the humidity greatly. And that can bring in moisture, cause frostbite, cause respiratory problems. I mean you're you're just asking for trouble if you've got that you know, if you're not controlling that wet litter.

SPEAKER_05 25:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

Multiple problems.

SPEAKER_04 25:14

We kind of beat the ventilation without wraps things to death, but I I do have another question, Jeff. Should the amount of ventilation change as the outside temperature change? And it's no impact.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

No, not at all. So air exchange in a coop should always be a hundred percent air exchange, a minimum of four times in a 24-hour period. Okay. A 100, it doesn't that's summer, winter, doesn't matter. Spring, fall, that's every day of a chicken's life in an ideal world. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 26:03

Let's talk about the birds themselves. And I Jeff, I know you spent a ton of time and care you have and suit you have observing your birds. But what can the birds themselves tell us about the quality of the air they're living in? What have you noticed?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Everything.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Starts out with lethar lethargy, you know, are they lethargic, you know, it turns into snotty noses, watery eyes, then it turns into you know sneezing, snitting, right? And it just it just snowballs after that.

SPEAKER_04 26:47

I I can see how some people could witness those symptoms and misinterpret it as a respiratory infection.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

It's the beginning of a respiratory infection. So by the time you get to those watery eyes and and nasal discharge and smeezing and smitting, you know, your bird's respiratory system is so weakened that anything in that environment, you know, is gonna attack it, right? Whether it's carriza, you know, whatever. Right. So you just you're opening them up to a world of problems.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Okay. Here's one that the people who show their birds find interesting. What can feather condition tell us about moisture inside it?

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Oh well, if it's really dry in there, you're gonna have dry feathers. You're really gonna have the brittle, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah, you'll have brittle feathers almost like bright.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Yeah, bright and fry.

SPEAKER_04 28:15

What about the other extreme if you've got high moisture content? Have you noticed anything about that? I I have, but you know that.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I'm gonna leave it to y'all, so I haven't.

SPEAKER_03 28:28

You know, that's not you got me on that one.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

Have you ever had some of your birds who you handle and the feather quality looks great? And then maybe a few days, weeks later, you handle them, and the feathers seem very limp and weak to where they kind of flop a little bit. Have you ever noticed that?

SPEAKER_03 28:58

I haven't.

SPEAKER_04 29:00

Well, you've got a more open type coop too. I have seen that happen when there would be high humidity levels in the coop. The feather qual the feathers would just kind of get droopy. And and the other extreme is I've seen it when when the uh when the air was really dry, the feathers get brittle and and of course with red it get the old frizzed up. It just looks horrible. And that's why I tell folks peek people that uh raised red, holds them down every now and then. You know, when you condition them walk by the conditioning tank with a spray bottle and just switch them with a little water, that really helps the better conditions.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Oh, on a day like on a day like what we were having last week. Oh they love they love that. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

I wonder, Rip, do you uh because you live in your climate is a lot more humid than than mine and maybe Sue's, I wonder if you see that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Could very well be.

unknown 30:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Could very well be.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I I've seen the dryness, you know, that Sue's talking about. Now, again, I'm gonna say something that probably ticks somebody off. But if you get your dietary fat at the right level, above five percent, and actually closer to seven, the oil out of that oil gland and the activity of the bird preening itself is what holds feather condition. Okay, that's what the oil's there for, and it's not just a magical squirt can that hangs out the back end of a chicken, okay? It has a reason, and all these commercial chicken feeds run at three and a half fat.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

Okay, I just gotta say it's hard to find not much fat leverage.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

But I'll tell you that a chicken ultimately performs best in that seven percent range for sure above five. And when you start getting closer to seven, you know, you're hitting that ideal range. And depending on the type of fat, I've I've had feed formulas that I've done at 11 and even 12% fat. And if it's a good fat that the liver can process right and secrete it, and and the liver can turn it into proper cholesterols, you know, those birds outperform everything else.

SPEAKER_04 31:36

Define what you call a good fat.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Well, so that's where your tallow and your lard are going to be much easier for that chicken to utilize. Now, tallow and lard have re-seen have seen a resurgence in favorability among you know eaters out there and healthy, health-minded people. So to try and buy tallow or lard is is expensive.

SPEAKER_05 32:05

It is.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah, very simple. You know, I recommend people to get one of those uh turkey roasters, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Electric turkey roaster pigs.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

You don't want to put it outside.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

But you just turn it on, you turn it on a medium setting and let it go. And a couple times a day you go by and you you you skim out your cracklings. Okay. Give a little stir. The chickens will eat the cracklings too. There's nothing wrong with that. But you know, but if you're making more on me. So, you know, deer, deer fat, you know, deer season's coming up, deer fat for guys in the south who hunt wild hogs. Of course, they don't get a lot of fat on a wild hog, but that's fine. Any wild animal fat that you can get to your birds is gonna be the top, top tier of fats. You know, then you start coming into your coconut oils, your olive oils, you know, those are also really good. Flax oil's okay. You gotta kind of be fussy where you're you know, where you're getting, you know, your flax oil. But you know, if you you know, if you can't get those oils, just oil, right? You know, even the other seed oils are are gonna work. But yeah, animal fats are always gonna be your best choice when you can get it.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Well, I mean, that one thing you could do with that is when you call your birds. There's just some liquid gold right there.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Well, hopefully not a lot, but you know, for the people who like to free choice feed, yes, there's gonna be plenty of liquid gold inside that chicken.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yeah, yeah, but they ain't getting it back. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

If it if it's good, healthy animal fat, yeah, you don't want to give it up.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

No, no, smoked. So guys, when we open up our coop in the morning, what should we not be smelling?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Ammonia.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

Ammonia.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, hopefully you're not smelling anything because if you've got proper ventilation in there, you know, yes, it should smell like chickens live there, but you shouldn't smell the manure, you shouldn't smell the ammonia, you shouldn't smell the urethra.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Okay, yeah, it shouldn't be fine.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

If you're managing your bedding and your air quality correctly, it should just smell like chicken.

SPEAKER_04 35:08

And uh folks, I know we've talked about observing your flocks on a regular basis and how important that is, but you would be surprised just by observing your flock what they can tell you about what's going on inside the coop if you just watch them and you know, a what's normal for them and b when they're acting off.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Now, Rip, I know I didn't I didn't see it on your outline, but there is a way to tell when a chicken is feeling too cold. Okay, okay, so when they actually start to hit their lower temperature extreme, they'll ruffle out all their feathers and they they look kind of like a frizzle, right? So their feathers will not lay down flat, right? They're they'll just shake them loose and they're trying to get as much air capture as they can in there. Okay, so I have not seen that very often. That that is a rare extreme. But if people want to know if their chickens are feeling cold, they'll fluff out like a frizzle.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

Honestly, I don't know that I've ever seen it, but you know, when I'm down here, you live in Florida, yeah. Like human sounds, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

I've only seen it very rarely, like winter times in northern Minnesota, kind of thing. Pretty extreme, extended extremes, right? And but that's the only way you're gonna, you know. I've never seen a chicken shiver, so not from cold anyway.

SPEAKER_04 36:49

Yeah, I've seen them do it in stretch.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you actually need to be worried if you see a head's chicken quiver like it's shivering, that's one of the early warning signs of avian influenza. So pay attention.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Oh well, did you did you do you I need to start tapping in a larger font size?

SPEAKER_03 37:19

Well, I have a question while you're while you're using your so uh most of my coops face south and they have either two or three open sides. Now, during the summertime I have cedar panels, and I'll take down like the top two cedar panels just to increase the airflow in the coop. Now during the wintertime I put them back up. Am I making a mistake doing that? Should I go maybe further down, like three feet off the ground, and pull a panel out down there during the winter time?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

No, I would leave, I would keep taking the one or two off the top, but I wouldn't put them back up in the wintertime. I would just leave them.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Again, watch what your birds are doing and what they're telling you.

SPEAKER_03 38:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

And but I would think your worst weather in the winter is going to come out of the northwest. You know, your cold, your coldest winds are probably going to come out of the northwest.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

And I have no idea how your coops are oriented.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

So they're all placed in open, open side is south.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Open so yeah, you're you're good. And so yeah, you can drop those cedar panels on the sides just to keep, but you're you know, you're keeping always open, right? They don't have anything on that south side, right? So I can't see how you would have any type of moisture or humidity buildup at all, anyway. Right. But we still want fresh air coming in there, so figure out your best place for a porthole for air to pass through there.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Um, at some at some level.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

I I know that just, you know, like Rip says, observing the the flop at night when that when they're going up on roofs, there's a fight for those top roofs. They want up there where the fresh air is coming through.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah. Well, and also birds, they they like to be at the highest point, a lot of them, regardless.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Yeah, you know, with your coupe design, Sue, I would almost experiment with putting a roof vent in like a cupola and let air vent out the top. Go up just because just because you've got that whole open-sided south. But right cupolos can move some a good bit of air. I was amazed at how much air they let move through when you got a breeze blowing of any kind and acts like a vacuum cleaner and it pulls the air right out of there. So yeah, yeah, that might be an option for you with your design.

SPEAKER_04 40:01

Okay. With it or not, we even had barns down here in the south with bootloads on.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Yeah, it makes a big difference. If there's any air moving out there at all across the top of that barn, it it'll pull a draft up out of there really quick.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

So wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:20

Hey, let's take just uh about a 45 seconds, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Huh?

SPEAKER_04 40:37

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. Protrail has been a trusted name in sustainable farming and folk nutrition 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. I cannot imagine trying to do this show without Protrail support. And I couldn't imagine trying to do this show without Jeff's help.

SPEAKER_05 41:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

We are happy to do both rip.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

Well, and I appreciate that because the two in combination. It is wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Just don't forget to let me know when the bill comes ready.

SPEAKER_04 41:46

So that's coming up.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Not a problem.

SPEAKER_04 41:54

Would stocking density change the equation on air movement and that sort of thing? I'm not used to heavy stocking density, okay? Not like you not like UCF in some of the commercial operations. That's that's totally foreign to me.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Absolutely. Yeah, again, depending on the the barn layout and what the ventilation is, but you know, just for well-being purposes, you you should consider four square feet per bird, right? For like a large fowl, adult large fowl. Okay, I would be looking at that four square feet per bird of indoor space. Just stops cannibalizing, pecking, pecking mortar, a lot of that stuff goes away. But it's gonna help you manage your air quality and your bedding a lot better, too.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

Here's an interesting question, and I really had not thought about it until I got asked this. But how would an older wooden cook behave differently from the more modern modular metal construction? I mean, I can imagine, but I've I've never done that's a big difference.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

Go ahead to I would think that the the wooden coop would be able to maybe breathe a little better. One of the reasons why I built my last coop so tall is because I knew I was gonna be putting metal on the roof, and the metal is just like sitting in an oven, and I wanted it at least three to four feet above the the birds to where the air movement would get that hot air out before it ever got down to the birds level. So I mean that that would be one of my concerns with one of the newer coops that's all metal. What color uh what color roof did you put on there see oh it's it's whatever happened to be in my hand at the time it was it was yeah it was gifted to me so there's uh blue and silver and white and well if you get a chance this summer or sometime if you paint the whole thing white I can tell you that there is a 20 degree temperature swing yeah between white and all other colors yeah okay it's not as pretty right and and white is annoying to have to look at it on a sunny day but for the benefit of the chicken yeah you know white is definitely your win.

SPEAKER_04 45:01

I I really would not have thought it would have been that much I appreciate the share.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah I got a friend farmer he was in he was in Washington he now is in Montana but he was he was doing the tarp structures you know kind of like carries uh aluma coops and stuff and he went out there with a with a thermometer and he had white he had white tarping on some heavy you know heavy tarping he had white on some and silver on some with white on the underside and he he measured between white and silver there was 20 degrees difference in that coop okay so but I thought silver would reflect it it's still it's darker than the white wow that was his you know that he wanted to know right he had both out there in the field and he noticed differences him and his wife were very observant and they noticed that the birds were more comfortable and did better under a white cover than they did under the sofa. Yeah wanted to know why so he went out there and measured the temperature and on like the hottest day of the year you know in Washington state which isn't that hot but still in the 90s right there was in in in the peak of the heat in the afternoon like two o'clock there was a 20 degree difference. Wow okay that's amazing that's good to know information right so white is always going to be your preference for covering when you can do it or increase your ventilation and add misters in the summertime what are some of the more common ventilation winter ventilation mistakes y'all have seen people make no not giving them any wrapping tight amen yep I can't tell you this you watch this winter right in November December people will be posting pictures of their chicken coop on Backyard Chicken Group or something like that backyard chicken of how they wrap their chickens in cellophane right and their coop was tighter than tight yeah right and they thought they were doing the right thing and they probably put their food and water in there too and got a nice little heater to help them bake hey on the coldest day my chickens had to come outside if they wanted to eat and drink. Okay I never supplied food and water in the coop never now when we had a fresh snowfall and they'd never seen it before they all stood at the doorway looking at it like what the heck is this stuff right so I scattered a little straw on the ground right and when they heard the feed bucket rattle they they started out one at a time ever so cautiously and then once they got out there they started eating it and playing in it and having a good old time they just it was new right and it was a new sighting what is this yeah he people just don't really realize how new things can really stress poetry and simple little things it's it's crazy. It's crazy I was working with a guy the other day right and he was wondering why he was having a failure to perform at the level he thought he should be performing and I said look it's it's believe it or not it's this simple whatever feeder and water you're going to use when you move them out of the brooder to their other housing they need to see that and get used to using that feeder and drinker as chicks before you ever make the move because if you go from an orange feeder that's an oval like a turbo feeder in the brooder and all you have is flip over waterers right and you take them to the field now they got hanging red feeders and they got nipple lines yeah they have no clue they are they have I lose three to four days of performance out of a bird just because of that major change of environment okay simple things people don't even think about it oh they'll find it they'll find it yeah they will what is what did you lose in the meantime?

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Yeah they find it in time yeah how can we tell there are there any clues and here again I'm in Florida and so I don't see a whole lot change but when how do how do we know when we've achieved the right balance between protection from the weather and the proper amount of ventilation Sue's setup is actually ideal right so as long as you have a wind block from prevailing winds okay that's really all they need.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

People get totally carried away with their with their chicken housing thinking that they want to live in the same comfort that we do you know in a house with a heater and unless you're gonna move them in the house with you and let them free roam your house that that's not a truthful statement. Jeff don't tempt some people it's already happening I can't tell you how many people I know with a house chicken. Okay it already happens I I miss my little house chicken but honestly you know I'm glad I don't have another one so yeah a lot of I'm sure you could take your pick of ones that would like to come in there I I have a handful of ducks that walk right in the door if I let them yeah I'm sure I got a lady in British Columbia and she's got a a our favorite chicken she's got a silky sits on her desk while she does her work. Yeah right and it wanders around the house does its own thing got his little diaper on yep yeah yep no no diaper just picking up work now mine had a diaper okay oh she cleans up after yeah I didn't even know chickens had I didn't know a chicken diaper was even a thing.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Oh yeah all right okay there's a lady on YouTube that's made a whole business out of it.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

There's some things I don't want to know I mean hey if somebody's gonna buy it you might as well sell it.

SPEAKER_04 52:18

Yeah we could make about anything I I really have more information here on my sheet to ask but we already covered it all so I'm I'm just not gonna beat a dead horse tonight but I do have a couple of quick questions.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

What's one simple thing one thing people could change that would make a difference in improving their air quality carry ventilation betting betting betting I would I would want up carries to go to forced ventilation forced timed controlled ventilation right it it is not a high dollar investment you know you can get a bathroom exhaust fan for about a hundred bucks all right you can get a vent at the same store on the other side for probably 15 and a timer for another 10 bucks at all at the same store okay it's not that hard I mean you can even get it on Amazon and have it sent straight to your house. You ain't even got to go to the store think about this Jeff now I'm I'm not gonna open that can hard Lisa's gonna run go ahead yeah that's put up Lisa's comment right chickens are like little furnaces you know they can handle the cold they they handle the cold Canadian winters just fine right no heat source but well ventilated that's 100% right so okay I think our issue is more picking the right breed for where we live that has a lot to do with yes you know like people wanting modern game bantams in northern Minnesota is not a great fit okay so you know there's birds that are cut out to be in those colder climates and there's birds that are cut out to be in hotter climates. And you know your hard feathered you know huh I said there's your house chicken yeah well you know those hard feathered breeds like the games the modern games and the game bannems you know they really are more of a southern chicken right I mean that's where their parentage came from anyway. You know like Esther has chantlares they're perfect for cold climates like you know New Hampshire Favourell's are the same way. It's just picking the right breed for your climate but you know people fall in love with something else right and think they gotta have it or chicken collectors who have to have every breed but okay Carrie yes I I know you like this one someone would ask you what can be the danger of adding supplemental heat to your chicken coop during the winter roasted chicken fires for sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

You know the one that's one of the biggest things that people don't think about is they will get you know they don't want to spend the $10 to $15 to get the explosion proof red lamp they want to get the two to three dollar one that is very thin. And when chickens are cooped up they're just like teenagers they get rambunctious and they want something to do and they'll start bouncing around and they'll bust that sucker and if the thing's not just right there's a problem. And I know people I've heard a lot of internet traffic about people talking trash because I compare chickens to kids but if you got kids and you got chickens they both do some of the same dumb stuff. Or grandkids by case same category I got both.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

Yep now look I was guilty of supplying heat one winter that same winter where I talked about having down in the teens for an extended period of time but I I I put a red heat lamp three feet above my chickens in the coop okay above the roost only right and it was on a timer right it came on automatically it went off automatically now did they need it no but I thought they did so I felt guilty to the same thinking okay so it happens they didn't bust the light though so I do I I do buy the higher dollar light right the other thing to think about too is those winners when the power goes out which has happened happened here multiple times you know if you've got chickens that are used to having a warm you know luxurious coop to sleep in every night and the power goes out those girls are not gonna be at a happy at all no no no and I thought about that after the fact is is I was making them wimps winter wimps and yeah but that that that heat lamp went off every morning at 5 a.m when the other light came on to tell them it's time to lay an egg time to get up so they final question for the night and I'm gonna ask each one over separately Karen we'll start with you if you could give folks only one thing to remember about winter air quality what would it be take it serious okay that to me the air quality in the wintertime you got to take it serious because you know they're gonna be cooped up a lot because if you do live in a really cold climate then you know they they might go out and check out the snow because it's new but they want to go back in the coop and if they're spending a lot of time in there you got to take the air quality serious because you know they have I mean their lungs can be removed with a teaspoon.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

They're tiny and they can be damaged really easily you know to the point that if you can smell it it's already twice the limit that it should be or more so yeah I I would take it serious.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Same question for you if you could give over here only one thing to remember about winter air quality what would it be ventilation ventilation forced ventilation okay Jeff you're gonna have to close it out with your answer here what's one thing I'm glad you brought me in last because you give me more time to think about it but actually when you asked the question to Carrie I had my answer and it's really this simple if it stinks it stinks right and it's bad living conditions.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:20

So if you smell anything going into your coop it's a bad deal for everybody it's bad for your lungs it's bad for their lungs right and you're just diminishing the quality of your file so if it stinks it stinks I'm I'm glad you brought that up Jeff because as as a nurse ammonia is dangerous to people it can kill you so yeah it's not it's not anything to take lightly so well folks that's our show for tonight we appreciate you joining us I thought we had a pretty good show pretty interesting show we covered a lot we covered uh covered a lot of ground tonight but we'll be back in two weeks with another fun fill show you