Carey Goes to APPPA 2024

Join us in this exciting episode as we dive into the highlights of the recently concluded American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) 2024 Conference, where our very own Carey was in the midst of all the action in the Lone Star State!

Carey's journey to Texas was nothing short of remarkable, as he immersed himself in a sea of poultry enthusiasts, experts, and industry leaders. From engaging workshops to thought-provoking panel discussions, Carey shares the latest trends, innovations, and invaluable insights gathered at the forefront of the pastured poultry movement.

Tune in to discover the key takeaways from Carey's Texas adventure, including the groundbreaking ideas, networking experiences, and the palpable excitement that filled the air at APPPA 2024. Whether you're a seasoned pastured poultry professional or just starting out, the next couple of episodes promises to provide a glimpse into the future of sustainable poultry farming.

Don't miss out on this behind-the-scenes look at Carey's journey to the APPPA 2024 Conference in Texas—subscribe now and join us as we explore the fascinating world of pastured poultry production!

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Transcript

Carey: 0:00

So tell me where you were last weekend. So last week I took off around Wednesday and drove to Allen, Texas to the APPPA conference. It's the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. And it was the first time I've ever been to Texas. It was the first time I'd ever been to a conference like that. And those people that were there were some of the most genuine, honest, and helpful people I've ever met in my life. My brain was literally overloaded Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So you got to talk chicken for three whole days? Three days! Are you sick? And I'm not sick of it, no. Literally, we talked chicken for three days. I learned a lot of random facts that One of them that I learned is A broiler chicken consumes 11 pounds of feed in its life. That's, why do you need to know that? But, if you're raising a couple thousand or more a year of them, you need to know that. Is that six and a half weeks or something? That is if you go the full eight weeks. I also got to meet with some people that are poultry nutritionists. And there was, there was seminars about feed. There was seminars about marketing, Facebook, building your story. You're a, how to write your about me. There, there was seminars about all kinds of stuff. And one of the things that really caught my attention. Was using feed nutrition to trim that eight weeks to seven weeks. And instead of having an average size of four pounds, your average size is a little over five pounds. So you gain a pound of meat and you cut off a week. And I'm like, it's just a week. It's a few days, but you do that five times a year and you just bought back five weeks of your life. To do something else. And when you're not feeding a thousand chickens for a week, that's a lot more into your profit margin. So I learned a lot about the why, the how, the law. A lot of people think, Oh, if you process chickens on your farm and sell them, you'll go to jail. You won't. There's actually some state or is that across the country? So that is actually us department of agriculture guidelines. I can process a thousand chickens with no questions. It doesn't matter who I'm selling them to. I can process up to 20, 000 chickens. In a year, as long as I am selling them direct to the consumer from my farm and they know that it's coming from my farm, I can sell 20, 000 birds. That blew my mind. Yeah. We always hear about all these regulations from the states and stuff that you can only do so many. So yeah. So that's not state specific. That's country. That is correct. The U S department of agriculture, there was actually an attorney there that was doing that particular talk on the on farm poultry producing exemption. It is. It's called the Own Farm Poultry Meat Processing with the USDA Exemption. Also referred to as the Poultry Producers Inspection Act. And it's I mean it's pretty, pretty specific in some of the guidelines that you gotta follow. You've gotta label the meat a particular way. You gotta say where it came from. A contact for that farm. You gotta say that it's not inspected. And it's smart on that sticker to also include proper handling and cooking. Hey, if you're going to handle raw chicken, you need to wash your hands. And you need to cook it to at least 165 degrees, which, that's pretty simple enough. I actually looked on Amazon and they have stickers that are pre printed by them, by the roll and by them suckers and slap it on the back. Is that the only thing you have to do, or you have to file for permits or anything? So talking about permits, this is actually hilarious to me. So you have a freeze dryer, right? All right, so let's say you take that freeze dryer and you fill it full of skittles and you freeze dry skittles, which is pretty getting pretty more and more common and they actually, they are pretty good. I had some of them. I tried it out. Runts. Those are pretty good. Freeze dry too. You have to have more paperwork. More permits are required to freeze dry skittles. store bought candy and sell it than you do to process a chicken and sell it. You know what? I'm glad. We shouldn't be eating Skittles anyway. I understand that Skittles are made of a whole lot of really weird things that I can't begin to pronounce. They're not good for you by no means, but it just blew my mind that I can process up to 20 birds, 20, 000 birds on my farm. Not just birds, but chickens in particular, because there's a lot of birds that are not regulated at all. Like what? Quail, for example. Now there may be some state specific things for quail. But I know in Alabama, and I'm told in a lot of states, they are not listed in a lot of different categories. They're just a bird. There's a whole lot less regulations for turkeys as well. Now back to quail, we're just talking about Coturnix here. We're not talking about bobwhites, right? Most definitely. Bobwhites, they're a whole different ballgame. And that varies from state to state. And in some states, I'm almost positive that it varies by county jurisdiction. They're really weird about their bobwhite. I have a, there's a guy that lives not far from me and every so often he'll contact me and say, Hey, have you started growing bobwhite yet? I'd like to get some for the hunting club. No. I looked into it there. They take a long time to grow a lot more time to mature and there are a lot more paperwork involved, so no, not doing it. What about turkeys? There's very little regulation that actually mentions turkeys. I have not read the entire Poultry Producers Inspection Act. But what I did see when it gives the 1, 000 bird exemption or 1, 000 exemption and the 20, 000 exemption, It did not mention turkeys, which makes me wonder if they're like a whole different ball game. I am interested in processing turkeys, but that's down the road for me, my, my initial interest and the whole reason I went was twofold. Number one, I wanted, I knew this was going to be good content for a podcast. Because there's a lot of people like me that want to know the answers to a lot of these. And I have a huge interest in self sustainable food, period. And so I wanted to go learn about chicken because my son has a cattle farm and he raises quite a bit of cattle and processes quite a bit of cattle. So wasn't really worried about that a whole lot. I needed to figure out chickens. So that was my main reasoning for doing this research. Will, did you get the golden information on how to cross something to get a Cornish cross? I asked that question a couple different times. One person looked at me. And he started into this very in depth about why you don't want to mess with that. He said there's some things in this world that are better left to the professionals. And depending on which spinoff of a Cornish Cross you have, it's anywhere from 16 to 18 different varieties. That makes that Cornish cross because to me the ultimate thing would be to Have a set of layers that lay the eggs that went in my incubator that hatched out made the chickens that I processed and I mean there was seminars on heritage poultry or standard bread poultry As a means and that's really well, but that I mean they're talking 12 13 weeks minimum For that bird, most commonly it's around 16 weeks and it's I want chicken in two months, I want chicken in four months. And you can only do this about four to five times a year. Cause they say that unless you have a really large scale operation with overhead hanging heaters and that type stuff to have in your broiler houses, it's really not. advisable to do December, January. Cause like right now we're talking about this at the end of January. And we had snow in Alabama for the first time in years. And there's people that I know in Florida that had freezing temperatures, which, so that makes sense why they say don't, unless you have. The things that you need don't do it in December and January. It was, it's a lot. So is the Cornish cross, is it a hybrid? Is it a GMO? Is it a Frankenbird? Like people talk about it. Did you find out what makes a Cornish cross? Okay. So some people call it. I think more accurately the Frankenbird, cause that's, that sounds better, but no, I could not get. Anybody to tell me how to do it. Now, I don't know if that's because they're suspicious and they know that I have an entrepreneurial spirit and I may go, get me these sets of chickens and may never buy a brawler from anybody again, I don't know. But apparently that is. Out of all the things that I talked to people about, all the things that I learned and the things that people were willing to share, how to hatch a Cornish Cross is possibly the only secret in the poultry world. At the end of the day, it's just a cross between a Cornish and a White Rock, right? What now? It's just a cross between a Cornish and a White Rock. But I would think they've been specially bred for their meat production. For the most part, I believe it is. They're specially bred for their Frankenstein like abilities to grow extremely fast. Yeah, I think that's the basics from what I've learned in doing my research online. I went to Google University and Tried to get a degree in that, but there's not even a whole lot of information on Google about how to make that, that's something that comes from the hatcheries that somebody's granddaddy has is still there because he might be the only person alive that knows how to do it. And that's what's keeping the hatchery afloat. And just waiting to share that secret with the next person. Alright, what else did you learn? I learned about coops, free ranging, egg layers. There's a lady that gave a talk who's in California. And she has pastured egg layers. I think she said she had 2, 000 of them. And she has a egg vending machine. And when she said that, I was paying attention. I was there in the room, but when she said vending machine, I set my pen down and I sat back and I was like, I gotta see this. I gotta watch this. I'll make notes in a minute. She has a vending machine. The vending machine has two batteries. One of the batteries controls the brain of it, which is the computer that makes the doors open and close. And the computer that runs the debit card reader, because she said that she is a card only. Vending machine person, the vending machine is on her farm. It's set up under a canopy. She said that's a whole lot better for the machine than leave it out in the open. Although you can leave it out in the open, but she has it set up under a canopy. People come up, she said that she runs out. It sells out every day of the week. Wow, that's pretty nifty. I think it has three different sections, and in two of the sections she puts one dozen cartons. In the third section, she has half a dozen cartons. And in California, you have to wash and weigh the eggs. You have to sell them by size. And as she called it, her good eggs go into the vending machine. And she has a 5 refrigerator beside it. And it's essentially a cooler that whether it's different colored eggs that aren't a, they may be a medium instead of a large or whatever. Those eggs go in there and she'll put them in either half dozen or a dozen containers depending on what they are and all that. And anything in that refrigerator is 5. And it usually sells out as well. I think egg vending machines are popular in Europe. That would make sense because that I looked online. Cause you know, that's, I'm thinking about it. I'm like a vending machine, and every one of them that I found was overseas. The ones that were for sale, there was a couple in America. They're very proud of them. And they're not very forthcoming with the information on the sites that talk about she, for those that are wondering, she said she paid$6,000 for this machine and she paid another$2,000 to have the graphics designed and wrapped onto the machine. Eight grand, but she, it sells. Over a hundred dozen eggs a week. She must be somewhere where there's not a lot of country people with eggs Because I live in the sticks in Tennessee, and if I put an egg vending machine out there It would be full for weeks, especially in the summertime. I mean if you put one At your place. Yeah, it would probably start smelling and she did say that she's in a high traffic area. I think she said that she was. Maybe a couple miles outside of town, but not a lot, and she is on a busy road. She did say that there was, stuff around, and people, she sells out of eggs. She has 2,000 birds, and she's doing, she, she sells them for$10 a dozen. What about pet food? Was there any pet food discussions at your conference? No, and I was curious. I was really curious that there wasn't, there was not a single seminar, discussion, listening to people talk. Nobody talking about food. Nobody talking about pet food, and I know that feeders is a big thing. Because a lot of people that have their precious older dogs that they love so much that those dogs do a lot better with fresh meat that the only processing it's had is in a food processor. To make it smaller. I was surprised about that, though. I thought there might be some there. Maybe we should look up about pet food regulations, and I wonder if there are any regulations. I sell a lot of feeders, but I've never even bothered to look to see if there is any. I'm going with no. And I say that because one single person can grow Process and sell up to 20,000 chickens for human consumption on their farm. I don't think they care about what you feed your dog. Okay, so let's go back to this human consumption. Did they care about how you processed them? Did you have to serve them whole or quartered? Could you grind them? What could you do? Alright, so most people process them whole. Because the time people that quarter them up, they cut the legs, the thighs cut the breast and they cut them up like that and bag them up. They typically charge three to 5 per pound more for process for doing that process. Now they did a competition and I saw a video of it. Where there's a lady that has a process implant in Texas, little bitty lady, but she took a carcass, it had been Defeathered, but that's it and in 27 seconds legs, thighs, breast, all cut up. That's fast. I saw that I was like, wow, that lady has done that on more than one occasion. And she has really sharp knives, too, I bet. Yes, that is one thing. In the seminar that I sat in that discussed processing in depth, she said that a lot of times, they will have several knives that they use in a matter of a couple of hours. The seasoned professionals that she has that work with her will typically provide their own knife. Because they like the better ones. She did say that they do have a lot of people that have come in for a day or two and decide it's not for them. And they'll provide them with a less expensive knife because it doesn't always make it back. You know when they leave so there was that but she did say a knife is the probably one of the most important things and what she does with her technique is the blade is pointed towards her Like she'll stick it into the bird and come up instead of going down in a way and at first I was like Okay, but she said she does that because she likes to see That blade did its entirety where it's going what it's doing and in the video where she'd done the demonstration I mean she's you could have dangled a hundred dollar bill in front of that lady's face and she wouldn't have saw it Unless it was between her eyes and that blade. She was concentrated. She was focused So I would think that as sharp as that knife needs to be especially since they talked about sharpening it and keeping it sharp. That's not something you want to touch your fingers with wow. You'll wind up with a little more in the chicken than some seasoning. Alright, so if somebody wanted to get started with pastured poultry and selling it, what would be like a couple of starter tips? So from what I learned, I would say start, number one. There are people there. That regularly and this one guy that did a show or he did a seminar, I want to say he said he processes an average of 10, 000 birds. He'll run a thousand here and a thousand there at a time. So he'll have, he said he staggers his to where, this, at the end of this month, he's got a thousand coming out of the tractors and more chicks going right behind them. And then the next month he has another thousand. So it, it's eight, it's an eight week cycle typically, but he does it on a four week, every four weeks. He's got birds coming off to maintain constant income. The first thing that I personally would suggest to somebody that wanted to do it would be to start small get you a coop that you can drag around. Doesn't have to be beautiful. It has to function. It could be something that you can make out of scrap lumber and some hardware cloth. Or, you could get a really nice coop that's designed for it and go overboard. Either way, I would start no more than 50 to 100 birds. And I would grow while you're growing them. You need to be talking about it on social media and see what the interest is. And then once those are ready, process them and see how long it takes to get rid of them. If you do it right and there's a lot of need, you're going to have a list of people wanting some of them before they're even processed. And those people will buy what they asked for and more if you have it, when they come pick it up. But if you can sell those 50, 70, 80, whatever you start out with. Then, there's probably going to be a need for it and I would do it again. Personally, my plan is I ordered a hundred chicks. That's what I needed to get up to the next price level price break when I ordered them. And I have a friend of mine that wanted some of them. So I ordered that. I'm going to process those. I've already got a couple of them sold and they're not even shipped yet and I'm going to see how it works and if it works out the way I hope it does. I'm going to do it again. I may do the same. I'm probably going to do about 60 70 is what I'm going to keep. And I may do the whole hundred myself the second time. But I'm going to do it a few times and if it, each time if it works out well, I'm going to increase my number and build up to it. They said that one of the biggest problems they see is people decide that they want to do pastured poultry because they Believe in sustainability. They believe in knowing what goes into your body, knowing what you eat and being healthy, clean eating is one of the terms I heard a lot, but a lot of people, the older 250 birds. And only sell 10 of them. 250 is an overwhelming amount of birds for somebody who's never done it before. Yeah. Yeah, so I order 200 at a time. When I do them, but I only run one batch a year. And mine come in March, I've tried them all different times of the year. I like the spring ones, I think they grow faster and bigger in the springtime. So I get them in late March, and then I have them out a couple weeks later. We start butchering at seven weeks. And we can't butcher them all at once. We're just not physically able to do that many. So we just do the biggest ones. And then the next week we do the biggest ones. And then the following week we finish up whatever's left. And that is exactly one of the methods that one of the people talked about in the seminar is while you're getting used to it. While you're getting your groove and, getting the flow of it, you're going to have some birds that are ready six and a half to seven weeks. A lot of times the cockerels are going to be larger and they're going to be ready to be processed. Take a third, take a half, whatever. Get those, process those. They're going to take you a lot longer. The guy said that this particular one, he said, the first time you're going to take a third of the birds, because it's going to take you twice as long as it will do to the rest of at once, because you're going to be figuring it out. I don't care how many times you watch YouTube videos, when you got the bird in your hand, it's going to take longer to figure it out. And he said, so you're going to use that first third to get your group. Wait a week, whatever, when the weather comes, do that. You can either process the rest of them if you're feeling lucky or take another third and then another third. Several people in their talks talked about that because that, that is, burnout is one of the biggest things that gets people out of farming. And they said that if you do too much at one time, you'll get burned out a lot quicker. So they talked about that. And they also talked about pulling food 18 hours before you process. I agree. They said that it makes for a lot cleaner processing area for obvious reasons. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it eggciting. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.