Poultry Keepers Podcast

Why?....What?....Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman • Season 2 • Episode 77

Share episode

In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, hosts Rip, Mandelyn, and John continue their discussion on the challenges of shipping poultry eggs, contrasting it with the hand-to-hand model. They share experiences with postal delays and the use of improved packaging materials. 

The discussion also touches on the variable hatch rates of shipped eggs, the complexities of poultry behavioral science, and the prevalence of misinformation online. The hosts provide practical tips for maintaining water supplies during winter and stress the importance of verifying information from trusted sources, concluding with insights on natural methods for enhancing the poultry's immune system.

You can email us at - poultrykeeperspodcast@gmail.com
Join our Facebook Groups:

Poultry Keepers Podcast -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/907679597724837
Poultry Keepers 360 - - https://www.facebook.com/groups/354973752688125
Poultry Breeders Nutrition - https://www.facebook.com/groups/4908798409211973

Check out the Poultry Kepers Podcast YouTube Channel -
https://www.youtube.com/@PoultryKeepersPodcast/featured

Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast, where Rip, Mandelyn, and John are talking about poultry, from feathers to function. In this episode they finish their discussion about the things that furrow their brow in part 2 of Why?....What?.... So let's let's join them as they pick up where we stopped in our last episode.

John Gunterman:

I know how my birds did under my care and husbandry. I wonder how this genetic pool is going to do under somebody else's care and husbandry. So it's going to be very interesting to watch. This is all a great big science experiment for me to see if I even want to entertain the idea of shipping eggs anymore or stick to the hand to hand only model, which has worked in the past.

Rip Stalvey:

John, I think if I had to make a choice right now, I would go with. The hand to hand model just because there are so many factors that can go awry when you're shipping eggs There's a couple of postal service hubs that man if the package goes through there You could just count on it being delayed by two or three days and that's not good for eggs in transit But I digress here,

John Gunterman:

but I did promise an update several months ago about the egg foam That I was testing from Jennifer and yeah, her new improved foam is definitely better on the shipping. It's a denser foam and the eggs don't seem to slide around. Internally as much in the sleeves. It's got some friction factor that really helps and it helps. Mandelyn, you had the same problem before you put a slip of cardboard as well. They were slipping inside and the point of the top egg was denting the round on the egg below it and cracking them. So this extra dense foam is really helping with that. Yeah, love it. Great stuff. Highly recommend it. Not that we Jennifer is supposed to send me some

Mandelyn Royal:

at some point so I can try it out too.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, fantastic.

Mandelyn Royal:

It almost seems like there's no rhyme or reason to knowing when shipped eggs are going to perform and when they won't. And I know my hatch rate's here, but the very moment I put them in a box, and it doesn't matter if they're going 500 miles or 2, 000 miles, The closer spot might see a hatch rate at 85%, the farthest away spot might see 10, 20, 30, 40%. It's unpredictable and that blows my mind.

John Gunterman:

What I want to do next year is in the, when I get ready to do my spring set, is take 50 eggs and go to the post office in the next town over, so it's not the post office that I get sorted and delivered through, and ship them to my address so I know they're at least going to make it as far away as Burlington or Worcester and then come back to me and then set them alongside eggs pulled from the exact same batch and just see What really happens as far as losses just like I wonder what would change if I took

Mandelyn Royal:

them to downtown Cincinnati so that they didn't go through the two other stops locally to get to there. If I just drove 25 minutes to get them to the main hub, if that would change things. I don't know. There's a lot to consider.

John Gunterman:

There's so much going on. It's hard to unpack it all, so to speak, but it's really a tough haul.

Mandelyn Royal:

And I'm hesitant to ship chicks because If I hatched them, I could grow them here, but if I put them in a box and lose them all, everybody loses. I lose, the buyer loses, everybody loses, because that was a whole batch of chicks that could have grown out here just fine.

Yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

so I'd rather send the eggs because it's not so sad if they don't all make it.

John Gunterman:

No, it's just expensive scrambled eggs at the other end.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, which

John Gunterman:

has happened. We've all, you and I, shipping eggs back and forth. We made a lot of omelets.

Mandelyn Royal:

I didn't actually cook mine.

John Gunterman:

No, the mail lady goes, here, this one's in a plastic bag for you because it's leaking.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, yeah.

John Gunterman:

Thanks. Do you want to refuse it? Please don't. I don't want to take it back. It'll start stinking. No, take

Mandelyn Royal:

it, clean them off and see if anything will come of it.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. Seems one of the biggest drivers in success

Mandelyn Royal:

is how fresh they are.

John Gunterman:

It is. For me, anything I found a big shipment that I sent out Anything more than six days old from the day I shipped it was not viable at the other end.

Mandelyn Royal:

That makes sense. I aim for It was three days in transit,

John Gunterman:

so nine days total. That was a hard, nothing more than nine days hitting the incubator was viable. But that was a pretty big trip too. That was about as halfway around the planet as you can get for those eggs.

Rip Stalvey:

Here's a question for you. Why is there so much incorrect information about poultry online and why do so many people believe it? That's what blows my mind. Because my birds are

John Gunterman:

special and I want to believe it to be true?

Rip Stalvey:

And I can understand that's part of it. But there's so many people who are what a friend of mine used to call three year experts that get tickets, had them for two or three years, and they're suddenly an expert on poultry.

John Gunterman:

In the martial arts, we called them coochie booshie, mouth warriors.

Rip Stalvey:

Folks, I've had poultry 65 plus years, and I don't pretend to know it all. I'm learning something new every day. Just today, I had a question on a group. What makes the difference in males crows?

John Gunterman:

Yes, they're very distinct.

Rip Stalvey:

And I knew they were distinctive, and I've gotten to the point in life where I can identify pretty much the breed by the sound of the crow.

That's the difference.

Rip Stalvey:

What actually causes it? I didn't know, but I looked it up and I found out and we're going to talk about that Thursday night on Poultry Keepers 360.

John Gunterman:

Oh, we've been here online chit chatting and I can hear one of my Chanticleers crow at Mandy's farm, and I know that's a shant, not a bresse. Yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

he sounds different than all my other boys, for sure. I can hear Buddy from this window right here.

John Gunterman:

And her bresses? Yes. Don't sound anything like my, even the females sound very different. The females, the shants have a nice little cooey, sorta, almost like a cat purring. And the one hybrid

Mandelyn Royal:

boy, he sounds different than both of them, but more similar to his dad.

John Gunterman:

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

So I wonder if it comes down the male side.

John Gunterman:

Rip will

Rip Stalvey:

tell us. That's right. On Thursday night. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

All right.

Rip Stalvey:

It can be caused by several factors and it's usually a combination of several and not just one or two, but genetics is one. Breed is one. Size of the bird is one. Sometimes I play copycat.

John Gunterman:

Have you ever seen, or I should say heard, a hen crowing, or a rooster making the egg song? Yes. Yes. Yeah, okay, so that. I just thought it was really weird the first time. I actually got up to go get the egg, and I'm like, the rooster was standing there doing the egg song, and I'm going, dude, you don't do that.

Mandelyn Royal:

You have to do, they're a full support of egg laying.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, but they,

Mandelyn Royal:

Those boys may have worn it out. When I hear

John Gunterman:

it, I go get the egg because I want it still warm in my hand when I'm weighing it and putting it in the rack.

Mandelyn Royal:

I had an especially sassy Marans hen that would walk into the barn and crow and then walk back out.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. Just gets you stirred up, they do that.

Mandelyn Royal:

She hardly ever laid an egg and I just wonder if something was off in her hormones or what. Because I had ample males, there was no reason for her to step up. Because I think crowing hens are more common in flocks that don't have a male. And the lead hen will pick up that role, but I had ample males. There was no reason for her to step up like that.

John Gunterman:

Oh, poultry behavioral science is a wow. There's people that do PhDs in this. They get to sit and just observe. And yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

I do that for fun.

John Gunterman:

They do that. They get paid to do that.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's probably fun.

John Gunterman:

And get to tell us. So if you've never read any of their work, shout out to Temple Grandin. Rip has a copy of my book Ethical Livestock Handling. I cannot recommend that highly enough. Let's see. What else we got going on? As you can tell, folks, we're just trying to catch up here. It's fall or winter. I

Rip Stalvey:

just started to say it's not cold here.

John Gunterman:

Is it finally cold down there? All right. It

Mandelyn Royal:

was cold enough up here that I So whenever we have freezing temperatures for the daytime highs, I will put a heater in the hatch room and put garbage cans full of water. ahead of that freeze in that hatch room. Cause otherwise I have to lug water from the house and it's about 150 feet. So I'm on my third can of water and we thawed out enough to get it refilled yesterday and process some birds. Cause I don't like doing that when it's freezing. Cause my fingers go numb.

John Gunterman:

Here's a helpful tip. If you're a homeowner and you need hot water or warm water out to your animals. Put a insulated hose especially on the outlet of your hot water tank where you would normally drain it once or twice a year and use that to pump the water out to your birds and you're going to drain and flush all the sediment from the bottom of your tank a lot more effectively and you're not actually pushing all that hot water through the whole house plumbing system and out your outdoor spigot and most people's spigots aren't plumbed for hot water. That's another thing you may want to consider in the winter is plumbing your spigot. to a hot water instead of a cold water tap.

Mandelyn Royal:

I'll bring that up to my husband, but I'm pretty sure he's just gonna say just remember to fill your cans.

John Gunterman:

But cleaning, if you have a tank style hot water heater, cleaning the sediment out is one of the best things you can do to prolong its life and flush it out regularly. Oh you're

Mandelyn Royal:

supposed to do that yearly too?

John Gunterman:

Twice a year.

Mandelyn Royal:

Twice a year?

John Gunterman:

Twice a year. When you change your smoke detector batteries you should flush your hot water tank.

Rip Stalvey:

Did not know that, thanks for sharing, John.

Mandelyn Royal:

I thought it was once a year, and if you skip it, chances are when it goes bad, it needs one of those new rods down the middle of it, not a whole new tank, just that rod.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, you short out the elements. But if there's no sediment buildup, you're not going to short out your elements and your tank will last longer. We have an on demand, so it's not an issue anymore because it's constantly flushing itself. But hot water straight out to your birds. Things to think of when you're installing your infrastructure. If you're going to put in a freeze proof hydrant or an underground water line, then maybe you want it plumbed for hot in the winter.

Rip Stalvey:

That's true. I can see some advantages to that. Whether you could do either or. Just by opening and closing a couple of vowels. Sure. I'm looking for ways to

John Gunterman:

streamline and make my life easier on the farm. We're not getting any younger and things are becoming more challenging.

Mandelyn Royal:

When Rip had the question about why there's so much bad information floating around online, my thoughts on that is because they already have trust in the source and through that trust, they then parrot that information themselves that they heard. And it spreads through all the homestead style influencers. If they say it, it's true. Now there's even more people saying it. And a lot of myths can float around that way and make the rounds.

Rip Stalvey:

And Mandely, Mandy, I honestly think that's what is the biggest problem. Perpetuator of that.

Mandelyn Royal:

I always try to validate everything I hear. Even if I trust the source, I don't have blind trust anymore. That got ruined a long time ago.

John Gunterman:

That was rule number one in Navy Intel school, trust, but

Rip Stalvey:

verify.

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

And I don't know if you guys have noticed it, but in my recent postings, when I write an article down at the very bottom, the last thing on there is I include. Three to five, six, maybe six references where they can go back

and

Rip Stalvey:

verify what I've been talking about. Hopefully that will make a difference for some folks. I don't know. Sometimes I'll even

John Gunterman:

try to include a reference that refutes what I just said, too. I'll be like, oh, and FYI, here's a couple of references that completely refute everything I just said as well. You figure it out. Because here's another big takeaway that I came out of academia with. All research is biased in some way. So look for the bias, be aware that it exists, and take the data for what it's worth. But somebody had to pay for that laboratory or intern or that research to exist. So it's going to be slanted in one direction because of that investment in it inherently. Usually there's plenty of valid information there though, but just be careful.

Mandelyn Royal:

And you know how the game telephone works. One way to help prevent your waters from freezing is to put salt into a bottle of water and then put that into your troughs or pans. And it helps reduce how quickly it'll freeze. But that got translated somewhere, and people are going around saying, Just put salt in their water! No, you don't put salt directly in the drinking water. No, you put the

Rip Stalvey:

salt in a bottle. What I saw recently was beet juice. Add beet juice to the water.

John Gunterman:

Sure. If you want to give a mold, that beet juice is going to mold. Sorry.

Mandelyn Royal:

It's going to grow stuff as soon as it gets warm enough. And God only knows what it'll do to their poop color.

John Gunterman:

Oh my goodness. Oh, talk about a triggering episode. Yeah. These things just don't get old. Do it.

Rip Stalvey:

Man.

John Gunterman:

But it's sugar water. It's nothing more than sugar.

Rip Stalvey:

It's so sad that we have to take everything anymore off the internet that we read or hear or see with a grain of salt. Sometimes we have to use a whole box of salt, but it's just a fact of life. If you don't know, if you don't really know your source, don't trust it.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, and probably one of the worst things I saw going around recently was using crock pots on warm for your heated water drinker. And the next thing you know, you see the burn victims or the bird that jumped its whole body into the crock pot of water and then froze because when it got out, now its feathers are all wet. Just use the species appropriate. Water fixtures, don't use kitchen appliances.

John Gunterman:

I know I've told you guys before that the Premier One insulated heated poultry drinkers are fantastic. They work down to negative 20 Fahrenheit, no problem. You just gotta train your birds to use a nipple drinker.

Mandelyn Royal:

See, I just go out there twice a day and swap frozen water for not frozen.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, but I can't always get out there every day with fresh, warm water. So if it's raging a blizzard out there, which it does happen a few times here in Vermont I do rely on just plugging in that heated water out in the pen, not in the coop. I don't want to be, no warm water in the coop. And that's a recipe for disaster. You're creating humidity right where you want it the least.

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

There is one other option. You could move to Florida. humid all the

time

Rip Stalvey:

because in all the time I've been living here in Florida, I have only had my automatic water freeze up twice.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, like your mosquitoes?

Rip Stalvey:

No, there is that. It's just two people. There's also that,

Mandelyn Royal:

but all the best news stories come from Florida. Where

Rip Stalvey:

else you gonna go and find out that we have problems with falling iguanas down to South Florida when the temperature hits warm,

John Gunterman:

only when it's cold and spiders

Mandelyn Royal:

alligators.

Rip Stalvey:

Nah, alligators don't bother me.

Mandelyn Royal:

I like to go swimming. A lot. In nature. We don't have alligators up here.

Rip Stalvey:

That works. Just don't float around looking like a log. They won't bother you. Or looking like another alligator.

Okay.

John Gunterman:

I would trust you considering your background. That is being good advice.

Rip Stalvey:

I don't have any. What other

John Gunterman:

triggering statements are out there that, especially this time of year? Ba Oh! Big debate. Give your birds corn to help them stay warm. Yes, but, don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. Don't

Mandelyn Royal:

overdo it. You want to get them too fat so that right when spring pops off, they're all too obese to lay an egg.

Rip Stalvey:

If they got too fat over winter,

Mandelyn Royal:

then you'll have to force a molt right during prime time.

John Gunterman:

Give them a little bit,

Mandelyn Royal:

but not

John Gunterman:

much. Jeff's winter formula, we were talking about that on the Frigid Mix. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Just a, just an extra handful before they go to roost at night. Don't forget the fiber, if you're going

Rip Stalvey:

to up the fat. Somebody also said that or asked a question, what could they use in place of corn? Because they have some corn allergies in their family. And Jeff's response was Barley is

John Gunterman:

popular up here because a lot of reasons, but we have a large, originally it was a Scottish influence. settled in this area. I

Rip Stalvey:

don't.

John Gunterman:

A lot of barley farming.

Rip Stalvey:

Ever seen barley down here in the south. Of course, we don't grow much in the weggrains down here anyway.

John Gunterman:

You guys grow some dandy sorghum and sorghum's, it's basically a corn.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, sorghum, milo, pretty much the same thing. Use it a lot in wild bird feeding. The

John Gunterman:

other nice ingredient, hemp seed. It's really great. It's got a lot of really great natural oils and fiber, but the oils are the really good part. And if you've noticed your wild bird food blocks are usually very high in hemp seed for that reason. A lot of good energy for the birds.

Mandelyn Royal:

What do you guys think of using oregano oil?

Rip Stalvey:

I've done it a time or two. If I've had a specific need for it I've used it. I think it does a pretty good job. I know why. I

Mandelyn Royal:

used it quite a bit and it helps a lot with their immune systems. And I had one develop an ear infection and it cleared it up.

John Gunterman:

I did get a little bottle of it. I was building a, what I call a holistic husbandry. First aid kit for my flock, so it has things like oregano oil, I make my own garlic tincture switchel, just the things that you always have on hand, but I've never had to use it the highest I've had to go is the garlic tincture, look up that formula, that's great stuff,

Mandelyn Royal:

garlic, honey, oregano, I've seen blends that included some thyme oil and cinnamon, Stuff like that so that it looks like there's growing research that shows some of the natural methods being as effective.

Rip Stalvey:

Why don't we just wrap it here and we'll be back with another great episode of poultry keepers podcast. Don't miss it, folks.

Alex:

This concludes another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. Thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoyed this show. Remember we'll be back next Tuesday talkig poultry from Feathers To Function!

People on this episode

Head Shot

John Gunterman

Co-host
Head Shot

Mandelyn Royal

Co-host
Head Shot

Rip Stalvey

Co-host