From Poultry Nerd to Certified Judge: Keeping Chickens Safe & Healthy on the Farm

In this episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, we celebrate a big milestone—earning an American, Oriental, and Spanish Gamefowl Judging Certificate—and dive into essential farm wisdom every chicken keeper needs. From choosing the right judging regalia (coat, apron, or vest?) to keeping your flock safe from common hazards, we cover it all.

Learn about chicken wire vs. hardware cloth, preventing injuries from pigs and cows, why heat lamps are dangerous, and how to protect your poultry from moldy feed, tangled strings, and poorly designed coops. We also discuss roost bar safety, ventilation myths, and the best way to prepare your chickens for a long, healthy life.

Whether you’re raising backyard chickens, show birds, or gamefowl, this episode is packed with tips, laughs, and real-life farm stories that will help you avoid mistakes and keep your birds thriving.

poultry podcast, chicken care, backyard chickens, gamefowl, American Poultry Association, poultry judging, chicken wire vs hardware cloth, chicken safety, poultry farming tips, flock management, farm life stories

Transcript

Jennifer: 0:23

So you did a thing this week. So tell us about what you did, what you got. So

Carey: 0:29

I actually did this back late August when I took my test. But I got an American game foul judging certificate. So now I'm a licensed judge.

Jennifer: 0:42

So you gonna wear like a little white coat and have a nerd pocket Ooh, nerd pocket. Okay.

Carey: 0:48

So there there's a debate because you can get they will pay for either a coat, an apron, or a vest. So it's do I want the doctor's coat with the logo of my name on it? My judge's number? Do I just want like a apron? What? What do I don't know. Like I haven't figured that out yet.

Jennifer: 1:19

So if you wear a coat and it's open, then the birds can still poop on you when you pick'em up. But if you had an apron on, you wouldn't have to carry around an extra shirt. True,

Carey: 1:34

but it can be practical. And the coats are either white or like a Heather Gray color or maybe a little lighter than Heather Gray. They're pretty light.

Jennifer: 1:52

Yeah. They show poop. Good.

Carey: 1:54

Yeah. So that's why I'm like, I don't know, because I don't really want to get the white jacket. I was gonna, since I'm actually the one in charge of ordering the regalia for the organization. I may accidentally order, like a. Darker gray color,

Jennifer: 2:15

gray. I guess you could always put a apron on underneath of it anyway.

Carey: 2:20

Yeah, I could have, what if I had the white doctor's coat with a, the logo and judge, and then like a dark blue or black apron with just my name on it?

Jennifer: 2:35

Yep. Put big on the front to catch the poop

Carey: 2:39

and that says that it is gonna be 10 million degrees. Yep. When I go to wear that.

Jennifer: 2:46

Or you could just have both. So you could just decide that day

Carey: 2:51

I could do that. With the thing.

Jennifer: 2:55

Yep. Congratulations.

Carey: 2:59

Thank you.

Jennifer: 3:01

So

Carey: 3:01

I also ordered, I have the book, so I got my new standard of perfection from the a PA. I got it this time I got one that was spiral bound, so I could lay it flat or fold it over and use it a lot. They also have this poultry showmanship manual. So I figured, hey, I like doing stuff with kids and like being involved and getting kids involved in stuff. So I gotta admit, when I saw you doing the showmanship thing, I got a little jelly. So like I need to figure that crap out.

Jennifer: 3:42

All six kids that I judged, I don't, Hey, but it was fun. It was fun seeing what they learned and what they know and how they handle their birds and how they can plop down on their knees to chase their birds so readily when as you get older, you can't do,

Carey: 4:01

shoot. At my age, if I plo down on my knees to chase a bird, I'm feeling it for a couple days.

Jennifer: 4:07

Yeah. I ain't saying

Carey: 4:08

that. I ain't done it. But it, I am saying that I did feel it for a few days.

Jennifer: 4:14

It was fun. It was it was interesting to see, the kids and how much effort they put into it or didn't put into it. And it, you could tell. So

Carey: 4:26

I know that you're on TikTok.

Jennifer: 4:27

And,

Carey: 4:28

cause I see some of your videos that are awesome. But do you watch the ones of some of the kids showing like sheep or pigs or cows?

Jennifer: 4:42

I watched the one with the girl that does the pigs. It just cracks me up.

Carey: 4:48

The young blonde-headed one.

Jennifer: 4:50

Is she blonde? The one that's so serious?

Carey: 4:54

I do know that there is one like that. Okay. Like this kid is so serious. You would think that she's making a$10 million business deal. Like when she gets older and she goes to the bank to sit down and buy her farm. You know how number one, if you get intimidated, you lose. And number two, the first one that talks after the deal is made Lose This chick's never losing.

Jennifer: 5:23

She needs

Carey: 5:23

to play in Vegas. She's so serious. I heard that reminds me of that picture of Brie that she posted a while back when she had the thing. I don't even know what it's called. I'll call it the thing, the stick in her hand. I think it was a sheep or something like that. I was like, I thought they just shaved them suckers to make stuff, but it's intense and I think the original thing that piqued my interest was a couple months ago. About a month and a half ago I had a four H Club reach out and they're doing some research on feed and feed tags and stuff like that, and the sponsor of that club was like, I wanted to know if you would send possibly some samples or something. Because apparently she's been reaching out to a lot of companies trying to get something and they wouldn't send her Jack. I'm like, these kids are gonna be buying your stuff one day. You idiot. Why don't you send it to'em? So I told her, I was like, yeah, what do you need? And she says I will take whatever. Okay, cool. So I got five pound bags and I put it in some that were resealable so they could pop it up and smell it and seal it back up. And I put the feed tags on that bag. I sent her all those along with the PDFs of the P tags so she could print some out for the kids to draw on and make notes. And a pretty good other bit of literature. And she was like I didn't realize who you were. Like I'm just a guy from Alabama, whatever. She was like, no. How, what? Think about what it would take to get you to come out here to talk to the kids. And I said, an invitation, maybe lunch. And so we're gonna try to work that out where I can go out there'cause. I want to get more involved in that kind of stuff. You gotta teach today's kids'cause that's the poultry nerd of tomorrow. Yeah.

Jennifer: 7:40

Yep. Today we are not gonna jabber for an hour about ourselves. We're gonna talk about how to keep your birds safe. All the stuff that's out there that can hurt them, which they will find if you're not careful.

Carey: 7:58

Chickens and goats, like they can find a way to break something. Themselves or whatever they're messing with. They can. I'm sure some other animals are capable too, but for them to be so smart about some stuff, they're really stupid. Out there when it comes to other stuff,

Jennifer: 8:18

I had out a Drake, a young Drake, right now, I'm gonna have to put him down and he, his leg is just shattered. He, the only thing I can think is they like to try to eat the pig food before the pigs come, which is really a stupid call because the ducks weigh what about six pounds, maybe gonna pig

Carey: 8:43

hundred pig.

Jennifer: 8:46

So the only thing I can say like better fast is he got stepped on, which is really stupid on his part. It makes, it happens. Cuing, culling choices makes them easier. So pigs would be the first thing on the list to hurt your birds.

Carey: 9:30

Yeah and I've got, I don't even let mine near my birds. So far, none of my birds have been stupid enough to fly over there with'em.

Jennifer: 9:41

I don't think the pigs intentionally are hurting'em. I think they're just, no, but they're

Carey: 9:45

monsters compared to the chicken.

Jennifer: 9:47

Exactly.

Carey: 9:48

I don't care if it's your 10 12 pound orpingtons or a little three pound Bantam gainer.

Jennifer: 9:57

So I've got two Orpington hens who have decided that the cow barn is the place to be when I feed the cows and the troughs have drain holes and I guess some of the sweet feed falls through these drain holes and they eat the sweet feed that falls through Nice will. They are standing there, the chickens are standing there when I go to feed the cows and then the cows come running. They're seriously pregnant now, so their running is a lot slower than it was a few months ago, but. The chicken, one of the chickens. As I reached over to pour another scoop, she just goes into Waylon and I looked down, of course, what am I supposed to do? It's a 1500 pound cow standing there, and the cow is standing on her foot and she can't get her foot loose. So I took there was a rake sitting there, so I took a rake and just reached over and pushed the cow with it. And during it, that chicken didn't run in a circle, and as the cow shifted, her weight stepped on her again. But the worst thing that I could find was it moved one of the scales on her leg. She's still over there every morning trying to eat sweet feed.

Carey: 11:18

It is, it's like the same grains that they eat mixed with a little bit of molasses, so it's no different than us eating pancakes in the morning. I guess though,

Jennifer: 11:29

my chickens are smart, they know my routine, and so these. I think there's three hens they run and it's pretty far distance for them to run around to the cow barn and eat any sweet feed that falls and then race me back to the barn in time for me to feed them.

Carey: 11:53

So this is what I'm picturing. I'm picturing early morning garage door starts popping up those three, start looking around. They see the gator go over to the cow barn. Then they just take off.

Jennifer: 12:08

Oh yeah. They'll, if I come out of the garage on the gator and the cows are usually in the back grazing at sunrise. Yeah. So they will raise their heads and they'll look to see if I turn to go towards the barn to quail barn, or do I turn and go towards the cowboy? If I go towards the cow barn, it's stampede and everybody better get outta the way. If I go towards the quail barn, they'll continue grazing. So if the goats are in the front and I'm gonna go feed the cows, I intentionally drive really slowly so the stampede doesn't run over the goats because the goats aren't as smart. They're probably not the most. Intelligent animals that I have,

Carey: 12:57

and I was gonna say goats. Theirs are like mine. They're. They're pretty low on that totem pole.

Jennifer: 13:03

Yours came from me, so Yeah, they're the same intelligence level.

Carey: 13:07

They did,

Jennifer: 13:08

so they just run I don't know, it's, do you remember that episode of Friends where Phoebe just runs, like with her arms wailing and everything and Yeah, that's how the goats run.

Carey: 13:19

I was gonna say, if the goats didn't need the front ones to run with, that's exactly how they would run.

Jennifer: 13:25

Oh yeah.

Carey: 13:25

And they would make that loud squealing noise. Yeah.

Jennifer: 13:31

So I try to drive the Gator in such a manner that nobody gets crushed in stampedes jockeying for positions, but it doesn't always happen. So I guess the first order on our list here is just. How your farm is set up. Make sure that the other animals are being respectful of your birds as best you can,

Carey: 14:02

or also make sure you don't drive too fast and you're side by side'cause. We're talking about keeping your animals safe. And those das are run right in front of you.

Jennifer: 14:14

Oh, I have run over a rooster on Orpington. He laid down though. I didn't know he was there. He is on the passenger side. It was in the driveway. And he just decided that's where he needed to take a nap. Wow. And I was like, shoulda have woke up quicker. Okay. So yes, just, hazards of farm life would be first on the list. Next step would be chicken wire versus hardware cloth. I feel like we cover this a lot in a lot of different locations, but it comes up. Over and I can get that. People new to keeping chickens wouldn't understand, but chicken wire is to keep chickens in

Carey: 14:57

right.

Jennifer: 14:58

And can keep, the good way to remember this is to keep chickens in and contained so other animals can rip through it to eat them easily

Carey: 15:07

And really the only thing chicken wire is good for is to keep birds in or out. Because if you use it over the roof of a run, a hawks won't fly through it.

Jennifer: 15:19

Yeah. If you can cut it with scissors, that's about

Carey: 15:21

it.

Jennifer: 15:23

Yeah. If you can cut it with scissors, which you can chicken wire it is not gonna keep anything with any kind of claws out.

Carey: 15:32

Nah, it won't.

Jennifer: 15:34

Now, I, not at this house, but the house before, we had a Turkey pen out of a chain link. You know those storage bins they put behind like gas stations to hold all the cardboard. I got one of those, it was like 10 by 20 or something, and it was like

Carey: 15:52

eight

Jennifer: 15:52

feet tall. It was really nice. That does sound nice. Something. We think it was a mink. Actually peeled the chain link down and massacred all of my turkeys. So while chicken wires almost guaranteed not to save your birds, there's really no guarantees. If something wants in bad enough, it's gonna get in.

Carey: 16:21

Yeah. Where there's the will, there's a way.

Jennifer: 16:25

So hardware cloth is the one that has the little squares that we use a ton of it in the quail world. So if you're not doing quail, if you're doing other birds you wouldn't have such a hate relationship with it. But if you get quail you'll learn to hate hardware, cloth. It's a necessary evil.

Carey: 16:48

Yeah. And like. When working with hardware cloth, I gotta say and if you could see my leg right now, it would say it too. Be careful with the stuff. Even if it's a hundred degrees outside, if you're working, if you're gonna be like putting hardware, cloth around the bottom of your pen or your run to keep stuff out and in. You might wanna wear pants. Or your legs will look like you got into a fight with a squirrel. One of mine does right now. So the stuff's great. It's handy, but you need to be careful with it too, because those little pointy ends will scratch the crap out of you.

Jennifer: 17:31

And if you're using a lot of it a pair of dikes or wire cutters, whatever you wanna call'em, they will wear your handout pretty quickly. They do make an attachment for a drill that you can zip right through it and like butter and it's not very expensive.

Carey: 17:49

I was gonna say if you're gonna be working with hardware claws, the attachment that she's talking about, you can get it to go into one of the little impact chucks. Or a regular drill, chuck, I think they're less than 30, 40 bucks at the most. If you get a really nice one, also side grinder, put your cutting wheel on that thing. Boom, works great using the 10 snips and all those kind of cutters. That's gonna work once, but your hands are going to get raw and have blisters if you're building a cage or a pen.

Jennifer: 18:29

Yep. Yep,

Carey: 18:31

do that. Yep.

Jennifer: 18:33

Alright, next on our list is heat lamps. People love to hate on me because I hate on them. Heat lamps do not belong in a dusty straw filled space, like a barn burning barn sheds, coops, whatever you wanna call'em. It does happen. It happens regularly with heat lamps and I know people will argue with us. So go ahead and send in the heat mail, but heat lamps cause

Carey: 19:08

fires. so@ultranerdpodcast.com and look, I'll say this I will put in this little caveat if you want to get a true from a supply house,$10 red heat lamp. That is specifically designed not to explode, be all. Now, if you want to get what you will find at a lot of feed stores or even box stores like Lowe's and Tractor Supply and those type places, and I'm not knocking those'cause I love them and spent a lot of money just this past weekend at. Both of those actually buying stuff to build a pen. But those two,$3 heat lamps, those things will blow up and when they do best case scenario, your chicks are gonna want to go see what the shiny stuff is. It just hit the floor and could probably wind up ingesting some of it. Worst case scenario. A barn catches on fire and they all pass.

Jennifer: 20:27

And even if you don't even have it turned on, remove it because we're talking about birds. Yeah. They cannot tell the difference from standing on the ground looking between a floppy electrical cord or something to land on. So they'll try to jump up on it. They'll play with it, they'll pick at it. And we're not talking about just the lamps, but. Any electrical cords?

Carey: 20:55

No. They're going a light on it, like it's a perch.

Jennifer: 20:58

Yeah, and I use brooder plates. They try to perch on the electrical cords for brooder plates too. It just is what it is. They're inquisitive, they're bird brains. They're not gonna do that. Okay. Next on my list is feed bags. The string. You wouldn't think about the string, but I go through at least four bags a day. So that's four strings that I set in random places because I'm horrible about it. So the back of the Gator must have a mile of them in there, but I used to set them on top of the Quell cages. One day I know. There's just standing there and it's a place to set on. I might as well just throw it on the floor. Be safer. But anyway, then you gotta bend

Carey: 21:48

over to pick it up.

Jennifer: 21:50

I know one day I was moving some burbs around and I grabbed this hen, and another one came with her, and I cannot make this up. These hens were tied together by a feed bag string, a quail in a quail cage tied themselves together. Yep.

Carey: 22:12

I can see that.

Jennifer: 22:14

So they eat them, it could impact their crop com. Im impact compact their crop. E

Carey: 22:23

either one actually

Jennifer: 22:24

tie themselves up like those two quail did. Just, it's a chicken and they're gonna do stuff.

Carey: 22:31

And look, those of y'all that have had poultry for a hot little minute. You're like, oh yeah, nothing really surprises me anymore. And those of you that are thinking about getting into poultry, you're like, no way. But look, I promise after you've had Birch for that first year, you're gonna be me. But that second year after you've had birds for two years, nothing to surprise you anymore.

Jennifer: 22:57

Nope.

Carey: 22:58

I

Jennifer: 22:58

had some chicks last week or the week before in the barn. The last of the orpington grouts is still in the barn and they had found, one of them had found something that was blue. I still do not know what it was. Maybe the size of a dollar bill, maybe if even that, but it was bright blue. Okay. Running like lightning speed around this. What are those coops? Like five by eight or something?

Carey: 23:27

Yeah, sounds right. Just

Jennifer: 23:28

running. So the other chicks couldn't get it and nobody else. It was really funny. I should have taken a video, but the other chicks were just looking at it like, why are you running? We do not care about your little blue thing. But it was running, it really thought it had something. I don't know. What did

Carey: 23:46

it have?

Jennifer: 23:47

It was just blue. I didn't even stop. I didn't even care. Just let it have, its fun, whatever. But they also eat the styrofoam. They'll eat, they ate my insulation, my blown insulation. I paid so much for as high up as they could off the wall. They'll pretty much eat anything. Yeah.

Carey: 24:05

I do know that for a fact.

Jennifer: 24:07

The next step is moldy feed,

Carey: 24:09

which is the one thing you don't want them to eat.

Jennifer: 24:12

And we actually did a podcast with Jeff about feed, wet feed on the ground, blah, blah, blah. Probably what, about four months ago or so? So you could somewhere

Carey: 24:23

in there. Yeah.

Jennifer: 24:24

Yeah. You could go back and reference that, but then you're gonna get botulism and all that other stuff. My, what's the one that starts with the m?

Carey: 24:35

So Mi mylas, microplasma?

Jennifer: 24:39

No, not that

Carey: 24:40

one. Mycotoxins.

Jennifer: 24:41

There you go. Mycotoxins.

Carey: 24:43

Yeah. The mycotoxins are in the moldy feed.

Jennifer: 24:45

Yep.

Carey: 24:46

And there's people that have had just little chunks of feed that were moldy in a whole 50 pound sack, and they actually lost some birds that weren't that healthy. That's a pretty huge thing. That's one. Probably the biggest reason why it's so important to keep your feed stored somewhere that's not overly humid in a dry container like a barrel or something with a lid. And don't go buy six months worth of feed. I buy one to two months at the absolute most. If you're buying store-bought feed, I would not buy more than a month. If you're buying a custom blend that you know was milled like within a week or so of you getting it, then you could go 45, 60 days at the absolute max. But yeah don't hang on to it forever.

Jennifer: 25:49

Next on the list would be rocks or other objects on the ground, specifically items where they're jumping off of the roost, that's where they're landing. You don't want them bruising the pads of their feet or breaking their toes. You could end up with bumblefoot and lacerations. Broken legs, slipped tendons. You could theoretically lose your bird on a slipped tendon. I've lost one that way.

Carey: 26:21

Yeah. And like some people, like our friends that have game foul, they, they'll have roost 6, 7, 8 feet high, but they also will put anything from sand to pea, moss to straw on the bottom. So when they do come down, they're not landing on the hard ground. Aside from that, if you're not making special precautions on the ground to protect their feet, I would not recommend you to have a roost more than two to three feet high.'cause, especially if it's a big bird that you know that come down on a rock. Want you pretty bird.

Jennifer: 27:09

My highest roost are the turkeys. And they're four feet.

Carey: 27:14

Yeah,

Jennifer: 27:14

all the chickens are 20 inches.

Carey: 27:17

But I'll also say folks, if her runs were freshly cleaned out, I you could lay down and take a nap there because she mixes stall pellets, peat moss. Like she has soft soil dirt where she is it's sandy, so she's not getting bumblefoot. Other places where you have that clay-like soil that has them small pointy rocks in it, that's not good. Gets you a little rotor tiller and till that stuff up while you're at it, get some lime to kill bacteria and germs. And some peat moss and throw that in there and till it in and mix it up and fluff the dirt up. You'll be good to go.

Jennifer: 28:07

I love my new little tiller, by the way. They're

Carey: 28:10

handy as crap. I know.

Jennifer: 28:12

So next on the list, it's ventilation from wrapping the coop. Also something we'll get hate mail for. We do live in the south, so we are not going to claim to understand those who live in the Arctic Circle, but. It doesn't change the fact that a bird needs fresh air to breathe.

Carey: 28:36

The people that we know that do live Vermont, Wisconsin, Canada, they've got holes in the tops of their coops indoors to let air flow.

Jennifer: 28:50

So if you want to wrap. Your coop, while we are going to encourage you not to,

Carey: 28:59

but you do, you boo on your farm, your rules,

Jennifer: 29:03

something loose. Like maybe instead of putting painters. Plastic up and completely making like a greenhouse effect. Maybe put tarps up so that they can move with the breeze and keep the air moving. Yeah. The idea here is to keep. So when they breathe and it's cold, you know how when you go outside and you breathe out and you can see your breath? That's moisture. So if a bird is doing that all night long and you've created a greenhouse effect, then that moisture is gonna be in there. It's gonna cause respiratory problems. It's gonna maybe cause frostbite on their combs or waddles. It's just, it's a hazard to. To their health.

Carey: 29:54

It's the same concept as, people tell you don't put a water inside the house at night because it adds humidity to it. If you don't have ventilation, the they're what? They're breathing out. We'll do it.

Jennifer: 30:15

Yes. Now I am on the other side of that. I say do put water in the coop, but just that's

Carey: 30:23

because we're in, we ours are very well ventilated.

Jennifer: 30:27

If they're rail ventilated, put water in there, say

Carey: 30:30

that twice.

Jennifer: 30:31

Do not put it in a slow cooker where it's constantly steaming. I see people do that on the chicken groups. That's just putting steam inside of a coop. Now if it's open where the air can blow the steam out, that would be okay. But my reason for saying putting water inside the coop is. What happens if, for whatever reason you can't get out there to let them out, say you had an emergency in the middle of the night and you are gone for 48 hours and you don't let'em out, then they're just gonna die from dehydration. So it's more of a emergency type situation as far as I'm concerned.

Carey: 31:15

Yeah, and like for me, my, my watering system. For 90% of my birds and one of my weekend projects coming up will get the rest of'em. But it's all automated and I do that because crap happens. And I'm okay if a bird's feeder is empty for a day. I'm not okay if a bird has no water. Because they're, they're like humans in the sense that they can go a while, couple days without feet, three, four even happens all the time when you ship'em. But going without water, they can't do that so long. So keep that in mind.

Jennifer: 32:05

So

Carey: 32:05

it is better to have water in a coop. That has airflow at the top in negative temperatures than it is to have birds be freezing and thirsty.

Jennifer: 32:24

Correct. I agree. Roost bars, I personally use boards two by fours for the chickens and two by sixes or two by eights, whatever we got laying around. We don't go buy boards, we just have stuff and we just use those flat side up for the birds. Make sure they're not metal because metal freezes and then that could cause frostbite that way. Also make sure that they're big enough, especially if you're in a colder environment or even here, it drops to zero for a couple weeks, it seems every year. Because if it's a flat board and then they roost down on top of their feet, then their feet are covered by their body heat.

Carey: 33:16

It keeps your toes nice and cozy.

Jennifer: 33:18

Yeah. They are 108 degrees. Yeah. So yeah. Toasty toes, just keep that in mind. If you're giving them like a closet rod or something, then their toes are gonna be curled around it. And then the on the bottom side, they're exposed to the cold weather. The other thing is I see people using branches and stuff for roosts and justify it by saying they used to roost in trees. That is true. They did use to roost in trees. Growing up about a hundred.

Carey: 33:50

Years before we domesticated them.

Jennifer: 33:52

Growing up, my ch the chickens we had dad got game foul after he got rid of the white rocks, but they lived in the woods and roosted in the trees. The difference is they chose the branch size from all the trees in the whole forest. They would choose what they needed in order to be safe, be warm. Be level, whatever. They also

Carey: 34:18

have limbs and leaves and pine straw blocking wind for them

Jennifer: 34:24

right

Carey: 34:25

when they're like that.

Jennifer: 34:26

So a crooked old branch might not be big enough around in diameter to keep their toes from freezing. That would be one concern. A second concern would be if they're constantly roosting at an angle, say they are in a crook or something. Then they could get a crooked keel bone. Yeah.

Carey: 34:50

And people that have those, we're not saying, oh my God, you did this so wrong. A lot of people use tree limbs and stuff because they're repurposing and they're taking advantage of what they have, and that's awesome. What I actually have some tree limbs in some of my pens, but what I did was I used a piece of five and a quarter deck board, so it's a little more than three quarter it's about three quarters of an inch thick. It's not a one inch, and it's almost six inches wide. One by six if that's what you can find. And I cut sections and I just screwed'em to poles. Some of my breeding pens are actual dog kennels that have the two by four wire in them. So you know, you slide the two by four up. It's. The small end is up. And what I did was I took some five and a quarter deck board, stuck it in place. A lot of times I would start, I cut'em a couple feet, whatever, put'em on either side that way and have to worry about the roost pole sliding out.'cause sometimes chickens get a little rambunctious, especially turkeys, but when turkeys are in those, they get up there on that five and a quarter, it's. Anything is six eight inches wide. They pop up, they land, and then they feel sturdy and they sit down and they can actually relax and be as stress-free as a bird can.

Jennifer: 36:25

My first chicken coop as a adult, we used a C log. It was big. It wasn't like one inch diameter, it was like eight inches diameter

Carey: 36:36

but a log like that would be awesome because it being cedar would also help keep mites and pest away. Exactly. Smart thinking.

Jennifer: 36:47

Now my, my good friend that lives in Michigan, she asked me what to use for roost when she was building her new coop. And I told her if I was starting over, I would do sawhorses. And she asked why? And I said when you go to clean everything, what's in your way? And it's the roost. I was always in your way. You always have to dodge it to go. Collect something or say, you can either make them on the

Carey: 37:10

hands where you have to, pick'em up and tie'em.

Jennifer: 37:13

Do all

Carey: 37:13

that. Or you get a sawhorse wherever you go in there and take your foot and slide it outta the way.

Jennifer: 37:18

Yep. Or take it outside and wash it.

Carey: 37:20

Yeah.

Jennifer: 37:20

Or and everybody always has short pieces of something laying around just to make sawhorses around. I have probably 10 sawhorses now that Dave has made me outta just scrap wood that's probably 18 inches tall. They're, yeah. And that's what I put in the barn for the grow outs inside to start playing on so that when I put'em outside, they don't do the mosh pit thing, they actually start roosting.

Carey: 37:50

Yeah. And side note, three, regular stud, 96 inch two by fours. If you cut, outta two of'em, you can get 6 32 inch length pieces. All right, so you got the top, the middle bottom? To make that eye beam. Outta two of them. And then you use the third one and cut it to make the legs for the other two. So three, two by fours will make you two roost. Because the first, like I, one time I was at your house, I was like, why? Why in the crap do you have two foot tall horses? Yeah, they're all over. David. Is he making stuff now sitting on a bucket? And when you told me that I was like, that's smart. And now I've got quite a few of them and actually bought some two by fours the other day when I was getting all the other crap to make subar'cause. When you put your roof poles between the wire from one side to the other, yeah, it's convenient. But like in a grow out situation, I had a two by four between two, I'd do that in the corners and like them, son of a guns would get on there, as many as they could fit. And I had one piece that was a one buy. And my wife and I kept debating on how long it would take for it to either fall or break. And when I finally replaced all of those in that pen with sawhorses, that thing, like if you took the two sides that were stuck through the fence, there was a six seven inch drop. From where they, like so many of'em had sat on it. And I mean that, that couldn't be sturdy. So they're trying to sleep and wiggling and balancing and stuff like that. So soft horses are easy. And the next thing that we have to talk about is using tarps for roofs. And I'll say this. Even in the south, we get snow. I had a chicken pen. One of those neat ones that you can get off of Amazon for 200 bucks. It's a 10 by 20 nice little pointy roof on it. The wire that you need to throw away to go around the whole thing and. I had over the top,'cause you know it's pretty steep little roof. But I had used a tarp for the roof.'cause in my mind, it's gonna provide shade, keep rain off part of the run. All those benefits. Perfect. Plenty of angle. The one time we get rain that snows. Hey, this thing's got like several inches of snow gathered up upon it. I thought, man, it's cool. And then the daylight came and the underlayment started to freeze. And then the next night, chickens were all over the place because it caved in. And if I'd have had the, if I'd had my roost built into it, I'd have been out that too. But nope, I. Tossed my saw horses out of it as I dug through and collected everything.'cause I was not happy. And that's one of the reasons why I love my Lummi coop.'cause they don't break. I had a freaking concrete block land on one of them. Didn't mess it up. There's a scratch on the rubber and at the peak of the roof, like three or four stitches came undone. When a concrete block landed on it. So tarps like if you do those, you need to be extremely careful for the roof. Take precautions, poke holes in it. Like after, after it rains that first time.'cause I understand, you're chicken in on the budget that first time it rains. If you need to take a knife box cutter or something out there, find the spots where it collects. Cut you a slip. Otherwise it's gonna crash.

Jennifer: 42:23

We tell you funny,

Carey: 42:25

I love funnies,

Jennifer: 42:27

so I had a really good friend and she knew I was looking for turkeys and found some and brought'em to me. This is probably 10 years ago now.

Carey: 42:36

They were

Jennifer: 42:36

rural palms and. I was not prepared, thank you. I'm not ready for them. So she dropped'em off. There were six of them, and they were probably about three months old. Okay. We didn't know. We didn't have anywhere to put'em. They were too big to just go somewhere. And so we went out there and we had woods on at that house, and we just took some fencing that we had and made like a triangle fence between three trees. Just wrapped it around, sounds perfect. Threw a tarp over the top of it. It rained like 12, 15 inches it seemed like, and I didn't think anything about it. I went out there the next day to feed'em and it had created a bowl of water, and the six turkeys were smashed up against the fence between the tarp and the fence. Just looking at me like, really, this is how you're gonna treat. I

Carey: 43:31

thought you looked like you're a nice lady now you got squished up against this. We would've been fine getting wet.

Jennifer: 43:38

So those turkeys are the ones that ended up in the 10 by 20 chain link fence that ultimately got broken into by a weasel or a mink or something and got eaten anyway. So sometimes you just, you can't win for losing sometimes it seems

Carey: 43:56

And I'm gonna say this. When it comes to putting together facilities for your birds don't cheap out. And I say that because I know we want to, because we want to get chickens. We want to have'em because they're cute, they're fun to play with, they're nice to talk to. They won't tell your secrets, whatever your reason is, but. Learn from our mistakes. That's the whole reason that we talk about a lot of this random, the, like this random crap we've done. It is a lot of it's stuff we've done and I found out that you can either do it cheap three or four times over the course of five years, or you can do it once. And not do it again. And you know when we're gonna have animals, regardless of their purpose, you wanna be good stewards of them and you want to protect them and keep'em safe because. At the end of the day, you don't want to weasel eating your chicken. You want to eat it. If that's what it's for. Or you don't want a snake getting your eggs. You want to get'em. So do everything you can to provide them the best housing possible and take care of'em and let'em have a good life while they have it. Because we raise beef cattle and them sign guns are fed really well. Really good place to get out of the rain when the morons choose to get out of the rain. So take care of'em. Keep'em safe so you can enjoy'em as long as you want to. I actually saw and rip sent me this today and I was mind blown.'cause we talk about how older chickens get. This, that and the other. Probably no surprise, that's actually a Guinness thing, believe it or not, and the Guinness Book of World record had a chicken. Now I can't find it to save my life, but I wanna say it was like 18 years old.

Jennifer: 46:20

Remember when Jody Chicken was on talking about the showmanship? She said that they had a chicken that lasted 18 or 19 years.

Carey: 46:27

Yeah, so I haves,

Jennifer: 46:30

I have two that are 11 or 12.

Carey: 46:32

I mean mine, my foundation, trio, rooster of one of my game families that I have is. He was like 13 and a half, almost 14 when he passed, and he'd seen some tough times.

Jennifer: 46:55

Yeah. Those old birds have lived through all of our mistakes and kept on trucking.

Carey: 47:02

Yeah.

Jennifer: 47:03

All right. This was just some of the stuff that we've done and passing on our wisdom so you don't have to repeat it.

Carey: 47:10

Yeah.

Jennifer: 47:12

See you next time.

Carey: 47:14

Take care y'all.