Cracking the Secrets of the 2025 Pips n Chicks Virtual Show with Breanna Patz

Join us for an exciting episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast as we dive deep into the highlights and behind-the-scenes secrets of the 2025 Pips n Chicks Virtual Poultry Show with special guest Breanna Patz. Discover insider tips on winning poultry competitions, understand judging criteria, and learn how to prepare your flock for virtual shows. Whether you’re an experienced breeder or new to poultry competitions, this episode is packed with expert advice, practical insights, and fun poultry show stories that will help you elevate your birds to champion status!

Keywords: Pips n Chicks, virtual poultry show, poultry competition tips, Breanna Patz, poultry judging criteria, champion poultry breeding, preparing poultry for show, Poultry Nerds Podcast, virtual livestock events, chicken show prep!

Transcript

Carey: 0:01

Good afternoon everybody, and happy Monday. Today we are here with Brie and we are gonna talk about her Pips and Chicks live virtual show. Good afternoon, Bree. How are you?

Bre: 0:16

I'm doing great. Very glad to be here.

Carey: 0:19

Jennifer, you look ecstatic.

Bre: 0:21

This is like our very first like extra show we've ever done.

Carey: 0:26

Yep. But this is like a huge deal because. Nobody except for Brie that I'm aware of even tries to put on a virtual show much less, does a really good job of finding licensed accredited judges to make it real. A lot of people just post a bunch of pictures of their stuff and yeah,

Bre: 0:49

It's so easy. It just, I don't know why more people don't do it.

Carey: 0:53

I think Brie would probably argue that fact because before'cause

Bre: 0:58

lot of work.

Carey: 0:59

Before I hit the word, the record button she was talking about the exhaustive amount of website problems.

Bre: 1:09

The gray hairs.

Carey: 1:11

Yeah. Like she probably already has some and she's. Can't even go buy a beer.

Bre: 1:17

And it's not even Thursday yet.

Carey: 1:19

Yeah. And it's not Thursday and guys Thursday's when it kicks off.

Bre: 1:25

Yeah. I'm super excited it'll start. May 1st officially is when we've got a whole host of things going, so

Carey: 1:33

that's awesome. So I've got a few questions for you and I think it's gonna help people learn a little bit about you because everybody wants to know what. What's behind, what they're watching and why they should enter. So can you share some of the inspiration behind founding Tips and chicks, the name for your farm and all of that good stuff. And tell us about your journey in breeding poultry, how it began, and feel free to throw in a little bit about your education as well, so everybody knows that, you're a super brain person. I.

Bre: 2:12

The nerd. She's a nerd. We thought

Carey: 2:15

we were nerds, which is why the podcast is Poultry Nerds Podcast. Brie actually is.

Bre: 2:24

Oh yeah. So Pips and Tricks started in probably eight years, I don't know, eight years ago and was when we got our first chickens. And it was maybe a year after that. A year or two that we started it, I actually started it with my younger brother who wasn't really interested in chickens at all. He was just doing it'cause I was doing it. And we called it Pips and Chicks. We had planned to just hatch eggs out and sell the chicks.'cause that after, no, you had your, I know after you had your first shakes out, you just get addicted. And we called it pips and chicks because as chicks are piping out it rhymed very nicely and that, that was the most exciting time for us was just,

Carey: 3:07

Yeah.'cause they pip and then you have chicks. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And your brother, is that the one that makes the little pterodactyl arms for your chickens? And that would be the

Bre: 3:20

youngest brother? This is my middle brother.

Carey: 3:23

Okay. Okay.

Bre: 3:25

That, that we get'em all like ball.

Carey: 3:28

I seen pretty cool. Farming a lot of times is a family, it's a family thing.

Bre: 3:33

Oh yeah. For very much and even like that kind of carried my me through high school, right? And we were, we would hatch out, we'd sell some most of the time we'd hatch up for ourselves. Then I got into quail. And then at the end of high school, when I graduated, I sold. All of my quail off which is what I focused on. And my family now, my dad especially, takes care of my chickens. Back at home, we found a small layer flock, just mixed layers. And yeah, so I like that was a completely redo, but really good way to bring in the family there. And then I realized after about a year in college, I just, I missed it too much. I missed not having birds and animals specifically on my quail again. So I got I was back up in Michigan at that point, so as about as far north as you can get in the United States. And still be in the United States. Yeah. And I ended up working with a local farmer, kept some birds there at, in their on their property and then did that for about a year. Before I transferred universities, I decided I, I wanted to go even more in depth into it. I loved physics and I loved mathematics, but I really wanted to see the practical applications specifically with the animals. And I had a research project. I pitched it with Quail and I pitched it to River Falls, and they accepted it wholeheartedly. They told me, come on in, we'll get the paperwork started on, give me a pretty good scholarship and. So I'm at University of Wisconsin River Falls studying specifically agricultural engineering right now. But the focus on mechanized systems and livestock systems. So my goal is to be able to integrate poultry and equipment together and design some of that poultry equipment, poultry barns different livestock barns, bring it all full circle. But through all of that, pips and chicks has kept going in. I focused on genetics, color genetics for a while. Different breeding programs, the last, I don't know, year or so I've worked to develop the poultry program here on campus. Built like barn designs for them that they're actually building up right now. And then helped lay out like what a poultry program should look like, just from top to bottom, helping with their breeding practices, their their management, their hatching cycles, all of that. So that's been. Super fun the last, I don't know, nine months. Yeah.

Carey: 5:55

But at the end of the day, that was just your way of having quail and chickens at school, right?

Bre: 6:00

Pretty much.

Carey: 6:02

We won't tell'em that. We won't tell'em.

Bre: 6:05

Yeah. I've got, I live, they actually let me live on the farm now, so I live on the farm and I keep my quail where I live. That's awesome there. And yeah, it has been just absolutely wonderful.

Carey: 6:20

That's incredible.

Bre: 6:22

Good story. I'm glad you decided to do, I know the whole personal story and everything'cause we're friends off the show, but I'm really proud of you for doing what you've done. You you've done well. Thank you. No. All right. So tell us about this virtual show. Like what was the story behind that part? Yeah, so we started now four years ago. It was the peak, like AI was starting to creep, then it was starting to be a big thing in the United States. And I actually, and like right after Covid, during Covid, there was some of my friends that had done virtual livestock shows. And I thought, Hey, we could do something like that for poultry. So the very first time we did it all for Google Drive, had no clue what we were really doing. Got several hundred entries and put it together just with, friends that I knew that were interested in judging poultry and really enjoyed it. And it's just grown every year since then. So the last year we had about 2,500 birds in there and over 300 exhibitors from across 36 different state, and it's just continued to grow and it's been just an absolute blast of a time.

Carey: 7:38

Did you say 36 different states?

Bre: 7:41

Yep. And I think there's three different countries as well, aside from the United States.

Carey: 7:47

Holy cow.

Bre: 7:50

So what's different this year? That's new. Yes. Yeah. So every year we try and we grow, right? We've fi figured out what's worked, tweaked, what hasn't worked, and tried to improve every single year. So the first year we used just Google Drive and our website and it was Google form. And then judges would comment on the pictures and we'd post the pictures after. Last year and the year before, we tried to do live streams and that worked really well. So you could actually listen to the judges live as they were going and you could ask questions, you could see in real time how they were placing everything. But on the back end of things, that was a lot of work. We had to go through and manually label all of the photos. We stripped like the exhibitor's names off of them. Order them on these slides, put everything in the proper place. And when you do that to 2,500 birds, there's, it's hours and hours and hours of time. And it was easy to miss things in the cracks. So what we did this year is we completely revamped the program. So instead of posting it on the typical website it'll be the same link this year. But on a completely new platform, it's all gonna be integrated. You'll go in, you'll be able to upload it there, you'll be able to see all of the entries that other people are entering. You'll be able to watch the judging there, see all of the judges. You can go on like people's profiles so you can see and you can share those images right away to social media. So it. Streamlines it from our side. So there's less places for us to make mistakes and we can keep track of it so much better. And it also makes it so much easier from the exhibitor side of things as well to go through, upload all of your pictures to keep track of your entries and also see in real time what everyone is entering. When you say we, do you have a mouse in your pocket or what? Who is we? Yeah I'm

Carey: 9:46

like I thought this was Bree. I didn't, where's is she speaking about the other, the clones that she's created to help her with this?

Bre: 9:57

Yeah, usually for the most part it's just we, this year we've got a couple of different, I use we,'cause I'm used to just saying that like in our class projects and things like that. I do have a programmer that is helping me like fix all the little bugs, make sure the website's working pretty well. And then this year, which is new there's a judging committee. So we've got a group of four of us that are going through to pick out all of our judges. Make sure that we've got timelines set up really well. Judges are all really comfortable with the software and the platform we're using. And they're gonna help pick out all of the youth judges too, which I'm super excited about. And then we've got I've got another person that's doing the awards this year, so they're taking care of ordering the awards, mailing those all out so that they get out in hopefully a little bit more timely manner. And then we've got a couple of clinicians coming in. So we're gonna run about four different clinics four or five of them throughout the span of the entries for people to just, they'll be completely free. The whole show is completely free. So from entering to judging to the clinics, all of it, there's no cost to any exhibitors. But. The clinics will be a good way to deep dive into some topics. So we're gonna have one on photography, we're gonna have one on selecting your birds, one on showmanship, different things like that. So you get the full experience from start to finish and hopefully improve your breeding as you go. But I've done a lot of it and I'm still, I'm doing most of the work myself, but it just has gotten to, it's continuing to grow and therefore I've gotten people. And with me this year to help and make it a little bit easier on me.

Carey: 11:37

That's awesome. So tell us what the participation process is. If someone wanted to enter their birds, who's eligible to do that? Is it too late? Since it starts in a couple of days? What are the steps to register and submit entries?

Bre: 11:54

Yeah, so it, this year it's easier than ever. In previous years you've had to have a Google account and sign in and things like that. This and this this year it'll be all through the website. So you'll go in, you'll, you can see all of your entries and ev like everyone else's entries and the judges and the sponsors and all of that without logging in. But to actually enter it, you'll go ahead. You'll create an account. Then you'll be able to upload it. So they'll have a little place for that, says entries on it. You'll click that and you can submit as many entries as you'd want. An entry is simply a picture of your bird. So you want obviously very nice pictures of your bird. Preferably standing still. You want a good side picture and side profile. There's just one photo per bird that you need with the exception of quail. So we'll have actually a seminar on quail and how to do quail entries, because that one's a little bit more complex. But for the rest of them, it's a simple one-off profile picture. You upload it, you'll go ahead and click what class it is in, what variety it's in. You'll give it a fun name if you want to, and then submit it. And that's pretty much all you have to do. It'll keep track of your name, keep track of all of that and then you'll come back on the judging. We'll post the drudging dates as it gets a little bit closer. But when we say the show start this Thursday the entries start this Thursday. So you've actually got until the end of June to get all of your entries in. You've got over two months take pictures of your birds. Maybe you want to condition them out a little bit different, or you wanna you wanna wash them, bathe them, or you're taking them to a show when you want pictures at the show. All of those are allowed. And you've got plenty of time to be able to do that and prepare a little bit. And then into July is when we'll have those judges go through those birds. It gives them a little bit of time to sort through them. And then they'll start placing them live in July.

Carey: 13:53

Ooh. So the show's judged by a PA and a BA licensed judges, right?

Bre: 14:00

Yep.

Carey: 14:02

All right. Cool. So

Bre: 14:04

the only exception there is the youth. So anyone can enter the show.

Jennifer: 14:08

Yeah. Youth

Bre: 14:08

can enter an open show. If you're under 18, you can enter the same birds in our Youth Judged youth show. So we've got

Jennifer: 14:16

Okay.

Bre: 14:17

Specific youth judges. We pick people that. Usually are a little bit older, so they're usually they're under 21. They're not quite an A-P-A-A-V-A judge yet. Some of'em have thought about going on to become an A-P-A-V-A judge and are working towards that. But they're really qualified people that, and we wanna give them an opportunity to practice their judging skills, practice their reasons. And sorting through birds. So we, this year we're gonna go through, we're just gonna reach out to different kids that we know that would be highly qualified. They're showing already, they're in showmanship, they're judging and things like that. And then they'll be judging the different shows for the youth. But for the open show, all of that is gonna be a PAB a BA licensed with, and then quail will be a CBA. So we try and keep all of the organizations we want, obviously the best quality judges that we can get, and just like what you would see at a real show.

Carey: 15:16

Cool. So education seems to be a significant focus in the virtual show. How does the event contribute to promoting poultry education and breeding for excellence?

Bre: 15:58

Yeah. Like I said, we try and keep it as realistic to a real show as possible. The goal is always to be picking the best birds to win the show and to be improving and helping breeders improve. And by having judges judge live like we've done in the past, and actually give reasons, you get a chance to hear exactly why they're placing the birds they the way they did. And because it's so easy to do and it doesn't cost anything. We get a lot of new exhibitors, we get some grandmaster exhibitors all the way down to people entering a show for the very first time. And so it's a really good experience to be able to see how birds compare to the standard, how these standards should be applied to the birds in front of you. And even like how to take good pictures how to properly present your birds. Kind of everything from start to finish is really involved in the virtual show.

Carey: 16:53

That's cool.

Bre: 16:56

And you have the clinics too, so what's the topics of the clinics? Yeah, so we're hoping hopefully to have carry on for a feed one feed and nutrition. Probably

Carey: 17:05

work that out.

Bre: 17:06

Yeah, I think we're trying to figure out when we're gonna have that one. Sometime in June, probably. We'll have a quail clinic in May. So that's specifically going to be how to put your quail entries together. Put how to what variety they should go in, how to figure out what variety and what place your quail should go in. We'll have a showmanship clinic, so someone that's gonna help specifically youth go through their showmanship routine. Things to think about, things to improve, how to approach it if you've never done it before. And then we're gonna have one other person go through and talk about. How to select birds. So whether you're looking at your breeding pens or you're looking to go out and buy birds, what you're gonna look for to make a really good show bird at the virtual show. And then the last one will be photography. So how to take the best pictures of your birds. That one will be pretty pretty quickly coming up in May. So we'll get dates posted as soon as the main event of the show, like the entries have started. What challenges have you faced creating this new website? I know it's, oh, what? It's been a doozy, hasn't it? Oh, yeah. Programming is. It is not as easy as it looks like on tv. It's on tv they just if it was that easy, we'd all be doing it. Exactly. Every time it felt like, especially going through the debugging, it felt like every time I would try and fix an error, I would make an error somewhere else. So about three weeks ago, we had a test run for the virtual show. We got everything up and running to the point where it could accept entries and we could judge like a mock show. And we had 10 people run through it, submit entries, get little bugs and little, all find all of those little things that we couldn't see. And then I spent the last three weeks. Working through that, figuring out how to integrate things properly, how to make sure these images are stored appropriately so they're not just gonna disappear on us. And then all of the little things. The, so like adding social media, adding a, forgot your password for all the people that forgot. Forget what their login is. Just little things like that you may not think about. But the last man, it's probably been. Five months putting the platform together. And there's still things I'm sure as the show will go on, that will crop up. Some of them will fix this year and I'll fix as we go. Some of them will just be, that's a thing to pencil in for next year, suggestions to change. But it's been really neat to see it grow and continue to get better every time. So you've done all this work? We're do. You're doing the poultry show. So what are you going to use the platform for the rest of the year? Yeah, so we'll see where it goes from there. We'll see how well the first show with this platform goes if it works out really well. I'm, right now I'm in a livestock judging. I'm on the beef management team here, livestock judging team, poultry judging team here. And we put on several big shows. There's one actually that just happened last weekend. That's like a statewide large livestock show. So I anticipate doing additional virtual shows, whether that's with large livestock through clubs like the Block and Bridal Club here on campus, or whether that's more poultry with like breed clubs that wanna get more shows going. Or in the quail world with the A CBA. I'd love to get to a point to be able to keep doing more shows and help other clubs, other groups and other people that wanna do shows, get, get the ground running with something that's already established and it's been working.

Carey: 21:01

You get this working perfected, like you're working on. That you could probably easy, easily do one a quarter.

Bre: 21:11

I don't. I don't wanna bite off more than I can chew yet, but if it all goes,'cause in previous years it's been so much behind the scenes work. And just days and days of taking, making sure I have off for the judges, making sure, answering questions from people, sorting through all these entries. If this works it'll be so much easier to do. And I love to be able to do more. More per year, but it's gonna depend on if everything goes according to plan.

Carey: 21:44

Most definitely. Last question I have for you is for the listeners that are interested in participating or supporting your initiative, what steps can they do to get involved?

Bre: 21:58

Yeah, so this year, which is new this year, we've got our judging committee. And all of like our awards chair and all of these different volunteers. Those are pretty much set. We do have openings for clerks, so if you're interested in following along, making sure things are running smoothly while the shows are going, which means you need to be able to sit down and watch all of these shows or one or two of them we've definitely got a need for that. So go ahead and reach on out. But the biggest way right now to support is gonna be fundraising. So on Thursday it's not been completely public yet, but so this will be the first, A lot of you guys are hearing about this,

Jennifer: 22:40

we won't

Bre: 22:42

on our big fundraiser this year is gonna be called Poorly Drawn Poultry. So we've got a group of about seven artists right now where you'll upload a picture, you'll pay, we've got a link on there to pay. And again, this will be going live on Thursday, so you'll watch our Facebook post for it. And we've got the artists that'll go through and draw the pictures of your pet and some of them. Are phenomenally talented. Like they, they literally will draw things pretty close to outta the standard of perfection. Some of them are like grandchildren of people that, are showing in the show. They're six, seven years old and they're just really excited to draw. So you may get something and it's fantastic. You may get someone scribble on the back of a napkin. That's the fun of it. And you can upload as many pictures as you want. You'll pay for each entry. And then we are we do pay our artists for some of it, but the rest of it goes to the show. And then we'll also open up sponsorships so companies can go in and sponsor different awards. They can sponsor anything from a Best of Show award. Down to your class awards. This year we'll do something with youth awards. So we'll probably have an exceptional Youth award, it sounds so for one of the youth that kind of goes above and beyond throughout the show, we'll have special little awards here and there. And then you can also just donate too. So we've got links on our website that you can donate, you can sponsor. We've got merch available, so we'll have t-shirts and. Hats and like all sorts of fun things in between that you can go and buy on there too, to just show off that you're part of the show and everything in between. So a lot of ways for people to get involved and help out.

Carey: 24:24

That sounds awesome.

Bre: 24:25

You sound like you've got it all pulled together. Oh, I hope so. I always think I do and then things come up and we roll then as we go. But. I'm really excited for how this year is shaping up and getting ready to go. Good. I'm excited. So there's nothing we can do today other than just be excited. Then have to wait till Thursday. So

Carey: 24:49

let me ask this for this super anxious person, is it like Thursday at midnight? Thursday at more like clock. Is that at

Bre: 25:03

am on the dock

Carey: 25:03

Pacific Eastern? What time zone is that in?

Bre: 25:08

That'll be in central time.

Carey: 25:10

Oh, Thursday. Eight o'clock central time.

Bre: 25:16

Yeah, we should be go to pips and chicks.com. Yeah, in

Carey: 25:22

Turkey, in

Bre: 25:23

Central. Nine o'clock. I don't know any other time zones, but if you go to pips and chicks.com/auctions, or you go on our Facebook page will be where a lot of these posts are coming out. You'll be able to see the poorly drawn pets and the sponsors start to come through. So follow our Facebook page. The links will drop then. And then our website will also be live at eight o'clock. On the dot.

Carey: 25:50

So if one of your artists wants to draw a Rhode Island red like this I would be willing to throw down some cash on that poor. Sure.

Bre: 26:03

I can't promise for the poorly drawn pets. It'll be any, any better than what I could draw. But for. I know a lot of them do. Do I think there's at least three of them that do commissions on the side, so Oh, wow.

Carey: 26:18

We'll have to talk about that. And 11 by 14 would be, that would look good behind my desk at my office.

Bre: 26:26

Yes.

Carey: 26:28

All right. Jennifer, do you have any questions?

Bre: 26:31

No, I guess we just won't sleep between now and Thursday, just the pictures. I probably won't be getting too much, but No. All right. I'm sure we'll talk to you again and you can tell us how it went. Absolutely. All right.

Carey: 26:46

Yeah, I'm curious. All right have a great week, and we looked forward to eight o'clock central time on Thursday.

Bre: 26:55

Yep. Yeah. Bye. Thank you.