Poultry Keepers Podcast

Improving Production in Barred Rocks-Part 1

• Jeff Mattocks, Carey Blackmon, Jason Yuke • Season 3 • Episode 123

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In this episode of Poultry Keepers 360, we kick off Part 1 of an in-depth conversation with poultry breeder Jason, who shares his hands-on experience and strategies for restoring production qualities in the Barred Plymouth Rock. From his early setbacks with show birds to discovering the secrets of line breeding, nutrition, and evaluating skeletal structure, Jason walks us through his journey of breeding for dual-purpose excellence.

Discover how historical context, purposeful selection, and proper feeding programs (including Project MAD) are helping him reestablish pre-war standards of productivity, including egg laying, fleshing, and bird temperament. Learn what traits Jason prioritizes, how he tracks progress, and why he's focused on adapting his flock to his unique climate in Ontario.

This is a must-listen for poultry keepers working with heritage or dual-purpose breeds—and especially for those looking to improve the utility value of their birds without sacrificing long-term sustainability.

Subscribe to follow Part 2 and other episodes focused on poultry breeding, nutrition, and management.

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Alex:

Today's episode features audio from the recent Poultry Keepers 360 Livestream on Improving Production In Barred Rocks with Jason Yuke in Canada. Jason shares his experiences with Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon. Good afternoon or good evening, everyone. I am here with Jeff and Jason. Rip is not gonna be with us tonight. He has better things that he needs to attend to. I did post a little earlier today about Rip and how things are and how to get in touch with him if you need him, the best way that he prefers. So yeah, our thoughts and our prayers are with Rip. Jason, how are you? Good. How about you guys? I'm good. I'm good. Good. Let's see, so tonight what we're gonna talk about is the production or restoring the production of the Bard Plymouth Rock. Jason has done a lot of work with that bird, and so tonight he's gonna tell us a little bit about that. Jason, can you take us back to how you first became involved with poultry? And what drew you into that?

Jason Yuke:

Yeah, it's it's a long story, but we'll fit it in here. No problem. I grew up on, on two farms, both grandparents' side, and there was always birds around. We were primarily beef farmers and the chickens were just around. I really didn't pay any attention to it at all. And 10 years ago we bought a little homestead. My wife and I. And, the dream was, let's get some chickens. So we got a few chickens, just backyard flock. Started thinking about, okay let's get some meat birds. And we got some meat birds, of course. We went with the Cornish Cross and started doing a little bit of research and digging around on the on the internet and thought, you know what? Maybe we can do this and get some, get a dual purpose bird, right? So started looking at the dual purpose birds. First thing I do is go to the hatchery about 10 about nine, 10 years ago. Thought, what a perfect bird. Go to the hatchery, get the Bard, Plymouth Rock, start looking at them. Get a little bit more interested than start looking on the internet and go. You know what, these things don't look like anything like a Bart Plymouth Rock. And so I went through the hatchery blues and found out that, that's probably not the best place to start to get into the standard breeds. Then I decided, okay, I'm going into this. I am, I'm gonna do this. I love this bird. I go to a couple of shows around here. I find the best birds I could find. I knew nothing about these birds. Trust me. Nothing about these birds. Go and talk to the first, second place guys. Pick the birds up. Tell'em what I'm gonna do. Did I ever get a lesson in hybrid vigor? Vigor? I bought some show birds. The first year, the best thing that ever happened to me is a mink killed them. I. You hate to do that to these good birds. But I realize that, some of these guys take it to the extreme, so much in the ring that they breed and breed, and then they cross right before right before a show. And get a bird that, that I know now is referred to as hybrid. Hybrid vigor. Beautiful bird. If you knew what you were looking at the foundation of that bird seemed okay. But it really wasn't what I was looking for. So after the mink did the duty for me I started talking and there was a local farmer around here, and his granddaddy raised pigeons, and he raised barred rocks. So he explained to me what it would take, what I needed to do. A little bit about line breeding, a little bit about spiral breeding, and I ended up getting some lines off of him. So that was that was the foundation Kerry and then I got a little bit more involved and, watching 360 looking at some of the older Jeff was on a lot of the older oh with Jim Akins. What was it? Help me out there, Jeff. Was it sustainable Poultry Network. Network. Yeah. And yeah, and I found this and I thought, okay. Started reading a little bit more started doing a little bit more of my own research got to know, Rip a little bit, got to watch you guys and thought, okay there's a little bit of a difference here between. A show bird and a and a production bird. So really and truly, that's what drove me. And I started talking to Rip and Rip those. I think you're doing, I think you're doing a really good thing here. And so we started talking about the 1940 birds in that style of bird, I. And I started breeding and paying attention to the production qualities. And that's what I've been trying to do. It's, it, there's been some challenges, of course. But that's the direction I was heading and wanna go still.

Carey Blackmon:

So what about the barbed Plymouth Rock specifically made you say, that's the breed I wanna work

Jason Yuke:

with it. The neat thing about the bar Plymouth Rock, a lot of people refer it to as the first chicken in America. That's not the truth. But it was the first standard it was the first standard bird in America and I think they were showing Rip. Might Rip might shoot me for saying this,'cause I might get the wrong dates, but I know I'm close. I think they started showing them in 1949 in Boston up around Plymouth Rock. And then they developed it even further and. Was it 1873? I think it was inducted into the first into the first volume of the standard of perfection. And when I seen that exact bird, I thought, okay, back then they didn't have anything fancy, they were just probably a bunch of showmen and a bunch of farmers. And that's really what enticed me into that bird is just the history. Just the history of it, where it came from. I think it was developed it was developed by some English birds, I think. Some cos some Braus. And Dominique? I believe so.

Carey Blackmon:

Yep. Outside of the birds, what does the day look like for you on the farm?

Jason Yuke:

It's an early one. It we have we, we have. We have some livestock. We've got some pigs. Getting into quail, I've got two different breeds of birds. It's usually up close to daylight. Let the birds out. I myself, there's many different ways of doing it. I free range everything except for quail. Except for the pigs. You don't want our free range pigs. But but yeah, I free range the birds, so I get out, fill the feeders up, get the water fresh. I usually stand for 15 minutes and watch them. And yeah, that's the start of the day. And it really is quite easy. I got a couple of good babysitters through the day. I just let them out. My dogs are around and really and truly just keep the water cold. Keep it in the shade and birds. Perfect. They got perfect homing devices. They're usually all there when I go back and shut the

Carey Blackmon:

door at night. Yeah. One thing I've noticed about chickens, just about any other animal run off, but for a chicken to leave, it's gotta be bad. Yeah. If there's food and water, they're not going anywhere. No. When you started your journey to restore the production traits in the, in your line of the Plymouth Rocks, what all was involved in that? Tell us like, what did, why did you have, why and the what behind all of that? Yeah. What was that like?

Jason Yuke:

I guess I started to realize when I had the exhibition birds, that they weren't fitting the bill on, on production. When I had the exhibition quality birds and they were some pretty birds you'd get two or three eggs a day and when you felt the bird, it just didn't flesh, it just didn't feel flesh fleshed out properly. And certainly when we tried, I don't know why they call hatchery birds, dual purpose birds'cause there's nothing to them. You can't go that route for your meat supply. You look like I don't even know what it would look like, and I don't know if there'd be more meat on a quail, I think sometimes, but Hey, those are getting

Carey Blackmon:

jumbo these

Jason Yuke:

days. Yeah, exactly. So what we, what I wanted to do is was get a bird that could be very calm, be around got a son, be around my son. Not an aggressive rooster at all. Had some aggressive, got rid of that. The get the egg production, it's a little different in my area with egg production just because of the lighting and then it gets really cold and I don't supplement the lighting, but I want, I wanted to get those five eggs a day a week. I wanted to be up in the 200, the 260 range bracket. And what I really wanted is I wanted that seven to eight pound hen. And I wanted that 10 pound rooster. And that's where the light switch went off. And then I started reading I started reading a few books. And again, watching everything I could get my hands on about them. I started handling my birds more and I could actually feel the development differences different d different, the different. The different feel on the bird. You could feel the, how the keel should be and how the fleshing should be. And that's where I started. And and then I had some conversations with Rip. We talked about it years ago, and he pointed me in the right direction as to what he thought. The perfect era of the bird was, and that was in the 1920 to 1940 pre-war. And he said back then they were in every backyard there. The uniformity of them was fantastic. They all looked alike. The line was solid. And that's the, it's the corner I took. And so I've been comparing my birds, not to today's birds, but but to the 19, 20 photos and those standards.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah, I agree.'cause there's a lot of things that I mean like cars and everything else, I just don't build'em like they used to.

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

People have focused on other stuff and when I first started getting into birds again, I took a few year hiatus. And when I met Rip first, and up until then I never really thought of why to ha, why do I need to handle my bird as a chicken? Feels like chicken. But r really taught me a lot about what to feel for, why to feel for it, the importance behind it, things to look for, when you're looking for that bird. And Jeff, he. He taught me to look at the poop. I never looked at chicken poop before the last few years, but now I can look at it, man, that, that bird's eating good or that bird's got something going on. What traits do you specifically select four in your line? Egg numbers laying persistency. The shell quality? Yeah. What kind of traits do you

Jason Yuke:

specifically breed for? So I give a little up on the aesthetics to get on the fleshing. I want a really heavy, fleshed bird. I want my focus on the hens. So I go do this twofold. And what I focus on in the hands is, are they a good layer? Are they a good free ranger? Are they calm? Can I hold them? I pretend to look at that bird and feel that bird like it was de feathered. The last thing I look at are the feathers. I think Rip taught me a few years ago, look at the head, how important the head was. A good wide head will set the whole skeletal structure. And and I wanna re reverse a little bit to get to these, get to the birds that we're producing now, I don't think I would've ever got there if it wasn't Project mad. Because of the nutrition. Like I, I was just a bag of feed was a bag of feed. Go to Tractor Supply or PV Mart. You buy the, you don't really realize the influence on on feed what it can do. And I learned that firsthand. I was fooling with protein and I called Jeff. We actually talked, messaged for one evening and he gave me some time. And I found out what, real, real quick, what happens when you put a little bit too much freshy in the Kool-Aid, right? It had some pretty big eggs popping out and and within about a week Jeff helped me correct that I got a little carried away with the with the soybeans, let's say. But but that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the production qualities of a hen five eggs a week. I want the seven, seven to eight pounds somewhere in the middle. Seems to be good. Around seven and a half. Yeah, a little bit more particular on the width in the rooster. What I give up in the hen is I can make up on the rooster. And if you want, Carrie, you, if you wanna play those two videos of the hen in the in the rooster, I say a few things in there that I'm talking about now. All right. Good evening, poultry keepers 360. I thought I would do a little demonstration on what I look for when I'm handling a bird and look for what I want in a bird in my lines going forward. This is one of my breeding hens. Her feathering I'm not really that concerned about. What I'm looking for are the production qualities and what would make a production quality for meat and eggs. So when I first grab a bird, I find laying them right on the keel. It seems to be the best for handling. I usually start at the back and I look for a wide back and this bird is wide. You can see how wide she is all the way down through here. I usually take my hands and go around and find the pin bones. And the bottom of the keel the bottom of the keel should end behind the front, behind the legs. I then go up and feel the top of the keel, and I think Rip has done is, has mentioned this before, if you lay the bird down, you can feel how straight she is. I then examine the legs. I look for, how much meat's on them, then go around to the breast and I can feel that this one's got a fairly heavy breast. She would be a good candidate, which she was a good candidate for breeding. I have a look at the head and you can see down the head if you can see, right? If you could see eyes you know that bird doesn't have the skeletal structure right off the bat. I look for width. I can put my full fist between her legs without touching. And then I look for length. And this bird is a very long bird. You can see where my fingers are. That's 10, 11, 12 to the back. Her flat, her flatness is good. And the other thing that really is important is our calmness. I do an evaluation on the calmness as well. Are they gonna be freak out? Are they going to be fine around the farm, the barnyard around equipment, around my dogs? So that's just a little demonstration of what I look for. And hope you enjoyed the viewing and we'll see you back online so I could add a little bit more of a comment on there as well. And I didn't really get into it, but I find that leg positioning is very important on these birds. If you don't get, if you don't get the exact location of where those legs should be it just messes everything up from a skeletal standpoint.

And,

Jason Yuke:

and another thing when you're interpreting the standards just an example a part a Bard, Plymouth Rock says, and it's funny, it says, is to be long. But not too long. So if you get into those standards and go, what is not too long? The way how do you define that? Yeah. The way I did it is it, is that bird too long for its skeletal structure and does it look funny? So that makes sense that's what I look for. I don't know if there's a written exp explanation, when you look at birds and some of them are just too long and some of them are too short. Or their legs are up underneath their necks and they're all crunched up. So I think it's, if I could summarize it, it's a balance, yeah. Is that bird well balanced? So

Carey Blackmon:

that make, that makes perfect sense because, you, we, before we aired, you were talking about how your first 15 minutes or so of the day, you spend out there watching them, and during that time you can just scan your birds and identify those. And I'm guessing those are the ones you'll want to put over separate so you can Yeah. Grow them out for the crockpot. Yep. Yes, sir. Makes good sense. And so what kind of systems are you using to track the progress?

Jason Yuke:

I don't breed a lot of birds, so it's really easy for me. And I didn't go wig bands. I should one day. I know, I watched you guys use them. I know. They're really good. I just use, I use I use lake bands I've got three breeding cages. That's all I've got. And I'm getting to the point where I'm gonna be pedigree breeding, to get to this point. I had five, I spent five, I guess this, we're getting to the F six where my chicks are. I use line breeding in breeding, whatever you want, call it. And basically I used the hens so I would have all the hens in the one cage, and they were all related. And then I would pick my best rooster and put them in and put them in with those hens. And I did that for three or four years. The last year I did more of a pedigree where I took a rooster a little bit farther away and put it with, the same family line but but a hen. So I got fewer eggs. I got a smaller hatch. I. But so far from what I see, I'm, I, it looks like I'm gonna get, I know there's a 10% rule. I'd be thrilled if I was up at 15 or 20 for keepers. But we'll see. We, I won't know. I won't know for a while.

Carey Blackmon:

For me, like I think that 10% rule is more applicable in the earlier stages when in doing your breeding program, I like with you being five, six years into it. I personally think that you're, you should start seeing higher percentages because as you do that line breeding and you tighten up the gap and you cull everything that doesn't meet what you're looking for. You should, you

Jason Yuke:

should

Carey Blackmon:

see that.

Jason Yuke:

I, I, yeah. And I'm starting to see some uniformity. I'm having a little bit. The only differences I'm seeing now, Carrie, are are in the feathering really, I. But but I'm getting, the structure's the same. The type is the same. The rise in the back is the same. And now it's feathering. I do have one fatal flaw though that I will share that that I think is very common with these dual purpose breeds. And it's actually I can't hit the timeframes yet. So in, in. For the Bard Plymouth Rock. It states quite clearly, in, in breeding for production, that they want that bird to wait in 26 to 28 months. They've even seen them as early as 2023, or sorry, weeks. Sorry, weeks. They've seen them lay as early as 23 weeks. I'm nowhere near that. I've had some discussions with people. I think it's, I think it's my environment. We have some late hatches here. And I generally take them through the winter. But I'm not hitting peak weights. I wanna say eight, nine months is where I'm at, so I gotta work a little bit on that one

Carey Blackmon:

a lot. I think the more you watch Jeff and the more you learn a thing or two about nutrition and how to balance out the feed, you'll, when I first started, I thought the man was crazy and he finally talked me into trying it, and I tried it. Yeah. And once I started seeing that the, when I implied what he said, I got the results that he said, and for me that, that made my line of American breasts that I have even better than what they were when I got'em.'cause they were really, they were good when I got'em, but now I'm hitting that. I can process a bird and have a five pound carcass in 14, 15 weeks max, whereas before it wasn't quite that fe that fast. But I think the more you dive down the rabbit hole of poultry nutrition, the closer you'll get to those days.

Jeff Mattocks:

Jason, hold on a second, because you want peak weight? At 23 weeks?

Jason Yuke:

No. It's what, 20 basically in the standard of perfection. It's saying somewhere between 28 and 32 weeks is where they're hitting people Wait for the bars, they're a big

Jeff Mattocks:

bird,

Jason Yuke:

so that, that's a 10 pound.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay. For your bird I would want to be 75 or 80% of mature weight by 24 weeks old. Okay. But. That last 20% is such a slow addition. I don't, you're looking at close to a year to really see 100% okay. And I get what the standard's saying, but I don't think it's realistic. I don't know of a breed that actually hits its full mature weight. Okay, now you can hit cock roll weight. At 24 weeks and probably eight, eight and a half pounds, but not the 10 pounds. Yeah. That last two pounds is gonna it takes a while to get that last 20%. If you're there, I, it's gonna be hard to get them 10 pounds at 24 or 20 or 30 weeks. That's a lot. Yeah. We can do it, but what are we, I'm worried, okay. Structurally, like skeletal wise, if I, if I give you those nutritional things to make that happen, are the legs gonna be strong enough? Is the framework gonna be strong enough? I, I'm happy to dive into it, with you and try and get you there, but it's, yeah. I think that's a lot for a large dual purpose breed to say, I don't know how they were doing that in the standard to say 28 to 32 weeks, so

Jason Yuke:

I don't know. That's a lot. I had, okay. I had that conversation with Rip as well, and and he's having the same problems with his reds and they're about the same, so we're right on par with each other's weights. Okay. And and eggs. It's really hard for me to say about my egg production and when and the reason being is I don't supplement with light. I have them all in the, we we start losing light here real quick in October, and we're down to seven and a half hours, 6, 7, 8, 7 hours of light, seven and a half hours of light through the winter. And I think it's good for the bird to leave and be, and and not push him. So that's what I do. So I'm not really seeing eggs until our April when we roll it back around April and and they start popping the odd one out and then way they go.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're in a tough climate to do it, but in all honesty, if you can consider doing like a Christmas hatch or a late November hatch You would change, a lot of both the growth characteristics and the egg characteristic, but man, I wouldn't want to brood in your country. I wouldn't want to have a brooder full of chicks in your country in December, January. It's hard on the hydro bill.

Jason Yuke:

It's hard on the hydro bill. Especially when you get down into the minus forties, you're, I've seen myself with four heat lamps, and styrofoam. On the bottom, and I just don't want to go there. It's outside the danger. There's no danger, but when you start putting that much heat to something, so

Carey Blackmon:

yeah, you could start a fire pretty quick.

Jeff Mattocks:

That would not be, you're breeding your environment, I think you almost have to write the standard for Central Ontario. Okay. It's not. Yeah. You're not down, you're not down here in the states where the breed was developed. Okay. And it, it's a completely different climate,

Jason Yuke:

And the interesting thing about that, Jeff, is I've noticed a slight, I noticed the Waddles and I've noticed the comb getting a bit smaller.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yep.

Jason Yuke:

Up here as well.

Jeff Mattocks:

They're adapting.

Jason Yuke:

Yeah,

Jeff Mattocks:

so pretty soon you're gonna have the Ontario Bard Rock. Not the Plymouth Bard Rock. Yeah. And that's okay. That's okay. And then once you get it where you want it to be for your climate, you can market it that way. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just, no, because, I

Carey Blackmon:

mean, everything's different up there.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay. It doesn't matter where you go, right? Like right now I'm sitting in the Philippines, right? And the same chickens that they have here, which are the American games, are a full pound and a half heavier in the US than they are here in the Philippines. But here it's 85 to a hundred degrees with 85% humidity every day of the year, right? Not, no seasons really. So the bird climatize, the bird. Everybody's bird's going to adapt to their environment, and that's what you're seeing happening. And it's not a bad thing. So I wouldn't worry about it, 10 years from now, I, just start selling your own breed, right? You got the Ontario Plymouth Rock or Ontario barred Rock,

Alex:

This concludes another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. Please join us next Tuesday for the conclusion of Improving production in Barred Rocks with Jason Yuke. Thanks for listening and keep enjoying your birds.

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