Think Big Start Small

Special thank you and credit to Dalia Monterroso the President of Chickenlandia for allowing me to air this interview. Original interview can be found at the Bawk Tawk podcast dated June 4, 2026. All credit goes to Dalia of Chickenlandia and the wonderful folks who help to make these possible. Become a member of the Chickenlandia Nation today!   https://welcometochickenlandia.com/meet-dalia-monterroso/

Transcript

Welcome And Crossover Intro

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey guys, and thank you so much for taking time to listen to the show. And today we're going to be doing something very different. Uh recently I was a guest on the Chicken Landia podcast with Dahlia Monterosso, and she has graciously given me permission to bring this uh interview over to my channel and let you guys hear it. If you do not know who Dahlia is, look up Chicken Landia uh now. She is just an amazing person and an incredible chicken chicken keeper and backyard uh uh chicken enthusiast, just like you and I are. She is one of the best out there when it comes to the knowledge that she has about chickens and just a super, super person. We we've actually become friends uh over about the last, oh golly, I guess, uh six or eight months. I interviewed her. If you uh listen to a lot of my show, you know that I've interviewed her on here. And she asked me to come on her show. And what you're going to be listening to is the interview uh with to me, you know, which is cra crazy, uh, on on her show. So without further ado, let's get everything started. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Are we ready, Papa? Hello friends, and welcome to Chicken Every Day, a podcast for you, the backyard chicken and my host is my papa.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

This show will help you learn all about how backyard chicken keeping can be fun, entertaining, and stress-free. Here's your host, the president of Chicken Landia!

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Hello,

Chicken Landia Setup And Sponsor

SPEAKER_03 1:59

friends. Welcome to Chicken Landia and welcome to Bok Talk, your 100% friendly backyard chickens show. I am your host, Dahlia. I'm a backyard chicken educator who has found peace and joy in the chicken yard. And it is my mission to help you find that too. Okay, friends. Today I have a very special interview with my friend Gary. So Gary is a backyard chicken educator just like me. Um, he started a little bit after I did, and he's just got such a kind and gentle energy. Um, it's just been a pleasure to chat with him. I was actually on his podcast and on his YouTube channel, and then I invited him to come onto this one. So I hope you enjoy this interview. There's a lot of good information, and even if you already have chickens, you're past like the new chicken keepers stage. It's still an entertaining conversation just because he's full of so much wisdom. I do want to say this is the first podcast that I have recorded in my new office. And I have chickens in this office. So I'm not sure if you can hear them in the background. They're like pecking and scratching and making noises and laying eggs and doing their thing. Um, so yeah, they're in an enclosure in here. They're tiny little chickens, and I'm waiting on their outdoor enclosure still. So I just want to let you know if you do hear something strange, it's not a uh Sasquatch in my office. It's it's tiny chickens. I also want to let you know that this podcast, of course, was brought to you by the folks at My Favorite Chicken and Small Pet Select. If you would like to support this podcast, please go and check those links out in the show notes. Of course, I will leave a coupon code for you. All right. Without further ado, here is the interview.

Meet Gary And His Channels

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Hi, Gary.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Well, hello, Dahlia. How are you?

SPEAKER_03 4:11

I'm good. It is it is great to finally get a chance to talk to you. I should let my audience know we have been trying to put this interview together for about three months.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Oh boy, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

And, you know, you have been so understanding about my health stuff and everything, and really supportive to me. And I just, I think you might be the nicest chicken man on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Well, you you know, when you're when you're dealing with the president, one must use decorum and tact. So, yes, it has been my pleasure to to do this for you. Uh, I I've watched you for some years now. So just the idea that you're going to interview me. Uh I I've made it to the top now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Well, um, I really appreciate you having you as a you know, a listener and a viewer. Um, you know, it's great for me when I have other educators that I can talk to and kind of relate with because I'm still I'm still learning.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Aren't we all?

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yes. But I want to talk to you about uh your you have a couple of things going on right now. You've got your podcast, which is called Chickens Every Day.

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

And you have a YouTube channel called Tell Me Uh Central Louisiana Backyard Chickens.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

It's an acronym for Central Louisiana. It's called Sinla, C-E-N-L-A Backyard Chickens. And it didn't dawn on me whenever I named it Sinla, that that the only people who knows what Sinla is are the people who live around here. You know, so I've kind of got stuck with it and I have to explain it quite often, but it it's just it stands for Central Louisiana, and you can find me on on YouTube and TikTok.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Oh, nice. Well, can you tell me a little bit about like your history with chicken keeping and why you decided to become an educator?

From Farm Kid To Chicken Educator

SPEAKER_03 6:14

I want to hear the story.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Well, uh as a boy, uh you know, I was raised on a farm in Dry Creek, Louisiana. Dry Creek is a very, very rural community. If you go there today, it's still very rural. But back then, we didn't even have a flashing light. We uh we just had a stop sign, and that's the only way that you knew. And it was famous for a big Baptist encampment was there, and and and that was kind of it. And and you know, I I grew up, you know, hunting and fishing and riding horses, and we had all manner of animals, and mama had chickens and ducks and turkeys and and you know, just all kind of birds. And it was my job every day getting off the school bus, I have to feed animals. And when you're 10 years old and when you're 15 years old, you really don't want to have to feed animals, but you but you do it because you have to. And so taking care of chickens and feeding horses and make sure everybody had water, that was my job. And I grew up doing that. And then fast forward, you get out of school, you go to college, you get married, you have kids and family. In 2016, my kids got me a chicken tractor with three hens in it, and I couldn't understand why in the world they would do that, but something happened. I just fell in love with these things. I was having so much fun with them. I said, I've just got to do more. So I started thinking about building coupes and all of that, and somebody told me to look on the internet. So I looked on the internet, believe it or not, you were one of the first people that I found. And there's tons of us out there, but you were one of the first, and I just started binge watching your shows, you know, and it dawned on me that the things that we all do today on purpose and and and through trial and error and all of this, we did naturally back when I was a boy. For instance, you know, you you want to make sure that that your birds, you know, have have a good, safe place to roost, that you have some kind of predator uh prevention program going on, some sort, whether you're just you know keeping them in the run or whatever you're doing. Well, back then our chicken coop was in the barn, and the chicken coop was at the bottom, but the barn's like 25 feet with us with the ceiling up there, and so they roost way up high. And so that kept them safe. The fact that they're up higher like that in the summer, the cooler air is up there. In the winter, the warmer air is up there. So they had that environment. Well, you live on a farm, you always got big dogs, and we always get, you know, we we have dogs that are puppies and they're raised with the chickens. Well, when you have German shepherds and big dogs like that running around, you're not going to get a fox, you're not gonna get a raccoon that's gonna that's gonna be welcome. And so they were getting protected just through the natural means of this is what we did, you know. Yes, as far as the food went, you know, we go to town, and back then you go to town is actually a real event because the town is is 45 minutes away, and we buy lots of chicken feed and horse feed, and we do all do all those things, and mama would throw scratch grains out, and whatever's left over in the vegetable bin after every meal gets chunked off the back porch to the chicken. So the diet gets buried right there, you know. So all of these things that that I do through more mechanical means, for lack of a better term, with with my birds, you know, I feed them calcium, I give them extra grit. You know, I'm I mean, I'm the guy with cameras in his coop. Okay, so I'm I'm that I'm that guy. You know, we just did as a matter of course back then. And and it so it dawned on me, well, gee, I know a little something. I didn't know that I knew something about chickens. And I I guess I'm kind of a natural teacher. I've been teaching in in some form or another uh most of my adult life. I spent 10 years with the American Cross teaching first aid and CPR. Uh I teach flight instruction, believe it or not. If a country boy like this can teach people how to fly an airplane, so it's it's crazy. Uh my day job is home inspections. So I teach home inspectors, I help get them their licensing for the state. So so I teach. That's kind of what I what I do. And so I said, well, maybe I would like to do that. Maybe I can do like Dahlia and get on there and talk to people and what have you. And my wife says I kind of have that gift of gab when I'm not scripted. She said, When I whenever I'm scripted, it's horrible. But she said, just whenever I just start talking and yapping, I do much better. So here I am. I started my channels, you know, started talking to people. I even invite people that I don't know. I tell them, look, this is my email address. If you want to chat, email me and we'll we'll we'll see what we can do. You know, so that's kind of my origin story, how all of this got started. Like I said, 2016, I hadn't even seen, hardly seen a chicken in 25 years. And then it started from there, and I just fell in love. And now I get to share this with my kids and my grandkids, and you know, uh uh Sylvie, who's the intro and the exit to all of my podcasts. She was going to be here, but she's bowling with her grandmother right now. They they went bowling a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

But she but she now she loves chickens and and she knows how to go out there and she handles the birds and she scoops them up and she pets them and she collects eggs and all of that. So it's just it's just turned out to be wonderful for us over here. It's it's just really cool. And I sell eggs on top of that. So it gives me something else to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Well, good for you. And I love that. I absolutely love that. And there's a lot of similarities. Um, the one thing is I didn't grow up on a farm. I grew up, you know, just total Gen X kid in the suburbs. Um, without we didn't even have a garden.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

I mean, we had flowers, but my parents you have amassed this wealth of information, and I just don't think my brain is young enough to do what you did anymore. I mean, I think most the stuff you know, you know.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

I think uh yeah, I went a little bit of obsession was involved. Like well, yeah, it's a little bit of neurosis, yeah. Uh I got just really, really passionate about it. And you know, when you find something that you're passionate about, it's easy to just absorb that information and keep that information in your mind. You know, if you're not passionate about it, it's really hard and certainly hard to think about it.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

And you do, and and you know, at the end of the day, you're all about helping people, and I'm all about trying to help people as well. And so one of the things that I do, I read. I get on the internet and I read. I have your first book that I keep. It's actually by my coffee table, and I could walk over there and grab it. If you don't believe me, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

I believe you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

I'm I plan to get the next one whenever you come out with it because I'm all the time getting stumped.

A Lethargic Hen And Home Care

SPEAKER_02 12:59

And believe it or not, five days ago, uh, I had one of my OGs, that that's my older girls. Uh, she got very, very lethargic. Uh she's a uh she's a barred rock. Sweetest thing on the on the planet. And I mean, I raised her from a chick. She's she's she's just one of my girls. She's very, very lethargic. You know, with a chicken, even if even if they like you, you go stand up next to the chicken, they're gonna have a tendency to walk away.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

You know, unless they're ready to be held. She wasn't moving. I reached down there, I pick her up, she's not moving, I pet her, I put her back down. Uh so the first thing that I go do, put her somewhere where she's nice and cozy, and I come in the house and I scramble some eggs. Well, I didn't know this as a boy. Mama never did that. If there were an eggs to be scrambled, we were eating them. Yeah, you know. I scrambled her some eggs, put a little bit of oregano in there, and I brought them out there to her, and I made them made them a little bit wet. You know, I didn't dry them out because chickens love wet food, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

So I brought them and she had an appetite. Good. And when I first found her, she's just leaning up against the water can and just using that as a prop. And I move her away from it, and she takes a step and she's leaning the other direction and falling over. Poor baby. So anyway, I I give her, I give her these scrambled eggs for the protein and the energy boost that I that I know they do. And I put a little oregano in there in case maybe she's got some infection somewhere. And I do this two days in a row. And the third day, I I go out to the chicken pen and I go, Oh Lord, am I gonna see Adrian gone or not? You know, and I go and she's not in there. So I go out to the chicken lore and I start looking. Well, she's out there pecking around. So I do my usual, hey girls, and they all come trotting, and she comes trotting too. So oh, that's great. After that now, and uh, I don't know if I cured her or not, but it makes me feel like I did, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Yeah, that's great. I'll say you did. You cured her, you did it.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

It's so cool to see one of them do that, you know. Yeah, I saw I saw this same bird two years ago get stressed from a hawk that was trying to attack the flock. Yeah, she got really stressed and she went into a moat. And I've never seen her in moat. I mean, she was she was just about naked. Yeah, she had a hard moat on her, and it took her two months to come through.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

So she she's a resilient girl to be able to do, you know, some of the things she did, but I thought I was gonna lose her, but thank goodness I I didn't.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Well, I'm so glad that you didn't.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

And I know I jumped off track topic somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Oh, that's okay. That's okay. You know,

Research Phase Advice Think Big

SPEAKER_03 15:37

I wanted to talk to you because I I want to talk to you about what I know you love, and that is teaching specifically brand new chicken keepers. So for the very, very new chicken keeper, what is your first piece of wisdom that you would share with them during like their research phase?

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Well, the the the toughest thing you can do and you can tell a brand new chicken person to do is to think big but start small. And and what I mean by is brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yes, you need more room than you think you do, but you need fewer chicks than you think you do to start with.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Yes, please.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Trust me, we all want to get uh 20 beautiful chicks or a a dozen gorgeous chicks because they're so much fun to raise and to play with and to watch how they bond with you. But let me tell you a secret: you get three chicks this year, you rear them up. Well, uh four. Okay, get at least at least four. You get four chicks this year, you raise them up and you see how they bond, you learn during this process of what they require, what you require from them, that the you know, keeping them warm and all of that. Well, then next year you get that pleasure to do it all over again. You're not flopped out, you know, because it was such fun to raise these babies. Well, now you get to raise some more, and then the year after that, you get to do it again, you know. So now you you've gone from all of a sudden I got a big giant flock. Oh my lord, I've got to learn all this stuff and take care of you know, of a dozen birds. Well, now I get four of them and I'm caring for them. Next year I get to do it again, or if we get them in the spring, we do it again in the fall, you know, if if that's the way we want to do it. But it is such fun to get those baby chicks and raise them. Yeah, you you give yourself that for two or three years in a row. And once you're experienced and you're down the road, and it's a few years later, every few years you're gonna buy you a batch of chicks, or you're gonna get some chicks from somebody, or you're gonna buy some bullets from somebody, or hatch them out, you know. If you have a wrist, or you can that twice already. Sylvie just loves it. She thinks it's amazing, and we're all sitting just like this with our with our cheeks on our uh on our fists, watching them hatch out of those little things, and even a small quality incubator, it's just a it's just a wonder to behold, you know. So start big with your thinking, but when you're actually buying, buy small, you know, make sure you get that coop big enough to grow into, but buy small to begin with. Because you've got equipment to buy, you got different things to do, and you're gonna love me for it in the long run. Because now you get to go the first three years, spring, spring, spring. I get to buy new chicks and raise them each time, and it's such fun.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yeah, and I I just need to say, I'm the president of Chicken Landia and I approve this message. That is such good advice because you know, I mean it's so tempting to just get like 20 baby chicks.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Oh, golly, yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

You know, they're little, they're fuzzy, and but they grow really fast. It can get overwhelming, and you know, everybody knows what they can handle. Um, there are some people that jump right in like that and they do okay, but I've seen a lot of people get really stressed out that first year. And I don't, you know, I'm all about stress-free chicken keeping. So yeah, you can always expand, you know, start small. Like you said, think big, but build a bigger coop than you think you need, get a, you know, build a uh create a bigger run than you think that you need, and then you can always expand. And you know, like the more room, the better.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

So it's all there waiting for you, you know, and and you get that experience each year. Now you've got grown birds and you got babies to play with, and there's a whole new thing to learn when you want to incorporate, you know. So now you got something else that you get to learn how to do because you don't jump them in there.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

No, you know, don't do that, don't do that. Not with the is it cranky old adult hands?

SPEAKER_04 19:54

No, you don't do that.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

No, okay.

Brooder Must Haves And Heat Safety

SPEAKER_03 19:58

So let's say someone is out of the res you know, research phase and um they're coming home with their first batch of baby chicks, a very exciting time. What is the best advice? Yeah, yeah, four, four, four or five. Uh, what's the best advice for people that you have for people that are caring for baby chicks?

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Well, if you're coming home with them, I'm hoping you've already got the setup ready to rock and roll. You got a nice brooder, you you've got a uh heater plate. If you have to use a heat lamp, and I'm sorry, Dahlia, I have a heat lamp.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

Oh, that's If I have a heat lamp too. I have a heat lamp.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Your brooder has to be big enough that your heat lamp can be in a corner. Yes, and it has to be elevated, and the birds need to be able to get away from it. Okay, so it's a that's a and and honestly, for for $20 on Amazon, I bought a thermostatically controlled on-off 110-volt switch. So I plug my heat lamp into that, plug that into the wall, put the temperature probe down there by where the chicks are, and when it gets too cold, the heat lamp comes on, and when it warms up, the heat lamp goes off.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Quadruple tie this thing, and it's over a metal mesh. It's not touching wood, it's not close to wood. Because I know every year somebody loses a batch of birds because they either catch something on fire, and God forbid, or they have their heat lamp too low, they cook them. But you know, we don't we don't want to get it.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

We don't tell you.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

But make sure you got all the set up ready to go for them. You you start that first couple of days and you set it to in the bottom of your brewery. You just just lay some paper towels for them because it gets give time for their little legs to get to get strong enough to scratch around. Then after a couple of days, you can put some chips and what have you in there, but have have the right feeder, have the right food, have everything ready for those birds to go. If it's a hot, you know, have some ventilation. Oscillation, just a little bitty oscillating fan. Doesn't take a lot to do this, you know. But have your equipment ready to go and you're gonna have fun while you do it. If you get there and then you got to start putting it all together, now you're gonna be impatient and you're gonna be, you know, it's just it's gonna be stressed. And the idea of these animals is to relieve stress, not cause stress. So try proper planning. We've all heard that before. So make sure you do your planning ahead of time. Get your equipment set up and ready to go. If you got kids, you know, you're gonna have a blast at the farm store picking out your birds. Just be careful, don't pick out 27 birds or you know, three or four, bring them home and let's do this on it. Just have the right setup. That's that's the biggest thing I could tell some people, you know. Uh I had a cousin of mine set up some chickens, and it basically is a tarp with wire on the sides, and it's a little bit on the inadequate side. You want to do a little bit more from that for that, especially when they're young, you have to protect from the weather. So think about what you're doing and just get that brooder. Uh, you can find many brooders online, just look around. You got idiots like me on there talking about brooders every day. You know, you can find what you want to do in a good brooder or a good setup. So that's that's where we want to start.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Yes. Okay, so moving right along.

Teen Chickens And Flock Integration

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Now we're gonna talk a little bit about adolescent chickens. We love teenage chickens, they're they're scraggly and adorable. So let's say you've got your chickens that are ready to graduate from their brooder and go outside to the big girl coop for you know full time. What is your best piece of advice for those that are past that baby stage and now they're going to be caring for adult laying hens very soon?

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Well, there's one secret that's not really a secret, and it's just one word, it's it's familiarity. I take my chicks at three to four weeks old from the brooder to a grow out pen. And my grow out pen is four foot by five foot by eight foot. It's it's a it's a chicken track, you know. It's got a bottom that rolls around the yard, uh, but it's protected where where they have a roosting area inside. They cannot get to the big girls, the big girls cannot get to them, but everybody can see everybody. And I let them interact like that for another month, you know, at least another month. So now they're eight, nine, ten weeks old. And then I'll start opening the back of the brooder up and I'll let them go in and out of the brooder. The big girls go in and out, and there's always going to be chasing around and what have you. But by the time that I do this, they're everybody's so used to everybody that they're already members of the flock, or they're very close to being members of the flock because the girls see them every single day. They go sit around by the brooder constantly and enter interact with them, but they don't touch them, like I said. And by the time that they can touch them, it's not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah, they've already worked some of that out. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

And it's been my experience at some point in time, half of the half of the pullets are going to follow the big girls in there at one night and start sleeping in there. And then you just take the other half and just put them in there at nighttime, and you may have to do that for a couple of nights, you know. And then before you know it, you've got a cohesive flock that are figuring their own way out. There's always going to be pecking order that they've they've chickens have had pecking order for 8,000 years. You're not going to get rid of that, so don't try. You know, just understand it and deal with it. But, you know, you're not throwing young birds in there with another bird that weighs twice as much. It's a dangerous thing to do. Yeah. You're putting young birds with other birds that know them now, that get used to them.

SPEAKER_04 25:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

And you know, it's just, it's always been easy to do it that way for us. You know, and again, when I was a boy, that wasn't an issue because there was always some chicken somewhere trying to hatch a clutch of eggs. And when a hen who's part of a flock hatches a clutch of eggs, those chicks become part of that flock. They don't they get left alone. The roosters aren't mean to them. There's always a dominant hen that's going to show up and try to be a bully, but their mama's there to take care of that. And a couple of slaps from mama, and she goes away and everything's okay. So they become part of the flock just through attrition, the normal act of being a part of the flock and and and being being hatched there. We have to do it artificially. So we have to do it by making everybody familiar with everybody else, get used to each other, and by the time they can actually interact, eh, not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Yeah. So let's say, let's say it's the first flock that people have and they're putting them outside.

Safe Outdoor Time And Healthy Dirt

SPEAKER_03 26:43

They don't have any exist, they don't have an existing flock, okay, and they're putting them outside for the first time. Do you still have like a grow out pen for them so that they can be outside for a little while? You know, I mean, I always encourage people to take their baby chicks outside, just make sure that they're protected.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah. Uh, you know, any hardware store that you go to, you you can find that the soft fencing, this vinyl fencing that's got one inch, one inch holes in it. And I will make a pen out of that, and I will let my baby chicks, you know, from the from the brooder put them out there, wrap it with that little pin, and let them play in the grass. Yeah. They they have a ton of fun doing that. It's it's a lot of fun for us because usually the grandkids or the wife or myself, we get in there with them and play too. Yeah. But now they get to really start being chicken. They're playing in the grass and maybe they can find a bug. But yeah, you want to start them early on getting used to that environment. Their bodies need to get used to that environment. They need to they need to taste dirt, and they need to taste the dirt that they're going to live on, you know, because there's enzymes and there's bacteria in that dirt that their their body needs to have inside them to start building antibodies for. Yeah. And it's and I know it's a little bit scientific, but if you start doing your own research, you will find that chickens are the most researched bird on the planet. There's no other bird out there that are researched as much as chickens. And and there's two reasons for that. And I'm getting off subject.

SPEAKER_04 28:15

That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

But one reason chickens feed the planet.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Every continent on the planet eats chickens with maybe Antarctica, I guess. You probably can't.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Hang on, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:25

You know, but the second reason is the vaccines that you have in your body right now usually came from a chicken egg. They take the chicken eggs and they propagate vaccines inside those eggs and they grow them out. And you know, and and don't take my word for it, look online. So many vaccines are grown from the eggs of a chicken. So, you know, there's not many bird specialists out there who can get doctorates just for poultry, but you can get a doctorate just out of poultry, you know, and it's because of how important these birds are, and they've been important to us for like 8,000 years.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Yeah, and there's more chickens on the planet than any other species of bird.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Any other species of bird. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of chickens.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

If you make a number, it's more than that.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

So it's always my hope for new chicken keepers that they will have a good experience and they will stick with backyard chicken keeping and then pass it on to new generations. And I know that's your hope too.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

What is your hence the think big start small? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

Yes. Uh, what's your best piece of advice that helps to ensure a good backyard chicken keeping experience through the year so that you just keep doing it, you don't get overwhelmed, and then you teach your kids, and they teach their kids, and so on and so on.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Oh,

Clean Air Clean Water Simple Systems

SPEAKER_02 29:56

wow. Uh you know, make sure you don't get too many birds for what you can handle, for one. You want to know that you can handle the flock that you have. You want to know that you're able to keep your your pen and your and your everything relatively clean. It doesn't have to look like your living room clean. No, it should be relatively clean. Yes. You know, I've had people fuss at me online because I didn't clean mine every day. Well, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna, you know, but I clean it enough. I think they don't complain. Yeah you know. Uh remember, the most important quality that they can have is air quality. That's extremely important. After that is water quality, after that is food quality. So if you have those basic needs met and you have their safety met, you know, with with predator, you know, protection, you have a good good pen that they stay in, they're out of the weather, they're out of the drafts in the wintertime, they get some sort of drafting or airflow in the summertime. To make it easy on you is going to make it easy on the birds. And when everybody's easy, then everybody's a lot happier. And that's that's kind of my philosophy with it. I I'll, you know, I've I've looked at chickens for golly a long time. And I still walk out there sometime and go, golly, those are such pretty animals.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

They are.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

There's nothing cooler than going and sitting in my old man rocking chair. And I don't think of myself as an old man, but I go out there and sit in a rocking chair, and inevitably a bird's going to jump up on my lap.

SPEAKER_04 31:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

And she's not up there just for a treat. She's up there because she knows me, because she trusts me, and because we have a bond together.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

That's the only reason that she jumps up there. And I have helped nurture that with her. So I trust her at the same time. I have a bond with her at the same time. And so that's that's the interaction that we have. And the good part about that, she she feeds me. You know, I get some of the best eggs on the planet, you know. Uh, I have kids that come over here from the egg stand and I let them go in there and interact with the chickens. Oh, that's you know, and when you're my age, that's just a cool thing to do. Yeah, you know. Now I'm careful if you know farmers don't get to come do that. If you've got a chicken farm, you know, you don't get to come play with my chickens. I'm sorry because but biosecurity is is a little bit of a something. But a city kid that's that had never seen a chicken, yeah. Of course I want them, want them to play with. Yeah, but but but don't overwhelm yourself with the number of chickens that you have. Make sure that you have the equipment that you need to have. And I'm not telling you to go spend a lot of money because the poorest countries and the poorest people successfully raise chickens every single day. You don't have to do that. I'm the super nerd, okay? I can right now on my phone, I've got two cameras in in there with my chickens that I can look at them. And I've got two on the outside looking in. But I'm that guy. My buddies used to call me the high-tech redneck. You don't have to do any of that stuff. And and your wife or or husband's probably going to appreciate it if you don't.

SPEAKER_04 33:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

You know, because my kids will tell me that they'll look over at me in the in the evening. I'm playing on my phone. They're going, You're looking at chickens, aren't you? And I'll have to put the phone down, you know. But it lets me do that when we're on vacation, too. You know, so there is some good that I think that I get out of that. But you you don't have to do all the grandeur things to do this. You want to make sure that you have them safe, that that you you have the place relatively clean, that that that they're going to be secure. They got clean, clean air, good, clean water, good quality feed that you can give them. You know, and it doesn't have to be the most expensive feed out there. It needs to be what you can afford to give them. Give them scraps, vegetables out of the house.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

You know. But the coolest thing, I think, is you're going to get online just like the rest of us do, and you're going to learn. You're going

Treats Fermentation And Common Debates

SPEAKER_02 33:50

to do research and you're going to go, oh, well, I don't need to feed my chickens, leaves off of my tomato plants because now I know that's a nightshade. So I don't want them to eat that. Oh, well, they can't eat uncooked raw potato peelings because that can be a little poisonous to them. Oh my goodness, I learned that apple seeds over time can turn into arsenic, you know. So we core the apples out before we throw them out there. Now, don't get me wrong, they'd probably have to eat a whole tree before we throw it. Yes, we would still that's what we do.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

Yeah, yeah. Because we love them. It's like, I don't even yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah, it's part of the journey. You get to learn all of this stuff. You know, you you learn about we never fermented anything uh growing up. If it was fermented growing up, my parents were in the house drinking it. Okay, but we never fermented any kind of food, you know. And I learned about doing that from you, from Dahlia, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Oh thank you.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

I don't exclusively ferment for my girls, I have some two-quart containers, and I do three of those a week, and and I feed them for two days out of that. So two days a week, I give them some fermented food. And I believe and it's it's got to be better than nothing at all, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Oh, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

All the good things that fermentation does. Look at look at Dolly's videos. She's got a few of them out there that's all about it. But there's nothing but good that comes out of fermentation, and you learn about the gut bacteria. You know, you're not killing bad bacteria, you're just making less room for them to grow in there by getting them all the good stuff, you know. Fermentation is good for you and I. I mean, yeah. You know, and all that kind of fun neat stuff. So there's the journey that you're getting on is just really cool. You know, you're gonna learn a lot of stuff, you're gonna learn about apple cider vinegar, uh, you're gonna learn controversies about apple cider vinegar. You're gonna oh yeah, you better put a disclaimer in there.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Yeah. I did a video about dietious earth, and it's supposed to come out next week. I don't know when this interview is gonna come out, so it might already be out. And I'm just like regretting it so much. I'm like, why did I do that?

SPEAKER_02 35:55

The flashback you get from it, you know, but but Donna's going to tell you there's a difference between this DE and that DE. So pay attention to what she says. Yeah, um, I made, you know, I redid my chicken bath today. That's where we use our dial tamaceous earth at, and I put a good bit of it in there because it gets in the bird's feathers, it gets against their skin, and I don't have lights in mice. Yeah, yeah, mites. Yeah, I said mice, didn't I? I mean mice.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Yeah, we don't want my mice either.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

We don't want the mice either, but a few are okay. But but but it it's the journey, and it's so cool, you know. And it's something that that you know, if if you're a young parent, you get to do with your kids. If you're a grandpa like me, you get to do with your grandkids, you know. Uh my older kids, they've been around chickens, they really don't care. But one day when they get to be my age, they may start reaching out.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

They're gonna start caring. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

You know, but because you it it's that journey, yeah, you know, that you get to go through. And and the fact, you know, the the the second big coop we built, I got pictures online of of Sylvie painting and and all of this, and writing her name and her dad's name and everybody, you know, just wrote their names in purple on the on the coop. Uh, that's coop 2.0, I think that that's out there right now. But but it it's all of that learning that you get to do. And if you start small and you get to buy a new batch of chicks every year for the first few years, you get to you just get to raise those wonderful babies and you learn how to interact with them. You learn little things like you don't go overhand to reach for a chick, you go underhand to reach for a chick. So you want your hand way down low because they're a prey animal and they're used to everything above their heads wanting to eat them. So you don't go above a chicken or a chick's head to pick them up. You go below, you know? And they kind of stand there and look at you like you're a fool, but they don't run away so yeah so easily.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

I'm learning, I'm learning. I didn't really think about that, but it's true.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah, you didn't know that one.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

I didn't know that one.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Well, there's one coup for me.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

I have another confession. I throw my apples, just just full apples into the coup.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

But I have like, I have a lot of chickens, and it's like you know, yeah, it it's it's something that happens in their body, but it's such a low amount that you would literally have to feed your your chicken steady apple diet for quite a while before it started making them sick, you know. Yeah, but the but the truth is that the seeds can turn into it's either arsenic diet or or or water. I'm pretty sure it's arsenic, yeah. You know, yeah, and like I said, you know, that you beat them a tree before it would happen. We're not gonna we're probably not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Well, Gary, it has been an absolute delight to have you today.

Where To Find Gary And Fun Wrap

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Um, you can find Gary on his podcast, Chickens Every Day, and your YouTube channel, Senla Backyard Chickens. I have one. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Go ahead. No, I know what you're gonna say, and I was hoping you would go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

I have one, I have you know I have one more question. One more question. If you were a chicken, what kind of chicken would you be?

SPEAKER_02 39:11

There's only one chicken for me, and and it's a Welsomer. The reason for that is because the chicken journey for me takes me back to my boyhood, to my childhood. And you don't know it until you're an older adult how great those years may have been for you, you know, and I hope that yours were. Those years were wonderful for me. Yeah, I rode horses, I went hunting with my dad, I learned how to fish, did all of those things. Well, almost every breakfast at school, mama cooked a little on the weekends, but for school, it was Kellogg's cornflakes with sliced bananas and a spoon of sugar. On that box of Kellogg's cornflakes, there was a chicken.

SPEAKER_03 39:53

It's a Welsomer, yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

The Welsomer chicken. That chicken's name was Cornelius, believe it or not. He had a name. Uh-huh. It's a Welsomer chicken. So if I was ever going to be a chicken, that's the chicken that I would want to come back at.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

Well, that is a great answer. Thank you very much. Uh, Gary, it is always a pleasure, and I hope that we can have another chat soon.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's been such fun. Such fun. Thank you so much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Also known as the president of chicken lymphia.