Welcome to another episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast.

I know this may sound crazy since falls just officially getting underway, but breeding season will be here before we know it.

Are your birds ready?

If they're not there's still time to get them prepared.

That's exactly what Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon will be talking about in this episode.

So lets turn it over to them now.

Jeff, how's your week been?

I don't know if it's the moon phase, if it's the season change, what it is this week has been insanely busy.

I don't understand where it's coming from, but you know what?

I guess I should be thankful for it.

That's what they say, otherwise I'd be complaining about being bored.

But I, that hasn't happened in a long time.

So Jeff, I've been knowing you,

what, three years now?

I think three years,

something like that.

And never, I've heard you complain about a decent amount of stuff.

I have never in my life heard you complain about being bored.

Yeah.

I'm one of those stupid people that if I have free time on my hands, I find something new to do.

I can't just, yeah, do nothing.

And I gotta, I got, I gotta quit doing that.

I've talked to my wife about it because my schedule is pretty tight, but she told me, she said, you know something that's who you are.

That's part of you is staying busy and helping people, and she said, to be honest, if you weren't busy or helping somebody or both, would you be you?

I don't know, but wouldn't mind a down day every now and then,

I every now and then I'll take a weekend or a day on the weekend and just sit and try and do nothing like binge watch, band a brothers or something like that.

Just, that's a good one.

So she a, she actually asked me Yes.

Yesterday or day before.

He said what do you got going on Saturday?

And I just looked at her and she said, seriously, what do you got going on?

I said, I hope and pray nothing.

We'll see how it works out, but that's what I'm hoping for.

And I had a I had a piglet that, or a pig sow.

The other day I was out there and I was like, I heifer.

She don't quite look like her sisters.

No, she ain't done got pregnant.

I went and caught her.

I've never felt a pregnant pig before, but I have felt a pregnant woman's belly before.

When they're in that last trimester and the baby looks more like an alien moving around.

And surprisingly enough I did have a pregnant and then I was like I wonder how far along she is.

A couple hours ago I got a picture from my daughter.

She said, pops, there's six.

So I have six baby pigs at home.

Are

you sure?

She's done,

she's moving around and my daughter she helps feed and she said she would not let me anywhere close to'em.

Like I said I'm glad that at least her mothering instinct is that far developed and, the, she was moving around I don't know.

Do they get up and walk around and then pop another one out?

Sometimes they don't know.

Like they'll, there'll be a pause in the labor.

Yeah.

And you can have a surprise, an hour or two or even longer.

Okay.

So you don't know.

But actually, so this is

first time for her,

right?

Actually for K Coon.

And being a first time six is probably the right number.

That's a pretty good number for a Kuni Kon on a first litter.

This is this one, she's two feet tall, 18 inches wide, decent size, not I've got my, one of my bores is.

Probably 300, 325 pounds.

He's ready for the, he's about ready for the breakfast table.

Yep.

That's about all you're gonna do with him.

If he, if you've used him for breeding and he's been around thousand gilts for a while, he's gonna be, you make him into a good spicy sausage that has a fair amount of sage and garlic in it.

So just saying, look, we're here to talk about chickens.

We ain't here to talk about your pigs.

I know.

You're excited.

I know you're excited.

But wait, you just

started talking about sausage and you just probably fixing to say something about bacon and

Yeah,

I was gonna have to talk to Sue and Laura and see if we could just have a breakfast show.

There we

go.

Yeah, I don't know.

Tonight I got a feeling there's gonna be enough fat on that old boar that you can cook down a lot of lard.

I was gonna say Sue.

Sue just said that.

Yeah.

But we'll find out'cause I am gonna keep it all tonight we're here to talk about getting ready for breathing season and when I first mentioned it to Jeff, he had that same reaction.

He kinda laughed.

And I was like, I said Jeff let's really look at this, because the first time I thought I was ready for breeding season, I wasn't far from it.

And I was behind the eight ball when I was getting started.

So that's why I'm like, Hey, you know what?

Let's have a good conversation about breeding season, what it should look like and all that.

So our new listeners, watchers can figure out that, like me, my, my first go around when I, man, hey, that first time I felt like I had it under control.

I was popping out.

Chicks left and right, everything was going good.

We're great.

And then I started hanging out with guys that knew a lot more about how it really should work.

Like you and Rip and Jennifer, and Mandy and Karen.

I've learned a lot last several years.

I thought my granddaddy taught a lot.

So the next season, I.

I got all my ducks in a row.

So hopefully we can help somebody bypass that.

Look, it doesn't matter what stage you are in your poultry journey, right?

There is always something new to learn.

It, that is if your mind is open and things can still enter in, there's always something new to learn, right?

And

it's I have always said, if you're not a student of your craft.

You're gonna fail sooner or later bad.

So you gotta be a student of your craft or it's not gonna work out.

No argument Uhuh, no argument at all, because for me, I thought breeding season night I'm gonna put three or four hens with a rooster.

They all look good.

Boom, I'm set.

And another one, another area.

I had a really good rooster and I had a layer flock of Isa Browns and, they're like the hinz 57 of the chicken world that's actually productive.

And they, they prolific layers.

So I was like, I'd got me a tabletop incubator.

Okay.

Hatched a couple out the i, I don't know what kind of drug you would call that if like it's a hatching drug or chicken something, I don't know what you would call it, but it got me and I was hooked.

So I bought a cabinet incubator.

I went straight from a nite 360.

To a hatching time, CT 180, no in between.

And I was hatching out chicks left and right, and then I found out that I was a hatcher, I wasn't a breeder.

And I really started thinking about stuff.

And in your mind.

And we talked about this a little bit earlier, but for somebody that's wanting to set up a breeding program and actually breed birds in their backyard, whether they want to hatch out 10 or a thousand, what is the most important place they should start?

Oh man, that, that's a really tough question, because you're asking a person who does nutrition every day and, but it actually isn't a nutrition thing, right?

It is evaluating your birds and finding the hen and rooster with the least amount of defects.

Starting there, and hopefully you've got a couple hens to choose from to go with that rooster.

Two, three, something like that.

But if you're starting with what's already in your backyard, I agree with Sue, you hunt down the best, the best birds you can afford.

But starting like you did right for the brand new breeder.

It's looking at, body type, body depth, what you're, you're just looking for what you want, down the road in what you're doing, right?

So it's gonna be selecting the best overall birds with the least amount of defects or problems or body function issues or whatever, right?

And that's where you start.

Yeah, when.

The first time I asked Rip that question, he said that depends.

Where do you want to be in five years?

And I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, this guy's asking me where do I wanna be in five years.

I don't know where to be right now.

But he told me it was a very good lesson because he said that I needed to think about what I wanted for the future of my flock.

To know what I'm starting with and figure out how I need to get there.

And I was like, that's deep.

I, but I needed a game plan.

I needed to figure out where I wanted to be.

So I did that.

And we talked and so then he helped me, put things in order, but.

Having that right when you figure out a bird for me I started with, and I'll always love a Rhode Island red, it reminds me of my grandfather.

Some of our greatest memories I have with him is messing with those and collecting eggs and stuff like that when I was knee high.

So that was the direction I went.

And he's helped me a lot from, this rooster has this, that's not right, but the hens, theirs is perfect.

So the chicks will inherit that trait from the hen.

So I was able to learn how to put that together.

And now Sue's bragging.

She's got some dandy puls this year, and that's good because the birds that I hatched out last year that I kept, I think I got three pulls and about 20 roosters.

I'm hoping this year what I hatch out is heavy on the hand side, we'll figure that out in time.

But I had to learn what I wanted, where I wanted to be, and then I had to learn what that bird should be.

And I had this idea in my mind, but as the more research and stuff I did, and of course I looked at a standard of perfection and that's where I learned what to look for.

Then when he and I talked, he says the hard part's done.

And I'm like, huh?

Oh yeah.

It gets you 75% of the way,

right?

Yeah, Yeah.

It's where you go from there.

So once you have those birds, where do you go?

When do you think about setting up.

What you're setting up to be able to hatch, say January or February?

Again, Carrie, it's what is your goal, right?

If you take the road like a breeder like Kenny Triano, right?

So his goal is purposely going for the perfect burden, right?

And repeatability.

So when he breeds.

A rooster to he within a family.

He has predictability on what those chicks, what that offspring's gonna look like.

So if you keep honing in, and a lot of this is gonna be done through wine breeding, and inbreeding.

Is, eventually you're gonna continue to work out, these hidden.

Gene that you didn't even know you had.

And a lot of people get scared, right?

But that's, that's further down the road.

But a serious hardcore breeder like a Kenny, even like a Rip, right?

That in breeding and line breeding is going to clean up that family as fast as anything, right?

That's what I've learned as well doing.

A lot of people are scared of line breeding, but everything I've learned, all my research, and from what I've seen in the brood pen, that's the best way to weed out what's sneaking in.

And depending on where you're starting from, you could be three to five generations to weed out the majority of those faults in a bird.

Yeah.

It shouldn't take you longer than that, but most people quit after two, right?

Because they see some really, really strange stuff popping out of these birds, right?

And they're like, oh, man, I've got, I'm messed up.

I've got line breeding what do you call it?

Depression.

I got the, yeah.

Line depression.

All right.

I gotta

bring in fresh blood.

Yeah.

That is absolutely the worst thing you can ever do.

Yeah.

Completely new in fresh blood from outside.

There you go.

See, Sue's saying that you just don't,

you don't do it.

You don't give up just because you hit that, true.

Line breeding or inbreeding depression shows up first.

The true actual depression of line breeding or inbreeding is.

Failure to reproduce.

So when you, if you or could actually get your poultry to a point, of, at where, the hen won't become fertile or the rooster won't become fertile or whatever, or you get a bunch of, even if they were fertile, you have a bunch of embryonic deaths.

That you can't explain otherwise, but it actually goes back to total fertility the inability to breed.

So when line breeding goes too far or inbreeding goes too far.

That's the true.

In breeding depression that I've seen right in all other species.

Because this practice is done in goats and sheep and cattle and pigs and you name it, right?

If they use it everywhere, it's on the farm is how they do it.

And so true.

True inbreeding depression is failure to reproduce.

Okay.

And that would the only time I would consider, getting something in your same line, maybe a generation or two out or from another farmer go

to the person you got your bird from.

Right?

That's what Rip, that's what Rip was telling people the other day is if you ever think you're gonna need another rooster or something.

You go to somebody else who has the same line as you and select a bird from there.

But I have never seen, I've never actually seen poultry bred to the point where they fail to reproduce because of genetics.

I've seen it where they don't reproduce because of poor quality feed, because of poor living conditions, because of poor management.

But actually.

Where it was a genetic failure.

I have not seen that yet.

To me I think that 99% of it all boils down to management.

Even when you hit that part, this genetic, the manager hasn't managed the breeding program correctly, which is why you hit that.

In my opinion.

I think a lot of it's on us.

A, a lot of the great breeding people, the families of humans that have been bred, multiple generations, they've never brought outside blood in, so it, they're constantly, in some fashion, either line breeding or in breeding.

So in some, some families have had'em for 50 or 60 years.

Okay.

One of the things I learned when I was working with Kenny Triano is the genetic the number of chromosomes and the way the potential of, breeding repeatedly because they're a reptile, they're not a mammal, their gene code is closer to a reptile.

It is like thousands of combinations before you're gonna hit a wall.

So it's, that's hatching a lot of chicks.

That's hatching a lot of chicks.

So

we've got our birds picked out.

We know what we're looking for.

We're doing that.

We want to ha we wanna start hatching like in the south hatching.

And I'm a fan of hatching in the cooler months because it's easy to keep a chick warm, and so they don't have a problem with that.

I, in the south, I've actually had birds get too hot as one, two week old chicks and die.

So I would rather hatch out in a cooler month to.

Do that, but you would like, I've started now prepping my birds for hatching out, being able to set and hatch out in December or set in December and start hatching in January with their lighting management.

You should have everybody set at right around, 11 or 12 hours.

And don't let it go below that.

So you're holding, you're not, you're holding light.

My light.

12.

Alright, you're holding light for pulls or hands?

Is 11 hours 11 or 12?

Okay.

As long as you don't let it go below that, then you keep that pretty much stable.

You don't have as far to go with light stimulation when you're thinking you want to breed.

Like you're gonna start, you're gonna start stimulating and breeding for December.

So actually you're gonna start moving your lights up in November.

cause you're gonna have to Yeah, I have above.

You're gonna have to get above 14 hours.

To get them stimulated and the older birds, like if you've got fourth, fourth cycle hands, fifth cycle hands, 5, 6, 7 year olds they may take more light stimulation.

They will take more light stimulation to get them moving.

Then a

pull does.

Because she's ready, right?

She's ready.

The bullet's ready to pop.

She's not gonna take a whole lot of encouragement.

Some of them are laying egg with eight hours of sunlight,

right?

So the puls are, the few that I do have from last year they're already laying.

But what I've done is in some of my research on lighting,'cause I've done a lot and you and I have had a lot of discussions about it.

Yeah.

That 2,700 K spectrum is what, like Hubbard Genetics and people that spend multi-millions of dollars doing research say is the best.

So I found those and then I also found it to where they're not bright.

A lot of people think when they stimulate a bird with light, we're lighting up Yankee Stadium.

But

actually when you can overdo it.

Yeah.

You study it and you read it, that actually stresses the birds out and they won't do anything.

Yep.

And you gotta come up gradually.

So I've

checked that and it does like.

They won't do nothing.

Yeah.

I've used like 6,500 k, those super bright lights and had the day at 14 hours, nothing.

Make one change, swap that out for 2,700 k.

They call'em cool white.

It's more like a overcast day kinda.

Swap it out with that within a week.

I'm getting eggs every day.

So you did that lighting study thing and posted it about a year ago.

It's probably time to repost that again so people understand.

All right.

I can share that.

You only need between, what is it, 10 and 20?

Lux not to go over 40.

Lux.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is 20 foot candles.

And we've talked about it.

You can get the app for free on your phone, right?

It's l Yeah, there,

there's a couple of'em, but the one that's LUX,

that's the one I use.

LUX.

Yeah.

And it's free.

You just gotta watch what you agree to.

So there's one that they'll charge you a monthly, and there's another one that's take the free one.

The base model is free and so Sue wants to know, so she needs a link where to find those light bulbs.

But.

So you need to get all that posted in the group, yeah.

I'll get that shared out.

But yeah, so get that app right and you'd be amazed at what you think is, the appropriate light versus what they've studied to know is the appropriate amount of light, and it's really not much.

Okay?

It's just a little bit more than a good night light.

You plug in the wall.

So it's I tell people enough light that you can walk through there without stumbling over a chicken.

That's it.

Don't take much.

I got a buddy of mine that has commercial houses up in North Alabama, and we were having this conversation last year and he said, look, man, if I go, if I had to walk in them houses after dark or early before the sun comes up, I've got a green hand lamp that I put on because the light coming in from the, like the sun coming in from the side.

Along with the lights, you can not trip over a chicken, which I mean, they're packed in pretty tight in there.

But he said if the sun is nothing out or the moon's not out a lot, I gotta wear a headlamp.

So

now that's a commercial barn.

Yeah.

And so they're trying to manage aggression.

Cannibalism, things like that.

But that's why they don't have really bright lives,

right?

If you get your lights above a certain level, you actually stimulate aggression.

And you can drive'em crazy just with too much light.

And so

Yeah.

And they'll drive you crazy as

a result.

Yep.

But what I do is.

Like you talked about, I plan way ahead.

So instead of backing it up 30 minutes every week, I do it every two weeks to where I get them to 14 hours.

So I like to wake'em up with the artificial light, at the peak of season, December, January my lights are on at three 30 in the morning outside.

Yep.

And,

and that's just barely 14 hours,

right?

But here's the thing.

I, what I do is about every week I will make a conscious effort to pay attention to what time the sun goes down, because I wanna make sure my clock timer for my lights goes off hour and a half, two hours before the sun goes down.

Because, and I do two hours, which kind of a bit excessive, I know, but in the south, which I'm sure it's everywhere else, the sun don't always set at six o'clock.

It may go down a little early, it may go down a little late, the weather could be off, whatever.

But I want that roosting, nighttime, bedtime, whatever you wanna call it.

I want all that to happen naturally.

That's the best results I've ever seen.

When I maintained the flock in the backyard and the chicken, no matter what, whether I put lights in the building or not, right?

At sunset, they were all on the roost.

So in a chicken's mind, sunset is the end of the day.

I had very poor success trying to stimulate with any light in the evening.

Okay.

After the sunset, they just ignored the lights and went to bed.

That's, that was my chickens.

I could see that because they know, like you said, they know.

They do?

No, we wanna think they're stupid, but they're really not.

They just act that way sometimes.

But yeah, they're really not.

Yeah.

So when you do that, you've got your lot, you know you're gonna have your best results with 14 hours.

It's best to wake them up early in the morning so they can rouse naturally at night.

Now wait, hold on because let's roll this back a little bit because if I remember I was talking about if you got like a five, six, 7-year-old hen Or you got a rooster in the same boat five, six, 7-year-old rooster that you're still trying to get more checks out of.

You may have to take them as high as 16 or even 17 hours to get them fully stimulated.

You can stimulate a first year pull in a second year hand with 14 hours working up to 14, but the older they get, the more stimulation they require.

So just keep that in mind, right?

They're not all gonna be 14 hour birds.

But that's also in my mind, and I may be wrong if I am, tell me, but my mindset if I stop at two hours.

Before then, the ones that only need the 14 hours of light are getting a solid 14 hours.

But if they need more, they're gonna get it naturally.

But I'm not overdoing it by giving them light.

Is that line of thinking right?

It can't be!

We're already out of time for this episode but don't worry we'll be back next Tuesday with the conclusion of this great topic.

So make plans to join us then.