Chickens in the Garden | With Dr. Sez the Vet

We’re talking chickens—those fluffy butt, soil-turning, pest eating wonders that can be put to work in your garden. 

🐔 Whether you're dreaming of adding chickens to your permaculture setup or wondering if they're right for your orchard, this episode is packed with practical, real-world insight. I'm joined by Sez the Vet, an experienced life-style vet and educator.

This is a conversation I was looking for 10 years ago! I get to have it now and share it with you. 

Are we OK to feed our hens oats in the morning? 

Can we let a mama hen eat the chick starter?

What breeds should a gardener have? 

By the end, you’ll know whether chickens are right for your land—and your lifestyle. 

🎧 Tune in to learn how pigs can become not just garden helpers, but cherished companions (just don’t let them get away with any nonsense!).

Links & Resources:

• 🎓 Find Sez's animal care courses at: lifestyleblock.co.nz
• 📺 Watch her YouTube channel: SeztheVet
• 🐷 Connect with Sez on Facebook and instagram SeztheVet

🌱 White Strawberries is where we try and get Little Fluffy Butts to do our work ;)

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Transcript

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Sez the Vet Chicken breeds and nutrition

[00:00:00] 

welcome back to White Strawberries. I'm Sam, your host today and I am in Nelson, that is in the South Island of New Zealand. And I'm here with Sez the vet. When she was going through vet school, I started getting interested in permaculture, Sez the Vet is my sister. And I used to ask her lots and lots of questions about chickens.

What kind of breed should I get? Can I just soak the grain and give to them soak grain?

How do I stop them getting worms? How do I do this? That the other thing. I wanted to ask her some questions and bring. Some of her knowledge to you. Basically, we are talking about what breeds to get and nutrition.

I literally think buying the right chicken for your backyard is the most important gift that you can give yourself. Do not buy the wrong breed. If you're a seasoned chicken owner, I dare you and not to learn something here. Enjoy.

Hi. Who are you? Serial clothes. Yeah, yeah. Um, lifestyle Block Vet Poultry Enthusiast. .

Uh, yeah.

A job's a job of interview. I knew that was gonna be an exhibition.. A job interview. Tell me how good you are, what gives you the right Sarah to be giving me advice and how I should look after my pet hens. Fair. Cool. Fair, fair question. Uh, well, I guess this is a good time to put a disclaimer out there that everything I say is coming from a veterinary perspective.

I actually only just got my own very fast chickens as my own pets, little or benton's. , I'm not a breeder of chickens or anything like that . But I am a poultry vet and it is a very. Niche area to work in. I'm not a commercial poultry vet, nor am I a pet avian vet in the sense of, um, you know, if you go through university and really specialize in that field, most of what you're doing is gonna be parrots, canaries, that kind of thing.

[00:02:00] But to be a backyard vet, poultry vet. Where you can do surgeries on them and approach them as individuals and really offer a very high standard of care for the individuals. That's a really unique space, , there's not many of us, I should say. So it's a very, it's a very, um, complicated, specific niche. A hundred years ago, people would not have taken a pet hen to a vet. Mm-hmm.

True. Even now a lot of people would scoff. But it's really changing field big time along with everything else. Animal welfare keeps improving and maybe it's just Maslow's Pyramid, you know, as we all become slightly more enlightened and aren't fighting for our lives and trying to feed our children.

Um, the country becomes, as a whole more wealthy and the world in general. I guess we start caring more deeply about kind of higher order things like that, I suppose. Yeah, it's an interesting space. I totally agree. You have a lot of. Courses, you have your own YouTube channel where you are explaining a lot about chickens. And so I would encourage people to go and check out, uh, C the vet and also lifestyle block co.co do nz. Um, to see all of those, but specifically where I get excited about chickens is linking them in with gardening. Permaculture how we fit chickens into our ecosystem. And so I guess one of my first questions is how do we know what sort of breed to get?

Also, I should say, because we did a podcast on pigs together and I know that a lot of what we were talking about was very New Zealand specific. Like one of the things that you mentioned is that we don't have a miniature breed here.

It's like when we talk about breeds, we're talking about what's available in New Zealand.

So are we just talking about light, heavy and highline?

How do you categorize? [00:04:00] Yeah, that is how I categorize them. I think you can get even more specific than that. And not, not just Highline. So Highline brown shavers. Yeah. Commercial breeds. Commercial high layers, commercial high layers. Yeah. I mean, your commercial is just saying like high, high, laying, but to a crazy extent.

Yeah. It's all on the spectrum. But yeah, we keep them for a year. They lay an eagle to a day at the end of the year, they go on skis. That's what a commercial high layer is at the end of. Yeah. After a year flying. Mm-hmm.

Do they really lay two eggs in a day? No. It takes about 26 hours to lay an egg. So no, you can't lay more than one egg in a day. It takes about 26 hours to lay an egg, but they, they will lay a a every day of the week and kill themselves. Okay,

my question to you is, someone who wants chickens to work in my garden, and let's say in this case, I don't wanna eat them. I want them to do some work. I want to eat some happy chicken eggs, and I want the chickens to die at the end of a long, good life. That's my plan. Yeah. And let's say that I want my hens to do some work in the garden.

So however that is in my case, I have a dome that I move over annual garden beds and then they free range in the orchard. And I want them to pick up pests like guava moths, um, other moths, other larva that are in the ground and I want them to poo in the orchard and just kind of balance out the ecosystem.

If that's what I'm wanting from a hen, what kind of breed should I get? What am I thinking about? So many more questions than that. Do you have kids? Do you want them to be cud? No. Do you have a hawk that circulates and you worry about hawks picking them off? Because they will [00:06:00] a pick, a hawk will pick off if it's, if it wants to, uh, it's not easy, pray for it.

But a hawk will definitely pick off a full grown brown shaver at 1.8 kg. Do you worry about hawks? Do you worry about fences? Do you need them to not be able to fly over a fence? If so, let's go for a heavier breed like an aton. That's gonna be a big, big hefty mama when she's grown up. Ain't no hawk taking her baby.

She's not flying no place. I just got aing, so I'm pretty into them. How much does an orpington weigh? Uh, when it's fully, so a hen you can get, uh, like three and a half, 3.8 kg males, four plus. Up there. So twice the size and then the, or the Orpingtons as well as like, they're one of the biggest breeds. And then they have the fluff as part of the breed standard.

They have the massive fluffy, so they look even bigger than what they are, that they really look massive once they're fully grown. They're so beautiful. Yeah. So hawk's not messing around with that. Um, but yeah, they're not gonna fly over fences. They'll respect like a 90 centimeter high fence. So if you are worried about your, he getting like just flying right over a fence line or, and we are talking like a meter and a half, like chickens can just fly right over a meter and a half fence. Um, or you are worried about hawks picking them up, then you wanna be going with a heavier breed, not a lighter breed.

You wanna be going with a heavier breed. I mean, the lighter breeds you. You get wing trimming. People do it shockingly all the time. It's not that hard. You do one wing, you only trim the primary feathers, like just Google a diagram of it. Oh my goodness. You do both of them. They're just gonna flap twice as hard.

If you do the wrong feathers, they're just gonna compensate, you know? And then every time they molt, you have to redo the wing so you can. Trim one wing as well. And that's okay. You have to consider then, are there actually predators around, like, what's the risk that your family dog, which is the number one predator is gonna get in there, and now you've forsaken this little thing to not be able to protect itself.

So these are all, there's [00:08:00] so many different ways to, to do chickens that, yeah, there's just all, all those different things to think about. Yeah. But if you don't want it to truly don't want it to be able to fly, then, then you'd get a heavier breed. Okay, so if I don't want it to be able to fly, get a heavier breed. So am I right in also thinking that a lighter breed lays more eggs typically? Typically, yes. Yeah, because I mean, just to like imagine, why is it a heavy breed? It's been bred for the table, right? So it's a meat breed, you could say like egg breed versus meat breed. But then you get all the heritage breeds, which are supposed to be healthy.

And in general they are, because they're more of a dual purpose. So we can say light heavy. Or we can say egg and you know, egg and meat. And then Jewel purpose is kind of in the middle. And they do tend to make healthier birds for all the obvious reasons. So I probably don't need to specify, but yeah, they're just, yeah, better, well-rounded.

Okay, I've got barn of elders. I think they're a mixed breed, I believe from the research. Do you mean heritage breed? They're heritage, but I think Oh, a dual purpose. A dual purpose breed. Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah, like Barn about is they're a dual purpose. I've noticed that the ones with the silver lacing that are just under two kgs easily fly over my chicken fence.

And the ones with the brown lacing, they're about two and a half kgs, don't fly over the fence. So within half a kg, ones just like. Sweet as constantly trying to fly away and just constantly being free. And the other ones stay where they put, they just can't be bothered. They can't, the heavier bothered, the heavier breeds, my heavier ones love ducking under a fence.

Mm-hmm. At least duck under something. Yeah. And then we should say as well just chuck out there that they are. There are exceptions to that. Like if you want tiny little things, that's where the silkies come in, at least not breath 10. They don't have the issues. Like I see plenty of issues with Silkies, but I see issues with everyone, but they, they've got like a frizzly kind of feather.

It's not a normal feather, and they literally cannot fly [00:10:00] despite the fact that they're absolutely minuscule. Tiny little mini things. And then you get big differences in how loud they are. Do you want them to be quite quiet? Maybe you wanna go for a silk, you a bantam, or like little peek in. Um, or do you not care about the Babbly talkativeness?

Or do you care about how much they're gonna scratch up your garden? If you do, if you want to. If you don't want something that's gonna scratch up your garden, maybe you get something with feathered feet. It's annoying as all heck when the rain comes. 'cause they just cake into balls of mud. But

it's uncomfortable for 'em to scratch a lot. There's so many options. When you have a chicken with feathered feet, they don't like scratching. Mm-hmm. They're much less destructive. Much less destructive. Okay? Mm-hmm. So for me, I want them to be destructive. Mm. You want them to turn over till the soil, till the soil, eat all the bugs.

And so I need a chicken that what's my main, what am I looking for then if I'm wanting a chicken that, so obviously I don't wanna go feathered feed. How else do I get a chicken that's gonna be tilling my soil? You'll have lots of options.

I guess do you know something we haven't really touched much on is how many eggs do you want? 'cause that is a massive thing for people. How many eggs do they want? And most people out there seem to think that more is better, more is more.

And it is not. More, more eggs means a shorter lifespan. Hmm. Foho, Foho. And then like, okay, so think of like take Orpingtons for example, that have a pretty decent lifespan. They're heavy breeds, so they do battle things like, um, they have a, propensity, I should say, for obesity and, um. Uh, heart disease, that kind of thing for sure.

Fatty liver disease, you know, all the, all the fun things that go along with obesity, so you can't just lock them up and feed them ad-lib food, for example. Because if you just lock them up and let them, let them eat an ad-lib diet, they will run themselves into obesity. They have to be somewhat restricted and with pallets, and they have to go out and and forage and move [00:12:00] around during the day to lead a healthy life.

Compare that with a brown shaver. Or a highline, a commercial laying breed that has been developed by humans, bless our cotton socks over a long period of time to just lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, and then be cu at 18 months, right? That's what would happen in the industry. The only way that they survive.

What we've developed in those chickens now is for them to eat ad-lib and ad-lib. I'm doing cre marks around my face means ad lib. It means they, it's just available to them all the time. So imagine like a caged hen in the laying industry. They're locked up. They do not move. They literally cannot open their wings, let alone take a step, and all they do is eat.

And that's the only way that their body sustains. They're laying habits for 18 months, and even then, at the end of those 18 months, even being fed absolutely a hundred percent nothing but pallets with the high calcium and all that jazz, even then at the end of those 18 months, most of them are gonna have what we call cage layer fatigue, which is a fancy.

Lame name for osteoporosis because they've just lost all the calcium in their bones. So when we take those birds and give them a beautiful second chance, which I.

Standby through and through and through. It's just a beautiful thing to do. And if I didn't have hawk circulating, that's what I would've done, but I do so I couldn't. But when we take them and we give them a second chance at home in a backyard setting, we do easily run into big nutritional deficiencies because they're laying habits remain the same.

They still pump out that amount of eggs, but now they're eating, if anything, a small amount of pallets first thing in the morning. And then they're wandering off in free ranging and they're living their best. Yes. But they're crumbling with low calcium and not enough protein. So it's, you really have to be very, and this is what I'm, what I was talking about before with that, it being such a niche area because commercial vets won't be thinking about the heritage breeds, you know, and the avian vets aren't thinking about poultry at all generally.

Who out there is really thinking about the difference in, in [00:14:00] nutritional requirements between these specific breeds, heritage breeds versus, you know, all these other things. It's um, you really have to know what's up with your specific breed. And we do run into a lot of nutritional deficiencies or malnutrition and general from owners who absolutely think they're doing the best thing.

So not all chickens thrive in a garden, eating spinach, bugs, whatever they can find during the seasons. Correct. I, that is not me saying that you shouldn't do it. It's a beautiful thing to do and you absolutely should. You just have to be really on the ball. So we touched on the Orpington as an example of a heavy breed.

She needs to be moving, she needs to be exercising. So those heavy breeds that you can't just let them eat to the point where when I was studying. At vet school I was approached by a professor that said, are you interested in doing a PhD?

Spoiler alert, I didn't. But out of interest, what they had proposed, and I dunno if it's been done now, I don't believe it has, but what they proposed as a PhD in the field of animal welfare was to look at broil hens being the meat chickens, the breeders of them. So the breeders of those babies that are sent for meat, those breeders.

Live their lives in chronic hunger because for them to live any kind of real life and not just eat themselves into the ground, they have to be restricted. They have to be restricted. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean? Because if they, they've been bred, these meat breeds want to, their genetics want them to grow, so.

Unbelievably fast to meet our, our demands as humans, that they have these ravenous appetites and if we're not slaughtering them at say, six weeks old and we're actually, giving them a life. They, they will just eat and eat and eat and it, you can't have them eat ad lib on a palate diet.

They have to be moving around free ranging. So that's the, the heavy meat breads. With the layers, people just have to be really strategic. So what you have to be super aware [00:16:00] of is if they're free ranging. I recommend to people that they lock them up first thing in the morning until they make sure they have had a good big full crop.

That's a storage chamber at the bottom of the neck before the food moves into the stomach, into the prop. Ventriculars, filled with. A quality layer palette, not a layer, not a mix, they don't get to throw out all the healthy stuff and just eat the corn.

It needs to be a paled formula and they need to eat a, a big, full crop of a paled formula before they're allowed to go out. Then they go out, they free range, they eat their garden, whatever, blah, blah, blah. It's a beautiful life, and they're gonna get the grubs and they're gonna find protein and they're gonna be healthy chickens if they get, uh, wheat or scratch grains, which are very yummy.

Um, and very nutritionally deficient in a lot of ways. They get that last thing in the day as a treat. When you get them back in and you make sure that you try and encourage them to eat those pellets, you know, they should be available all day. Um, the other thing that you need to be really careful of the calcium requirements.

And this goes for everyone. They should always have a separate container of dry. I would argue fine, although that's just anecdotal in, in my experience, but in my experience, fine oyster shell grit seems to be taken in better by them. And it just offering a separate shell of that. You do not mix it in with the palate that leads to, occasionally hypercalcemic events.

So we, we want them to be able to choose when they supplement their own calcium. You don't mix it in yourself. You put it in an extra bowl for whatever reason, they seem to eat it mostly in the evening. It has to be dry and they will usually take in more if you leave it next to, um, the door to their coop.

They only seem to eat it. Supplement that themselves. If they can sense somehow by some sorcery that they're low in calcium, so they, they will self-regulate their calcium. Sorcery some crazys. Nature is insane. What magic is happening here. It's cute. If it gets wet, they won't eat it. [00:18:00] But yeah, I mean those are the big things that we are thinking of as like, and so in our growing chickens, we can go into, we can touch on that, how people go wrong there, but, but basically with our like adult laying hen, the two things that we really get can, the, the two big low hanging fruit is protein and calcium.

Hmm. Are we maintaining that we can maintain protein by giving them a pallet, not a mixed grained concoction, even if in in that bag of mixed grain concoction, they have the right crude protein. So what you call it crude protein needs to be about 16%. Is that right? For a layer layer, uh, usually goes up to about 18.

. 16 would be more for your growers. So it starts at like 20 to 22 protein for your little babies 'cause they're growing super fast. And then it drops down to about 16%, which is very low, um, for your growers.

'cause we wanna slow them down. We don't want them to just convert that all to fat and become heavy things. But that's a good point, like. Uh, just to round that off, sorry. And then when their hens, um, when they're laying and they're mature, that increases slightly to about 18% and that's to compensate for the, a huge amount of protein loss.

The egg white is just albumin, which is protein in the body, so they're losing a huge amount of protein every day. Um, but that's a good point as well. Like even those guidelines, even those figures that I just said, that's based on. Our commercial breeds that's based, you know, you buy a bag of that, it's got a damn picture of a brown shaver or a highline on the front.

So what I'm hearing is that if we have a he that is a commercial layer, they have co-evolved quote unquote, and by evolved, I mean. Selectively bred by, by humans. The powers that be. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not bred.

Um, and evolved in nature. Yeah. That they are designed to be in a cage, [00:20:00] eat, nothing but the perfect diet to lay an egg every day of their life. And then they chucked out at a year, 18 months. Mm-hmm. So if we own one of those animals, we need to respect its dietary requirements and make sure that we are not, for example, giving them leftover oats for breakfast that our son didn't want to eat.

Correct. Then so. I mean there are lots of people that buy. I think that's funny by the way. 'cause a couple of days ago you were like, you're Sam's at my place at the moment and a couple of days ago. She's like, oh, I love it when my kids don't eat their porridge. 'cause my chickens know it's gonna be a good time today.

Yeah. So you are, you're taking yourself down as that owner there in your comment. I am. But Don, you don't Commercial own high. You don't have high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I own B of Elders and you know, they get quarter of a cup of war moats with peanut butter, um, on a day that Noah doesn't eat them. And in the winter, that's what they would get, and I'm not too worried.

Well, coming back to my initial question, what sort of breed should I get if I want it to work in the garden? The only info we didn't gather on that is do you want it to lead? When you say a long and happy life, it's very vague.

Yeah. That could mean 18 months or that could mean 12 years. What are your thoughts?

I don't like the idea of owning a hen killing it after a year because it's prolapsed and can't lay another egg. Yeah. That's what I don't like. Yeah. Whether or not it's it's full life is eight years or 15 years really doesn't matter too much to me if it's living a good life.

So I got a heritage mixed. Did you say mixed breed? A dual purpose heritage breed in my Barna elder. And my thoughts on what breed to get would be [00:22:00] to get a heritage breed and to have a conversation with. People that own that breed, what are they like? I don't know, but I think there's something to be said for having a chick raised by a mum who is doing what you want. So I have one hen who really likes snails, and when she had some babies, they were like on the snail train. The other hens are still quite skeptical, but the ones that she's sat on, even though they're not biologically hers, they're biologically, all the hens that are there, um, have done what their mama told them to do, which is to, this is how we eat SNAs.

Is there anything else you wanna say about nutrition? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about heavy breeds. So, heavy breeds, we read the back of the bag and make sure that that's how much food we give them. Oh, and then we shut the, the food tray up for the rest of the day. Yeah. Unless you've got a heavy breed because you are truly trying to farm them for the table. For commercially or for your own home. If you've got a heavy breed because you want it to grow as fast as humanly as chicken possible and then slaughtered, then of course you are going to push it to its limit.

You know you're gonna let it overindulge. I think that's not our market maybe, probably right, that we're talking to today. It's probably not our listeners. Your listeners. Um. But yeah, I mean that's why they've been bred like that. Yeah, heavy breeds. I would make sure that during the growing phase you are aware of their protein intake and you're not.

So, for example, a lot of chick owners, a lot of people get chicks and they have heard and correctly so that you can keep it on the chick starter. You know, don't waste the bag. You can keep it on the chick starter right through layer. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. If you've got a, if some someone has a heavy breed, I would be saying, I wouldn't risk that you, you really need to make sure that you're dropping down that protein during the growing phase so that they're not just [00:24:00] depositing a crazy amount of fat running themselves into obesity.

So make sure they're on appropriate diet for their life stage.

What about young growing chicks? If I have a hen that has chicks under her, Ooh, can she eat? The chick starter?

Yes. So the packet would say no, but the packet says no because the protein is too high. We don't want that going on for a long period of time.

It would also say no because there is usually a drug called AIA Stat or an ION four, um, in that food. However, anybody that's got a mother hen with chicks knows that trying to feed them two different diets is just an absolutely insane idea. Yeah. Of course they're gonna eat the same thing.

So the reality is absolutely, usually a broody hen after she's been sitting for 21 days or longer on those eggs and they've had, she loses that it's normal for them to lose a pretty significant, like health wise, a significant amount of weight. Mm-hmm. During that time 'cause they, they're good mummies and they don't really feed themselves very much.

So they do lose a lot of weight. She can absolutely do with the higher protein, it goes up to about 2022 um, percent for the, for the chick starter. And then the reality is the co city Stat Schmidt, like she's not gonna come onto the lay for a few weeks anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Be aware of the COOs stat, be aware of the withhold period on it, which I can't remember exactly.

What that is. I mean, the idea is that it's, it's pretty lim and lengthy. Um, but she's not gonna be laying for a while anyway. She's, so, COOs stat is a disease. No. A coia. Coia. Coccidia is a disease, is a little gut parasite. A coccidia stat is a drug that is put into a Kickstarter feed, most of them. And the drug is there to slow down.

So stat means. Slow down. Ec static. It slows [00:26:00] down the reproduction of crop city. I thought stat meant sp up. You joking? Let's do that stat. Let's get onto that stat. Oh my God. Can we Google that? What is that? What's that short for? Let's do that. Staccato. Oh my God. Oh my God. That'll be short for staccato, right?

Like dude, dinging, dink ding, dink, ding, ding. Dinking dink on the piano. Nope. Ding, ding, ding. You should know you're married to someone in the army. What stat? Mean? Stat? I, I reckon it'll be short for staccato. Sam's Googling right now.

Surely. Oh, how much money would I be on that stat? Um, yeah. No stat in the world of drugs means slows it down versus societal, which means kills it. Stat in the world of Britannica Britannica dictionary. Uhhuh as an adverb. Yes. Uh, definition of stat without delay. Immediately used chiefly in medicine. Get this patient to the operating room stat, but why?

I wonder what it's short for. Oh, statin. The term originates from the LA word statin. Well, there you go. You learned not much about chickens, but you now know words sta. Yeah. Co city statue means slow down. Oh, I like that. Okay. Co city aside means to kill the co city rather than just slow it down. Anyway. A highly toxic drug and dog.

Don't get your dog eat the food. What were we talking about? Okay. Thank you. That is so good to know that you can feed it to her. I recommend. Yes, yes. But also keep your dogs away. Oh yeah. And your children. Holy flip. One of my good friends here just lost her dog. Ate. Ate like a cup and a half of the staff when it fell out on a windy day.

I'm sorry. Yeah, he struggled through. There's no antidote for it. It's horrific. Yeah, don't let, don't let them. There's just like wildly varying toxic dose rates amongst species, but it's [00:28:00] like I really stand by it as needing to be in Chick Starter, especially for free ranging hens v show. Okay. So we need to give our chicks chick starter.

I, I would recommend that Absolutely. The mums are okay to eat it. For 12 weeks or so. Well, bubs are meant to be on it for six weeks, so there's no reason to keep them on it. Keep mum on it after that. Okay, so mum's allowed to eat chick starter for six weeks, you would say, because a babies are gonna eat what Mum eats anyway.

Yes. So you can't feed them a separate diet. It'd be very difficult to, and B, it's only six weeks and she's lost a lot of weight sitting on X. Yeah. So the high protein will be good for her and C um, it's the COOs stat is not gonna hurt mum. Mm-hmm. But, uh, if she eats it, we as humans should not be eating her eggs.

Correct. For how long after?, what is the withholding period? If the mum hen is eating the chick starter.

So this answer probably comes down to a little bit of like legality. So because it's not labeled for them at all, we, we should be going to a default, withhold period because it's not licensed at all for, for that use. Does that make sense? So we go to what we call the default with hold period, which in New Zealand is 10 days.

So if a drug isn't labeled for a particular use. And we don't know what the withhold period is. We say 10 days. The meat withhold, uh, I believe is about 14 days. Um, you will probably find that she's not even laying eggs within that time though, to be fair. So you, you may find that you don't end up puffing any eggs out at all.

I don't think a heritage breed. A mom that's lost a lot of weight has been sitting on eggs. Take It will usually take 28 days, a few weeks, 21 days. Yeah. It's gonna be. Laying eggs in the first six weeks. Yeah. That's how long we are giving chicks chick. Yeah. Okay. She might, I mean, it's really variable, but no, they often take a good few weeks to get back [00:30:00] into it.

Okay. So it's not, I'm not concerned. That is absolutely my recommendation to people. Okay. So let's come to our heritage jewel breeds. Mm-hmm. Like mine, barn elders. Mm-hmm. They have pallets, ad lib. Mm-hmm. And I throw them oyster shells. Weekly. What does that mean? You throw them oyster shells? I throw it on the ground, A handful on the ground.

Okay. And sometimes a couple will go and pick them up straight away, like, thank you. Whereas that been, and other times they're like, no. Okay. And I'll come back and get that when I feel like it. Mm-hmm. Should I, I don't really wanna be giving them a bulb, 'cause I think the bowl will fill out with water. I'd rather chuck it on the ground.

Mm-hmm. And because I rotate my chicken so much, I don't mind things being on the ground. And I assume, I don't know, I know nothing about this particular breed other than, you know, what they look like in job purpose and blah, blah, blah. But I assume they probably lay what, like three on average? Like three, four eggs a week, would you say?

In the laying season. That be right? Yeah. My younger ones would. I got some, I got some so that, so like three pretty chill elderly ends now. Yeah. If we are looking at like three eggs a week, that's, and that's considered like a, a pretty average layer, right? There's a lot of buffer there. There's a lot of buffer like the body.

Our bodies, chicken's, body animals' bodies are very, very good at regulating their own calcium. They have to be, they're regulated very tightly because it affects nerve function. It can stop the heart if it goes haywire. So it's the most tightly regulated thing in terms of homeostasis in the whole body. Um, so we've got different mechanisms of, of, you know, uh, increasing absorption from the gut and, um, and increasing or, or decreasing elimination through the kidneys and all sorts with the.

With the, uh, with calcium. So if, if they're only laying three eggs a week, they've got way [00:32:00] more time to self-regulate. It's the ones where we increase that from three up to five. You see a big, a drastic change in life expectancy. And then if we go from five eggs to seven eggs a week, one a day, which is like your brown, your commercial layers, then our life expectancy just falls.

So the episode four? Mm-hmm. But on three, I mean, your chickens are probably absolutely fine. They'd get away with that. I wouldn't worry. 'cause they're laying about three eggs a day. Your young ones, you said My young ones. So like they're fine. They're cracking on. Yeah, they're living their best and their body is probably very happily self-regulating everything from their diet.

Okay. Some days they'll increase more, you know, they'll absorb more calcium than other days because they need more or whatever, you know? Okay. They can look after themselves. Okay. Their healthy heritage. Okay. So, um, another thing I like to do when I do give them, when they're free ranging, I only give them food that I know that they'll eat 100% off.

Because I don't want pests. And when they're in their coop, I actually check all of their food scraps. 'cause I have a thick mulching system and I just lay mulch. They kind of form a compost pile and then I move the dough. Mm, love it. So let me say a few foods. And you can say, yes, definitely no. For my dual purpose, Barnabas, sometimes I will, like if Noah doesn't eat, finish off his tin of tuna, I'm thinking tuna's fine because they're free range.

The problem with tuna would be that it's very, very high in salt, but they actually have very, very high salt it intake. So that's the thing that would come to mind for tuna is the salt. Like for any other Bri, any other species, I'd be like, Ooh, salt intake. Um, but actually chickens have very high solds diets because of laying eggs and yeah, so it, it's probably fine.

Okay. Oats. Oats. Oh, they'll love [00:34:00] oats. They'll, it's like McDonald's. They'll get, they'll put on weight and it won't give them much. So pretty nutritionally deficient in a lot of ways. Um, and they'll choose it over most anything else as well. So if I give it to 'em first thing in the morning, they're gonna eat oats.

Get full tummies. Mm-hmm. Leave and not necessarily eat their palate. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Oh heck yeah. If it's alongside a palate, they're not gonna eat their palate. Good gracious. No. They'll have their oats, add some barley in the mix and they're away laughing with obesity. No, I'm just joking. They're probably fine.

Your chickens. But try doing that for like a heavy breed and you'd be. Up the creek. Is there anything, what about sprouted grains? When people talk about giving sprouted grains to their hens. I don't know enough about it, about sprouted grains. Here's my thing. It's like if you're giving them sprouted grains and they, that's 100% carbohydrate, then you need to also be making sure that you're giving them grubs, et cetera, to try and get up to that.

Well, grains aren't a hundred percent carbohydrate. Okay? If they've got their casing on like their leg ca on the outside course they're not, they sprouted, then they're, of course they're not. Sorry, beg your pardon. Yeah. And especially if you are sprouting legumes and things. Yeah. You just need to be careful if get, if os very different situation and that's carbohydrate.

Okay. If it's like a refine, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay. Hmm. Okay. Maybe cut that bit out then. Not really sure if we wanna go down that route route. I'll just, I don't, I don't think we know enough to be educational. I'll just say with calcium, something that I do know is that. It's common to have low calcium in soils in New Zealand in particular.

Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't be surprised with overseas as well. Mm-hmm. And so if you are thinking, well, my chickens are free ranging, they're getting calcium from their greens, it's not necessarily. [00:36:00] Happening. They're not necessarily getting, just like humans, we're not necessarily getting calcium from what we are eating.

Just because Wikipedia says that their plant has calcium in it, it doesn't necessarily make it true. Mm-hmm. Because plants will only get what they can get from the soil if it's, if it's available to them. Mm-hmm. And I know that it is something that in compost specifically, people will. Try Will, will actually add to their compost to try and amend their soil and their garden beds., You know, with those greens, obviously it's fantastic for them to get them, but when they, when we have breeds that have really intense nutritional requirements, like your high layers that just lay a ton of eggs, it's.

You it, it's just not even, it's like a drop in the ocean. You know? Even if there was a normal amount of calcium in there, they just have such high requirements. They, they've not evolved. They've de been devolved by humans. They can't live in a natural environment. They're so far from their comedy ancestors.

It's unbelievable.

Also, the ancestors were not roaming around eating grass and greens. The ancestors were living on a forest floor. Eating predominantly grubs, you know? Yes., We have free ranging brown shavers up the road from us. And I remember having a thought along the same lines of, oh, they're all in this paddock and they seem to be roaming around doing their thing, but there's not really anything growing in that paddock.

Hmm. And then I thought, well actually for a brown shaver that's probably best that they're not actually eating. So they're going for a wander. Sure. There in the sunshine and flapping around. But then they're going back to their palate to eat. Mm-hmm. It probably is. Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting thought.

Yeah, I mean, this is my first time thinking about that as well, but yeah, they need to eat ad-lib their palate for sure. So would it be correct to say that [00:38:00] not all chickens should be free ranging? As chicken owners, should we be allowing all our chickens to free range? One could argue no. I would argue that because free ranging is such a beneficial thing for their mental state. Every chicken owner, especially if you have a brown shaver, a high line, a commercial X layer, any of the high laying breeds or the heavy, heavy meat breeds, you are ethically obliged to have your ducks in a row and do your research for that specific breed and feed them very strategically.

Otherwise free ranging is gonna run into, can run into issues at either end of the spectrum. I'm not saying don't free range. I think it's a beautiful thing and I absolutely, absolutely think that's best case scenario for every little life. But you as the owner are obliged to, to do your research. For someone that doesn't have a lot of experience and wants to get chickens, would you recommend a commercial breed?

A hundred million percent no to a commercial meat breed ever. They cannot live in real life. So that's not a thing. No. Uh, a commercial layer. Yes. If you are prepared to euthanize them immediately, if they crumble at a young age with a prolapse, for example, or cage layer of fatigue or anything that you don't know how to address, or you are highly motivated and are willing to get them healthcare from a, an avian vet, a poultry vet, um, they make beautiful pets.

They're so lovely, eh? They're so sweet. They're very trusting. They're super trusting, which is just crazy. There's no credit, no awareness. Yeah. I definitely think there's a place for them. People just need to, people need to understand how they differ [00:40:00] and they have strengths in many ways that your meat breeds don't, but they are an end of a spectrum. Mm. Right. At the end of a, of a spectrum. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Is there anything else that we wanna say about that?

If you're getting X layers, like truly from a cage Yeah. Um, there is. Probably more than just me talking about it out there, but you're absolutely more than welcome to, to go and look it up on says the vet. I do a whole video on it. But yeah, you, you need to be aware, not just if you're getting them as chicks, but if you're getting them actually from a cage, so they have been in the commercial industry, you need to be aware that they are going to be immuno naive in many ways.

So they have been sitting in a cage pooing through the bars. They have never encountered their own feces. They have never. Re picked up their own, coccidia, like gut parasites that come out in the stools. So there's a lot of things they'll be naive against, they won't have immunity against, and the main things are going to be coccidia and worms.

It doesn't mean that they're straight off the back gonna be sickly and that you shouldn't get them. It just means you need to just approach it as if they were chicks all starting all over again. So sometimes I actually recommend people put them on a chick starter as they. Progress out. So if you're getting a commercial breed, a commercial laying breed chicken from the cages, they need to go to C the Bear and actually do some research on how to, yeah, yeah.

You are likely going to have to have them on a preventative deworming schedule for the first year of life, just as you would for a chick that first goes outside, including being aware of coia and treating or preventing that going through their first winter. Okay. Yeah, please go watch on the vet. There's other specific.

Health issues you should be aware of so you can mitigate those concerns.

What breed should someone get if they're into permaculture, and I would say if someone's into permaculture, often they are considering eating the meat. The brewsters. Mm-hmm. And I would say that they would have a [00:42:00] much better life and a very quick death

if someone is really thinking about the ecosystem and cares about nature and cares about animals, you know, which I would say people that enter permaculture are so, in which case, if you want eggs for the table and some meat for the table, a dual layer as well. A jewel. Why is that so hard for me to say? A jewel purpose, A dual purpose chicken heritage breed.

The one thing that's crucial to talk about that we haven't talked about yet is very, very frequently I see young growing chicks with nutritional deficiencies and they are being fed a, the, the diet that they're supposed to be fed and clients cannot figure out what's going on.

And what is usually going on is they are young chicks that are free ranging and taking in very little. They're being offered a chick starter, but they're not eating it. They're eating what mum's being fed or trying to, but not fitting a palate in. Probably, or what commonly happens is people get a great big 20 kg bag of chick starter food.

I. Don't go through it all for their little pets for the year. They store it in a hot garage over the rest of the year and then feed it to next year's chips as well. Say like act day chicks is a common example of that. And we have B vitamins, which are crucial for nerves along with a lot of other things that are very unstable in heat.

So we see in practice a lot of B vitamin deficiencies. And vitamin C is also very unstable. So those are the two things that will go down if you store your bag in the heat and a big hot black bin in your hot garage across the air and try and feed it again, and you'll go, well, I buy some chick food from my local supplier.

Take it home, put it outside in one of those big black bins. This is actually what I do. But then it's all [00:44:00] used up in six weeks. Have I lost my B vitamins? I couldn't tell you. I mean, they'll start degrading straight away if it's really hot, but uh, but you're probably fine if you're using it quickly. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know what the half life is. 'cause it's all on the spectrum of how hot it is as well. Right? Right. 100%. And when you're having, when the chicks are moving around. Yeah. That's good to know. So should I be storing my chicken palette that also has b. Vitamins in it out of the heat? Yeah, I would, yeah, I would.

Okay. Thank you. That's my understanding. Unless there's some kind of stabilization process going on with the pallets, but I, I don't think so. I think it's just, you know, like we have injectable B vitamins in veterinary practice and they're kept in the fridge. It's, it's really unstable in the heat. Okay.

Lastly, I wanna ask if people. Want to see a vet that is going to give them good advice around their poultry. And I have many friends who've had really rubbish advice and I've gone or have and now are starting to approach me, go, what does your sister say about blank? How do they know? What questions should they ask Yvette before they ask that specific vet to see their chicken?

I mean, how, how do you know that you are seeing a vet that is good? Do you just ask the clinic? Who's your chicken vet? I mean, how do you know? Do you know? This is, this is maybe shocking to say. I would maybe take it to a forum. Is that crazy to say? Like online you will not get an honest answer from front of house

'cause they don't know. They know that they've got the vet that is comfortable dispensing antibiotics and pain relief to their, to chickens. And that's the person that they put the chickens in with. And if you ask 'em, they'll go, oh yeah, we've got a chicken vet here.

It's not, it's not the same thing. I would actually be [00:46:00] be asking for experiences from other clients. If you've got a vet that is performing a, you know, is, is putting a, doing a stitch up under general anesthetic. For a chicken or going above and beyond with with different forms of pain relief or hospitalizing a chicken.

You know that vet is invested and knows what they're doing and is motivated to do the best thing. That's what I'd be doing. I'd be asking around social, social forms. Who have other people? Sarah currently has a brown shaver in her garage, everyone I do. And you're doing it just for love. Yeah. Yeah. It's not her fault.

She's a brown shaver. It's not her fault. She's a brown shaver, two years, two years old, and she has not gone off the lay once. She's on the other side of winter now, and she has had to have a, a contraceptive hormonal implant to stop her laying because she is a persistent prolapse and she's had a little surgery to permanently replace the prolapse, and she's now gonna stop laying for three months with her implant because she has a very motivated owner.

And it was slightly crazy vet that said I'd hospitalize it for free in my marriage. That's amazing. Yeah. So I, I can't imagine that that's really anyone's best. Yes. Buying a brown shaver chick. It is. If you're happy to slaughter it at 18 months old, I mean, that's really, that's really what it is. You either offer it, you're either motivated to offer it healthcare or you are only expecting to get maximum eggs, and there's lots of people that do, do, do that.

To be fair. Yeah, they want maximum eggs and every, for 18, you know, for the first year of its laying life. So they start laying at five, six months old, what you say, and they slaughter it at 18 months. And owners, some owners will just rotate them. So every year they'll get, they'll add another five to their flock.

And the oldest, the 2-year-old, five year olds get bonked at my kids' school for Ag Day. [00:48:00] They sell chicks in their brown shavers. Mm-hmm. Is that because they can sex them? Mm-hmm. Okay. That might be why.

Girl, boy, girl, boy, girl goes in the crate, boy goes down the shoot.

You can, you can absolutely vent sex a, uh, any, any chicken, heritage chicks. Yeah, totally. Okay. It's just a skill. So about the school of just trying to figure out why a school is selling. For pets. Mm-hmm. As Ag Day chicks, brown shavers, when there's so many other options out there, and it's because they're able to buy them as just females, I'm assuming, because the place they've bought them very regular supply chain every six weeks is another batch.

Yep. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you so much for talking to me about chickens. Thanks for getting into chickens. Okay. Thank you.

If you would like more nuance or in depth information from C, check out C, the vet on YouTube. I'll be thinking to Nelson again and animal questions that you have. Take a screenshot, share this episode with someone you think needs it. A Happy Animals and happy planner equals happy people.

And this is where it is at. Until next week, may your garden be abundant and Strawberries white.