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Join us on Facebook at - https://www.facebook.com/PoultryNerds
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@gmail.Com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
Mhm.
Carey:Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Kerry Blackman, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant, and we're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
Jennifer:Yes. And I realized people treat them like pets, but you and I both show. So probably not very many people are going to pamper their chickens as much as we do. And mine don't get any kind of treats like what anybody is thinking about when we say that. Mine get pieces of old
Carey:bread. I was going to say, I don't give mine apple pie.
Jennifer:Spaghetti noodles, potato chips, pizza. I saw one this morning. Oh my word. I almost just passed out. She said every Saturday mine gets pizza crusts. And you know what, pizza crust might not be so bad, but they don't need all that oil that's on it. And the size of the chunks that she was fixing to throw out there was a whole nother story. So a lot of this has to do with how you keep your chickens too. Are you keeping them cooped all day? Are they out on fresh grass? Are they free ranging? So if we're going back to feed, let's just say When I was a kid, ours got a coffee can, and it was a small coffee can, like a 12 ounce coffee can, of cracked corn. That's it. That's all they got all day. I don't care if we had 100 running out there or 12 running out there. We got one 12 ounce can of cracked corn. Now, if I had posted that on Facebook this morning, people would have a coronary. However,
Carey:my, I bet you had some hearty chickens too.
Jennifer:And they had 50 acres to run around and get whatever they wanted to. But they didn't need supplemental feed. That was just to get'em to come back into the cup at night.
Carey:Yep. they hear that corn, there's probably a metal or a glass cup, metal coffee. They hear that rattle. Yeah, they can hear that. We do that with the cows. You can open the grain bin and get you about three, four inches worth of corn inside of a five gallon bucket and start shaking that. And I'm talking on 125 acre property. You can shake that thing about 10, 15 times. Open the chute when you're trying to get them corralled up, open the chute, set the bucket in the middle of it, tie a string to it, and you just go sit on the bucket of the tractor and wait. And they'll all come running in.
Jennifer:That's right. And then, but now today we keep, we like to coupes and, with signs on the side of it and flower beds and stuff. And that's not. natural for a chicken to be cooped like that all day. So you do need to feed them a complete feed because they can't go out and forage for what they need. One of the biggest I guess controversial posts that I made last spring was right out about a year ago. was that you can put grass in your runs. People talk about, sand, mulch, gravel pea gravel, concrete, all these things to put because it's muddy and it's inconvenient for you to walk in when it's muddy. Now my coops have 42 foot runs on them and they have grass that I have to mow. Like I have to mow it right now today. And I don't wanna because it's still too chilly outside. But anyway, I made a post about the grass in my runs needed to be mowed and I am not kidding you. 5, 000 people thought that was insanity.
Carey:A minute wait, here I am. You got goats.
Jennifer:No, I'm talking about in the breeder pens over here on the side.
Carey:I understand. So what we need, what you need to do is on your others, you got the pigs going in there to aerate the soil. So let's just get the, put you a goat in there with your ginormous chicken. It's not going to mess with each other. Yes, and let
Jennifer:eat all the grass. So actually yes, you, it's, I do have chickens and goats together in the back, but sometimes they squabble and the chickens always lose. I lost one the other day. She got stepped on and it broke her back. Oh, that ain't good. No. Maybe if I got any, the little bitty tiny baby goats maybe, but not my full size goats. No, you'd have to move them around. Yeah. So the. It's okay to put grass in your runs. I actually encourage you to do it is possible. Just because you have chickens doesn't mean you can't have a yard.
Carey:But don't put hay or straw in there. And don't
Jennifer:put 50 chickens in. When I have grass in my runs, I might have eight chickens in there.
Carey:And what is this mess that I see people doing about buying toys? I understand there's get something where you can stick a head of lettuce on it and hang it or stick a pallet in there for them to play on that. But I've started seeing chicken toys that are like kid toys,
Jennifer:waste of money.
Carey:And I'm just like, what's stuffed animals? Like, why are you giving your chicken a stuffed animal? They're going to do like a dog. They're going to eventually destroy it. And when they do, that fuzz is going to get caught in their gizzard and you're going to walk out there and your beautiful pet chicken that you bought that fuzzy toy for is going to be laying right beside it.
Jennifer:Yep. Impacted crop. Yeah.
Carey:Yeah. Impacted. That's why. A lot of people will want to put straw inside of a run because the straw does not mold like hay will when it gets wet. So they do that. But I'm here to tell you, straw will also, chickens like to chew on it and they'll get impacted crop and die from it. Grass cliffs. Yeah. That's when you. When I give grass clippings to mine I actually bought a battery powered mulching lawnmower with a bagger. So it cuts it up small. And then I'll dump the bag inside chicken pens for them to go through and do whatever with. If you're just giving them regular big old pieces of grass, that's not going to do good for them. It can cause problems. Now it may not. There's probably somebody going to say, Oh, they're lying. I've had chickens for 30 years and it never happened. I had one get an impacted crop. It was a chocolate Orpington a few months ago. Two of them impacted crop on straw and I felt like absolute garbage because they were beautiful. I looked for them for a while. I finally found them. And it was a nice pair and that was the only thing wrong with them. And when I physically opened their mouth and looked in it, I saw a piece of straw and I felt horrible and I'll never buy it again. Some other issues that you can see when having chicks and I'm going to put a couple of these together. Splay leg, curled toes, and rye necks. For me, if I see that. You got 24 hours. Maybe if I'm busy at that moment, you got 24 hours because it could be you hadn't had a drink of water yet or something. I don't know, which usually it's not. But if I see that in a brooder, after they hatch out like when I take them out of the hatching basket put them in the brooder if I come back 12 to 24 hours later, and I still see that same chick it is going to become a hawk feeder
Jennifer:Yeah, we don't keep them here either They're gone.
Carey:I have seen people that have spent weeks nursing those and that bird, they never thrive. And it's, to me, it's doing a disservice to the bird. It is.
Jennifer:There's why in nature the strongest survive. And there's a reason, and other things have to eat too. Dying isn't the worst thing in the world. Living in pain would be terrible. Anyway. We don't keep them here either. We have outlets for them that we use them for.
Carey:What about, let's see. And I feel confident when I say what about coccidiosis. What do you give your animals when they come up with that? And you're going to probably say, I never have a problem with that because I keep my runs clean.
Jennifer:I never have a problem with that because I keep my brooders clean. Yes.
Carey:And your brooders clean and you don't throw your feed on the ground where your animals go to the bathroom. A lot of, a lot of people they don't, they just throw the feed down on the ground and they're like chickens eat all kinds of stuff off the ground. Yeah, but when you have chickens in a pen or in a run or in a coop, that's where they go to the bathroom and until people start eating out of a toilet. That doesn't mean that chickens should do it either, so Put their feet in a feeder. Don't make them eat it off the ground. And keep the pens clean and you won't have coccidiosis.
Jennifer:So let's explain coccidiosis here for a second. So it's not a bacteria. It is a protozoa. And so you have to introduce it into the environment. It doesn't just come out of the air. So if you let's just go through my theory here. So I have my brooders inside my barn and I in between each batch, I sanitize. I clean the brooder with soapy water, and then I sanitize it. And then I use clean puppy pads, brand new puppy pads. I lay down on that. And then they get clean waterers and clean feeders. Now these waterers and feeders have never cleaned the brooder. left my incubation room. They don't get used outside. They don't get used in the main part of the barn. So this is it. And then we take care of the chicks first when we go out there. So our hands are clean. First thing we do that day there's very little chance. I'm not going to say no chance, but we have minimized all the chances of contamination, bringing in. the protozoa from outside. And so I do not have a problem with coccidiosis in my brooders. Okay. That being said, now there are some breeders who throw fresh dirt in their brooders to weed out the weak immune systems instantly. And that is another method. I do not do that, but there is some merits to that I think is worth maybe exploring a little bit, but right now I'm happy with what I'm doing. So I was going
Carey:to say I can see that, but also I feel confident that you should give a bird every chance you can in the beginning and, I don't try to, I'm not going to throw a wrench in it, but if I see it, it is what it is. So for me that's how. I take care of it. You do the same thing. It's one of those things. If you handle your chicks first, because it is outside, your adult birds have it. They have all kinds of stuff when you feed them quality feed that has all the nutrients in it that they need. their bodies fight, all kinds of stuff. Stuff that's airborne and everything. Just like ours. Yeah, just like ours, but not the chicks. A lot of things that, we talked earlier about brooding. And so let's also talk a little bit about when chickens can go outside. And for me, there's two things, two things that I look at on when a chick can go outside. Number one, that is a un unconditional thing is do they have all their real feathers if they've got all their feathers and I say feathers? I told my son when he was little, he says daddy, what's the difference? And I said son, you got peach fuzz and you got your feathers. Once that peach fuzz comes off and they actually have feathers. then it's usually safe for them to go outside if it's above 40 to 50 degrees. Now, for me in Alabama, I have put Rhode Island Reds, all the dirt, outside at five weeks. And it actually after they were out for a couple of days, it dipped down below 40 and I did not lose a single bird there again. They were all, they are on really good feeds hatcher and they had full, they were fully feathered and they look really well. So I think that's important is to make sure they're fully feathered. Regardless of what it is,
Jennifer:right? So if we're hatching in January, and you're probably not going to be putting them out till sometime in March, but if your hand, if you're hatching in March, it would not be. a big deal to put them out at five or six weeks in April. Just dependent on the weather.
Carey:Now I will say this if you hatch them out in October and you put them out at six to eight weeks, you will have some very hardy birds.
Jennifer:But I don't find they grow big enough in the
Carey:fall. They don't usually, if it's if it is a large fowl I have done it, but for that, I will say that it is extremely important to have wind breaks in place. Birds can handle cold temperatures. They cannot handle the wind chill.
Jennifer:I can agree with that. Let's see, what else? I'm going to talk a little bit about vaccinated birds versus unvaccinated birds. I'm going to say this. All my birds are unvaccinated. I don't believe in vaccinating them. I eat my birds. So therefore I don't want any of that stuff in there. And I don't know a whole lot about them other than once you keep vaccinated birds, you always have to keep vaccinated birds. You can't mix. So make sure you do your homework there before deciding if you want to do it or not.
Carey:Yeah. I don't do it. I understand That's another thing that floats around in the air, but there again, like Jeff's told me that if you feed them right and you take care of them, you don't need it. A proper diet for any animal can keep them safe. Of a lot of stuff, Hey, look at people if we ate properly, we probably wouldn't have 90 percent of the health issues that we have. Right. Yeah.
Jennifer:So let's see. And then I guess the, we'll just end on once you do put them outside, don't put roost over your head. Think about you, you're important too. And I'm not reaching way up over my head to deal with birds. And don't overcrowd your coops. If you only have enough space for three birds, then only have three birds. And for the love of everything, sleeping in the nesting boxes is not okay.
Carey:No, let me tell you this though about the roost. I got to say this because this is hilarious to me. I have most of my breeding pens are four foot wide, eight foot long and eight foot tall. Some of them are five foot wide. eight foot tall and 10 foot long. So I used two by four wire, which is great because you slide a two by four in there and boom, you got a roost. When they're young, I'll start, I start out with a couple of feet up. I'll slide two by four in there. And then I will offset it a couple of feet and, over and up. I'll stick another one in there and I'll make stepping where they can go back and forth because a lot of mine have metal roofs and it's really weird late at night. I will look outside and I will see. Chickens, seven and a half feet up in the air, hunched up under the metal roof of whatever shed, whichever breeding pen they're in. fighting to get up that high because they want to be up there. Now, obviously the don't do this with a young bird because of, if one of my adults fall off, they're going to catch themselves and fly out of it and have a soft landing. But if a bird can't do that, they could get seriously hurt. They, I don't know why they just like going real high. Even this, what really. Was awkward to me the other night and I'll end with this I have some Delawares that are about eight pounds, and they will get up that high. I put the two by four almost at the top of that breeding pin for support because I anchor mine to the ground, so it is attached to the uprights, the wooden post at the back, which is why it's so high. They, the nearest one is about three and a half feet down from there. And two of them were up on top of it.
Jennifer:Oh, so my roost are two feet.
Carey:And where my reds are. There I have one that's about two feet off the ground and I have another one that's about three feet off the ground. The one that's two feet, I have it there. All the pens have that way they can get on a roost, which is natural for them to sleep. And they're totally, they have all the wind blocked because I have a four foot piece of metal at the bottom. And then the next one is just above that piece of metal. So when it's hot, they can get up there and enjoy the wind. So that's the main design behind that. The other pieces were put to use for anchor points. And I've just recently seen that they like getting up that high. And when I saw the Delaware's up there, it was hilarious.
Jennifer:Yeah. My birds are so heavy that if they could get up that high yeah, they would probably break something on the way down. I did have a coach in that thought he needed to be up on the turkey, turkey roost one time, and I ended up having to move him because the only way he could figure out how to get down was just to fly straight until he hit the wall and then fall down. Wow. So I had to move him. Yeah,
Carey:that's a lot.
Jennifer:Now the turkeys, now turkeys like to roost high too. Naturally they're gonna roost in trees, right? Logistically, when you need to go in there and do something, you don't want a 40 pound turkey above your head that you have to do something with. So my turkey roosts are four feet. And that allows them to see out through the hardware cloth that's around the top of all my pens. That's plenty high enough for them. And it's easy for me to catch them. So when I go in there and I have to catch them for the, like the MPIP or just sorting for whatever reason I have a lower roost at two feet that I call the bounce board. And then they'll get up on that and then they'll hop up to the higher one. They're two by eight boards is what they are. And what I do is I just encourage them to go up and they'll get on that bounce board and then I'll just touch their tail feathers and they'll hop up on the four foot board right when they land that split second of teetering I'm getting my bearings is when you can snatch them without arguments. So that's how I have learned how to catch them. But I'm short. I'm just barely over five feet tall. So a four foot roost is about all I can handle.
Carey:Yeah. Now, one thing that I'll say also about roost. is, I said a while ago that I used the two by four wire around the top so I can slide a two by four in there for them to use. And it makes it easy. One thing that I have that I do that I have found mine really is I'll take five and a quarter deck board and I'll cut that in sections that's almost as wide as the interior of my coop. I'll slide my two by four in there. I'll screw that to the top of it. And they can, that's, they're really comfortable. They have plenty of room to lay there. That's almost six inches wide. So that works out pretty good. Yeah.
Jennifer:Mine are on two by fours, but the turkeys are on two by eights.
Carey:I can see that because turkeys are, even though your Orpington is what, 13, 14 pounds, that would be a small turkey. 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@gmail.Com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
Mhm.