Selection and Grow Outs-Part1

0:00 Today, we're taking you on the journey of the grow out season and how to best work through all of the new birds you have on the ground for dual purpose flock goals. Mandy, how many grow outs do you have right now? I don't have an exact count on how many, but I do know there are six different age groups. Okay. And the oldest ones, they're already in the freezer already. And I started hatching back in March. And once we begin hatching the workload, it just keeps getting heavier as that population rises.

0:40 So we normally peak around June and that's when I have all of my spaces filled with various ages. And then when we start doing that first round of processing in June, then it starts reducing systematically over time. And I hatch a lot less coming into fall. And then I try to have everything buttoned up by the end of November. And then I take winter off. At peak, how many mouths do you have to feed? How many? Just a rough guess. Oh, I'm probably hovering at 200 right now. And you were at peak a couple of weeks back before you put a lot of birds in the freezer and your buyer came?

1:21 Yeah, before we got that first batch in the freezer. So I've already refilled that space that I emptied. And right now I did give myself a month and a half in between the more recent chick hatches because I wanted to get enough quantity going for the second feed trial I'm working on. So here soon, everything will be full again. Again. It doesn't take long to do that. No, it really doesn't take long at all. Now I'm going to ask you a tough question here, but out of that Approximately 200 birds you have, what do you think you'll cull that down to for keepers, roughly? Doesn't have to be an exact number. I do go female heavy on the keepers to keep our egg supply going, so I'm a little more generous on the pullets, and let's assume that out of that 200, there's 100 females, and I'd look to have them down to about 30 by fall.

2:20 And then three to five boys, and then if I find more culls after that, cause I have to account for rate of lay too, so if I'm thinking I want to have 30 females, then I really should be keeping 60. Cause by the time we get through their laying test, I might not have as many as I thought I would. Just out of curiosity, I don't think I've ever heard you mention it, but what's your rate of lay on those birds? Just roughly. I look for a minimum of five eggs a week, but six is the norm. But if she's built exceptionally nice, I'm okay with one egg less, but if they're only doing three or four eggs a week, then I don't retain those.

3:06 No that's really not worth your time, effort, and feed to do that. Let me throw another question out there. What do you guys focus on in the first weeks of growth on your chicks? I'll ask for both of you. John, you want to go first? My first three weeks are infamous because I am extremely obsessive about taking daily weights on my chicks. And I use that information to develop individual growth charts and then compare the growth charts of the different chicks against each other and against the cohort. And at the end of three weeks, I can sell off two thirds of those chicks. It's not on weight. It's on growth pattern that I select.

3:47 I just sell them as straight run chicks and get them off the books as quickly as possible. Then I could really focus on just growing out that last 25 to 30 percent that I've retained past that. And those are going to be my really good freezer birds and hopefully my potential breeders for next year. Makes sense. Mandy. So you do a very focused approach very early. Yes, like a microscopic, everything is magnified in that first three weeks. You've seen how quickly they can put on weight just in a day. So if I chart that it's an amazing tool for me at least. And I don't just end up with the heaviest boys at the end of three weeks.

4:29 Cause I'm not looking at weight. You're looking at the swings of growth. I'm looking at, it's like when, you have a child and you're going to the pediatrician and like my child's in the 70th percentile and they say, okay your boat growth plates are this big. You should be this tall. You have this growth potential. And I'm always looking for that growth potential in my birds. I'm John, I don't weigh. To find out weights as much as I do, are they giving a good steady rate of growth? I want those birds that will put on weight over time so I don't get spurts. They'll put on weight for three or four days and then they'll stop.

5:09 And then you get this other spurt in there. I like a much steadier rate of growth of my birds. Yes. And by doing it daily, that a lot more readily. Because I do it weekly. Because it changes so quickly in two or three days I can spot a chick and go, no, you're out. You, your rate of growth is percent day over day, as opposed to everybody else who's 10. And, three weeks later, that chick is smaller and a little scrawnier. And, it supports my decision that I made early on, but they still get the access to it. All the potential. John, like you said, if you chart it out, you can see you get this increase going up and then it hits a little plateau and then it starts going up again and then hits a little plateau.

5:51 That's not what I want. I want something that's more of a sustained sweep up as they grow. There are, I've noticed, three succinct steps but I like to smooth them out so they're less of a plateau and a step is more of a little S curve going up. And that's what I'm looking for in my growth chart. So I'm able to weigh weekly and I do the percentage calculations of what they gained over the week before. And I'm noticing I tend to favor the ones who do like a 50 percent gain over the week prior, but some of them might be 32%, some others, they might be.

6:34 75, 80% all the way up to 110% over the week prior, and it's the only bird in the batch that did that. But then that bird's probably gonna hit that plateau. You were talking about that next week. And they do a whole bunch of flip flop like this week they gained an incredible amount. The next week, not so much, and I tend to favor those birds that just hover right at between 50 and 70% over the week before. And I do that through at least eight weeks. After that, they start getting trickier to handle. Oh, it sounds we're all three of us may be doing it just a little bit different, but we're looking at it pretty much in the same way. For sure. do you keep your birds on the same feed for the duration of growth?

7:19 Mandy? Lately I've been using a custom blend that Jeff formulated over at Fertrell. And that's a 23 percent starter, which is higher than any other protein percentage that I've used for a starter. I think I did try 26 percent turkey starter and that wasn't so great. Really they only need that the first three, four weeks. And then I switch them over to a grower feed that's more like anywhere from 19 to 21 percent depending on which brand I'm using. And when I asked Jeff about that, he had said that as they gain size, they can eat more, and as they can eat a higher quantity, it doesn't need to be as nutritionally dense as those earlier starter feeds.

8:07 And that, to keep them on starter for the duration, you're wasting money, Getting too much in them. So I have learned to stagger. And you're making life a little harder on yourself by producing excess ammonia and urates, and you've got to change your bedding more often. And the birds can have long term health effects. overfeeding too high of a protein. Yeah. So when I found that information out, that was actually a relief'cause it made it more economically viable too because the starter feeds the most expensive feed. It's, Dollar wise, at least in mine, there's not a big difference between starter and grower.

8:49 But if you multiply that out by a bunch of little mouths eaten, it can add up. To considerable savings over time. And Mandy, in your case with having those 200 growers you got there that I think you'll see some significant savings in feed costs. Yeah. No, I already have. So I ended up changing how I store feed and I acquired a fleet of rodent proof garbage cans and I positioned a can near the pen for the age group of birds and put the age appropriate feed into that can. So everything's right there. Easy to get to. So over by the brooders, I've got two cans of starter over by the grow pens. I've got the grower over in rooster coop, they get the finisher.

9:33 And then I have the adult feed by the adult pens. That makes sense. Pretty streamlined. That's pretty much where I'm at, but I have the screw top five gallon buckets and I mix my feed fresh according to age formulation. Yeah. You're making it yourself. I still go buy it and let somebody else do the mixing. And I'm sized appropriately that. I can do that. You would need another person and some much larger equipment than I have. My grain mill is, it's okay, but it still takes 20 minutes to grind a hundred pounds of feed. Realistically, me sitting there feeding it two scoops at a time and it's coming out the other end and then another 20 minutes in the mixer.

10:19 And this is per a hundred pounds of feed. And I'm doing this this time of year, at least once a week for a different age group, which that management, I'd really like to streamline this. So I'm only making maybe two batches of feed per week. And then we throw the quail in on top of that. Their formulations are changing every three weeks. Oh yeah. With their growth speed, because they're trying to make it by eight weeks. They are. End. Any, anything I can do to reduce my costs in my feed, I realize that my fish meal and my soy meal are my two most expensive ingredients going into my feed. So everything I can do to get them off those two things and Onto the whole grain diet, the better.

11:05 And I am a little paranoid about too much fish meal in my poultry diet, because I don't like tasting it. So stay under 5 percent at all costs, anything near finisher age. Yeah. And that can sneak into eggs too. I found out. Oh, absolutely. It can. Oh, somebody ate some of my hatching eggs and I sold them specifically as hatching eggs. They're like, oh, we cooked them and they were horrible. What do you mean you cooked them? We didn't have room in the incubator and you gave us so many and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, yeah, great. But those are hatched, I told you these are hatched eggs. Yeah, those were on the breeder ration, not the breakfast ration. I very, yeah, I brought them some of the feed to smell.

11:48 I'm like, this is what the breeders eat. And they went, oh, that's what the eggs tasted like. They still had some permanent emotional scarring from that because they cracked them on the pan. And apparently it, Filled their house with the most unpleasant aroma, first thing in the morning. Yeah, I can imagine. Hey Mandy, I know you do a lot of focus on birds for eating and the look of the carcass is important to you. That bag of peel as I've heard you refer to it as. Yeah, the bag of peel. My question is, what do you look for when you're doing your initial selection for freezer birds and for potential breeder birds?

12:31 So right around that 12 week old point is when I need to start thinking about how I'm going to finish them out and who's going on the dinner list. I'll go through the cockerels first and focus on them, and when I pick them up and I handle them, I'm not too worried about what they weigh. But I'm really worried about what they feel like. And there's a certain feel that I'm looking for in those who may get a reprieve for more growth. And I'm looking for the bone spacing that gives them a really good body capacity, where they're two fingers between the pin bones, at least three fingers between the end of the keel up to those pin bones, how deep their chest is, how broad their front is, how broad and long the back is.

13:17 And I'm comparing them against each other. So anyone that isn't as nice as the others, he gets set aside for a freezer date. Because I don't need them. Once I establish that I don't need the bird and there's better in that group, I just filter them that way. And let's say I have a batch of 25 males. I'm looking for the best three to hang on to longer. Makes sense. Everybody else can start him on some finisher feed right away and keep the good ones on the expensive feed. Yeah. And I have a couple of extra tractors where I'll put the better ones because I don't really have anywhere else to put them. And then I just build a little collection of the best all through the season.

13:59 Then I reevaluate what I have in the fall and figure out who's sticking around longer. Yeah, that's a problem I have right now is I actually have too many nice roosters and I have pangs of guilt putting some of these boys in the freezer. I'm getting pretty close to that point and I'm not sure how I'm going to manage that other than just keep doing the same thing. Really that's a good problem to have. But after a certain point in time, I would say 18 weeks, they start really costing you more money than they're worth keeping around unless they're absolutely going to be a breeder. Yeah, that's pretty motivating. Plus, we eat a lot of chicken.

14:40 Here's an interesting question how many birds do you try to sort at a time? Depends on how much time available I have, but if I set 50 eggs in a batch and I get, 40, 45 chicks out of that, and there's going to be 20, 25, maybe 30 males, however, The hatch rate pans out of the gender split and splitting it up by gender and not trying to worry about doing everyone in one day is pretty helpful. And I put that growth focus mostly on those boys first because they get the first freezer date and then the pullets end up in their own pens in their own space where I'm still monitoring growth.

15:25 But for them, I can delay things because I just need to know that they hit five pounds when they laid their first egg. So I have at least 18 weeks where I can just feed out the girls and then watch them in their development after those first couple of weeks when I'm weighing weekly. Then after that I just set them up in their pen and put my focus on the boys. So if I can keep that batch size at 25 or less that's pretty manageable. Much more than that. Now I'm spending, half the day handling birds almost on a weekly basis for the boys. And I think it's wise to do it like that. I know early on when I would try to do a bunch of birds in a day that I found myself getting tired, getting a little bit aggravated and had a tendency to rush through my evaluations.

16:16 And again, you don't want to rush it. And then, so if I, when I have five different age groups, then I do it on different days, I'll do, this age group on a Monday and then on Wednesday, I'll do a different age group. Back in my younger days, I'd try to go through a hundred birds a day, and that's not the best way to do it. You want to be able to take your time because sorting is, and evaluating birds is something there's no do overs, you've got to do it and you got to try to get it as spot on as you possibly can. Yeah, for sure. What are the other things that You're looking forward that would indicate these are better growing birds. We, we've talked about body development, that sort of thing, but is there any other clues y'all use?

16:59 At freezer age, they're not done growing by any stretch, but you can start to see how they're trending, especially when you compare them to their peers in that same group. So like when the boys and they first start getting those combs jumping up. Then you can see this one's going to have six spikes. This one's going to have five spikes on the comb. This one's going to have about 15. And what that comb turns into over the next year and a half, you won't know until it happens, but you can start rolling them out for other little goofy things. And you can see like the shape of the head and how the beak's starting to form.

17:39 And then the initial structure, cause they, Rip, by the time a bird is a year old, how many molts has that bird gone through already? Cause there's a lot of different little mini molts in there, and every time it can change something in the tail angle, it can change something. So I look at the initial expression. And then I weighed around for more growth on those good ones to see if it stayed that way, got better, or got worse. And if it got worse, they're out. I know some folks think I'm crazy when I tell them, your birds are going to change and your birds are going to change every time they molt. We're starting out and some people were wanting to cull them for culler at eight weeks old.

18:23 You can't do that because you're not, unless you got an all black or an all white bird, but everything comes in time and some things can't be rushed and doing a good job of sorting birds is one of those things. And I can't just pick a day and call through everybody. I have to do that little staggered approach and filter them over time because of how much they can really change. Even at two years old, that bird might look completely different than it did at six months old. Pretty much. Y'all know that picture of Sue Dobson's Rhode Island Red Cock bird that I posted. That was a bird that won as a Cockrell in Ohio, and he doesn't look anything like he did as a cockroach, as he does as a cock bird.

19:09 He looks much better now. Oh yeah, he got a lot more. He changed a lot. Yeah, he got more depths of body and just they changed a lot. Trust us. But I still look for those early signs of those good traits. And then I just wait to confirm it. Yes. And it's important to do that. I changed my mind. Sometimes they don't pan out the way I hoped. And sometimes I have gone through and sorted out some birds that I thought I don't, there's, I don't like this. I don't like that. Putting in a, another pen and come back a little bit later on. I thought, why in the world did I put that bird in a cull pen? That's, I don't know. I need to hang on to that bird. I've sometimes, if I get too pinched for space, I'll.

19:51 Send some birds out to local friends and then they'll send me a picture, six months later going, look at this rooster. He is so handsome. I'm like, Oh, darn, should have kept that egg. Luckily I like to keep things close enough where I can say, Hey, can I bring one of my hens over for a conjugal visit? Yeah. Can they hang out for the afternoon? Yeah. I'll separate her for a couple of weeks and bring her over for a visit for a day. And then back home and collect and set those eggs. If, something that just really screams out I really need to pair Matt's rooster with this hen, cause they're closely related enough.

20:32 I did recently bring back a male that a friend of mine had. He's two and a half years old and he is just. A rock star. And he's so polite and he's so well built. Like he is everything I would hope for, except he's a little more yellow in the plumage than I would like, but he has so much other good going for him. Stuck him right back in a breeding pen. It's a strong case for having these little genetic safe deposit boxes around the neighborhood. It really is. She did a great job growing them out. Makes your heart good, feel good when that happens. Oh, it does. And we're just doing more for the breed and for our fellow breeders. Hey, Mandy, you, we've talked a good bit today about your rooster coop and your indoors coops in the barn, but And I know folks are always interested in what kind of coops do y'all use?

21:25 Describe your overall production facility. Just, you don't have to go into great detail, but just give folks a general idea of what you're working with. When we moved to this property, it had a giant 1, 600 square foot barn that was pretty much fallen down. And it needed all new everything. Including a couple of like main support beams. So we got to work fixing it up, and then we got to the roof part. We had a couple quotes saying that roof was going to be A heck of a lot of money. And so we were trying to figure out if we were going to turn it into a shop or maybe a business or, but as we went through all the options and the investment needed, I was like what if it was a chicken coop?

22:07 And the rest is history. Yeah. So now there's a 12 by 12 hatch room in there and I've got brooders inside where they stay there for two weeks. There's two towers of additional brooders outside of that hatch room. Where I could do about a hundred chicks at a time up till five, six weeks. There's grow out pens that are five by seven. And then there's pens with runs. There's a pen for the turkeys who got lucky on space. I think they're pens like. Nine by 15 for five of them. Cause I like to be generous with the space. Like I'm really looking for adult sized birds to have a minimum of six square foot per bird.

22:50 Cause it really seems to reduce the chore load of cleaning, but also happier birds. Yes. I'm a firm believer. You can't have too much space for a bird. You really can't. And that barn wasn't enough. So outside of that barn, we've got rooster coop and pullet pen. And a couple of flex tractors that I use seasonally. I've noticed if I try to keep my birds population a little too dense, they have more of a propensity to go over the fence and into the neighbor's yard and walk around in the road. Yeah. They started venturing more. They really do. They don't like to be crowded. I try to keep a quarter acre under electric fence. But even that can be challenging when the grow out gets pretty big.

23:32 Mandy, we've talked about how many birds you have on hand, okay, or how many you're growing out. How many birds do you keep for breeders? I can house up to 55 adults, and I always have it as a little goal to get that many. But once I go through all of the selection and all of the filtering, I don't always have enough. So I end up sitting around 25 to 35 hens. And as they hit that two year old point and they get through that big molt, I check to see how they come back into production, what their egg size is like, and if I can keep breeding from them.

24:15 And I condense those older ladies into their own pen and then I give them the most proven male and then it goes down in age from there. Because I learned a long time ago that if all of your birds are the same age, they're going to do everything at the same time and you're going to have dry spells where you don't get eggs. Every year I'm adding new pullets and then I filter and sort and condense down through the six pens I have. And then I end up with birds that are five years, four years, three years, two years, one year on down. And it, that filtering approach keeps me in all age groups at all times, and I never run out of eggs. And having them offset a little bit.

24:55 So if you're, Have your very first spring hatch and your last fall hatch. So your fall hatches are going to be rolling around in production for spring replacements, just as everything's coming around. And I really liked the fall hatch cause I can eek two years of production out of them before they hit their first molt. Whereas, you play with the calendar too on production. And how far can I push these birds before they hit that first molt and go into a nonproductive phase? Yeah, and I work a lot with pen averages and let's say I've got 12 hens in a pen when I'm getting eight eggs a day. And I know I'm looking for those six eggs per bird per week.

25:35 And if I'm not seeing it, then I take a systematic approach into that pen to figure out who in here is the dud? Who in here is dragging down that pen average? She comes out, And another one that's complimentary to those females, because I do like to have the females within a pen to all be quite similar to each other. Because it makes a more consistent hash result with the male that goes in there, which lets me get a little lazy on pair mating. I do want to find some space to do pair mating, but right now I try to build up my clans to be As complimentary and consistent to themselves within that pen and do it that way, which seems to be working.

26:16 Consistency is so important in a clan. You can't stress that too much. You prompted something, a little question went off in my brain here. But how do you determine which female is laying which eggs, or do you even worry about that? This brings us to the close of another Poultry Keepers podcast. We're very happy you chose to join us. Until next time, we'd appreciate it if you would drop us a note, letting us know your thoughts about our podcast. Please share our podcast with your friends that keep poultry. We hope you'll join us again when we'll be talking poultry from feathers to function.