April 28, 2025

Selecting Dual-Purpose Chickens, Hands-On Traits That Matter For Meat and Eggs- Part 2

Show Notes
Transcript

Discover the art and science behind selecting and breeding true dual-purpose chickens in Part 2 of our series! Join us as we dive deep into evaluating carcass quality, balancing body structure for meat and egg production, and how nutrition and genetics both shape your flock’s success. Learn firsthand from real breeders’ experiences, feeding trials, and practical selection methods to create resilient, productive birds. Whether you’re a homesteader, breeder, or serious poultry enthusiast, this episode is packed with real-world knowledge you can apply today!

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WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast! In this episode, we're continuing our deep dive into selecting and breeding dual-purpose chickens.

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We'll explore real-world examples of how genetics and nutrition come together to influence carcass quality, body structure, and productivity.

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Whether you're working with American Bresse, Marans, or another dual-purpose breed, we'll share practical insights that can help you build a better flock.

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Let's get started and sharpen your poultry breeding skills!

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See, I can remember as a child, my, when my granddaddy, I've followed him around on the farm.

00:00:46.881 --> 00:00:49.731
Part of his right arm went missing in the war.

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So he just had that one hand and he would squat down.

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He was about five two himself.

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He would squat down and start checking the birds out.

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Next thing I know, one of'em, part of it was here and the other part was on the ground.

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And he'd say, get that and take it in there to you nanny.

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And it is, it was what it was.

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Okay.

00:01:10.760 --> 00:01:13.941
Next picture before we start getting on nostalgic.

00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:15.230
Oh geez.

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So these two carcasses, the one on the right is a 14 week old bird from my breeding from the original line I started with because I have branched out and done some scientific line crosses to see what traits can be teased out, what can be influenced through different strategies.

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I filled the barn up with science projects.

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And then the bird on the right is from a different farm, and that's similar to where I started, where there was a good broadness to the front of the bird, and then I tapered off towards the backside.

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And that's pretty common to what the American breasts usually dress out like.

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But on the left side.

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That's when you completely lose your mind and hatch as many as you can fit and feed'em the best feed you can feed'em and totally get ruthless on your selection.

00:02:11.961 --> 00:02:15.561
That's what it can turn into, which I think is fascinating.

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There's no doubt in my mind that genetics plays a big part in that.

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But the other thing, it's the same

00:02:23.901 --> 00:02:24.770
genetic pool.

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Yeah.

00:02:25.221 --> 00:02:26.151
Green fire farms

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only imported three batches.

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We are all working with the same limited genetic pool.

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The one thing that I think people forget about is that nutrition plays a huge role in how our birds look and perform and what kind of carcass they produce.

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The egg production you get out of'em, so don't.

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We're talking about selecting birds, but don't overlook the nutrition component.

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That's something we harp on a regular basis.

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It can make a big difference in your birds.

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It really can.

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The genetics have to be there, and that's, oh yeah, what man has proven here through all of our hard work, but you're never gonna see that expressed.

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By feeding Common Everyday feed.

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True.

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And I think that's why Mandolin was doing this feeding trial for us earlier this year.

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And your next one, when does that start?

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Mandolin.

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You're gonna compare it to what you used to feed?

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Yeah.

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'cause that's gonna be really telling too.

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And I've got another two weeks on the eggs before they hatch, and I've already got the feed on hand to get started and then I'll have to make another trip.

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For fresher feed for the changeover, from starter to grower.

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Can't have old feed either.

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I think that's gonna be a pretty telling process.

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Yeah.

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Because now we're into the same genetic pool Now what?

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Yeah.

00:03:49.325 --> 00:03:51.605
I wonder if it'll look like this on the table again.

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I'm really curious what it's, it won't look like quite like this, spoiler.

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It won't.

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No, but

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I have the, I think the rest of these pictures are from birds before the feed.

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I tried that.

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You formulated.

00:04:04.056 --> 00:04:05.915
These are gonna be crumble birds coming up.

00:04:06.816 --> 00:04:08.256
You had me going there for a minute.

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I wasn't thinking in terms of feed.

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I got you now.

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Carry on.

00:04:12.575 --> 00:04:20.826
So this is back when I still had a pretty good flock of Morans and the breasts I had on for about a year.

00:04:21.005 --> 00:04:26.045
I hadn't done much, but as you can see, there's some pretty good meat on those birds on either end.

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It's just everything else about them was awful and I was still trying to.

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Straighten out kes, but those two carcasses actually turned out pretty good.

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I tried a little side dabble to see if the breast influence would hybridize some of the morans for a meteor carcass.

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No, it didn't change a whole heck of a lot in the F1, so I didn't pursue that.

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And then on the Morans, you can see where that keel jumps up a bit higher.

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It's a little more pronounced.

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They still have body width.

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They still have really meaty thighs.

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They just don't have that same fleshing in there.

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And coming from the Morans, I spent, gosh, five or six years with them working on widening'em out and getting that growth rate in.

00:05:08.766 --> 00:05:15.995
Because when I first started with the Morans, we weren't processing until after 22 weeks, but I got that to 18 weeks.

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The Morans, to me, and I've always felt this, they have large legs and large thighs in relationships to the rest of their body.

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Boy do they,

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but a lot larger than some breeds.

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So manly.

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When you did the F1 cross, was it a Moran Brewster on a breast hen?

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Yes.

00:05:38.346 --> 00:05:38.675
Okay.

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Because I do rely on that female line to bring forth that structure, but it doesn't always pan out.

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Maybe it was the feet.

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No, I was just curious which way you went on the cross.

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That could matter.

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Yeah, it would.

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The hen's gonna carry the majority of the traits.

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You would hope that the Moran would give you a little bit more length on the overall carcass.

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The Moran has excellent leg structure.

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There's a lot of meat on those legs.

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It's just lacking in the breast, so it doesn't have that packaged appearance that you're talking about or you like still.

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It took a while to time

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that width though, to tease that width out.

00:06:12.829 --> 00:06:22.579
I did end up losing a little bit of back length, and I lost everything great about their feathers too, because I was working on the black silver variety and.

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Everything that came up meaty.

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Like I put my hands on that bird and I go, wow, I need to breed from you.

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It's a shame that you've got all this color leakage and gold feathers where the silver should be, and your comb has 15 spikes on it.

00:06:35.500 --> 00:06:37.625
It'd be nice to get it all in one package, wouldn't it?

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I think it used to be all in one package, but then people started fiddling with it to make it, look pretty for the show.

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Yes, I

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agree.

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Yeah,

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I think we may have lost Mandy there.

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She looks like she's frozen.

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She

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locked

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up

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on us.

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Not anything I can do from this end.

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I don't think to she'd either have to log back in.

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So we had lots of people, like Sue said, or Rhode Island.

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Reds are delicious.

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They are.

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Yeah.

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Laura, they eat their calls.

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They give the smaller birds to a local raptor center.

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And that's what Rob used to do with his, but he's lost touch with'em.

00:07:14.615 --> 00:07:20.584
So used to give the falconer small birds Hanes two acre hobby.

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They eat their calls and they're delicious.

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They don't even put anything on'em.

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Just chicken and water, crock pot and water.

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It makes'em

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good stock

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like that.

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I would be willing to bet that if you have a really good natural feed that's just grains and oats, I.

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That would go through and it's like when you open the ba, a bag of fresh feed, how it smells like you just wanna put it in a bowl and eat it.

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That's gotta go through the bird.

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So where you don't need the seasoning it does, but people don't, it makes sense to me.

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Yeah.

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Mandy is back.

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Mandy

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is

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back.

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Yeah.

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I lost internet there for a second.

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I'm glad it came back on.

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Oh, this next picture I'm excited about.

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It'll show a lot of body capacity.

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I.

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So these two birds, the one on the left is an American breast that a friend of mine raised out.

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She said she wanted to try'em and she said, I wanna see if they're really dual purpose and I'm gonna compare them to Bill Fels.

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cause I like their color better.

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So she got the Bill Fels and that bird on the right is how that went.

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Big difference.

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Yeah.

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Both of'em are 18 weeks old and that's another.

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Genetics thing where that breeding selection really comes into play because if that bird on the right was allowed to go fertilize eggs, you're gonna get a whole bunch more of that carcass.

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The one on the right was really a breasts also?

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No, it was a bill Felder.

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Oh, bill Felder.

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Okay.

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Second import, if anyone wants to know First import was better,

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but that is a dramatic difference.

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No doubt about it.

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Yeah, it's huge.

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And that was over two and a half pounds difference.

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And it's hard to say if the bill filter would've filled in more later.

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'cause you do have late blooming birds out there,

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but I would

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assume not much change would happen.

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Esther wants to know what you feed your early calls to finish'em out.

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She's seen select your, so there is fancy French.

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Okay.

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Finishing methods that I don't always do because they're actually pretty great without doing that.

00:09:31.059 --> 00:09:41.889
I think what she means is like when you make a selection, say on a six week or an eight week old bird, that's not done yet, are you putting them on a feed just to bulk'em out?

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No, I don't change

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anything.

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Okay, so you're using the same feed all the way through?

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Yeah.

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So as soon as they're on a grower feed, they stay on that feed.

00:09:51.375 --> 00:09:54.855
All the way until you told me to try the finishing feed you formulated for us.

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Yeah.

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Did you try it yet?

00:09:57.134 --> 00:09:57.674
Yeah.

00:09:58.215 --> 00:09:58.514
Okay.

00:09:58.575 --> 00:10:02.804
I gotta do it again and see what's different there.

00:10:03.345 --> 00:10:11.625
It has enough corn in it, but the results were pretty similar to just doing the grower, so I was gonna play around with it a little bit and then let you know.

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How long were they on the finisher?

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Four weeks to six weeks.

00:10:16.695 --> 00:10:19.634
Okay, and you didn't see any additional carcass vet?

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You should have seen more fat.

00:10:21.674 --> 00:10:22.695
No, it was about the same.

00:10:22.700 --> 00:10:22.710
Okay.

00:10:22.934 --> 00:10:24.404
There should have been more pad fat.

00:10:24.404 --> 00:10:28.784
So where you open up for evisceration to go into the abdomen.

00:10:28.784 --> 00:10:28.845
Yeah.

00:10:29.414 --> 00:10:33.254
There should have been a larger clump of fat right there at the end of the keel bone.

00:10:34.154 --> 00:10:37.184
And unfortunately too many people don't understand.

00:10:37.184 --> 00:10:38.235
You need to keep that.

00:10:38.715 --> 00:10:39.350
It's part of Yes.

00:10:39.350 --> 00:10:40.070
Flavor profile.

00:10:40.070 --> 00:10:40.071
Yes.

00:10:40.071 --> 00:10:40.389
You need to keep

00:10:40.389 --> 00:10:40.429
that.

00:10:40.455 --> 00:10:41.804
That cooks down to liquid gold.

00:10:41.894 --> 00:10:42.254
I

00:10:42.254 --> 00:10:48.075
know, but too many people remove it and throw it away'cause they don't understand the value of that.

00:10:48.570 --> 00:10:48.789
But.

00:10:49.575 --> 00:10:59.205
There's a genetic component too, and I saw some birds that had it pretty good and some birds not so much, and some birds, they're based on the pen results.

00:10:59.205 --> 00:11:01.004
That's why I'm excited for trial 2.0.

00:11:01.754 --> 00:11:08.835
'cause then I can compare pen against pen and then run'em through the same methodology, the same feed, the same everything.

00:11:08.835 --> 00:11:16.394
The only thing different is their specific family, but all of them have been under my breeding guidance for years now.

00:11:17.294 --> 00:11:21.105
But then I wanna get into those little details of how thick was that fat pad?

00:11:21.105 --> 00:11:26.475
Because when it's at least a quarter inch to a half inch, that's gonna be the juiciest chicken you ever ate.

00:11:27.075 --> 00:11:27.315
Yeah.

00:11:27.404 --> 00:11:28.995
You don't want to remove the fats.

00:11:29.054 --> 00:11:32.684
People, I don't know, there's still bad publicity out there about fats.

00:11:33.284 --> 00:11:38.085
If you fed'em right and you raise them right, that's gonna be the healthiest fat you can get your hands on.

00:11:38.565 --> 00:11:39.345
Absolutely.

00:11:39.735 --> 00:11:39.975
Yeah.

00:11:40.875 --> 00:11:43.695
And Jeff, didn't you say that if you keep'em on a starter.

00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:44.610
Longer.

00:11:44.669 --> 00:11:46.919
You actually don't get more growth benefit from it.

00:11:46.919 --> 00:11:48.450
You can step that down.

00:11:49.110 --> 00:11:51.360
I don't keep'em on starter two, you don't.

00:11:51.870 --> 00:12:02.669
People think that they're gonna grow faster just because they keep'em on a higher protein and really you, it doesn't work that way and you're doing damage to the kidneys and the renal.

00:12:03.389 --> 00:12:05.345
The renal system of the bird.

00:12:05.789 --> 00:12:06.480
It does.

00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:09.120
There's no significant advantage to keeping'em on that.

00:12:09.539 --> 00:12:11.730
And again, it depends on where you live.

00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:13.259
What's your se, what's your weather like?

00:12:13.259 --> 00:12:16.049
What's your season like down in Alabama?

00:12:16.049 --> 00:12:19.350
Where carrie's at right now through the summer.

00:12:19.350 --> 00:12:27.269
If he was trying to grow birds, I might keep him on a higher protein because they're eating less due to the temperature.

00:12:27.330 --> 00:12:28.710
We've talked about it before.

00:12:29.159 --> 00:12:34.320
They're gonna eat for the calorie needs based on the temperature, and that's all.

00:12:34.470 --> 00:12:39.840
So there's a time and a place, and it's balancing your feed with your weather and your genetics.

00:12:40.470 --> 00:12:49.649
That gets tricky, and we're not gonna go into that tonight, but yeah, that's, you can, but you shouldn't in an average climate.

00:12:50.039 --> 00:12:50.759
Not right now.

00:12:50.759 --> 00:12:55.169
July and August in your growing seasons where it's cooler nights, warmer days.

00:12:55.879 --> 00:12:56.100
You.

00:12:56.205 --> 00:12:57.465
There's no need to keep'em.

00:12:57.465 --> 00:13:04.065
There's no advantages to keeping them on a higher protein feed for a longer period of time.

00:13:04.845 --> 00:13:08.865
You're actually doing more damage to the internals by doing that.

00:13:09.615 --> 00:13:13.424
And you're definitely making your chicken house smell a lot more ammonia.

00:13:13.575 --> 00:13:13.664
Yeah.

00:13:14.205 --> 00:13:15.164
Than it needs to be

00:13:16.065 --> 00:13:17.024
ready for another picture.

00:13:17.024 --> 00:13:17.115
Sure.

00:13:17.745 --> 00:13:18.735
This is a neat one too.

00:13:19.634 --> 00:13:23.024
So these birds were both from my breeding on the left is.

00:13:23.399 --> 00:13:29.549
A Morans at 16 weeks and on the rights an American breast, that was way too gosh dang, wide and out of balance.

00:13:29.909 --> 00:13:31.620
So he was cold for being too much.

00:13:31.620 --> 00:13:41.399
Also, at 16 weeks fed the same, grown, the same, exact same weight, three pounds, six ounces, but they were completely different body shapes.

00:13:42.149 --> 00:13:51.720
And so that's where you wanna dig into your specific breed standard and see what that standard says so that you can recognize if a bird is within that.

00:13:52.379 --> 00:13:53.039
Or not.

00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:57.870
And so in the case of that American breast on the right, it was lacking that balance.

00:13:57.870 --> 00:14:00.419
We wanna see it was too much and too far.

00:14:00.419 --> 00:14:09.720
And that's where I started to see, I had to step things back a little bit and start looking more at back length and depth and not just solely focus on width.

00:14:09.779 --> 00:14:16.230
'cause if you pick one trait and you keep selecting repeatedly for that one trait, you're gonna go too far with it.

00:14:16.230 --> 00:14:17.490
You're gonna lose the balance.

00:14:18.299 --> 00:14:21.750
But I thought it was really neat that they were the exact same weight, just.

00:14:22.485 --> 00:14:23.835
Different proportions.

00:14:24.735 --> 00:14:25.274
Interesting.

00:14:26.174 --> 00:14:46.215
I figured I'd bring out a boy that wasn't in a shrink bag and this guy at 11 weeks old is showing that early width, which lets me know in another two to three weeks he would be shrink bag ready and he is gonna have that shape that's marketable and that's what it looks like.

00:14:46.274 --> 00:14:49.754
If you look at the left side image where his legs are.

00:14:50.085 --> 00:14:56.804
Lined up right in the middle of his body and he doesn't have too much mass on either end.

00:14:57.195 --> 00:14:59.115
He's gonna grow into himself pretty well.

00:14:59.115 --> 00:15:04.034
So that guy actually got a reprieve when it came processing time to grow some more.

00:15:04.034 --> 00:15:09.345
And let me see how he really finishes out and that's what the wonky teenagers look like.

00:15:10.245 --> 00:15:13.365
Plus, I liked his attitude friendly without being too friendly.

00:15:14.264 --> 00:15:15.149
He's a nice looking bird.

00:15:16.049 --> 00:15:16.289
Nice looking.

00:15:16.575 --> 00:15:18.465
He's got a little crinkle in his comb though.

00:15:18.465 --> 00:15:19.725
If you really wanna nitpick

00:15:20.625 --> 00:15:22.394
when you're at the nitpicking stage.

00:15:23.024 --> 00:15:24.059
Yeah, I'm starting to nitpick.

00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:25.220
You're starting to nitpick.

00:15:25.220 --> 00:15:25.544
That width is

00:15:25.544 --> 00:15:26.264
pretty in there.

00:15:26.294 --> 00:15:28.634
This is another one where I was like, whoa.

00:15:28.634 --> 00:15:29.325
Too wide.

00:15:29.865 --> 00:15:31.125
That's a bit too much.

00:15:32.024 --> 00:15:38.625
And that's where those really wide carcass pictures came from is when I saw those boys like this who didn't grow into it.

00:15:38.625 --> 00:15:40.904
Like you look at that bird and go, that's too wide.

00:15:41.654 --> 00:15:44.144
Yeah, that one's starting to look more Cornish cross to me.

00:15:45.044 --> 00:15:46.335
Than your birds normally do.

00:15:47.235 --> 00:15:54.164
And so when you're doing the selection, you have to look at where can I improve and where do I need to scale that back a little bit.

00:15:55.065 --> 00:15:56.144
You have to be flexible,

00:15:56.504 --> 00:15:58.485
but do you want to just keep one line?

00:15:58.485 --> 00:16:05.504
At what point do you keep something like this and you start a line for a meat production as a primary meat production.

00:16:06.210 --> 00:16:08.159
Wouldn't there be a demand for that out there?

00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:09.929
And you advertise'em that way, right?

00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:14.250
These are more for meat production, not for the egg laying side.

00:16:15.090 --> 00:16:25.710
I'm just thinking of the homesteaders out there who are wanting these types of birds or people that want to grow their own food, would they not be interested in these broader birds?

00:16:26.610 --> 00:16:27.690
I realize there definitely

00:16:27.690 --> 00:16:30.384
is a market there and a lot of interest in it.

00:16:31.284 --> 00:16:36.504
I don't wanna lose the rate of lay and I don't wanna lose what I'm working on, and I don't have a second barn.

00:16:37.254 --> 00:16:37.524
Yeah.

00:16:37.794 --> 00:16:42.205
Because it, it takes all that space and infrastructure to start off a whole new family of birds.

00:16:43.105 --> 00:16:46.105
They did that earlier on with New Hampshires.

00:16:46.794 --> 00:16:57.445
It was created as broiler, broiler breed, but then it got morphed around to where there was two lines.

00:16:57.445 --> 00:16:59.215
One was a meat type.

00:16:59.559 --> 00:17:03.250
New Hampshire and one was a more production egg production type, New Hampshire.

00:17:03.730 --> 00:17:08.170
And you could see in some of those earlier pictures, you could definitely see the difference in the body.

00:17:09.069 --> 00:17:15.519
Now I'm just trying to aim for that balance of both because the first focus of my flock is to keep us going.

00:17:15.519 --> 00:17:18.279
And chicken, I'm not trying to buy anymore.

00:17:19.180 --> 00:17:24.609
I wanna breed for our own replacements and keep a good thing going without going too far in any which direction.

00:17:25.494 --> 00:17:39.984
Mandy, I've told you this before and I'll just probably keep harping on it forever, but I think you do as good a job as anybody I have ever come across in breeding your birds and selecting wisely for your breeders.

00:17:40.884 --> 00:17:46.944
And it took a long time to figure out what it really took, because I've been hatching eggs for a long time.

00:17:47.335 --> 00:17:53.634
I've been hatching eggs since what, like 1989, but I don't think I really started breeding.

00:17:53.634 --> 00:17:53.694
I.

00:17:54.384 --> 00:17:57.474
Until after 2012.

00:17:58.375 --> 00:17:59.011
We kinda all get there.

00:17:59.365 --> 00:17:59.934
Process.

00:17:59.934 --> 00:18:03.265
It started to make sense and as I juggled through breeds.

00:18:03.295 --> 00:18:13.765
'cause I went through a try'em all, little phase there for a while and then I finally found the one that stuck and I now they're the only breed I have, which makes it easier too.

00:18:14.664 --> 00:18:15.085
We get

00:18:15.085 --> 00:18:15.744
sidetracked.

00:18:15.954 --> 00:18:17.845
I'm sorry, do we have any more questions?

00:18:17.845 --> 00:18:21.295
I know we've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with'em, but.

00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.190
No, I don't think we missed any.

00:18:24.880 --> 00:18:25.630
I'll look back through.

00:18:26.529 --> 00:18:26.769
Nope.

00:18:26.859 --> 00:18:27.789
I think we're in good shape.

00:18:28.089 --> 00:18:28.390
Good.

00:18:29.019 --> 00:18:30.970
Mandy, I do have a loaded question for you.

00:18:31.869 --> 00:18:31.900
Oh.

00:18:32.349 --> 00:18:37.480
Knowing what you know now, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

00:18:38.380 --> 00:18:38.920
Or would you?

00:18:39.789 --> 00:18:50.275
That is tricky because on the one hand, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have spent so much time experimenting and wasting my time, but I wouldn't have learned what I know now if I wouldn't have done that.

00:18:51.174 --> 00:18:53.424
So I don't think I would change anything.

00:18:53.634 --> 00:19:02.664
I would just, yeah,'cause you gotta go through everything and learn it, and you have to apply what you hear because you can be told five different ways to breed a chicken.

00:19:02.664 --> 00:19:17.724
You can be told 15 different ways to raise a chicken and until you actually put it into practice with the birds you wanna keep and the region that you live with, the resources you have, you don't know what works until you apply it and it will work for you or it won't.

00:19:18.085 --> 00:19:20.214
There's some core principles that are the same.

00:19:20.890 --> 00:19:27.519
There's gonna be a little bit of experiment, experimentation to find what works for you and your flock.

00:19:28.299 --> 00:19:29.349
Besides nutrition.

00:19:29.589 --> 00:19:29.859
Feed'em.

00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:30.970
You'll probably be alright.

00:19:31.779 --> 00:19:34.269
Yeah, but that's even variable based on where you live.

00:19:34.390 --> 00:19:34.690
That's

00:19:35.559 --> 00:19:37.089
what do you feed'em if you live in the desert?

00:19:37.140 --> 00:19:40.734
Yeah, a again, I gotta know what the temperature and stuff like that is.

00:19:40.734 --> 00:19:48.505
The recipe that I made for Mike Zer in Alaska is not the same as the recipe I made for you and the central states.

00:19:48.744 --> 00:19:55.884
He's still doing pretty good though with he, he got a couple of American brass and he's seeing that growth rate on that formula you gave them.

00:19:56.694 --> 00:20:00.865
Yeah, no, it is still balanced, but it's balanced for Alaska, right?

00:20:00.924 --> 00:20:05.634
It's not balanced for Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois.

00:20:06.025 --> 00:20:07.825
And people that were live.

00:20:07.884 --> 00:20:20.875
If people are living in like North Dakota, Northern Minnesota, something like that, feed formulation needs to be adjusted for each region to maximize those genetic potential of each of those birds.

00:20:20.994 --> 00:20:26.845
Stu brought up a good mentor, really helps when you're breeding birds, and that's pretty true too.

00:20:27.474 --> 00:20:32.184
And I did have the benefit of my great uncle who.

00:20:32.934 --> 00:20:34.375
Let me catch my first chicken.

00:20:34.375 --> 00:20:37.494
And then he taught me the initial basics of what to do with it after I caught it.

00:20:38.394 --> 00:20:39.625
And then my grandmother too.

00:20:39.625 --> 00:20:47.154
She had birds her whole entire life and her mother before her and so on and so forth, all the way back to when they came over from Europe.

00:20:47.154 --> 00:20:48.474
They drank chickens with them then.

00:20:49.375 --> 00:20:55.555
But then the newer knowledge from hanging out at a PA shows and talking to people who've been doing it.

00:20:56.109 --> 00:21:02.500
20, 30, 40 years and getting their perspective and then talking to people who do commercial birds and getting their perspective.

00:21:02.950 --> 00:21:11.470
I asked around through all different channels of poultry people to figure out where I wanted to fall into that and how I wanted to raise my birds.

00:21:12.190 --> 00:21:17.769
And I was mentored by a lot of really great people, and that was a lot of great perspective that came from that.

00:21:18.670 --> 00:21:20.890
So I try to turn around and mentor people too, and.

00:21:21.789 --> 00:21:24.400
That way they can learn at a faster pace than I learned.

00:21:25.299 --> 00:21:30.700
A good mentor can shave years off of what you're trying to accomplish.

00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:32.410
I learned that the hard way

00:21:32.769 --> 00:21:34.029
and it ain't just chickens.

00:21:34.180 --> 00:21:34.990
No, that's true.

00:21:35.410 --> 00:21:35.710
That's true.

00:21:35.710 --> 00:21:35.950
I had a

00:21:35.950 --> 00:21:48.285
great mentor that got me off and started doing the animal nutrition and he had more common sense than brook smarts and it's made a world of difference for my career.

00:21:49.119 --> 00:21:51.009
So it doesn't matter what you're doing.

00:21:51.009 --> 00:21:53.049
A good mentor can help you a lot.

00:21:53.950 --> 00:21:54.430
I agree

00:21:54.430 --> 00:21:55.180
wholeheartedly.

00:21:55.750 --> 00:21:56.349
Me too.

00:21:57.250 --> 00:21:57.970
Okay.

00:21:57.970 --> 00:21:59.710
I think we've probably about exhausted.

00:21:59.710 --> 00:22:01.750
You don't have, that's your last slide, didn't it, Mandy?

00:22:02.200 --> 00:22:03.309
Yeah, that was the last one.

00:22:03.339 --> 00:22:03.700
Okay.

00:22:04.210 --> 00:22:05.980
I think we've gone through about everything.

00:22:06.595 --> 00:22:07.434
That we had.

00:22:07.555 --> 00:22:10.224
So with all of that said,

00:22:11.125 --> 00:22:13.644
he's wondering what he'd feed if he lived in the tropics.

00:22:13.704 --> 00:22:14.755
That's pretty much right.

00:22:14.755 --> 00:22:15.115
Rob.

00:22:15.204 --> 00:22:15.474
Rob.

00:22:15.525 --> 00:22:15.884
Yeah.

00:22:16.154 --> 00:22:17.924
Fish plantains and coconuts.

00:22:18.105 --> 00:22:18.404
Yeah.

00:22:19.305 --> 00:22:25.575
It's amazing how a bird's diet can change and from geographical locations.

00:22:25.694 --> 00:22:28.880
It's just staggering when you stop and think about it.

00:22:29.619 --> 00:22:30.599
That's definitely true.

00:22:31.500 --> 00:22:38.190
Folks, if you have forgotten or be sure and check out Mandolins, YouTube channel, Arcadian, orchids.

00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:40.319
Orchards, not Orchids.

00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:40.740
I'm sorry.

00:22:41.640 --> 00:22:42.839
Apples not flowers.

00:22:43.285 --> 00:22:44.154
There you go.

00:22:44.484 --> 00:22:45.194
There you go.

00:22:45.869 --> 00:22:53.130
And I also, she's got a really good Facebook page where she post writes very well.

00:22:53.190 --> 00:22:55.565
I've always enjoyed reading your writing, Mandy.

00:22:55.569 --> 00:22:56.579
You do a good job at it.

00:22:57.480 --> 00:23:00.990
But she's a good person to try to emulate when it comes to poultry.

00:23:01.890 --> 00:23:03.674
So long as you're willing to eat a lot of chicken.

00:23:04.575 --> 00:23:05.315