The Future of PK360-Big Changes, New Tools, and What’s Next

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, everybody. You know, got a question for you right off the bat. Have you been wondering just what in the world we've been up to on these few months that we've been taking a break? Well, we haven't been sitting idly around twiddling our thumbs, I can assure you of that. And we're going to share all of that with you tonight. And I hope with the time tonight's over with, I hope you're just as excited about it as we are. Sue and I were just talking. But by the way, I'm remiss. Uh we have a new team member joining us tonight, Sue Dobson. And there comes Carrie Blackman. Hot diggity dog, we're all here. Jeff Blackman. Jeff Blackman. Can I start over? It's been a while since I've done this. Uh Jeff Maddox is on the other side of the world enjoying life and taking it easy for a few days. And he'll be back before too much longer, I think. But we got a lot to cover tonight, and I hope you have a lot of questions, and we're gonna do our very, very best to answer them for you. But before we get started, I want to share one thing with you. I started out using AI a little bit until I could figure it out. And I just want to share this with you, and this is from the heart. Many of you know that Poultry Keepers 360 has been producing more educational materials than ever before to help us work more efficiently. We do use certain artificial intelligence tools during the creative process, and I want to be really clear about how we use them. AI does not replace our knowledge, judgment, or experience. It doesn't decide what we teach, what advice we give, or what standards we follow. Those decisions remain ours. Instead, I use AI much like a word processor, a graphics program, a camera, or a video editor. It helps organize ideas, improve writings, assist with layouts, generate graphics, and speed up production, allowing us to spend more time doing what matters most, developing educational resources that help poultry keepers make better decisions. Every educational concept, recommendation, observation, and conclusion presented here on Poultry Keepers 360 is thoroughly reviewed before I share it with you. Okay. I have if I can't get it to correct something to my satisfaction, I won't use it. And I've already done that several times. In many ways, AI has just become another tool in our toolbox. It has made me much more efficient. It has allowed me to do things that I I could not have done before. I was just telling Sue beforehand this little annual report document that everybody can get for free. Or annual programming guide, rather. I had about 70 hours in that, and that was using AI. If I had to do those graphics by hand, wow, uh probably would still be going into Christmas time.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah. That was a lot of work. Our mission has not changed. Our mission will never change. We're still committed to providing thoughtful, experience-based poultry education that helps you become a more knowledgeable, confident, and capable poultry keeper. Technology may help us produce that information more efficiently. But experience, integrity, and education will always remain at the heart of Poultry Keepers 360. And you have my word on that. But we are bringing some new content online to where you're going to be able to get something from us seven days a week if you want it. On page two, and this is just kind of a welcome to Poultry Keepers 360. And it gives you sort of that 30,000-foot view of what this is all about. Down at the bottom, you'll see all our little mugshots down there. In case you are just dying to know what we all look like, you can pick us out of a crowd pretty easily. But now to page three, this is where we start having the rubber meet the road. My hands are so dry I can't grab paper. Here we go. It's how this whole learning system that we've envisioned and put together works. You observe, you record, you analyze, and you decide and you improve. And that's what we're all about. Helping you make better poultry decisions. Observe. We got a few first field guide that comes out next week is going to be about observation. And then there's a series of six, yeah, six shorts that will accompany that video. So we we'll be talking observation all seven days next week. We have created observation journals where you can make your notes because golly, if you're like me, I forget quick anymore. So if you see something, write it down. And one of the keys to being a good good observer is you need first to figure out what is normal in your flock. And once you observe your birds long enough and study them, you'll know what normal is. And so when you see something that's abnormal, it'll stick out like a sore thumb. Yep. Now don't uh confuse looking and seeing. Okay, we can all look, and I I like to compare that to a uh two folks looking at a chicken at a poultry show. One of them's just John Q public off the off the street, the other one's a judge. And the guy from the public says, Look, that's a pretty bird. And I'm sure it probably is, but a judge will look at it and he will see things like tail angle, depth of body, width of body, width of head, color of eyes, color of the plumage. Um all of that goes into it, and that's a difference between just looking and seeing. Observation is a skill that you have to practice and that you have to learn. It's not something we're born knowing how to do, just doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And I think you have once you learn what you're looking at and what you're looking for, making really good notes to document all that is extremely important.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yes, yes, because you would be surprised, you can look back over a year's worth of notes, and you can pick up some amazing things. You know, did you change feeds? You can probably see it in your notes, how your birds responded to a feed change. Did you have bad weather? Was it hot, extremely hot? You can probably see it in your notes with what you observe from your birds. So the more you observe, the more you see, and the more you write down, the better your decision making becomes. All right. When I was this, I was trying to figure it out today, I was probably about 45 years ago. I was up at my mentor's home in Thompson, Georgia, Mr. E.W. E's. And we were walking around just looking at birds, you know, just observing and talking about them, having a good time. And I got to notice and we were looking at a pen of cockerels that were probably about coming up eight, nine, ten months old, maybe. I don't know. But I noticed a few of them had two, three, or four little white feathers, solid white feathers right over the kidneys, kidney area. Well, I I knew enough to know that solid white on a Rhode Island Red is a disqualification. And it kind of shocked me because I knew Mr. Reese knew it, but what I didn't know was why were they still there? Why had they not been called? So I asked him about it. He said, Well, I learned with my line of reds that if you have males that have those few white feathers over the kidneys area, do not get rid of them because they'll molt those white feathers out, yeah, and they'll come back in and be some of your most strikingly beautifully colored male birds you've ever had. I was looking, but Mr. Reese was seeing. That's the best way I can put it.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

That comes from making notes and trusting your notes and time.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yep. Well, you know, if and one of the exercises I'm gonna introduce to folks, I'll give you a sneak peek, is how just spending five minutes a day in your chicken coop with your hands in your pockets. Because if your hands are not in your pockets, you're gonna be doing something. Don't want you doing something, I want you just looking at the birds, seeing, listening, smelling. All those can give you a clue. Just five minutes a day. That's all it takes. That's that's not an inordinate amount of time. Let's flip over to page four, which is what I think you are gonna be most interested in, our weekly learning rhythm. Now, I'm gonna be honest with y'all. I started out this project thinking we need a content calendar so everybody knows what we're doing when we're doing it, yada yada yada. And I'm gonna be honest with y'all, the more I worked with it, the more confused I became, and it should not be confusing me because I created it. And I thought, this ain't right, it ought not to be working this way, and I thought, well, if it's confusing me, it's certainly going to confuse our followers and our members. So I thought, well, what's what's the gist of what they're gonna want to know? They want to know what time they can see a video, when it's gonna be released, you know, when an article's coming out, uh the whole bowl of wax. So settled on creating this learning rhythm, and it breaks it down day by day for seven days. On Monday, we're gonna post a field guide video. This is a brand new product. We've never done them before. We're gonna talk about one subject each week. They're gonna be probably 15 to 20 minutes long. I'm gonna cut the fluff out of it and just get to the stuff. All right. I want to get to the point because that's one thing I've learned from y'all. Don't dazzle me with how much you know, just tell me what you want me to know. So that's what we're gonna do. Now, from those field guide videos, we're gonna produce, like I said, YouTube shorts. Well, if you look over here, we this says we're gonna release four YouTube shorts. That's probably an understatement. We're probably gonna be closer to five or six every week. On Tuesday, we're gonna drop a poultry keepers 360 sheet, and y'all didn't know what I was doing at the time, but I was just dropping some out there just to see what kind of response I got on them. And honestly, it didn't start out to be a sheet, it started out to be nothing more than an infographic, and this is where AI came in, and I said, How can we make this better for the people, for the users? I want it to be attractive, I want it to be useful, and I want it to grab folks' attention, and so what we came up with was sheets, one page, one side. It has nice graphics on it, it has one message, one message only. Some of them are just informational, some of them, like the observation journal, is a tool for you to use. Okay, I've got things in there, a tool for tracking hatching eggs. I've got all kinds of, and and you know, somebody asked me, he said it how many, how long do you think you can keep these things going before you run out of stuff to talk about? I thought he doesn't know me very well, does he?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

How many years do you have?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I know it probably not enough to cover it all, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Then on Wednesday, something y'all have asked for, we're gonna bring back the podcast. We're not calling it a podcast, we're calling it PK360 audio. Now, because I've got so many irons in the fire, and I've I've got to be kind of protective of my time a little bit, we're gonna have a different format than we had in the past. Uh, we won't have a three-person team putting out content. What I'm gonna do is the podcast will consist of the content from the Poultry Keepers 360 live shows. That way, if you want to watch the videos, you can watch the videos. If you want to drive down the road while you're listening to Try Melodious Voice expound on something, you can do that too by listening as a podcast. Then we get to some more YouTube shorts. Well, we already talked about those on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Friday, although I don't think I have it on here, on Fridays, I'll be posting a long form article because we have folks that that like those. I'm trying to meet everybody's needs and wants as well as I can, and I want to meet you where you are in your particular situation. So that's that's basically what it all boils down to. You can take this and you can tell when we're going to be talking about something. What form it's gonna be in? Is it gonna be printed? Is it gonna be video? Is it gonna be audio? We have made the decision to change our poultry keepers 360 time for years and years, for the first several years, we were at 7 p.m. Eastern time. And then Karen had a a conflict with her job, and so we changed it to 7:30 Eastern time. Well, that kind of keeps me and Jeff up past our bedtimes. So we're gonna bump it back to 7 a.m. Eastern time from now. Now on out. You mean 7 p.m. Yeah, that's what I said. No, I didn't. I know I I know I didn't. I know I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

You just said if we were listening.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I don't see anything. Correct me, because I need it. Well, one thing that's kind of different that we've not done before, and I don't know if you picked up on it yet, but everything comes under the banner now of Poultry Keepers 360. Yeah, we don't have a separate podcast over here and a separate thing over here. It's all under the umbrella of Poultry Keepers 360. So you know where to come to get your information. You don't have to go to three or four different places to get the good stuff. You can go all to Poultry Keepers 360 and you can find it there. All the podcasts, and incidentally, the podcasts we made previously are still available and they're archived, and you can access them on the Poultry Keepers 360 YouTube channel, as are all of our video.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

But everybody learns differently.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yes, yep, yep, absolutely, absolutely. We want to have interactive discussions, questions and answers with our poultry keepers 360 team. Speaking of questions, do we have any questions up there?

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Kerry, you've been following along, or y'all have I have not seen any questions yet. I do, I have popped up a couple of good messages that I see where people are excited about what the content that's going out, but I have not seen any questions yet.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Well, folks, here's your big chance to stump things. You know, fire us a question. We'll do our best to answer it for you. So, but please, and if you have any questions about what I'm talking about, shoot a question our way. I'll be happy to answer it.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

In the past, what makes you think about changing up here, Rip? Is it the way people are learning?

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Uh there were several things, Sue. One, the constant request for a course of some sort. Two, I look around at all the different poultry educators out there, and there is a train load, and Carrie can vouch vouch for that. Yes. And I'm partial, I know I'm partial, okay? But I still I think poultry keepers 360 does as good, if not better, job than anybody out there. So I've I've really never been one to be satisfied with the status quo. I'd like to kick the bucket over.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

We do have one question. They want to know if we will have guest speakers.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

I think that's a good possibility. Would you like to come on and be one? No. Yeah, we can do that, but we'd have to do that on our poultry keepers 360 live programs because all the others I've already got uh the content planned for the next twelve months.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

You've been busy.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

And uh Sue asked me w why I was doing this and and what instigated it. And uh one is a very personal reason. Before my wife passed away. She told me I don't want you sitting around moping after I'm gone. I want you to do what you love doing. So I'm staying busy doing what I love doing.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

You're one of the best at it, Rip.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Well, I don't know about that, but I uh I do. I give it the old heave hold for a try out. Sorry for kind of breaking up there, y'all.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

All right. You're among friends.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Thank goodness. And good friends at that. Yes. One thing that had kind of always troubled me, and it was not something we planned, it's just kind of something that happened, and I said, you know, there's there's got to be a better way to do this. Because we would cover content in our live programs whenever we had the idea, okay, we need to talk about this. But it could be a subject that is best suited to talk about in the winter, like wintertime ventilation in your poultry coop. But we might be talking about it in the spring. So this year we're gonna be introducing a seasonality concept. And over on page five, you can see a little bar right across the center of the page. And and we're not gonna tell you, okay, this is spring, this is whatever. But the graphics, it'll be reflected in the graphics, in the look and feel of the graphics. In the springtime, you'll see flowers, maybe, you know what. We're not gonna overdo it, and it's not gonna be all about that, but there's just little subtle hints that kind of remind you of what we're talking about when we're talking about it. And not only are we gonna get it to you when you need it, we're gonna get it to you before you need it because some of the things we're gonna talk about may take you a month to pull off or two months.

unknown 25:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

So in July, guess what? We're not gonna be talking about summertime comments or content. We're gonna be talking about winter content. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm already suffering from that now myself.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, I know, right? We're there.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

But you know, just trying to provide better service to you folks out there. And and what you know, I talked to you we're gonna be talking about observation first, and then we're gonna be talking about in in for fall subjects how to focus, how to analyze, how to evaluate, and how to plan. And then for winter topics, we're looking at things like how do you reflect on the previous year you just had? Is there some way you can refine it? What did you learn from it that you can make preparations for next year so you don't have that same problem? And of course, spring, I think of growth, application, confidence, those sorts of things. And what I have struggled and started over and over and over and over with multiple times, more than I care to admit. But before our topics were all over the place and nothing was connected. All right. Now I'm gonna make a conscious effort that all content everything will link together. So with the exception of our live program, our observation will come up. And then we're talking about observations with our sheets, observations with our articles, observations with our gone brain dead, y'all, one of those days. YouTube short, that's what it was. Yeah. But so it will all, you know, we don't all learn the same way, and some of us like learning from something this way or maybe something that way. Try to cover the basis. It's gonna it's not gonna be an easy task. I gotta I I'll be the first to admit that. Because, like I said, our mission here is to help you make better decisions, and we're gonna spend a whole year talking about what you can do, the five pillars of better decision. We're gonna talk about observation, learning, how to reflect, how to connect, how to act, and and one thing I've been toying around with a little bit, and you may have seen some of it, but I'm starting to get into encouraging a better poultry keepers' culture. You know, I've we've probably all seen posts about it or heard folks talk about it, that it's the culture needs to be better, it's not what it used to be. And I'll firmly admit it, the culture is nowhere close to what it was when I was coming up.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Man, the shows back then were two days long. And now the one-day shows, and the folks are chomping it a bit to get out of there by noon. Yeah, that's a little a bit of an exaggeration, but not too much.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

Not much. Not not too much.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

On the two-day shows, they had time to to talk and visit questions. Young people had time to get to know all the old timers and ask their questions and follow them around and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

That's where I learned so much.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

You know, there was always a bunch of feeds, sacks of feeds sticking around, or bales of shavings or bales of hay or something. Well, I'd look for where the collection of all the oldest guys were who weren't seen I've and I just no that's no joke. Uh and then I just go sit and listen. Yep. And you could be amazed at what you can pick up and what you can learn.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yep. I think the one-day shows have really hurt the the exhibition world.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

The one-day shows and the point system.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yes. Oh, for sure the point system.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

But with our seasonality approach to delivering content with the pillars we talked about, it it we create a never-ending cycle. It just it just repeats over and over and over and over. Topics change. But you still got that same cycle, same rhythm. Helps you form good habits. Yeah. With any luck. How are we doing? Oh, I forgot. Ooh, I got I need to take a short break here. And we got a little commercial we need to play for you guys. We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Portrail Company for their sponsorship of the Pocrit Keeper 360 Live programming. Portrail is just the name of sustainable farming and folk industry for decades, and their commitment to providing high-quality, natural products aligned purpose with the device we hold there in our folks community. Thank you, Portrail, for partnering with us to empower Poultry Keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support. Incidentally, I was what y'all think of the music?

SPEAKER_01 32:27

I like it.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yep. That's our new custom music. Found a guy in Sweden said he'd do it for $40, and I said, no, it's worth more than that. So I gave him a nice little raise, and he gave us a nice little song. Oh well. Over on page seven, we want you to think what we're doing and what we're becoming as your long-term learning resource library. Okay. Because we're going to have videos, step-by-step guides. We're going to have articles and sheets where we can get in-depth with things. We're going to have downloadables like observation journals, like the health checklist, egg production records. We're going to have the audio programs. And obviously, you got your team here. You we've you got our insights. I mean, I mean, together we've got when you really stop and think about it, we got a pretty astounding number of years of experience in poultry keeping between all four of us now. But you know, make the most of it. Bookmark your favorite resources. Or make a note, start a journal, whatever. You are more than welcome to download any of the sheets, any of the guides, any of the articles I put out there, have at them. That's what they were designed for. I had one guy, I I had a posted, and it was where I tied linked two sheets together. One was the observation journal, and one was I believe it was a poultry health checklist or something like that. Anyway, he wanted to know if we would give him permission to reproduce those and hand them out to his customers in his poultry supply store. I said, Don't throw me into Briar Patch by all means. Go ahead. That's just more advertising for us. So feel free to snag anything I put out there. I'm not I'm not going to speak for the whole team, but if I it has my name on it, you're more than welcome to use it anytime.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

I would add that all that we ask is that you don't edit it.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Yes. We are all of our material is copyrighted now. Don't don't change our branding on there and and don't change the wording. Use it just as it is. That's that's one of the reasons I've tried to dress it up a little bit. Um to make it something that looks like it's really worth sharing and worth passing around. And this year we're gonna be talking about brooding, nutrition. All we've got to talk about. Everything that we do in poultry is related to nutrition. We're gonna be talking about housing setups, observation. Boy, I kind of beat that horse to death, haven't I? Body capacity, molting, parasites, predator prevention, egg production, seasonal management, uh, biosecurity. You know that's something I've been remiss, and I know we don't talk about that nearly enough. Talk about incubation and hatching and dabbling with uh decision trees. And what a decision tree is, if you and that's what the guy wanted, he wanted a copy of a decision tree. But if you see this, does it mean this or does it mean this? If it means this, then that's what the issue is. If it means this, go to the next option, and it'll work you through most situations, or a lot of situations. I won't say most, but a lot of situations, it'll help you get through that. It's helping you to think on your own. That's something else we need to be taught how to do. I mean, not only to think, but to reason. Um I go back to go ahead, Carrie.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

I was gonna say, I think a lot of this is gonna help empower a lot of people to make good, accurate decisions while they're in their pins. Yes, you know, they're not they're not gonna have to be like, oh, what do I need to do? Let me take some pictures and let me go research. You know, there we're gonna be going along as the season goes, and you can be observing your birds and sweet. This is what the season is here. That's just a little bit of light. But it it's to help folks to be able to make those decisions on the floor. You know, we're imposing you to learn the stuff. Not that we don't enjoy answering questions because we can talk about chickens 20 hours out of the day. You know, we we want y'all to not have to wait on this to replace, we want to empower y'all to to know this stuff because you know what what happens if the internet dies tomorrow? Right.

unknown 38:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Well, you know, people keep complaining about data centers. Well, we don't have data centers, we don't have the internet.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Yeah. Stop stop and think about this one thing. How many times have y'all seen somebody ask a question? And we've already covered it hump teen times in our group. Yep. But they ask. That's the kind of thing I think they should I want to help them to learn to reason through that situation. Because if it if it is something serious, by the time you ask the question and you get 14 different answers back with 27 different possibilities, none of them write, you you could lose some birds.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

Well, and a lot of times people ask me a question in Messenger, and I will try to go find the actual episode, whether it be a live or a podcast, and send them that. Because I may give a decision based on what he has, but when we actually discuss it in either a podcast or a live episode, you know, when they were separate. We we talk about a lot of different factors, and one of those factors could be something that affects you and your flock. So, you know, when when we do that, we're not being rude, we're not trying to pass it off. We're trying to give you a ton of information so you can make the most educated decision for your flop.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

I I think a lot of people forget that every one of us's situation is different from the others. Even if it's nothing just but based on where we live, you know, geographic locations. That makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_03 41:09

See, like Sue. Sue probably doesn't hatch out a whole lot of chicks in December. Nope. Me and Rip, we could do it every month of the year. I mean, in in December, the coldest is gonna be outside probably in the 30s. And it could be 70 one day too. You know, we we have had 70s on Christmas Day. So you know, we have we have to bring that all different aspects to it, like our like our friends in Canada. I mean, some of those suckers are already starting to see snow. And we ain't even hit the peak of summer yet. Yeah, they can they can we love them, but they can keep all that. Yeah. You know, I like snow. I like to look at it. It's pretty. Yep. Then I like to change my TV channel or keep scrolling on my phone and go to something different.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yep. Yep, I agree. But I'm and I folks, I'm not gonna say we might not stub our toes somewhere along the line, but if we still like a good challenge. We'll we'll make it up to you. We're gonna make it right, we're gonna do this right. Yeah, because we are in this whole learning situation together.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yes. You know, more people need to learn that. That's the first lesson there.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

I love when people ask me questions that I don't know the answer to. Because you know, my brain just it just needs another rabbit hole to run down.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

Um but I I love learning. I mean, that's why I spent so many years in education because I love sharing my knowledge. Yep. I agree, I agree. Yep. I I know I do have announcements on that too, but they'll they'll be later.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

I I have become a much better poultry keeper since I started doing poultry education. At least I think I have.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

So minute, but so huge. And you know, you just chuckled and said, Well, you weren't ready for it back then.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

And I was like, Well dang. But to be honest, I wasn't. You know, I I didn't know what I was looking at, what I was looking for or anything else. Now it's you know, I hate it for them when they come out of the hatcher, they need to be ready. Because the the first selection happens then. But convince me why I need to feed you and grow you out to see if you've got that partial white feather that is gonna molt out and give me some beautiful red ones.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

You never know. Rip, I had that conversation with a lady about a month ago because she contacted me, she was getting white across the back. And I told her, I said, How old is the bird? She told me, and I said, You just hang on, he hadn't molted, hadn't done his final molt yet.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

That's that's a Reese bird.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

And one side of that, and I just want to grab people and shake them and say, Hey, look, and I think it's a general tendency, and I get it. Yeah, they want to cull birds as early as they can to cut down on the feed bill. Yeah, she was mortified. When you when you do that, yeah, when you do that, you're gonna get rid of some of your best birds invariably. Yep. And Carrie, you were talking about we could hatch it around. I learned something from another red breeder, oh, Ken Bowles up in New York. I was talking to him one day and I said, Kenny, how do you always have birds in such beautiful shape and such beautiful condition to show? And he said, Well, I'll tell you the secret to doing that. If you want to have birds in top condition for any show, any time in the year, hatch chicks every other month.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 46:26

Yep, and it works because when you hatch them every other month, some are gonna be starting to molt, some are gonna be done with the molt, some have never molted yet, and they have beautiful plumage. And you know, there they're gonna be different sizes at different ages and different temperaments, and you know, it's that chirping sound, you just true, very true.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

It's it's it's a hobby where you never stop learning something new, and and that's what I love about it. Because just when I think I got something figured out, along comes another piece of information that says, No, oh, you're not even halfway there, and that that's what I love about this hobby, that and the people.

SPEAKER_03 47:32

You know, a long time ago, and I and I say that I I spent over 20 years in technology, and in one of the many training classes that I sat in over the years, a guy told the entire class, he said, someone asked, What's the most important single piece of advice you can give us when it comes to working on maybe IBM mainframes or something like that? It was it was way back when.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

It doesn't take much time, I say that like it takes months, but just to connect with each other. Okay, yeah, and then apply what you learned and see if it works for you in your situation. It may, it may not. But if we will just all get on the same boat, all paddling in the same direction, nobody can stop us.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Right. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Rip, I do have one question. This one comes from YouTube. It says, Will you be touching on marketing trends at various times?

SPEAKER_00 49:26

You know, honestly, that's something I have thought about, and and being an old marketer myself. Are you talking about live birds? Are you talking about processed birds? Are you talking about eggs? Just give me a little bit more information and I'll see what we can do. May not be able to do it right away, but it may be a little bit down the road. But if if nothing else, we can certainly do an article or something on it.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

I was gonna say in the the poultry keepers group where you posted this article, book, guide, whatever you want to call the document, if there's things that people have individual questions about, that would be a good place for them to put them, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

And and so you could look at that, and as time comes and those topics become appropriate, then you know, could figure out a way to wiggle them in.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

By all means, and and I'm gonna just throw this out there. If you're not comfortable posting in a public situation, okay, send me a private message. Yeah, I'll respond to that. Who gets you to hit your we'll help you with your problem?

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Exale from YouTube. It's ex sales, ticks, and grow out is the marketing trends and that type thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Oh, he's gonna make me break out of retirement and see if I can recall what I've forgotten by now. Let me see what I can come up with. Hey, I mean, we just gotta keep you busy. Oh, did I use my outside voice? Moving on to page 10. I I think one thing that's gonna set us apart from 99.9% of the other poultry keep educators out there is we are going to give you tools to use that will make a difference for you. I've been in a lot of groups, I get a lot of drama, don't get much help, and I sure don't get any tools. I left a lot of poultry groups just for that very reason, too. I I do want, and I wish we could have made it in bigger print, but down on the bottom left-hand corner on page 10, our commitment to you. We're continually creating new tools and improving the ones you love. So always have what you need to succeed, so you will always have. When I first started this before it was Poultry Keepers 360, I don't remember what we recall. Gold Standard Poultry Solutions. When we were going how soon we forget. When we were gold standard poultry solutions, I used a tagline for a long time. The information you need to succeed, and that's still appropriate to this, because ultimately our listeners, our viewers, our member success translates directly into our success. We can't do it without them. Absolutely cannot do it. A lot of I won't say a lot, but some of this is is repeated, and and that was done on purpose because the more times we hear something the more it sinks in sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

And on page 11, we we kind of finish this up with the journey continues, and uh I've been posting some stuff this week on sharing your knowledge. And ultimately that's what it's all about. You know, I told you the story about the white feathers on the Rhode Island Reds and Mr. Reese. He didn't have to tell me that. He could have hoarded all that information. And when he passed away, it would have gone to his grave. To me, information is of no value whatsoever unless we take the time to share it. I don't know if that makes sense to all y'all, but share what you know because even if you're brand new to this, even if you've only been in it six months, so what? Somebody who's just coming in would like to know what you know at six months. They could benefit from that. And post tomorrow will be about sharing information through stories, like I did with Mr. Reese. They may not people remember those. Yeah, they they may not remember what you told them and what you taught them. They'll remember that story if if it relates. Now I'm not saying go out there and make up a bunch bunch of bony baloney stories. You can pick up on those, but a real story, you can spot it a mile off. And it sinks in and it works, it counts. Yeah. So I I'd like to think that what we're giving the folks is lessons that are worth passing on. Because if we don't start looking out for down the road, I mean I've seen where the poultry fancy has gone back when I got started in the 60s to where it is 60 years later. I don't like it. But until we determine individually to invest in the next generation, it's not gonna get any better.

unknown 56:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Yeah, that's right. I didn't know tonight I was gonna get into so much philosophy on poetry education, but I guess I did. That's all right. And then on the back cover, and it says, Thank you for being part of the journey. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of our followers. You keep me on my toes, you ask good questions, you make me think, make me work hard sometimes. So I I just want to say a very heartfelt thanks to each one of you because you folks are the heartbeat of Poultry Keepers 360. You're why I do what I do. That's the bottom line. Okay, we're coming up almost on an hour here. Do we have any more questions or comments, Carrie? That's no sir, that's it. Okay. Sue, you got anything you want to toss out there and share?

SPEAKER_01 57:57

I'm just excited to be here tonight. At least the sun's still shining. We're we're under a tornado watch, so I'm grateful for that. Looking off to the side.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

Don't blame you, I would be too.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Watching the weather map on the television. So but uh you've been instrumental in my journey with poultry. Well um I feel like that I since since getting to know you and following you and your education and and every now and then a bop up the side of the head. That was just a tap. That was just a tap. Well, it's okay. I'm used to it. But uh, you know, I've I've advanced my skills. I've I look at my birds in a different manner, you know, sit out there and watch them and evaluate. Now you're seeing you're not looking. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Yep, yep. And there is miles, miles, miles between the two of them.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yes, yep.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Yeah, that's the difference.

SPEAKER_01 59:03

Instead of just looking at a a big gauge, you know, four or five-month-old cockerel walking around. I'm looking, is he balanced? Is his back flat? You know, does he hold himself? Does he have vigor? You know, what does his eyes look like? I mean, all this stuff's going through my little head while I'm just sitting there watching him, you know, watching him walk by. And yep. It's it's just you know, a whole different way of approaching raising chickens where before it was just fun and games, and now it's it's it's more work, but it's more interesting, it's more thoughtful and more intentional.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

It it's more rewarding to me, too.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

Absolutely. Yep, yeah. Especially when you make games, you know, where you say and then you look out there one day and go, Oh, hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Yep. Well, yeah, I don't know how many times I'd happen walking around saying, Whoa, where'd that bird come from? Yeah, yeah. But okay, well, folks, next week, or no, not next week, the first week in July, the rubber meets the road for Poultry Keepers 360. And I'm so thankful to have these folks right here with me, the team on my side, and I'm so thankful to have each and every one of you along for the ride, too. So we'll see you then. Keep enjoying your birds.