Feb. 12, 2024
Reading, Understanding, and Applying a Written Standard-Part 2
Unlock the secrets of poultry selection with us, Mandolyn Royal, John Gunerman, and Rip Stalvey reveal the subtle nuances of bird evaluation that go beyond mere aesthetics. This isn't your typical farm chat; our discussion wades into the intricacies of a bird's natural carriage and its dynamic response to the environment. By understanding the importance of patience and employing tools like video analysis, you too can perfect the art of recognizing the ideal tail posture, an indicator of your bird's health and genetic potential.
Imagine a kitchen where every utensil has its place—this is the kind of efficiency we explore when discussing body capacity in poultry. With Mandolyn and John's expertise, we dissect the 'cinder block' shape, not just for its form but for the function it serves in egg production and the bird's protective instincts. We examine the concept of heart girth and its resemblance to the deep chests of thoroughbred horses, understanding that this trait is not only about physical appearance but also essential for feed efficiency and vitality.
So join us as we combine our love for poultry with a touch of science, sparking a conversation that will resonate with hobbyists and professionals alike, eager to explore the intersection of culinary art and avian science.
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00:00 - Understanding Poultry Tail Evaluation
07:05 - Importance of Body Capacity in Poultry
13:01 - Bird Anatomy and Genetic Influences
23:44 - Analyzing Carcasses in Poultry Keeping
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Hi, I'm Rip Stalvin.
00:00:01.362 --> 00:00:05.072
I want to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast.
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Joining me in the studio are Mandolin Roil and John Gunerman the rest of our podcast team, and we are really looking forward to visiting with you and talking poultry from feathers to flunks.
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Okay, we've talked about the backs.
00:00:28.693 --> 00:00:32.576
Let's move a little further down the bird and talk about the tails.
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You know you have to think about the size, the shape, angle of the tail, carriage and the spread of the tail, and those are all defined in the standard of the profession.
00:00:44.372 --> 00:00:47.362
So, mandolin, what's your thoughts on selecting for tail?
00:00:48.304 --> 00:00:59.823
So when I look at the breed standard, it's going to mention the angle of the tail, and the tricky part of that is the bird is going to change that angle as it moves around, based on how it's standing.
00:00:59.823 --> 00:01:05.480
So you can't make a snap decision on tails, and they also can change over time too.
00:01:05.480 --> 00:01:10.640
So what they look like at six months old might be different than what they look like at a year and a half old.
00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:24.986
So I'm learning to be patient on tails to see what they're really going to turn into, and I'm only looking for what's an outright flaw to a tail, like if it's a ride tail, split tail, something like that.
00:01:24.986 --> 00:01:28.313
You can see that earlier, but it might also show up later.
00:01:28.313 --> 00:01:33.819
So tails are something I'm just trying to be patient and looking at.
00:01:35.222 --> 00:01:39.753
Yeah, I agree with you, it takes a little bit of time for those things to really develop and settle in.
00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:50.656
It's really helpful to watch them just in their natural habitat to get an idea of where their tail is in general, because it'll change based on what's going on in the environment.
00:01:50.656 --> 00:01:53.790
If there's predators around, the tail's going to do one thing.
00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:56.960
If there's anything above them, naturally the tail set's going to drop.
00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:08.098
That's why I don't have a nice little viewing pen with a top on it like Mandi does, because when I did, I set one up with a camera so I could get a downward shot.
00:02:08.098 --> 00:02:11.427
As soon as I did, I saw my Chanticleer's tail drop maybe 10 degrees.
00:02:11.467 --> 00:02:12.891
It makes a big difference.
00:02:14.199 --> 00:02:16.644
So in the show.
00:02:16.644 --> 00:02:26.627
I'm sure that's what they refer to as coop conditioning, to get your bird to show properly because it gets accustomed to being in a cage.
00:02:27.508 --> 00:02:35.633
You take a bird that's been running out and you put it in a show coop, it's going to almost instantly change the way they look.
00:02:35.633 --> 00:02:40.568
I know Sue Dobson's red champion up there at the Ohio National.
00:02:40.568 --> 00:02:47.550
If you looked at that bird in the coop you saw that his head was kind of shrunken down to his shoulders.
00:02:47.550 --> 00:02:52.806
His tail was going downhill instead of being level like it should be.
00:02:52.806 --> 00:02:56.816
That was because he was in a coop.
00:02:56.816 --> 00:03:03.193
Over the top of the coop was a piece of plywood because they had set band of coops on top of the large falcon.
00:03:03.193 --> 00:03:07.009
Anytime you do that, it's going to make them hunker down.
00:03:07.920 --> 00:03:08.181
Yeah.
00:03:08.181 --> 00:03:11.875
So it's also important to look at them in all their different areas.
00:03:11.875 --> 00:03:15.688
Don't only base your opinion off of when they're interviewing cage.
00:03:15.688 --> 00:03:19.062
Don't only base your opinion when they're out in the field.
00:03:19.062 --> 00:03:24.418
You want to see them in every scenario to get an idea of what's really going on.
00:03:24.418 --> 00:03:34.372
Then you want to find out what angle and shape and length and all of that you're supposed to have for your particular breed, because every single one of them wants a slightly different variation.
00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:36.584
You bring up a good point there.
00:03:36.584 --> 00:03:39.611
In measuring tail angles we've used breasts for an example.
00:03:39.611 --> 00:03:46.420
Their back should slope from basically their shoulders back to the tail have a downward slope to it.
00:03:46.420 --> 00:03:56.344
Do you measure the angle of the tail from the horizontal plane or do you take into account the amount of slope in the back?
00:03:57.306 --> 00:04:06.217
At this point it's kind of both, depending on the overall balance I'm seeing from the bird With where they're at in development.
00:04:06.217 --> 00:04:15.848
I've got some other stuff to pay attention to first before refining tails, the longer they're not squirrely or toothy or otherwise wonky.
00:04:15.848 --> 00:04:23.245
It's something I'm looking for later in the actual particular angles I've got other stuff to fix.
00:04:24.225 --> 00:04:33.978
The standard actually prescribed that it be measured from a horizontal plane, as if the back were level to get the proper tail that makes them.
00:04:33.978 --> 00:04:34.980
That put everybody in the plane.
00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:36.185
That could be back for later.
00:04:36.666 --> 00:04:43.088
If your particular breed has a flat back or is prescribed to have a flat back, that makes it a little easier.
00:04:44.110 --> 00:04:50.689
Reds are really easy to evaluate tail of them because they have that long level horizontal back.
00:04:51.550 --> 00:04:52.612
Yeah, that would make it easier.
00:04:53.901 --> 00:04:57.920
You were talking about looking at your birds when they're doing different things.
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Sometimes I've just been known to go out there with a video camera and just turn the birds out that I want to evaluate and just to turn video as they move around, as they scratch.
00:05:08.435 --> 00:05:10.903
I want them to feel comfortable, to feel relaxed.
00:05:10.903 --> 00:05:16.396
You can do more to evaluate birds that way that any other way that I found One.
00:05:16.416 --> 00:05:26.555
You can go back and reference it later too, and you can check out some other details, like what their legs are doing, what their wings are doing, how alert they are watching their behaviors.
00:05:26.694 --> 00:05:44.798
There's a lot to be seen when you're just observing, and then, if you video it now, you've got references to go back to if you need to and you were looking at a video of some shanta clear and we'll talk about this in a minute and you spotted something going on with the legs that I didn't see and I'm like, oh yeah, you do get flock blind.
00:05:44.798 --> 00:05:48.841
So, having somebody else take a look at something you know, you spotted it right away.
00:05:49.797 --> 00:05:52.673
We talked about tails and evaluating those.
00:05:52.673 --> 00:05:52.733
Oh.
00:05:53.817 --> 00:05:55.144
I did have one more tail comment.
00:05:55.144 --> 00:06:07.548
One of the things I'm looking for is for the back end of the tails to be open rather than pinched, and then what that looks like is when you're looking from the backside of the bird, with like a head-on shot of the rear.
00:06:07.548 --> 00:06:16.324
If those tail feathers touch each other and it's real tight, that can indicate a narrowness that's on the backside.
00:06:16.324 --> 00:06:18.536
That's not just the tail Like.
00:06:18.536 --> 00:06:20.427
Once you put your hands on them you can confirm it.
00:06:20.427 --> 00:06:29.009
But I'm looking for Almost like a tinted shape there where there's an openness between either side of those tail feathers.
00:06:30.055 --> 00:06:37.382
The old timers used to call that a teepee shape, because if you look at the bird from the rear end it's got that elongated V shape.
00:06:37.382 --> 00:06:44.137
You can rest assured that that's tied in To the width of the back.
00:06:44.358 --> 00:06:46.386
That's mirroring the structure that's ahead of it.
00:06:47.076 --> 00:06:51.863
Yeah, and you can look at the the leg how far the legs apart.
00:06:51.863 --> 00:06:57.305
The wider the legs are apart, the greater the width of the tail will be from side to side.
00:06:58.396 --> 00:07:04.528
So the, the spread of the tail, is directly tied at least to the, the latter half of the body capacity.
00:07:05.074 --> 00:07:16.175
You brought up something good, and that's the next thing I think we need to talk about is body capacity, what it is, why it's important and have a look for it, john.
00:07:16.175 --> 00:07:16.879
What are your thoughts?
00:07:17.774 --> 00:07:24.718
You need the basic room for the organs to fit and do their Stuff, naturally.
00:07:24.718 --> 00:07:26.903
So, too tight of a body, too narrow.
00:07:26.903 --> 00:07:28.708
I equate everything to the kitchen.
00:07:28.708 --> 00:07:32.826
So I I see some things that are, you know, torpedo shape, like torpedo rolls.
00:07:32.826 --> 00:07:44.757
They're kind of narrow at the front and narrow at the back and, you know, broadest at the shoulders, but it's too pinched and that's gonna cause all the internal organs to be Stressed.
00:07:44.757 --> 00:07:53.862
I like to go for this cinder block shape where I've got, you know, a lot of room for the pen to have her organs and do her reproductive thing.
00:07:53.862 --> 00:07:56.699
And, you know, roosters can be roosters.
00:07:56.699 --> 00:08:11.795
They need to be able to defend their flock and Be able to carry themselves and ward off predators or at least warn of them and you know I had somebody asked me one time Well, why do I need to be worried about body capacity?
00:08:12.805 --> 00:08:17.834
I said, well, body capacity dictates so much else that goes on in a bird rate of growth.
00:08:17.834 --> 00:08:20.000
It's a frame.
00:08:20.521 --> 00:08:23.110
Yeah, it's what everything is built on.
00:08:23.269 --> 00:08:37.990
You can't put two pounds of poop in a one pound bag, as my grandfather Exactly Well, and remember that even during egg laying, once it's into the what do they call that?
00:08:37.990 --> 00:08:55.486
The calcification process, that egg is in there spinning and turning and moving down through the laying track and if it's tight then it's going to not function probably as well as it should and it's going to want a priority of space.
00:08:55.486 --> 00:09:00.538
That can affect the other organs, especially if you get them too fat.
00:09:00.538 --> 00:09:10.143
That further causes additional inside constriction and you might see some problems coming from poor structure, poor capacity.
00:09:11.169 --> 00:09:18.595
You could have torpedo shaped eggs or you could have golf ball shaped eggs, and that's going to be a reflection on the body capacity.
00:09:19.537 --> 00:09:21.822
Well with where the laying equipment is.
00:09:21.822 --> 00:09:29.744
It's right up underneath the spine and you can even have poorly shaped eggs if it's pushed up into that back.
00:09:29.744 --> 00:09:33.503
So when the egg gets laid it'll look pretty normal.
00:09:33.503 --> 00:09:36.552
Until you turn it to one side that'll have like a flat spot on it.
00:09:37.514 --> 00:09:40.240
Another thing is that body capacity is linked to.
00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:55.414
If you have birds that your females suffer from getting egg bound where they have, they can't actually lay the egg because the egg is so big and they have that physical blockage there between the pubic bones that can cause you some real problems.
00:09:55.414 --> 00:09:56.879
It causes you to lose some of those birds.
00:09:57.870 --> 00:10:01.461
You'll absolutely lose them, because if they prolapse once, they're going to do it again.
00:10:02.289 --> 00:10:04.217
Well then, you need to lose them.
00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:08.340
Yeah, they shouldn't be part of the breeding equation, that's for sure.
00:10:08.730 --> 00:10:10.758
I mean, nature selects pretty well for us.
00:10:10.758 --> 00:10:22.381
Naturally, we're the one, maybe the one's messing it up, because we're always, I think, trying to go, oh, this is a really nice bird, let's give her a chance, when you should have maybe put her in stoop out a long time ago.
00:10:23.029 --> 00:10:28.663
Yeah, there's not any one trait that is worth sacrificing the important things for.
00:10:28.663 --> 00:10:33.020
It doesn't matter what their head is like, what their comb is like, their color.
00:10:33.020 --> 00:10:36.075
That all is secondary, At least to me.
00:10:36.075 --> 00:10:41.619
It is when you're looking at those more important utility traits that help with their health and function.
00:10:42.730 --> 00:10:49.053
So, Rip, there's a couple of terms that I'd like to clear up from the standard that talk about heart girth.
00:10:49.053 --> 00:10:52.081
Two or three more, I'm sure we're going to work our way around to.
00:10:53.149 --> 00:10:56.658
Well, to me heart girth and I like to measure that.
00:10:56.658 --> 00:11:09.836
When I'm evaluating birds, I put my thumb on the very top of the back, up near the neck, and then I'll put my middle finger underneath the bird, on the bird's breast.
00:11:09.836 --> 00:11:16.940
That'll give me an evaluation of how deep that chest cavity is, and then I'll report that.
00:11:16.940 --> 00:11:20.134
So, top to bottom, top to bottom and side to side.
00:11:20.797 --> 00:11:21.941
Is that in front of the wing?
00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:34.436
Yes, I do it in front of the wing, and the greater the heart girth, the more efficient that bird becomes at processing feed.
00:11:34.436 --> 00:11:40.340
Just being able to live, in other words, it's directly linked to the bird's overall quality.
00:11:40.360 --> 00:11:41.205
The vital organs.
00:11:41.205 --> 00:11:45.270
They call it the heart girth because that's pretty much where the heart muscle is Right.
00:11:45.831 --> 00:11:51.844
It's just like if you were measuring it on a horse or a cow or something like that.
00:11:51.844 --> 00:11:55.500
Heart girth is important there, just like it is important in a chicken.
00:11:56.451 --> 00:12:04.158
Well, like how thoroughbreds are so deep in the chest because they're working hard and yeah, the heart muscle needs room to work.
00:12:04.269 --> 00:12:06.750
Heart, muscle, lung capacity.
00:12:06.750 --> 00:12:08.231
It's all tied into that.
00:12:08.231 --> 00:12:14.918
Hi there, poultry keepers.
00:12:14.918 --> 00:12:18.287
This is Rip, one of the voices behind the poultry keepers podcast.
00:12:18.287 --> 00:12:24.379
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00:12:24.379 --> 00:12:34.677
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00:12:42.946 --> 00:12:48.464
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00:12:51.178 --> 00:12:53.908
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00:12:53.908 --> 00:12:55.475
Now back to our show.
00:13:01.086 --> 00:13:05.072
Well, we covered the depth of the body and how important that is.
00:13:05.072 --> 00:13:13.640
If we're just working our way down the bird, then we get to think about the strengthness and the width between the legs, because that's what the whole body is standing on.
00:13:14.503 --> 00:13:28.644
Yes, and, like I mentioned before, if you've got a good wide bird, you're going to have a well formed tail with a nice spread side to side and top to bottom, although I realized that's kind of a cosmetic thing.
00:13:28.644 --> 00:13:52.990
But that spread in the bird between the legs is related to heart, it is related to body capacity and you want legs that are straight top to bottom because if they're turned in, or cowhawk as most folks would say, that's indicating a bird that's wider at the top than it is kind of down at the bottom.
00:13:52.990 --> 00:13:59.427
Those are the ones that have leg problems, have trouble walking and they can also be bow-legged.
00:13:59.807 --> 00:14:00.288
Yeah.
00:14:01.611 --> 00:14:02.052
They can.
00:14:02.734 --> 00:14:08.607
And that's the opposite problem, and those are structural defects and those should not be bred forward.
00:14:09.437 --> 00:14:12.144
Exactly and it's easy to evaluate.
00:14:12.144 --> 00:14:25.315
If you're watching your birds, if they turn and walk towards you, directly towards you or directly away from you, it becomes readily apparent If those legs are straight or if there's a problem with them.
00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:28.355
Yeah, the more you look for it, the more you see it.
00:14:28.355 --> 00:14:44.235
Yeah, and I've also noted that the legs and how they're set and where they're positioned on the body and if they're coming down bowed in, there's almost always a very steep and sharp V-shape to the keel.
00:14:44.235 --> 00:14:55.365
That's very narrow more often than not and that's a problem I've noticed on most birds of most varieties.
00:14:55.365 --> 00:15:00.586
I've tried Well, the underside of the bird is getting completely neglected.
00:15:01.235 --> 00:15:12.839
Well, so many people really pay attention to the top line of the bird, or let's say the top half of the bird, because it's easy to see visually and they forget all about the.
00:15:12.839 --> 00:15:18.328
Equally important is the bottom half of the bird when viewed from the side.
00:15:19.115 --> 00:15:21.379
Well, for, purpose and for table.
00:15:21.379 --> 00:15:25.347
The underside is even more important if you're worried about what it's going to look like in a shrink bag.
00:15:27.179 --> 00:15:27.942
That's the breast.
00:15:28.956 --> 00:15:30.735
Yeah, that's the part that's turned up for display.
00:15:30.735 --> 00:15:40.873
If they're narrow or pointy or sharp or otherwise not looking very meaty, that's the first thing you're going to see as soon as they're in a shrink bag.
00:15:40.873 --> 00:15:41.735
Absolutely.
00:15:42.857 --> 00:16:00.327
And amount of body fleshing is something we need to touch on too, because if you don't have good body fleshing, you're going to have a really small carcass to eat, because that's directly tied to the amount of breast meat, the amount of thigh and leg meat.
00:16:01.157 --> 00:16:02.643
Also your feed conversion ratio.
00:16:02.643 --> 00:16:16.630
If you're feeding and keeping and housing a bird for that long and it's only producing X amount of meat where the bird right next to it is producing 125% in the same time space and feed, who's more efficient?
00:16:17.517 --> 00:16:34.735
Well, and if you've already accounted for your environment, your husbandry methods and you've already ruled out feed as being either helping or hindering what's going on, if you know you're on the right track with everything but that fleshing still is not there, then that's when you start looking at the genetic influence.
00:16:34.735 --> 00:17:11.329
And if they're even going to be able to produce birds that have a better condition and I've experimented a little bit by taking a really meaty bird and breeding it to one that wasn't that great to see how that would kind of spread forward in the hatch results and when there is a genetic tie, you might only see 25 to 50% of them as being as meaty as the one parent and then the others are as not meaty as the other parent, which was interesting confirmation to not be tolerant on poorly fleshed birds for the sake of other trades.
00:17:12.176 --> 00:17:13.221
I know it's not worth it.
00:17:13.221 --> 00:17:22.144
To me, in a way, this goes back to what we were talking about when we first started, and that's the importance of the balance of the bird.
00:17:22.904 --> 00:17:23.145
Yeah.
00:17:24.195 --> 00:17:31.347
If you've got birds that are shallow breasted and kind of pinched and tucked up in the rear, it looks out of balance.
00:17:33.355 --> 00:17:41.868
So for the first couple of years, maybe the birds that actually would look best in the shrink bag are the ones you want to breed from instead.
00:17:42.795 --> 00:17:44.121
That's what I did initially.
00:17:44.121 --> 00:17:46.240
Yeah, you put your lesser quality birds.
00:17:47.174 --> 00:17:51.500
When we're doing restoration forestry, we call it low grading your forest.
00:17:51.500 --> 00:18:03.445
Where you're doing single tree selection worst first you're taking the worst out first and only leaving your best trees to grow and mature, so you're always building the best possible forest.
00:18:03.445 --> 00:18:05.305
I see a direct correlation here.
00:18:05.970 --> 00:18:06.634
Single parent correct.
00:18:07.560 --> 00:18:10.519
Worse first out, that's exactly it, and by the time you're done.
00:18:10.578 --> 00:18:16.980
You just have great birds and you're like, oh, you know what you look the most like this bird and you both meet the standards.
00:18:16.980 --> 00:18:21.366
So you can have some conjugal visits and I'm going to collect your eggs and we'll see what you do.
00:18:22.347 --> 00:18:23.630
Okay, we were on legs.
00:18:23.630 --> 00:18:26.261
Let's move down to the toes.
00:18:26.261 --> 00:18:29.219
They should be nice.
00:18:29.239 --> 00:18:32.006
Oh toes those are going to be frustrating.
00:18:32.266 --> 00:18:37.805
Yeah, Especially as soon as you get your incubation right, at least for me.
00:18:37.805 --> 00:18:39.608
Toes cleared up a lot of issues.
00:18:39.608 --> 00:18:52.377
I was culling for crooked toes unnecessarily because there is a direct correlation to incubation temperature accuracy, especially in the early development stages, Right, and if it's not that it's riboflavin.
00:18:54.521 --> 00:18:56.286
Nutritional things can affect it.
00:18:56.286 --> 00:18:58.310
The incubation can affect it.
00:18:58.310 --> 00:19:03.631
You have a lot of leg work to rule out things before you can pin it to genetics.
00:19:03.900 --> 00:19:25.152
Well, you know, you were talking about nutrition and it's important to remember that it's not just the nutrition we feed the chick, it's nutrition that we feed the breeders, because if they don't have good nutrition bases, they can't put all the nutrients those developing embryos will need up until they hatch.
00:19:25.952 --> 00:19:26.193
Right.
00:19:27.580 --> 00:19:31.769
I mean a human finds out she's pregnant, bam.
00:19:31.769 --> 00:19:40.613
Prenatal vitamins folic acid especially, you know the essential amino acids become even more essential when you're building an offspring.
00:19:40.613 --> 00:19:55.469
I don't care what species it is, and that's going to help epigenetically set the checkup for success, because as it's being developed, it has access to all these things.
00:19:55.469 --> 00:20:00.088
So it's going to breed forward better and stronger.
00:20:00.088 --> 00:20:09.849
It's going to come out of the egg with a higher hatch weight initially, which is going to translate to its entire life.
00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:23.471
You heard somewhere that if you see nutritional issues prior to 10 or 12 weeks, it very likely came from the adults being deficient in what they were able to put into that egg for that chick.
00:20:24.359 --> 00:20:29.092
It's like if you do get crooked toes or a right neck or something, look at the onset.
00:20:29.092 --> 00:20:37.582
Is it before, after you know, two days, three days, Is it before, after you know, a week and a half to two weeks, It'll tell you whether it was.
00:20:37.582 --> 00:20:45.126
I don't want to say prenatal, pre shell or catch, what is the proper term for that.
00:20:45.126 --> 00:20:49.305
I feel so non-scientific, I don't know, I'm sure there is one.
00:20:49.705 --> 00:20:50.508
There is Probably is.
00:20:51.128 --> 00:20:51.650
Pre hatch.
00:20:52.759 --> 00:20:54.884
You know, talking about straightness of toes.
00:20:54.884 --> 00:20:56.549
I got a question for you guys.
00:20:56.549 --> 00:21:02.729
If the rear toe twist around forward, what's that called?
00:21:03.411 --> 00:21:03.871
Duck foot.
00:21:04.332 --> 00:21:05.013
There you go.
00:21:05.800 --> 00:21:06.443
I got one right.
00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:08.464
Hey winter, winter chicken dinner.
00:21:09.640 --> 00:21:15.778
Does that mean it's initially coming off the shank straight back and curves back around, or it's coming off?
00:21:16.181 --> 00:21:17.567
The whole placement is off.
00:21:18.101 --> 00:21:23.449
Yeah, it is Okay, because I've seen them come straight back and then curve back around.
00:21:23.449 --> 00:21:29.608
I think that's different, I think that's just not taking care of your chicken's nails.
00:21:30.451 --> 00:21:38.605
I think Duck foot is when that toes coming off almost at a right angle to where it should, so it should come straight back.
00:21:38.700 --> 00:21:48.651
If you look at your chicken footprint in the snow or in the mud or whatever is soft ground around, you should come straight back in their gate, naturally.
00:21:48.711 --> 00:21:50.905
Wow, that'd be a good way to test them out.
00:21:50.905 --> 00:21:56.023
Scatter some flour on a smooth surface, set your chicken to walk on it and it'll tell you where that toe is.
00:21:56.920 --> 00:21:58.085
Or just wait till it snows.
00:21:58.085 --> 00:22:01.728
The way it's been going, pretty much anywhere in the country is likely to get snow.
00:22:01.728 --> 00:22:03.392
Even maybe you ripped.
00:22:03.392 --> 00:22:12.625
I saw a snow in Naples, florida, in 1980 mumble something on Christmas day, I remember, because iguanas were falling out of trees.
00:22:13.799 --> 00:22:20.413
It snowed here, interestingly, on January, the 19th 1977.
00:22:20.413 --> 00:22:26.742
We got three inches of snow here where I live, so it can happen, melted the same day.
00:22:26.742 --> 00:22:33.431
Yeah, most of it did, but some of it was around for two, three days.
00:22:34.291 --> 00:22:35.875
Right, well, we're getting distracted.
00:22:35.875 --> 00:22:38.105
Let's talk about straight keels.
00:22:38.807 --> 00:22:41.364
Straight keels You've been selecting hard for this, Mandy.
00:22:41.945 --> 00:22:42.528
So hard.
00:22:42.528 --> 00:22:44.928
I am so sick and tired of seeing that flaw.
00:22:44.928 --> 00:22:53.429
I've seen it in every breed I ever put my hands on, mostly because of how I was sourcing my birds, because I like to make things more work than they need to be.
00:22:53.429 --> 00:23:09.471
But the keels, oh man, there's a lot of different shapes they can be, and you want them straight and smooth, and not boat inward, not boat outward, just a nice straight, even probably long too.
00:23:09.471 --> 00:23:12.055
There's not too many that should have a short keel.
00:23:12.055 --> 00:23:16.692
But measuring them and getting your hands on them, that's the only way you're gonna know what you're looking at.
00:23:16.692 --> 00:23:18.866
Rip, how do you measure your kills?
00:23:19.863 --> 00:23:33.769
when I first pick up a bird, I put the front point of the keel bone up against the heel of my hand and Then I lay the keel bone along through the palm of my hand, along my index finger.
00:23:33.769 --> 00:23:39.345
That allows me to feel is it straight or not and how long it is.
00:23:40.221 --> 00:23:41.928
That's also different than how I do it.
00:23:41.928 --> 00:23:44.700
We should hang out and handle birds the other end.
00:23:44.861 --> 00:23:48.439
I like to see it, you know, inside the carcass after it's been cooked.
00:23:48.439 --> 00:23:53.604
I Look at the cartilage and the bones and see I have this image.
00:23:53.604 --> 00:23:58.278
Remember the old Battlestar Galactica series, the colonial viper spaceship?
00:23:58.278 --> 00:24:03.809
To me that looks just like the cartilage and Keel should look like you're right.
00:24:03.910 --> 00:24:06.259
I never thought of it that way, but you're right.
00:24:07.384 --> 00:24:07.404
I.
00:24:08.642 --> 00:24:11.259
Want the bones out and look in real close.
00:24:12.464 --> 00:24:15.660
I mean if it's sitting on the platter and you're taking it apart when you're eating it.
00:24:15.660 --> 00:24:22.422
I mean, as I'm enjoying the meat, I'm definitely analyzing the carcass of the bird that I'm consuming.
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