The Threes C's of Chicks: Better Hatches, Better Broods, Better Birds

In this episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, we break poultry husbandry down into something simple, practical, and proven: the rule of threes.

Every bird goes through three critical stages of life — incubation, brooding, and grow-out — and in each stage, there are three things that matter most. Miss them, and problems follow. Get them right, and everything gets easier.

We dive into:

• Egg selection for better hatches (size, shape, shell quality, and why pullet eggs are a hard no)
• Why constant candling hurts more than it helps — and when checking eggs actually makes sense
• Turning, tilting, airflow, and avoiding incubator disasters
• Brooding basics done right: heat, dryness, airflow, and why floors matter more than people think
• Heat lamps vs brooder plates and how different species really behave
• Grow-out fundamentals: feeder space, moisture control, and consistent growth
• Why we don’t medicate, how natural selection strengthens flocks, and what ethical culling really means
• Common myths, bad habits, and hard truths most breeders won’t say out loud

This episode is equal parts education, experience, and straight talk — no gimmicks, no hype, just what actually works in real barns with real birds.

Whether you raise chickens, quail, turkeys, or gamefowl, this episode will help you hatch stronger chicks, brood them cleaner, and grow them out healthier.

👉 Like, subscribe, and share — and if this helped even one bird do better, it was worth it.

Join Carey of Show Pro Farm Supply and Jennifer of Bryant's Roost as we delve into chickens and quail (mostly)  to help you enjoy your birds more and worry less. Backyard chicken keeping shouldnt be stressfull, let's get back to the simple days

Valley Hatchery is a proud sponsor of Poultry Nerds, find more at ValleyHatchery.com

Transcript

0:39

Hi. So today we're gonna discuss the threes, and what I mean by the threes is you need three things to get better hatches, three things for brooding and three things for grow outs. Coincidentally, this three different important stages of bird's life. So that's a lot of threes. But on this episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, we're gonna talk about the threes of chicks. I just made that up. I just decided to do the three things that seemed important to me to do it. But if you think about it though, so okay, so we'll start with the egg. You wanna select a good egg? If it's if it's a quail you don't want to pick a eight or a nine gram egg unless it's a button. You'll want a smaller one. Then, you kinda want those 10, 12, 14, 15 gram eggs. If we're talking about a banum chicken or something along those lines, or game foul, the smaller, like even silkies. You're gonna want a round, a 45, 47 gram egg, something like that. Not the pulit eggs, large foul, 55 ish, something like that. But I do have a question. I don't have dinosaur chickens. On your buffs, what size egg do you look for? When you're selecting the eggs for incubating, you're like the second person this year to ask me that. And I don't know that I've ever actually weighed an orpington egg, but since I know how much a breast egg weighs, I would have to guess it's in the 50 gram area. I just know what a pull egg looks like and a full size egg. I know the difference with my orp. Once you have a line for so long, Oh yeah. What they're doing. And so I just know, and I'm just really picky. You don't wanna pick pull, you never wanna set a pull egg. And that's awful tempting. I'm over it. I, but. Okay. Hatcha. Holics Anonymous. It should be a real thing because you know that turban sound. No. Resist. Resist. You must always resist the temptation. Yes, that is definitely a thing. And it's bad juju to sell. Pull eggs. I'm just gonna put that out there. But no, that's a jerk move. Yes, that's what that is. But people do it want any, you don't want any torpedo looking eggs. You don't want any. Now excluding Silkies, I know those kind of come in different shapes, but to, yeah. Maybe I don't know anything about Silkies. Maybe that's just bad selection. I have no idea. So do they come in golf ball shapes? I think they do. I've seen'em. But should they, I don't know. That would be a silky person question, right? But the orpington eggs, they just look like eggs. They're eggs shaped you, so do they weigh about the ones that you would select? Would they weigh about the same size as your breasts? I think they're slightly lower. Okay. So I set breast eggs at 55 to 60, which I do weigh them. So I don't know why I weigh one and not the other one. Yeah, but just for reference, if you do 55 to 60 for the breast, then you know 50 to, in that range for an eight or nine pound chicken. It seems kinda small for that huge of a chicken, but that's just how they're bread, that's just how they're bred, yeah. Some, like a legger and weigh, lays a larger egg than their body size'cause they're bred that way. And so I used to have some, I had some white leggins. Because, they lay really good eggs. That was a story that I gave my wife when I first wanted to get back into chickens. Just gonna get a few. So my little white leggings, they're, heck, they're smaller than dang. Game foul, they're probably four pounds maybe. And they're, they'll pop out a daggum 60 gram egg. And I'm like, whoa, girl. You okay? But that's a thing for them. The extra large eggs and Yeah, they hatch out. It's pretty small. Yeah. So it may just be my line of Orpingtons. You've got a, you've got pros and cons to everything. And so to get the size of the bird that I get, you have to sacrifice laying. And that may also be sacrificing excise. So I don't know now'cause like my reds. And other people that I know that have other standard bred birds, they all say the egg laying sucks. A couple of weeks about all you're getting, three, four you ain't getting 6, 5, 6, 7 of them. Yeah. No, I would say the orp, my Orpingtons. Maybe three, four eggs max per week. Per bird. That's it. And only maybe four months out of the year maybe. Yeah. They're kinda like turkeys. Then they go broy, then they're nasty. I got one that bites like a dog, if I can figure out which one she is.'cause I'm walking across, they're all like in a mass. I go in, okay, so story time. So I go in to feed the Orpingtons and the main coop, which, I have 50 in there, right? They run and a counterclockwise. Circle around me. Is that because we're in the northern hemisphere? So if you're listening, no them things waddle. If you're in the southern hemisphere, do your chickens run clockwise or counterclockwise? Because mine run backwards. Counterclockwise. Now you're gonna have to pay attention tomorrow when you feed George. So mine running a circle around you, like I'm sitting here thinking like, what? They do. I'm and you messed me up. Okay. So then I go to feed'em, and of course they're all running around me, like a tornado. And one of them every morning grabs a hold of my right. Calf and bites the fire out of it, and I, the one in front of me gets kicked, so she just gets kicked by default. I've got a Turkey I've gotta grow out that's got some brass hens, some red hens, and some turkeys in it. Really right there. It it's pretty big. It's bigger than your runs. Okay. And like this one Turkey all the time will, like right at the back of my knee. And I have, we haven't connected yet when I, but one day I'm probably gonna slap it right in the head. We're gonna have a Turkey sandwich, huh? And hit, because, I've got to where I can move my leg. It's it'll be like, okay, fine, whatever. But other days it's hurry up and dump that crap out.'cause I've got one of the troughs is a six footer and the other ones are four footers that I put the feed in. And like that one, it's pig. I'm you, so you've got Turkey grow outs this time of year. Wow. Yeah, mine haven't started laying yet. They were thinking about it, and then we got cold. My, my Turkey grow out is they're a few months old. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah. No, I ain't gonna pulse. We got digressed. That's okay. Is that a word? Digressed? So selection. We got our selection. We talked about the shape. Do you look at pitting? You don't want any you want it to be kind? Not, maybe, not perfectly smooth, but I don't want mountains and craters in mine. And if, for me, if it ain't supposed to be spotted or speckled or anything like that, I don't want it. If it is supposed to be, then I'm gonna make sure, those are the way they're supposed to be. But like on my reds it is supposed to be a brown egg, not a spotted brown egg or nothing like that. So I'm not doing any spotted eggs. I won't set'em. I don't get any spotted eggs. I don't like'em myself personally, but only, yeah, they taste them. I don't do that. I got told yesterday, brown eggs tastes funny. So look, I have a customer that buys feed from me. And this dude says his wife must like he's got some white leggings because she will not eat a brown egg. She said it tastes different. I just looked at him and he was like, Hey man, happy wife, happy life. I ain't arguing with it. I get it. I understand. I can't tell the difference, but that's what she wants. That's why we have her. Gotcha. I said, Hey I understand the, to one of the other things, because we were talking about the three things to get a better hatch is, and I see people doing this all the time. I candle on this day and I candle on that day, and this one's not fertile and I'm not sure about this one. How often do you candle your eggs? Never. Okay. Mostly never. The big eggs, like the Turkey eggs, the duck eggs, or the chicken eggs. I will candle when I'm taking'em out of the setter, but when I say I candle, that means I plop the tray on my desk. And I take the can learn and I go bam. I don't pick up the egg. If it has an air shell, it goes in the basket. If it's clear, it stays and I dump'em at the end. So for me, I'll slide the tray out. I've got and Rebecca shared this on her page a while back. It's a green like laser pointer thingy. That's. I hope it don't blind chicks, but it's pretty dang bright. But I will slide the thing out and I'll just and that's as quick as it goes. On those big eggs, like you said, the turkeys and stuff, because when they blow up in your incubator. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about that for just a minute. People say that the candle, because they don't want an egg exploding. So that has been a big topic in our new Facebook group incubation masterclass. And people think that their eggs will explode. Now, I am willing to go out on a limb and say that I have incubated and hatched hundreds of thousands of eggs at this point. I have never had one explode. Let me tell you something. Be glad. Yeah, because that's what got kicked me kicked outta the house with one of my original incubator, the big one. And I don't I personally think that it was my fault because I put an egg in there. That I found probably, oh, that I maybe didn't collect for a few days during the summer, and then it just popped up outta nowhere. You know how if they lay on the ground or in shavings or something, they'll hide'em? And yeah, I think that's what happened because since I have refined my practices of egg collection, I have not had that happen. Because I didn't realize that it was like a game of hide and go seek. Until the second time that happened. But when you, way back when you would you real eggs for Easter egg hunting. And sometimes you'd find one or two with a lawnmower a few months later. That's about how the smell goes. No, I agree that they stink, but I've never had one explode. Even with all of the smells in my barn, which I'm accustomed to at this point, is what I'm told, that if I walk in there and I can smell one off and like it's not a violent explosion. They ooze and they have an odor about themselves. And you can find it because it, it looks like great stuff is on the outside of the egg, is what it looks like. Yeah. The spray foam. Yes. Looks like the spray foam leaked out of it. Yeah. And so that's the egg you want to find. And you wanna find it very carefully. Now, I'm not saying I've never had one of those because I have ducks and that's what's gonna happen, but. I've never had one explode. Now, when you smell it, you go to your incubator and you very carefully pull the trays until you find it. You don't wanna disturb it. No. And then you take a plastic bag over, like a grocery bag over your hand, and you very carefully pick it up because you don't wanna squeeze it. Yeah. Very careful, and then you very carefully turn it out and tie it in a knot, and then you go outside. Yeah. Now if you're feeling adventurous, you could not tie it and throw it. It will explode in the air from the force of throwing it. And you will smell it for a while, for a few days. Depending on the heat outside, so Yep. We we do just, we throw'em anyway, but we have pigs and I, once the pigs are gone, I might not do it anymore, but I only have that problem with the ducks because the ducks like, you need to keep one or two pigs. Nope. The ducks will bury their eggs and they get missed sometimes. But now I'm I guess don't care at this point. If I even think that egg has been there more than two days in cool weather, it just gets chucked. It's just, it's not worth it. Nope, but I'm getting everybody trained to lay a nest though. If you can do that, that solves a lot of problems. Yes, it really does. Milk crates and straw is what I have decided that the breasts really and they like to throw out most of it and kind. I don't know anything that don't love a milk crate. With some straw. I know the Orpingtons don't. I gotta still really Nope, nope. They can't get up in it. Probably the Orpingtons are like the ducks. They just oh, something fell outta my butt over there. That's what the ducks do. They just walk across the yard and Oh, it, oh, what was that? Oh. Orpingtons are about the same way. Okay. So we are not candling people. We don't promote it in our Facebook group. If you wanted to candle before you set just to make sure there's no cracks to prevent a oozing egg, I can get behind that. Yeah. I cannot get behind. Fixing cracks with wax because that's going to impact the oxygen exchange during incubation. I can't get behind opening the incubator 17 times. Yeah, that's the biggest thing for me is even though with a cabinet incubator, they recuperate pretty fast when they're open and closed it, it is still, it's a sudden climate change. And that's just not good for hatching. Period. And again, when we've talked about people, I always hear people say when they're outside, yes, I get it. But when you take the hatching away from Mother Nature and try to do it yourself, you gotta be precise. So I read a study actually yesterday and it, and they watched, hens, they were leggings over Rhode Island Reds, I think. Yep. And they, there are certain times during the 21 days that you, that the embryo can withstand a temperature change. And if you candle during those times, you won't cause as much damage Will. These researchers watched the Broody hens, they only got off their nests in the middle of warm days. Yeah. Never at night and never during those periods of development that it would hurt the eggs. Okay. That's so Mother Nature knows. Yeah. And I. Chickens are dumb. They do dumb stuff. But when it comes to stuff like that it is like with feed, when they eat feathers, they know that feathers contain methionine. So when it is like they know what's going on, but sometimes they just do some of the dumbest crap. I don't get it. Okay. Last is turning. You gotta turn your eggs. I like mine tilted. Okay, so during all of this research and stuff. Tilting at a 38 to 45 degree angle is optimum. Ooh, now we're going getting dirty y'all. Yeah. Yeah. That's for chicken eggs. Now, there is some back and forth on quail eggs that they may do better on their sides because they have more surface area that way than a chicken egg. And their shells are thinner. The problem with the study is he only said, I got some thin shelled quail eggs. Thinner than chicken is what they do. They compare'em to chicken. So the problem with the study is he only said I use standardized incubators. He didn't say I tilted'em. I tilted'em at this degree. I rolled'em. I. Propped the incubator. He didn't say how he did it. So that that ain't as steady. I know exactly right. But he put quill eggs, vertical fat, side up, vertical skinny side up on their side and no turn. Those were the four. What was better on their side. Again, we don't know. Were they on their side and rocked, tilted, or I was gonna say, was they tilted or rolled? Or rolled? We don't know. But I'm gonna go on a limb and assume tilted because that would be a standard incubator. You couldn't, ah, you couldn't put'em vertical in a nature. 360 style. So if you put'em all in the same incubator, but in different, might have tested, it would have to be tilted. I don't know. I could test it. It wouldn't be hard. But it would make sense because the quill egg would, I could see that. But again, we gotta cram more in there, right? What we don't wanna do, when you're sticking 2000 eggs in an incubator yeah. One or two just really doesn't, what we don't wanna do is put emu eggs, goose eggs, chicken eggs, and quail eggs all the same time in a small incubator. No. You want somewhat similar. Three things for better brooding. You gotta keep'em hot. Dry. And you gotta feed'em good. They also need some air flow. I'm gonna pick that one up for the dry because they need air. They need to breathe. Yeah. Not just, I saw I was scrolling today and I saw somebody said Help. My eggs. I just got notification that my hatching eggs have shipped and I don't have an incubator yet. You did not see that post. I was like, dude, procrastinate much. I thought I was bad with procrastination, but dang, it really kills another post that I see all the time. A lot lately is best Amazon incubator for under$50 and go. I'm like, yeah, that says Amazon gift cards. Look, those folks that spending a hundred dollars on some hatch and eggs to put'em in a$50 incubator. Crack me up. Sorry. And if that's you, Hey, I still love you, but don't be upset. But for me, I'm better. Don't be upset when you don't have a great hatching rate. Don't pay 10. Don't pay it a hundred dollars for a dozen eggs and put'em in a.$45 incubator. No. Hey, practice. First we're talking about recruiting. You went back to incubating. Sorry, you got on a soapbox. Okay. So when we say heat I am personally not a fan of heat lamps. I don't think that's a secret. Do you use heat lamps Only when brooding outside. Okay. And I know that sounds weird, but I can brood outside, done it successfully. It works, and they need a crap load of heat. Yep. So it's really dependent on the time of year and what you're brooding. So game birds like button quail or turkeys are gonna want to be a whole lot hotter, longer. Then ducks who may only want heat for 47 seconds. You've never brooded ducks, have you? Yeah. So you take'em out of the incubator and you put'em in the brooder and they look at you and they climb up on top of the brooder plate and they're like, yeah, we're good. But that's the thing I like about a brooder plate. It keeps the ground warm. As long as you keep your brooder elevated. It keeps the ground warm. They can get under it when they're cool, they're smart enough to get out from under it when they're not. And it works. They don't overheat or get too cold as long as you've got everything else adequate. If you got this ginormous 250 wat light bulb beaming down into brooder, they don't really have room to escape. No it has to have a cool spot. If you are using a brooder plate though, make sure that you have it tilted so that they can touch their backs to it at some location, and that will allow them to choose how much heat that they want. Just like you, like to be hotter or colder than somebody else. Same concept. The sec. The biggest thing that I see in winter brooding that people miss, and this is just experience is they incubate on the floor. Put'em in a cardboard box or a tub or something right on the floor. And your floor is cold. My, I have hardwood. My hardwood is cold right now. It is cold. And my feet get cold when I'm on it. If your feet get cold touching the floor, then that cold is seeping through the floor of the brooder and we will chill the chicks from the bottom up. So we think about room temperature and we think about. Heat lamp temperature and brooder plate temperature, but we forget about the floor, so make sure the brooders themselves are up. Put'em on a piece of four by four, or I have mine on furniture dollies, so I can move them around or up on a table. Table and you catch some things on sale at, oh dang, I love those things. Harbor freight, and you put your things on and move around. That works out really good. I like how you got the tubs up on a shelf. Just anything to let the room temperature circulate underneath of the rotter doesn't have to be a lot. If you don't even have anything, maybe a towel would be better. But if you're on, if you're up north or even here right now, we're, it's so cold. The floor's cold and that's gonna come up through the floor of the rooter. Yeah. It's not good. Keep that in mind. And it, this takes a few degrees to chill a bird. They have zero capability of regulating their own body temperature until they're 10 days old is when it starts. But different species will like more heat. So I have found that the buttons like to be super hot and turkeys like to be super hot, but like the cix quail, 10 days and they're ready to run out in the snow, I think by themselves like toddlers. Yeah, I, so what I do is with mine that I've got some in my ginormous brooder now, and when it got to the point where I think it was like 10 days, not quite two weeks in, I just turned it up on its side. The plate, instead of having it like this, I just turn it up on a side and then a day or two goes by and I come by and they're not even checking it out. I was like, oh, unplugging that. And I don't even unplug mine anymore. I have window screens on the top of all my brooders, and I'll just take'em out and set'em up on top because, I'm just washing them and. Redoing the next day, basically. Yeah. I didn't think about the making it to where, getting it to where they wouldn't mess on it. Yeah. But picking up on his, like it just sticks up on his side so I didn't have to take it out. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. All right. So we've got'em hot, we've got'em dry. I use stall pellets. To keep everybody dry. Stop pellets are great if your water tips over stop pellets turns to sawdust. Chicks are still dry if you put'em on a puppy pad. Depending on how much water you tipped over may still be wet. Hope it ain't much'cause they won't soak up much or flakes. The water will pull underneath of them, get moldy and icky and cold. So I have used them all over the years. You just tell everybody you use puppy pads and I have been using stall pellets for. What going on two years now, and I don't know that how it could be any better. You don't even have to change'em.'cause I only leave mine in there for a week and then they go out on wire. So you don't even have to change'em, you just have to stir'em. I have a, like a two inch putty knife out there. And I just stir it up, make sure everything's nice and dry and stir up and done dump them. At the end of two week at the end of the week and move on. Yeah. I like that too. And pellets work. Here's a little secret. If you have a water that leaks into your poop tray, you can take the stall pellets that are unused out of your brooders that you're fixing to dump. And put'em in that poop tray and you go wait about five minutes and come back and it will be sawdust. So they're reusable into your poop trays. All right, so next up we're gonna do grow outs up to eight weeks. Not like forever grow outs. Just up to eight weeks. And they're pretty simple to me, you don't want'em wet'cause they get cold. They're, they're little still. They can't regulate their body that they can regulate it, but not. If they're soaking wet, no. You need an abundance of feeder space. A lot of people will get just these little feeders or little round ones that comes with a starter kit and if you just got a couple birds, few, that's great, but depending on what kind of bird you're growing out. You need anywhere from one to two inches of feeder space per bird. So they can all, you want'em to all be able to eat at the same time. That way they grow consistently because if you got some hogging, the feed trough or the feed pan or whatever you're feeding in, and then you know you got these others that. After to eat what's left over, you're gonna wind up with runts. And that's not gonna work. Yep. Yep. Feeder space. Even if it's free feeding, which you should be at this stage. You still need more than you think. Feeder space. I know. I have been guilty of not giving them enough. And you can see, I like to do. Like at minimum of one inch up until like probably three weeks. Is this quail or chickens? Chickens. Okay. Quail can go longer on one inch, but with chickens after about three to four weeks, I really two inches perch. It quail, I eat one inch per quail Is. Enough, probably all their life. Their heads are Yeah, true. Not that big. That's true. And when they're all sticking their head out the front of the cage, it's probably one inch wide. Anyway. All right. We've left the most controversial subject for the last, so we both feed good quality, obviously, and no medicated feed around here. So Cocc acidosis is brought in. It is not just in the air it, you have to bring it in. So as long as your hands are clean, your bro's clean, and the birds are dry, you should not have a coccidiosis problem. You could make a coccidiosis problem, you can throw some dirt in there. There is a breeder that does that. You can have nasty brooders and. Or with weak immune systems. So the last subject we are gonna talk about is natural selection. So I had somebody come pick up some breast checks yesterday from me. Okay. And one was looking a little puny, meaning standing there, just, I don't know, puny looking, right? Not running around like the other ones. But it had always looked like that. And it was probably three weeks old. And by the time I was stirring'em up, putting'em in a box, it was fine. I couldn't even tell which one it was. Anyway. I just told the lady, I said, look I lay no guarantees to it because I don't medicate if they're going to be sickly, I want'em to drop at this stage. I don't wanna put three months worth of feed into'em for them to be weak. And so that's the natural selection. If they were out in the wild, the. You always wanna be faster than the slowest one, right? Because the bear's gonna eat the slowest one if it's chasing you. So the weakest one is what feeds the raccoons or the owls or the whatever's out there, right? And so we should think like that in the barns, because we only want the most vigorous birds as breeders because we. Want a strong, healthy line going forward, and that is why you won't find any medications. I know in my barn, and I'm 99.9% sure in your barn. We just don't do it. I got some garlic and some oregano. Yeah, I got that too. But I've never bought ed or anything like that. Bottled that's like this tall, that kills every kind of bug that you could ever have. No, I don't medicate Jack. I don't even like taking medicine myself. I do make a tincture that's garlic, echinacea, and cayenne. And I, my chickens get it and I've taken it. It's rough. The fix it that I make it works really well. It's rough. The the cayenne will bring tears to your eyes and a lot of coughing, but, I like to be very thoughtful of what I put into my body. And since I do put my chickens, I do eat them, and I do eat the eggs. I like not knowing that there's no crazy hocus pocus that's in there, and that's a personal preference. If you want to do it on your farm, hey, your farm, your rules, your money, your chickens. That's right. But just something to think about if I medicated that chick that looked puny to keep it alive to make the sale, is that the kind of chick that you want to buy as a buyer? And I don't, therefore I don't do it. Yeah. That, that's me. I don't want somebody to be like I bought these from you, and it sucked. You didn't buy it for me. You stressed it. Now you can stress it when you take it home. That's a whole different ball game. But I would, as far as would I would've ended that thing beforehand. Yeah. So you want to buy from a breeder that Kohls hard because moving it to your farm is a stressor and it needs to be healthy enough to withstand that stress. Yeah. And there's a lot of controversy behind the coaling thing. If you buy a used car and you take it home and it breaks down, you're gonna be mad, right? If you get a chicken and you take it home and a dumped chicken, you're gonna be mad. And we just don't want people mad at us. So we try to make sure we have the best we can. I ain't saying crap, don't happen. Natural selection is a thing. And that is, to me, that's what helps keep a flock strong and vigorous is those three sets of threes. We hope that helps somebody. One person at least. Yeah. Maybe have a better experience with their birds this year. Yep. And be busy. Make sure you give us a and subscribe and follow and hit the bell. All that jump. And if you didn't like this, hey, we're sorry. Maybe next week. Talk to you later. All right. Bye.