Chickens Every Day
Dedicated to helping backyard chicken owners keep the happiest and healthiest flocks we can.
Chickens Every Day
Part 2: Jeff Mattocks The Backyard Chicken Keeper’s Guide To Pecking Order, Nest Boxes, And Health
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Overcrowding And Flock Fighting
SPEAKER_02So another concern people have, and and and my cousin that I mentioned earlier is already getting into this. Oh, I've got seven chickens, I want seven more. And now we get into overcrowding. What are some of the things that we need to look for that can happen to us when we overcrowd our birds?
SPEAKER_01First off, there's going to be a pecking order, right? So to add seven more birds to existing seven, you're going to have days of fighting, right? Now they have to re-establish the pecking order, right? Who's the dominant? Who's in charge? Where does everybody fit into that society? Okay, so you're going to have that. If you get birds and you crowd them, they're going to start pecking at each other, right? So now you're going to start having cannibalism. Um, they could be eating feathers. Uh, if it's space related, they generally will either peck the tail head where the big feathers are, or they'll peck the back of the head, right? That is the two places when they feel crowded, like if there's not enough space for them to spread out and be comfortable. Um every place that a bird pecks each other has a different meaning, right? Like when they peck the saddle feathers right in front of the tail, a lot of times they'll actually eat those, and that means it's a nutritional deficiency, right? Um yeah. So, you know, some things mean you know, they need more space, some things mean their nutrition's off, and people get this all confused and mixed up on a regular basis, right? And you know, they just don't take the time to understand um what what is happening and
Nest Boxes That Hens Actually Use
SPEAKER_01why. Um, you know, one of the biggest offenders I see is people don't have appropriate nest boxes, and they don't know where a nest box is supposed to go. So understand that the hen is looking for a solitude space, dark space to lay her egg, right? And I see nest boxes sitting out in the open daylight, open sun, and you know, the people that own the chicken think, oh, this is great. And the chicken's thinking, God, this is horrible, right? Come on, this sucks. Right? So, you know, have enough uh nest box space for the number of hens. I would say six or seven hens per nest box. You want a curtain over that nest box, right? So you want to keep the light from going in there. You want to discourage two hens in a nest box at the same time.
SPEAKER_02My wife actually made some fabric and I and I slit the fabric put in front of them, you know.
SPEAKER_01They love it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they love it in there because they're private, it's dark. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But they don't waste a lot of time in there, right? So they're not lounging. They go in, they lay their eggs, they leave, right? They go in, they lay in so you end up washing less eggs if you make it the appropriate space. That's true. Where yeah, when they designate that as a nest box only, not a place to sleep at night, right? Not a place to lounge around, then yeah, then you can so yeah, nest boxes, and then if you get two hens in there, like if you see a a bird that's getting pecked at the vent, you know, where at the obeduct, then you know, there's a highly likelihood that you have two hens and a nest box. And maybe you've seen this, right? You get one hen in there, she's facing out, right? Her head's pointed out, one hand is pointed in. Well, the hen facing out is the one about to lay her egg. The hen facing in just wants the nest box so she can lay her egg, right? But people don't realize this, and they need to go YouTube it, or maybe you can find one, but um, a picture of how an egg gets laid so it gently that oviduct protrudes and gently places the egg in place. Okay, when that happens, that oviduct is very translucent and it has veins in it. The other hen sees the red of the vein and she pecks at it. Well, and the oviduct does not retract correctly, and now she is the target of all other hens to peck her back end because now that red is exposed, and that's called a peckout, and then people call me and they say, Oh, I got blowouts, I got blowouts.
Peckout Versus True Blowout
SPEAKER_01I'm like, No, you don't have a blowout, right? I okay, I'm celebrating my 30th year of helping poultry people, right? And I'll bet I haven't seen more than two real cases of blowout.
SPEAKER_02Well, what is blowout?
SPEAKER_01I don't I don't know if I've even heard well, blowout is when a hen tries to lie an egg the size of a goose egg, right? Like when she's laying like a you know, a triple egg or triple yoke, you know, jumbo, then sometimes it will not retract and then the oviduct will stay hanging out, right? And but I don't really see I've only seen two or three in 30 years where that's actually been the case. Um you know, I I kind of get tired of seeing people post these pictures of these, you know, huge eggs that their hen just laid, and they don't realize what they're actually doing to their hen, right? If they really cared for their hen, right, that would be a problem. It's not a trophy. Exactly. Right, yeah, it's a problem, right? And that's where you're overfeeding, right? So that's where free choice feeding, and if you have a hen that just doesn't know how to stop eating, your egg size is tied to the amount of feed that that hen eats. So if you feel your egg size is small, increase the amount of feed a little bit, a little bit, okay. If your egg size is too big, like if you're getting too many jumbos, you need to back down how much you're feeding. Okay. That egg size is controlled by the amount of protein that that hand consumes every day. And and most of our hands are designed for large and extra large eggs, not jumbos. An occasional jumbo is fine, but not on a repeated basis.
Egg Size Tied To Feed
SPEAKER_02Well, that that brings me to another question about my fly. I have some bullets that that just started laying uh, I don't know, a good month, month and a half ago, maybe even almost two months. I have one that has laid that small fairy egg every dang time, and they're not getting larger. Is she eventually going to start laying some some regular adult-sized eggs, or do I have a chicken that's just what lays fairy eggs all the time?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, is she part of the flock, or can you feed her separately?
SPEAKER_02Uh she's part of the flock.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So here's the thing: she got light stimulated to sexual maturity, meaning she, you know, the lights were increasing. It stimulated her to lay, but her ovaries had not fully developed. Okay. So she could be three months laying those pulled eggs, those little, you know, what you call fairy egg.
SPEAKER_02Will she eventually grow go grow out of that?
SPEAKER_01She will, but I I would also say if you're out there watching them, she may be one of the more timid birds that doesn't come to the she doesn't come to the feeder and she doesn't eat enough.
SPEAKER_02She definitely is way down on the on the yeah.
SPEAKER_01So if we can figure out, like maybe we add another feeder somewhere that she can go to without feeling intimidated by the other birds, that may come up quicker. But her body has to finish growing. Okay. She has to reach so pullets, really should not lay eggs. You don't want your pullets to lay eggs, right? We don't want to light stimulate them until they're about 80% of what their mature weight should be. Okay. So most of your birds are probably four and a half to five pound birds. Right. Yeah. I don't really want that pullet to start laying until she hits the four-pound mark, right? And that gives her ovaries time to fully form. So, like you were talking about hatching some this fall for next spring. We need to make sure, right, that hatch date, you know, you need pretty much five to six months before you want them to start laying eggs, right? So they're going to start laying anyway in your neck of the woods by March 1st, probably somewhere between March 1st, March 10th today, right? This is should be when you start laying.
SPEAKER_02Well, you you said something that I did not realize, and I and I did this to my birds inadvertently, and you talk about light stimulation to these younger birds. I did that. And I do that every year, but I don't have bullets every year. And what I what I do because we sell eggs, uh, when it's when the winter starts coming in, I put I have a light that I have in my my coop. Now understand this is a red light, not a not a heat lamp, but a red LED bulb. I'm lucky enough that I have internet and Alexa out there, and I will tell this bulb to come on at 4 30 in the morning and take the next hour slowly ramping up. Okay. I'm not I don't flash my my birds with light. And then they go to bed at nighttime, you know, naturally with the sun. I didn't realize that and then this year I had these young pullets in there that I was overstimulated. And in the wear solstice, I shut the light down because I gave my birds a break at this point. But but probably by that time they were overstimulated already. And I did this to my own clock and and didn't even know it.
SPEAKER_01If you uh you know, you just don't so pullets need a chance to get to full body weight, right? Um, or 80% of full body weight. So, you know, knowing what your pullets or knowing what your breed should weigh mature is somewhat important and kind of tracking those body weights um to make sure we don't stimulate them too soon. So, but look, if you want her to catch up, right? Um if you go weigher today, you're gonna find that she's probably a half a pound behind everybody else, right? And you probably you can almost see it yourself that you know, just by visually, you know, you you probably know who she is.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, she she's a young moron, and I really want those chocolate eggs, you know. Oh yeah, I know exactly who she is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she just doesn't have any dominance to fight out at the feeder. So adding, you know, in this case, you know, adding more feeder space, you know, other feeding locations um can help you out and allow her to finish maturing so she can grow out of that pull it phase and that pull it egg. Um, you know, I ideally, if you could separate her, I'd tell you to put her on a 20% layer feed, right? And that would get your egg size up and help finish developing her body.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's something good for good body mass like that.
Backyard Biosecurity Basics
SPEAKER_02As a new chicken person, should I really worry about biosecurity? I hear you guys talk about biosecurity all the time. How important is that? I mean, come on, am I going to bring a disease to my chickens? And you know, people love to share their bird, you know. At the egg stand, you know, people come to the to my gate and I let them look at the chickens. And they want to let their kids in there. And I'm like, uh, and I and I make up an excuse to say, well, a couple of them aren't all that friendly, you know, and I don't want to take a chance of youngsters in there. But honestly, I know better than to let someone who's come from Uncle Jed's chicken yard to come to Mr. Gary's chicken yard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You just don't know.
SPEAKER_01You don't know.
SPEAKER_02You don't know until all of a sudden you do know and it's too late. You would rather not take that chance. But is it is it that much of a worry?
SPEAKER_01It is. Sadly, it is. Um, you know, and it's it's the gamble that you have to be willing to take, right? I mean, uh, what do your birds mean to you? You know, what are their purpose? Um, you you have to make that decision on your own. I would at least have a footpath. And and actually, Gary, you probably should have one that you even use yourself, right?
SPEAKER_02And it's nothing more than I do swap out shoes. I don't have a footpath, but I do swap out shoes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean you can just get a shallow tray and um with like a sponge material, and and you just keep that with a little bit of bleach and soapy water in it, and just you know, you just step on it on your way in. Um, shoes are probably the biggest offender versus you know what we're wearing and things like that. However, you know, our clothes can be a thing. Um here's you know, you're you're in a heavy migratory area for migratory birds. Oh, yes, winter migratation birds. So um the big diseases I don't worry about so much after you start having 90 degree days. Okay. So most of those sunlight and temperature will kill them off. But your biggest worry period is actually when your temperatures are continually below that 90 degree days, more cloudy, um, things like that. So right. So, you know, this it's a personal decision. You know, do you let people in there to to hold you chickens or not? Um, you know, I if I knew somebody was, you know, had chickens in their backyard, I probably would not. Um, we'd just watch them from a distance and talk about them. But, you know, it again, you know, how important are your chickens to you? That's the big question that you have to ask yourself. How how important are your chickens to you? Right.
SPEAKER_02And that that's that's the same reason, you know, over the years, and I know you've had it, I've had people say, look, I have a friend getting out of the chicken business and they're just giving chickens away. You want them? Uh no, I'm sorry. You know, I just yeah, I I I don't adopt, you know, and I and and if I did, I would separate them for a long enough period of time that I I wouldn't feel good about it, you know. So I I I just don't adopt. You know, and I think just having a set rule, you know, that that's that's what it is.
Treat Rules Without Overfeeding
SPEAKER_02Uh the next thing I want to talk about is what do I feed my chickens? Both the the the food that I get out of the bag and and what what kind of treats can I give them give my girls? Because people love to do that now. You know, chickens are the new dog, you know. They're they're they're up all the ranking on pets now. They used to be down to 30 something, and I think they're like seven right now. And I and dogs are and cats are are number one and two, but but chickens are rising. So I feed them to make sure they stay healthy, not get too fat, because a fat chicken is not a healthy chicken. And and what kind of supplements can I give them? And I know most of your answer because I follow you and I give my birds what you tell me to give my birds, and I think they really appreciate me for it. I hope they do. Yeah, I okay.
SPEAKER_01So uh let's let's cut back to what you know, let's cut back to the right amount of feed every day. Um, a treat is a treat. So just think of a treat like you and I would have, right? Let's say you want to have a a small dish of ice cream after dinner, okay. That's that I know. Well, if you're gonna have that kind of ice cream. But if you're gonna have that kind of ice cream, then your dinner needs to shrink back, okay? Same thing applies to your chickens, right? So if you're gonna over-treat your chickens, then what you feed them at four o'clock in the afternoon or five o'clock in the afternoon needs to shrink back considerably. Again, that you have to make a decision, right? So do I wanna it are treats that important to me? And if they are, then I need to cut back on how much feed I'm giving them. Okay. Now I will tell you that giving treats to your chickens create bad habits, just like a dog, okay? Like my dog at home, she has an internal clock, she knows what time she gets her treat every day, okay? And she'll come get me off of my recliner, right? Okay, come on. It it's treat time, all right? It's treat time. Okay, now and you can do this for your chickens if you like, but what I've done for treats now, um, when I'm a deer hunter, right? So I kept all the hearts and livers this year, and I don't eat those myself, so I sliced them up and I dehydrated them with no seasoning, right? Just straight, you know, deer liver, dear heart. And I dried them right down till they were crispy, like a biscuit, right? So I can break off a piece and give it to her. You know, you could do the same thing for all your chickens, right? It's a really healthy treat. It's mostly protein, doesn't have a lot of carbs, not worried about getting them fat, that sort of thing. You know, but people get carried away with corn, they get carried away with, right? So a treat should never be more than 10% of the bird's total diet. Okay, that's my rule of thumb. Okay. And look, I had I kept a bag of scratch around for our laying flock as well. You know, but here's here was my secret. They thought it was a treat. For me, it was a distraction. So when I cut back to a limited amount of feed every day, okay, I would take a handful or a cup full of scratch for 25 birds, you know. Um, yeah, about a cup, not quite a pint. And I would toss that out in the yard, and they'd all go looking for it. And that gave me about a minute to go fill the feeder without getting trampled. Okay. So that's that's where I used, you know, treats.
SPEAKER_02That's a that's a great idea. I do something that I don't even know if you remember, probably three or four years ago on the poultry keeper keepers uh webcast, you were talking about how birds love wet food.
SPEAKER_01Oh, they love it.
SPEAKER_02And I will take my regular food for them, mix it with water. Sometimes if I if I think about it at the at the grocery, I'll get uh Greek yogurt with no flavoring or anything added to it. I think you you you've mentioned that before, and I'll mix that in and and just really moisten it. They go bananas over.
SPEAKER_01Oh, they do. They love it.
SPEAKER_02When you make it wet, yeah, holy smokes. So you know you're not doing wrong about that.
SPEAKER_01It changes it changes the odor of it and the appearance.
SPEAKER_02I guess.
SPEAKER_01They they love a damp. Now, when we say wet, it's just enough to make it clump together and hold together, right? Not not soupy wet, not runny, not running. Um, and you know, so people that are feeding a mash feed that may have a little more powder in it than versus a pelleted feed, is I say, look, it's you know, once a week, you know, collect your powder, right? And once a week put it in a small, like one-gallon bucket, add just enough water to that to make it clump up and put it back in the feeder, and they'll clean it right up. And they're completely amazed at how that works, right? Um, you know, if you want, so like in a pint of water, if you put a teaspoon of molasses, like cooking molasses in there, mix that up really well. That slight hint smell of molasses will really drive them to eat it really quickly. You're not hurting them. Very small amount of molasses. Too much molasses is a laxative for chickens and can cause diarrhea.
SPEAKER_02Or we don't want to get that.
SPEAKER_01No, and you know, people send me their feed tags, and I'm reading down through the ingredients, and you know, and I'll hit molasses and I see where it falls in the list of ingredients, and you know, it's got too much molasses in it, right? Um, people don't realize when they read a feed tag, uh, it has to go in descending order, right? So the largest ingredients to the smallest ingredient. And so depending on where I see a particular ingredient, tells me, you know, kind of the quality of the feed or things I need to be concerned about, right? But there really should not be molasses in a chicken feed. Uh, they put it in there because they're using garbage ingredients, and the smell of it will get their chicken to eat it, regardless of how poor quality it is. Okay.
Reading Feed Labels And Hidden Byproducts
SPEAKER_02Well, speaking of feed tax, because I've actually sent mine to your company before. What does someone want to look for for those first three or four ingredients? And what do they not want to see for their first three or four ingredients? And you can probably write a book. Just on that.
SPEAKER_01I know. Yeah. It exactly. And you know, I I wish all feed companies would actually declare their ingredients, but they don't. So they use processed grain products, processed grain byproducts, processed protein products, right? And that allows them to use any any grain that they want to use today. So it could be corn, wheat, barley, rice, whatever. Okay. Falls under the city.
SPEAKER_02Generally, won't that be what grows most around your part of the country?
SPEAKER_01You would think so. Yeah. Uh it just depends on what commodity prices are doing, right? Um like this year, corn's going to be cheap because of, you know, we're not exporting as much corn as we have in years past. So corn prices are going to be, so it's going to be corn this year, right? Um, some years that could be barley, some years that could be wheat, some years that could be, you know, whatever they can get their hands on, right? And then usually the next ingredient is processed grain byproducts, right? And that so people don't understand that uh actually down your neck of the woods at the ports where they load grain out to leave to other countries. Um, a good friend of mine is a commodity broker, and he pays people to collect the dust when they're loading those barges with corn or whatever, right? They have large dust collectors, and they'll they'll collect the dust. So he collects the grain dust, takes it somewhere, right, and turns it into a pellet, and then it'll go to a feed mill somewhere, and they put that in as right. So it's nothing more than the dust off of the grain getting loaded on those large ships, you know, leaving the port of New Orleans, right? So um, so things like grain dust, wheat midlings, people see wheat and they think it's a good thing. Wheat midlings is the outer skin, right? So there's an outer layer, protective layer on a grain of wheat. Well, on white, on white bread, not you know, if it's whole grain, that's still in there. But on white bread and white pastries, things like that, they remove that outer layer. That's the midling, right? So it has little to no nutritional value whatsoever. But you have to have either the grain dust or the wheat midling in order to form a pellet. And you first make a pellet, and then you they put that through a roll, couple of rollers, and that's how they make a crumble.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So people don't understand that you have to have a pellet before you have a crumble.
SPEAKER_02I actually knew that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the to make either one, you have to put a sticky kind of filler in there, filler product, which is usually wheat midlings in most cases. Um, so that's usually your second ingredient. And then you have processed protein products, which can be soybean meal, canola meal, could be a wide variety of grain proteins. Okay, so you never know exactly what you're getting. Now I've noticed, and I don't know what's made this shift. Um, some companies like Combok um and others have now started to list their ingredients, like you know, corn, processed corn, processed soybean meal, you know. Um, they'll tell you exactly what that list of ingredients are. They're not hiding it behind generic terms anymore. Good. So we're starting to see that shift. So you can see between the lines to know more about what's what's going on in your feed. But yeah, and somehow marketing um has duped us into believing that you know chickens require pellets and crumbles, and it's really not. Um, you know, the big reason behind making pellets and crumbles is the new automated feeding systems for feeding poultry on a commercial scale function better with pellets and crumbles. Right.
SPEAKER_02It's efficient for these guys, right?
SPEAKER_01It also is a place to get rid of byproducts that we don't have a home for anywhere else. Okay. So look, uh big yag industry has been putting byproducts and fillers into our animal feeds now since World War II, right? So when they don't have a home for something that they consider to be garbage, they figure out how to use it in agriculture. They feed it back to our livestock somehow, right? That's unfortunately that's the truth of it. Okay. Yeah. Because pre-World War II, almost all almost all bread that you bought was whole grain, right? It still had the mids on it. It, you know, it was the whole grain. Um, we didn't have all these byproducts until our food industry started refining things to make it look prettier. They thought make it taste better, right? And things like that.
SPEAKER_02So you know, I I have a friend of mine who is a huge sugar cane grower. They have a few thousand acres that they farm. And and this is like third, fourth generation farmers. They've been doing it, you know, all of their life. And I I'm I'm with what's called the EAA Experiment Experimental Aircraft Association, and he was talking to our group one evening during one of our one of our meetings and talking about the difference between cocaine and beet sugar versus corn, high fructose or sugar. He said, Did you know that America never had a sugar or and health problem until the invention of high fructose or corn syrup? He said, When they took that and made something sweet with it, everybody sucked it in, and he said it reacts with your body in a negative way versus natural sugars. And it kind of made, you know, the way he was telling you, it really made sense. That phenomenon has happened in the last 60 years in this country. Now the high fructose is coming here, in other words, byproducts of what what we're getting versus the best ingredient out of what we can get. I have often tried to convince my wife that popcorn is a vegetable. She won't fall for that, but that's kind of what they do with a lot of the chicken feeds and other animal feeds.
SPEAKER_01I'm with you. Popcorn's a popcorn's a vegetable at my house.
Anti-Nutrients And Why Variety Matters
SPEAKER_02I have a word for you that I would like you to explain to the audience. What is an anti-nutrient?
SPEAKER_01So an anti-nutrient is a component, a chemical compound that naturally grows in. Um usually we talk about them more in the protein side, like soybeans, peas, you know, on the proteins. Um, but an anti-nutrient, it's actually a natural self-defense mechanism of the plant, so that it cannot be overconsumed by any one animal. Okay. So it's a built-in self-preservation, if you want to look at it that way. But an anti-nutrient, and let's use soybeans, for instance, right? Soybean that has not been heat-treated has a compound or an enzyme known as urease. And urease blocks trypsin. So they're the digestion and the breakdown of trypsin, which trypsin is important for the proper digestion of protein. Now, I know I just said something that's going to make a lot of your listeners' eyes go whoop, right? So, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Including eye.
SPEAKER_01An antinutritional con component of a protein or any grain, right? Um, is part of it that limits how much an animal can digest without causing any digestive upset or side effect. Okay. Now, almost every grain has some type of anti-nutrient. Okay. So I would tell you that the best poultry grain out, the best poultry feed out there has a little bit of wheat, has a little bit of barley, has a little bit of oats, has a little bit of corn, has a little bit of Milo, right? And because and then maybe a little bit of soy and a little bit of peas and a little bit of you know different kinds of protein, right? So now you don't exceed any of those anti-nutrient levels, okay, and the bird functions at a much higher level and can process all of those carbohydrates and proteins, etc. But if we looked at a bird, if we turned the bird loose, like when your birds are free-ranging, right? Okay, so she gets an ant over here, and she gets a cricket over there, and she gets a grasshopper, right? She gets a uh uh you know, a seed head, you know, grain over here, and you know, so her diet is so diverse when you turn her loose, right, compared to what we put in that feeder or what we put in that, yeah. Um, and that diversity is what makes them healthier. Everybody knows that a true free-ranging chicken like yours that come out and just wander around the yard has a lot more nutrients in that egg and in her body than one that is locked up and fed a very controlled diet. Okay, that's a hundred percent right. Nobody can argue that. And so, but you know, they're just able to get what they want. Um, you know, they can they can go find different things every day, right? You you have no idea what she ate today, right? I mean that's good. Yeah. If you know, if you get a new insect hatch, right, all of a sudden the grasshoppers become available, right? Well, okay, so today she gorged on grasshoppers, right? Tomorrow might be crickets.
SPEAKER_02And you know, maybe they find a frog, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, who knows? You know, they like mice, right? I mean, if you you turn a moot mouse loose, you know, in the daylight in your hen house, he's not gonna make it out the door, right? They they are more carnivores than people give them credit.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, it's those that dinosaur gene in ay they it's still there, right?
SPEAKER_01It's still there. And yeah, uh if you if you know if anybody listening to this wants to test this, you know, theory, um, you know, go get a cheap piece of meat, right? You know, on the bone or not, and just throw it in your hen house and see how long it takes them to clean that thing right down to nothing, right?
SPEAKER_02I mean, they they they they love it. And part two.
Final Thoughts And What’s Next
SPEAKER_00That's all we have to have for today. I really hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast. Be sure to watch our videos on behalf of my before you're in the middle.
