Understanding Post-Molt Poultry Care and the Importance of Properly Balanced Nutrients

0:00 How can you have your birds looking and performing their best after a molt? Well, coming up in this episode of the poultry keepers podcast, we'll share what you can do to have your birds in tip-top shape after they molt. This episode is a portion of the poultry keepers 360 live stream on after the molt care best practices To reduce the overall runtime of this episode. Question and answer. Portion of that live stream isn't included here, so if you want to see the entire live stream, it's archive on the poultry keepers 360 youtube channel under the live tab. Now here's Jeff Maddox, karen Justin and myself. To me they're not just the nutritional side but also the management side to help and our birds overcome this.

0:58 And I'm gonna stress Management pretty much from a feathering standpoint, because I know we have a lot of folks who show their birds and show seeing is Rapidly coming up on us. Let's talk about for a minute to avoid feather picking. You want to make sure your birds have plenty of room, more space than you would normally give them, my saint. So plenty of room. And Remember when feathers are just starting to come in, you got a lot of pin feathers and that can be very appealing to other birds to pick at. So you might find it helpful to offer some sort of an enrichment item, a peck block or some sort of toys.

1:39 I know some folks have used just a plastic water bottle, drilled a couple holes in it and put a little wheat or a little Scratch feed in there and throw it in there and let the birds peck and roll it around and it dispenses a few grains of Something for them to eat so that keeps them occupied for a while. Another thing you can do is to offer extra purchase, and not just in the portion itself but out in the run, because when these birds get to aggravating each other, they appreciate a place where they can go and get out of the way and out of the Fluor traffic and I guess they take sort of an outside out of mind Situations which I don't weigh them for that at all.

2:22 We also want to keep in mind that some colors can bleach from sunlight or even change. Buff is one that is bad about bleaching and you get this model look to the plumage and Blue will sometimes maybe not get the model look, but some of the feathers will get a red cast To the feathers which is very undesirable. So you want to make sure that your birds have plenty of shade to prevent that from happening. I Also remember one time somebody was talking to me about their birds getting wet and and actually I'm a fan of Birds getting wet when they're regrowing their feathers because it seems to improve and help the feather quality.

3:08 I know several breeders, who one that breeds blacks and matras and black menorcos, and he goes out there every Few days, every three days, every four days, something like that, with the water hose, and he's got his males and individual coops and when they're molding just go out there with a little spray nozzle on his Garden hose and wet them down and boy they. They come out shining Bright. It's incredible. So don't be afraid of them getting wet or getting them wet. And this one should go without saying because you want to make sure your pens are clean, particularly if you raise white birds of any kind, because sometimes when feathers get stained, when they're just growing back in, it's just almost impossible to clean those stains out and get them back to a nice bright white.

3:57 So when they start molding and after they mold those feathers, give your pens a good cleaning, replace abetting if you need to, but get the old feathers and the manure and the spill feed and all that stuff out of there. So you don't have stained feathers and that you know. Just use good management practices, the feed that's suitable for them, fresh water, plenty of space, good air movement, adequate lighting not too much because you don't want to start feather picking, but Just the good basics of poultry husbandry. So that's kind of gone to you. Wrap it up for me, though, jeff.

4:37 I'm gonna turn it over you and we're gonna let you take over with the nutritional support of that. So Rip, you brought up a really good point about keeping the pens clean. So I want to ask you you witness this over your years of experience, something I see you know working with commercial birds, larger flocks have you ever noticed that ammonia smell in the chicken? Oh yes, it will change how those birds feather. So I mean what I see in large groups of birds. If I walk in a layer house or a broiler house or whatever, your condition is much poorer when in the houses where you know I can smell the ammonia in the air.

5:22 I just have you seen the same thing I mean yes, I have, and people don't really realize we're five, six feet tall. Those birds are only 12 to 18 inches tall and if we can smell the ammonia at our level, those birds are really suffering down at their level. Yeah. Yeah, and actually a lot of folks don't realize this, but it's. We've known this for a long time. The human nose can't detect ammonia to until it reaches about 25 parts per million, and poultry respiratory tracts are actually getting scarred at as low as 10 parts per million.

6:07 Wow, and the time we sell it it's two and a half times. You know where the ammonia is starting to occur, right? So whether it's eye burn, can you, can you see eye burn? when you're judging. I don't recall ever having seen that I was trying to say. I thought was that and it may be something I thought was something else was actually was eye burn. Yeah, it's just to kind of a cloudy haze over the cornea, okay. I have seen that and thought it was something else, and so yeah, well, I mean, there's other things that cause it, but one of the common causes of eyebrow, you know or not, having that high gloss appearance to the eye which I, you judge the eye right.

6:55 That's part of judging. Yes, but yeah, cloudy eye. But yeah, you know, when you talked about keeping the pens clean, it prompted me to remember, you know, my experiences with ammonia. So you know, folks, you just need to be really careful to make sure that pairs as fresh as possible. You know Ripp talked about relieving stress, like a peck block or something you know he left out. You know, if you get a hay bag, like you would feed a horse or you design something, you know, putting a flake of hay in there, suspended, so they just have to stretch for it a little bit, gives them something to peck on besides each other, right, and you know they love playing with it.

7:38 It's a really good tool, so, and they're actually going to benefit from it if it's good quality hay. So just something else to add to that list. Jeff, I've also found a head of cabbage suspended upside down for just where they have to kind of jump up just a little bit to get at it. Yeah, out of the multiply as well. Well, it'll keep you occupied as well. Just bring a chair and you know something to drink and just sit there watching, because that's hilarious to watch any creature bob per cabbage. So you want to have it just kind of that. They kind of have to fly up a, two, three inches and peck at it, and yeah, that is.

8:18 You know so the way we do it Ripp is we bore a hole right down through the core, you know so it's upside down. We bore all the way through and push the string through, you know, and then just put a stick or something on the other side so it doesn't fall off. And you know, the longer the rope, the more it dangles, and once it gets moving, it's hilarious to watch that chase that thing around. Hey, I'm going to remember that. That's good redneck entertainment, I don't care what you think. So, yeah, yeah, so that's, that's worth it, that's worth the price of admission, all right. So you know, we're here to talk about coming out of the mold and you know, like two weeks ago, I prepared it.

8:59 Look, this, this isn't a ration that you need to run to your feed store with. Okay, you, it's. You know, I want you to. It's more important to worry about the nutrient levels that we're going to talk about the post mole reaction, right? So everybody focuses on the protein, which is fine, but it's not the key component, right? That's not what I want you to focus on. So, yes, it should be around an 18% protein, but more important are the amino acids. When we go down through there, every good poultry diet is going to be at least 5% fat. That's the one between 5% and 7%. The term is used for fat. It's vegetable oils, it's some type of oil, whether you're adding cooking oil, whether you feed meals adding cooking oil or something.

9:47 But you want to get between 5% and 7% fat. This is important to the bird. It helps the liver function correctly, depositing cholesterol. All that ties together with a good, healthy bird. So most commercial feeds, if you look at the tag, they're only guaranteeing a minimum fat, usually around 3%. If you all need to be tag readers, so when you go to the store read the tag, okay, it's worth your time and effort. You want to look at the ingredients. I know they write them in gibberish that make it pretty much impossible to know what's in there. You're welcome to take a picture, send it to me. You know I'll break it down, tell you what I think is in there.

10:29 There's not a lot of choices out there as far as commercial feeds go, but I'll happily tell you what I see reading between the lines of ingredients. So fiber you want the fiber between 5% and 7%. Okay, the fiber is going to help regulate the digestive tract, just like it does for us or any other creature. Fiber is important. We want that fiber in there. Just keeps the digestive tract moving smoothly, efficient. It scrapes the gut wall. They get more nutrients out of it. Now calcium level coming out of the mold is going to be dependent on are you going to go right back into laying or are you going to be doing some type of a holding diet till the next breeding season.

11:14 So what I put up here is a 1.2 calcium. You want above 1% and this is more like a grower developer type feed. You don't need a high level of calcium at this point unless you're going to stimulate them to lay eggs and get right back to business. Then you want that calcium level to be 3.5. You ever take a quarter point 3.25 to 3.75. Phosphorous levels I like a little bit extra phosphorus. I run at 0.75. That's a little on the higher side, but that phosphorus is a point for bone mass. It's important actually for eggshell.

11:56 So that relationship, calcium and phosphorus, is key. If you don't have enough phosphorus you can still have a poor eggshell. The other thing is phosphorus in almost every living creature is essential for proper reproductive performance. Okay, so look at that phosphorus level. Look for something a little bit higher. Calcium levels between 0.18, this one's 0.17, it's still fine, but between 0.18, 0.21, you're not going to see energy on the tag, so I shouldn't have included it. Just get up, skip over that. Vitamin A look, I'm running at 8,000 international units per pound.

12:37 Most off the shelf feeds are only between 3 and 4,000. There's a few really good ones out there at 5, but they're hard to find. They're not available for everybody. So start thinking about how you want to supply some of these extra vitamins. Hopefully not an assault form, but, looking at it, you want to be above 6,000 on your vitamin A. Right Again, vitamin A, critical for reproduction performance. How many eggs are you going to lay? But how strong is the chick coming out? The other side, a is going to tie right in to chick vigor. So you want to make sure that you got the vitamin A there.

13:20 The tag's not going to have vitamin D on it. Generally, when you buy vitamin A, you're going to buy something that had vitamin D with it. Vitamin E most commercial feeds are running around 15 international units. You've heard me say this before. I really want you above 50. If you're closer, you get to 100. The hell's your birds are going to be. So that's when you're out there looking for something to add to the feed. These are the top ingredients Vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E. Then we start getting into the amino acids. You know, rip and I talked before the show. It's not about the protein number.

14:01 Don't get all tangled up about the crude protein. It's more important to get the amino acids and by law in the United States a proper poultry feed tag has to include lysine and methionine. That's the legal labeling requirement. However, people send me lots and lots of tags and they don't have lysine and methionine Yet I read the ingredients and they've added them to the feed but they're not guaranteeing the label. So if you can, try and ask gently if they can tell you what those are.

14:43 You know, look old female people or farm store managers. They don't like getting cornered just like anybody else. So just be real careful how you ask them the questions. Plead with them like hey, you know I'm raising some breeding flock here. I need to have a little bit higher nutrient levels before I start adding. Is there any chance you can work with me on what are the levels of lysine and methionine? So I know what I need to add in and how to add it. So go in gently. Don't be confrontational because you will get nowhere. He will show you the door. So lysine levels, I'd like to see you for sure, above 1%.

15:27 A 1.2 is a little bit better. Methionine levels above 0.45, for sure, if you can get closer to 0.5, you're going to be happier. Your amino acids are what are the key building blocks to your feathers. Right Now. Many of you have fed higher protein and you've seen the response of feeding higher protein gives you better feathers. That's true, and here's the reason why A molecule of protein is made from three or more amino acids. So your amino acids are your building blocks to every protein.

16:09 Now, for the last 100 years, they figured out that methionine is the first limiting amino acid for poultry. So when it's deficient, egg size isn't right, feathers aren't right, health of the bird isn't right, nothing really functions right. Well, okay, where do you get methionine? Now? Look, soybean meal and plant proteins are typically very, very rich in lishing, so it's not often that you have to add it, unless there's a bunch of byproducts in the feed. So things you want to consider if you're looking for a protein supplement some of the better ones. You've heard me say before I'm a fan of fish meal.

16:51 All right, it's in this feed formula that I have off to the side, which is a 100 pound feed formula. So fish meal has great methionine levels, methionine in relationship to lishing. So it's higher in its relationship or ratio the methionine is higher than lishing but it is one of the highest available in the settings. If you can't get a good fish meal, consider like insect meals whether it's dried black soldier fly, whether it's dried mealworms, dried crickets those are generally a good, clean option. You need to be careful. Figure out where your mealworms are coming from.

17:33 I didn't realize this until about a year ago that close to 80% of the mealworms are being shipped in from China. We have no idea what they're feeding their mealworms to raise. So if you can try and find domestic mealworms, look. They feed crickets and mealworms chicken feeding. So you know it's fairly safe for the most part, without insecticides and chemicals, all right. So what you get to your amino acids you know. Then you want to focus somewhat on your trace minerals. You want to have good levels of trace minerals and the reason is manganese, for instance, is going to give you a much deeper, richer black.

18:16 So if you have a bird that has black feathering in it, you're going to want to make sure that your manganese levels are adequate. In fact, these levels at 97 are just bare minimum adequate for a black bird. You probably should be running closer to 150 parts per million Burge with red in them. You're going to want to make sure that your iron level is adequate, depending on where you live, what's in the water, what's in the soil, you know, and what's in the feed. So your iron is going to translate over into your reds pretty significantly. Copper's going to support a lot of this as well. You know, in general colors, copper is blue by nature.

18:58 When you look at copper sulfate, for instance, it's going to be blue. But as it goes in and combines with the iron and the manganese, it's going to help with some of those unique colored birds. So make sure your trace mineral levels are where they need to be. You know the feed formula is off to the side. It's just a guideline right now. You know two weeks ago I posted the molt ration. It's more of an educational piece, you know you're welcome to go use it. This is public information. You don't have to ask my permission. You can take this wherever you want to and try and duplicate it. But it's more important to hit these numbers on the new transpecs than it is to worry about those ingredients.

19:45 Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. Be sure to listen next week when Mandolin Royal, john Gunnerman and myself share how to find your poultry group. So until then, be sure, and keep your birds happy, healthy and productive. Bye-bye.