March 19, 2026 • 47 mins
send us an email and be sure to include your address so we can respond!
Today we’re talking all about Bresse chickens and why they’ve become one of our favorite breeds for a self-sustaining flock.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why we prefer Bresse over Cornish in many situations
- Meat quality, tenderness, and ideal processing age
- How to select breeder birds for width, body shape, and table quality
- Egg size, egg selection, and incubation tips
- How to build a breeding program around your goals
- The difference between breeding for production versus breeding for show
- Why Bresse may be one of the best chickens for homesteaders who want both meat and eggs
If you’ve been wondering whether Bresse chickens are worth the hype, or you want a better long-term option for meat production on your farm, this episode is for you.
Bresse chickens, Bresse chicken breeding, Bresse meat birds, best meat chicken breed, Cornish vs Bresse, self sufficient chickens, dual purpose chickens, homestead poultry, backyard chickens, poultry breeding, meat bird selection, chicken processing, incubation, hatching eggs, sustainable poultry
Valley Hatchery is a proud sponsor of Poultry Nerds, find more at ValleyHatchery.com
Feel Free to email us at - PoultryNerds@gmail.com
Join us on Facebook at - https://www.facebook.com/PoultryNerds
Sign up for News at PoultryNerds.comEggFoam.comget your egg shippers and live shipping boxes and always get free shipping!
ShowPro feed supplement for all your feathered friends! Grow them bigger and healthier with the best ingredients.
Coturnix Quailhatching eggs from Bryant's Roost, including jumbo celadons!
Quail cartons and Supplies from Double R Farms
Please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review, we appreciate you. And if you have a subject request, email us. PoultryNerds@Gmail.com
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:23):
So yeah, we're here.
Yeah.
How is everybody?
I hope they're doing good.
And from what I see on thescreen right here, we're gonna
fix them to talk about breeding.
One of my favorite meals.
It's been a hot topic here and Ithought, you know what?
(00:45):
I'm having to walk through itwith with David and the kids a
little bit, and I'm gonnaexplain why in a minute.
But I thought, you know what,let's just walk through it
publicly and maybe follow myconvo, convoluted trail of how I
get to point.
B from a It is, it's funny thatyou say that talking about
(01:11):
dinner is a hot topic.
Yeah.
So I just made what did youmake?
If you don't know already?
We live so rural, we cannot getgood Chinese food and I am a
really good cook and I can cookpretty much anything, but I'm
still trying to master like ourfavorite Chinese dishes.
(01:35):
And so tonight, or today leper,I guess I made honey, chicken
and rice.
And of course we made it frombreast.
I think we are finally out ofall of the Cornish, out of the
freezer.
I'm gonna have to dig throughthe bottom of it a little bit
and make sure, but if there'sany, there it's freezer burned
(01:56):
and it'll be dog food, but thebreasts they won't mind.
No.
So we eat a lot of meat and Idon't know from the first time I
made breasts dinner or chickendinner with breasts, I guess you
should say.
It was instantly like, why arewe even doing Cornish and.
(02:19):
People.
And when I see people say onlinethat they, they're stringy or
they're tough or whatnot I don'tunderstand unless they're, the
only thing David and I can comeup with is, you know how you go
to the store and you buy thechicken boneless, skinless
chicken breast that's in thelittle saran wrap.
Thing and you can just take itout.
And it's ready and you can cookit almost from frozen state.
(02:43):
I don't know what they do to itto get it to that point, but you
cannot do that with a breast.
There's a difference.
Cooking a heritage chicken andcooking, I guess a processed
Cornish like that, but.
I didn't do anything magical.
This was just a half, we do ourshalf chickens in va vacuum seal
(03:05):
and put'em in the freezerbecause he likes white meat and
I like dark meat.
And so that works pretty well.
And I took it out yesterday anddidn't make it last night.
So we made it today and I justtook it off the bone and.
Chopped it up into bite-sizedpieces and made the honey
(03:26):
chicken and you could cut itwith a fork, and it was just as
tender as.
It was just as tender as couldbe.
I don't know what else you couldask.
I say you can't really compareit to getting something at the,
at a restaurant,'cause thatdon't happen.
So if you go to a restaurant andyou get say, I don't know,
(03:47):
chicken tenders or something orchicken nuggets.
Per se, then those are moreprocessed.
I think they use like somepotato starch and some onion
powder and stuff.
They process it and then make itlook like a chicken nugget
again.
I've seen tiktoks on that, butthis was just straight up.
I took the meat, chopped it up.
(04:10):
Put it in the batter.
Put it in some tallow.
I think it was tallow.
It could have been schmaltz.
I looked at it in therefrigerator and I was like it's
some kind of a fatten.
It's the fat I'm going to use tofry this chicken.
And I don't know, because some,like you never know what you
have in your refrigerator.
No.
(04:30):
Because at your place it couldbe anything.
Yeah.
Kevin.
So that's why when you said it,I think it was tallow, I'm like.
It can be towel.
What was it?
It could be lard, it could besch small, it could be all kinds
of stuff.
You're still here, so it wasn'tbad.
No, regardless it's fat and youhave to have fat to fry
something, and so I just put itin the batter that makes the,
(04:54):
for the Chinese food, you knowit's a batter and you put it in
there and then you fry it, andthen you put the honey sesame.
Sauce on it.
And some rice.
I cooked rice in the instant potin five minutes and that's what
we had.
And it was good.
And David ate it all.
So that tells me it was good.
(05:15):
But what I'm getting at here isthe meat.
It was not like eatingOrpington.
Orpington would have somechewiness to it no matter what
you did, because they're older.
The breasts are like 17, 18, 19weeks when you process them.
So they're much more tender.
And so maybe people are waitingtoo long to process'em.
(05:39):
Yeah.
And I see a lot of that in someof the groups, people talking
about when should I process?
But that's really a hard thingto say because you have to know
your birds and you have to knowwhat you're feeding them.
Because if you're feeding them aration that's specifically
designed for that purpose, andyou finish'em out over a two
(06:04):
week period.
Then, you could have a juicy,tender bird probably what up to
at least 16, 18 weeks.
So I have finished'em and I havenot finished them.
And to be honest, I can't tell adifference and it's really quite
(06:25):
a pain to finish them with themilk and the oats and blah,
blah, blah.
And so I just.
I just don't do it.
The only thing, and don't hateme, but the only thing I do is I
take'em off of your feed and putthem on a blander feed and some
corn.
I was gonna say about a weekbefore, I ain't upset about that
because if I was finishing abird, I would, I'd probably feed
(06:49):
it a mixture of like cornmealand something, or.
I would run, Ooh.
I would run corn, barley, andoats through the grinder.
Mix it up because if it's thelast two weeks, yes, you want
(07:09):
your bird to eat good.
And that's a good mix of justgrains.
But the hatchability and allthat other stuff that comes
along with really good feed,you're not really worried about.
And so I would do that, man.
'cause I, that's what I did thefirst time I processed the
Turkey for Thanksgiving, and nowpeople don't want to store
(07:34):
bought Turkey.
And for that sucker, likeputting it on that diet.
For a couple weeks, is all thatchanged about its life?
Yeah.
So if you've ever had grassfinished beef and it was
processed in the spring, you'regonna get an onion flavor to the
(07:55):
meat.
So we always process our beef inthe fall or late summer.
You got those onions growing inthe pasture, you know exactly
the natural weed ones.
And so the breasts or Yeah, soyour feed has all got all those
good fishmeal things in there.
And while I can't.
(08:17):
Some people can't taste it.
I can and so I'm afraid to leavethem on it and Yeah.
Be fishy.
Yeah, I would.
I wouldn't.
Yeah.
So I just put'em on a plain oldoff lock with a whole bunch of
corn, cracked corn in it.
The other thing that's probablygonna make people gasp is we
don't pluck really.
We just.
(08:39):
We just batch cock'em and cut'emin half in order to vacuum seal
'em.
We don't eat the skin.
It's just, if you're gonna go tothe store and buy chicken,
that's how you should processthem.
So if you buy a whole chickenand you roast it and you eat the
skin, then by all means pluckit.
But we don't, we like choppedchicken in veggies or.
(09:00):
I don't know.
We, we just don't eat the skin.
I don't do rotisserie per se, orbaked chickens and stuff like
that.
So that's just not how we cook.
And so we just skin'em.
And that extra finishing at theend is what puts the fat between
the meat and the skin.
And if I'm just skinning themanyway.
(09:22):
Point doesn't really matterpoint.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean I do have a pluck and wedo use it for the turkeys and
for the orpingtons and stuff,but that's different.
You have a huge mother pluck.
I do like that thing is marriedfolks, just so you can get a
visual of those blue 55 gallondrums.
(09:42):
That's what that thing was madeout of and it's got the pluckers
fingers you know that you canbuy to fix your pluck.
Whoever made that thing spentsome time, but that thing works
great.
I have used the hose pipe whileyou stuck birds in it a couple
times and I like it.
(10:04):
Since you have been here, Taylorreplaced my pulley system under
on the motor.
Thing, that thing will throw aTurkey, 50 feet.
I think you have to watch it sonow you don't have to worry
about that.
Okay.
Yes, it's a big fluer.
You have to be really careful,but.
Let's let's just talk about theprocessing for a second.
(10:24):
So the, if you do decide topluck, you put your water
scalar, which we just use like aTurkey fry and scald at a
hundred fifty five degrees, andit won't burn your fingers, like
unless you're dainty orsomething, but you're not gonna
be in there for very long.
So just leave the feet on andyou swish'em.
(10:47):
In the S you gotta leave yourfeet on because gotta have Soper
with Yes.
You gotta down.
So those are their dipperhandles now.
Yeah.
And so you put'em in the scalarand you, what your goal is to
plunge almost with them becauseyou're trying to get the
feathers really close to theskin wet.
And that's what your aim is.
You don't really care about theedge of the.
(11:08):
Feathers, right?
The, you want'em to come out ofthe skin.
So that's what you're after.
And I think people don't maybeget that done really well.
And then when you put'em in thepluck or you you turn it on and
then you take the feet and yougo around in a circle and then
you've got the hose in the otherhand.
(11:28):
And, and then you let go and itfinishes it.
So I would say in the s calder,maybe 20, 25 seconds max, and
I've got videos of them beingplucked in The longest one is 23
seconds.
Yeah.
If you got your, if you've gotyour alder as far as the
(11:49):
temperature.
It loosens those feathers up andit doesn't do, doesn't take
long.
With a Turkey, if you're onlydoing one or two once you let's
see, cut things out.
I'll say that and hang on for alittle bit.
The stress of that happeningmakes the feathers just.
(12:12):
Let's let loose.
So you start pulling real quickand you'll get all those pen
feathers out and two minutesyou're talking about turkeys, so
that's a game bird.
And when they are stressed.
Live or dead.
When they're stressed, they letthe feathers go, right?
So it's a really good opportunetime to pull those hard
(12:34):
feathers, like the flightfeathers.
But you can pretty much pickthem bald.
Before the flapping stops.
Now breasts are not game birds,so that wouldn't work with them.
No.
But anyway, so that's rabbithole number one.
Yeah.
Rabbit hole number one.
Okay.
So if you are going to try them,make sure you let them rest.
(12:57):
Don't go out there and get oneoutta the yard and cook it for
dinner today.
You wanna rest'em?
I would say three or four days.
Now, one thing that you can dois you can rest'em at the front
end or the back end.
So say you put'em in a coolertoday, bag'em tomorrow.
So they're good, what, 36 hoursor so before They're frozen,
(13:18):
solid 48 hours.
And then when you take'em out,rest'em again another day or
two.
So then you get three or fourdays of rest that adds up that
way.
And then, don't try to cook'emlike a Cornish.
At least not straight off thebat.
If they've been rested for fouror five days, you probably
(13:39):
could.
But yeah don't try to cook'emlike a Cornish.
It's not the same thing.
No.
And I can't really say anythingelse.
They're just, I can't find afault with them.
I really didn't know.
I didn't really have anexpectation really when I got
'em.
I just wanted to try'em, and I'min love with'em.
(14:00):
Honestly, I'll never forget thefirst time I was there.
And we were standing in thekitchen and you said, here, try
this.
I was like, oh, okay.
And I was like, man, this is thebest way I can describe it, is,
how a really, like a good, realpiece of fish, not something
that you bought at a store.
(14:21):
How it's got the flakes in itand the tenderness.
That's how the breast is.
Only it tastes like chicken andnot like fish.
Yeah.
It's got a silky texture to it.
Okay.
So the best part about thebreast though is that you don't
have to keep buying them.
Like every year, like theCornish they lay eggs, you can
(14:41):
incubate them, you can fry theeggs, like they're just a
general all purpose chicken andthey grow really quickly.
Of course now I'm comparing themto my Orpingtons.
Frozen molasses grows fasterthan my Orpington's, but.
Yeah, the breast, the breasts dogrow really quickly.
(15:02):
So we operate here on quarters.
We don't wanna be put'em in itin the freezer every like month
or so.
So we figure out how many wewant per quarter, and.
I raise enough here for at leastthree households, sometimes
four.
The kids, shop in the freezerwhen they come over.
(15:23):
And so I try to figure out howmany we're going through in a
quarter and then that's how muchI hatch off.
And then we just all gettogether and clean out the pens,
put'em in the freezer, divvy'emup, and.
See you in a quarter, basically,right?
Hey, you know what?
It's good.
(15:44):
I'm not gonna say clean funbecause it makes a mess, but
it's something that you can doas a family.
And by God, if you only get tosee'em once a quarter to,
because they want to comegrocery shopping at your house,
at least it's worth it.
Because, I would give my kidgroceries to, to have a routine
time where I could spend all daywith'em.
(16:05):
And, that's good.
And if you can't do that manylike at a time, then just do it
like every 60 days or something.
But there's no, it, you're ahundred percent in control.
It's not like the Cornish whereyou can't do it in the heat of
the summer or the cold of thewinter, or you have to be home
on a certain day or they'regonna start dropping dead.
(16:27):
It doesn't work like that.
The breasts just keep growing.
So anyway, so let's talk aboutlike how to get started with
them.
And of course there's differentways you could start with chicks
or started birds or hatchingeggs.
But regardless, remember thatyou're just starting you're just
(16:47):
getting your feet on the groundwith them, and then you have to
accumulate a quantity of them inorder to essentially go
shopping.
To find the birds that you wantto move forward, and then you're
gonna eat the rest of them.
So until you know the breasts,you're always going to be eating
(17:09):
your coals.
And I think there's a differentmindset maybe than what people
are expecting where they just goout there and the Cornish are
all the people have it in theirhead that they're all uniform,
but they're really not.
If you've raised Cornish,they're really not uniform man.
Ain't nothing uniform aboutthem.
Things are nasty.
So you could get some that'sfour pounds and you can get some
(17:30):
that's nine pounds at eightweeks.
So the expectation that theCornish would all be the same is
unrealistic, and to get thatuniformity straight off the bat
with whatever you bring home isalso unrealistic.
And that is just true with any.
I was gonna say that's true withany breed.
(17:52):
Almost gonna say any species.
Even if you were breeding dogsor something, you know it's
gonna be the same.
And the only way you're gonnaknow is if you have a
relationship with the breederand they specifically pick you
out a pair or trio or five.
For purposes.
(18:15):
And that's only if their goalsalign with your goals.
If y'all's goals ain't the same,then you're gonna have to get
with yours.
'cause like when I got'em.
(19:13):
Yes, I wanted meat, eggs, butalso wanted pretty, and I didn't
have to be perfect.
I just wanted'em to look good.
Who wants ugly chickens walkingaround their yard?
That's why I didn't want Cornishwalking around the yard.
They waddle anyway, they, theyare different.
And I've been enjoying workingwith'em for the last few years.
(19:36):
So it's a, I've only had'em fora year and a half, but they turn
over really quickly.
And if you step back and reallythink about what you're doing
with them, it's not a hardlesson to grasp on the breeding
side of it.
For example, with theorpingtons, you want them as.
(19:58):
My Orpingtons, you want them asbig as possible.
So what we're spending time withon the first six to nine months
is structure.
And then they're going to startfilling out on the breast is a
little bit different.
Yes, you want some structure,but we want them also filling
out by 17, 18 weeks.
(20:21):
So we don't want them spending aton of time growing structure
because we wanna be able toharvest what we need at the 17,
18 week mark.
So if you harvested a.
17 week old Orpington, youprobably would get more meat off
of a quail.
I was gonna say you would've achicken sandwich instead of a
(20:44):
meal.
Don't that, it's all bone.
You'd have some good bone broth.
But you're not gonna get reallyfar.
So just keep that in mind.
Whatever you get started with,think of it as an investment in
quantity.
And then you are just going tofeed your incubating and
(21:05):
hatching habit addiction likecrazy so that you can then
select from all of those.
The actual breeders that youwant, because those chickens
will have been raised in yourenvironment with your feed.
Yep.
The way you are gonna take careof'em, and that is a huge, I
(21:30):
don't know.
What am I to say?
And you may not do that may notbe the first, when you hatch out
all you can hatch out and yougot a yard full of birds, you're
going to make some groups andpick some stuff out.
And, when you give a, like whenyou have a plan and you're
(21:51):
looking for something.
You, you can't start at thebeginning or start at the end
and work your way back.
You gotta start at the beginningand work your way forward.
So you know, the first timeyou're gonna look for birds that
you like the way they dideverything better than the ones
you started with.
(22:12):
And then, you know those, you'llput in a breeding pen and you'll
have some really good chicken.
Yeah, and then you get to belike, Ooh, let me hatch out
everything I can and do itagain.
And if you find something thatgrows up to be better than
what's in your second generationpen or your foundation pen, then
(22:37):
they get replaced.
And you have cocoa van.
So you know, it's, you're tryingto better it, but you have to
know your goals, people alwayssay, what kind of chicken, what
kind of chickens should I get?
I don't know, there's like amillion kinds, but what are your
goals?
(22:58):
Because that's what works yourway backwards to what you should
have.
Okay.
So if you guys are listening tothe podcast, I actually did a
little slideshow, so you mighthave to come check it out over
on YouTube or the website.
It's not fancy, but it is somepictures to illustrate what
we're gonna talk about.
So this is just a shortintroduction.
(23:19):
The breast chickens come fromFrance and they've been in the
United States for 10 to 12 yearsnow.
Depends on if they came overlegally or not.
And they're just a real, they'rewhite.
Ours are white.
There are different varieties.
There's black and there's blue.
I think somebody's working onsplash maybe.
But there I've seen some.
(23:39):
Yeah but I think those are morefor like pretty, and.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So there's two schools ofthought on the breast.
There's a group of people whoare trying to write a standard
to get'em put in the a PA toshow them.
While, yes, I do the show worldto a degree.
I do not have any interestmyself in showing breasts.
(24:02):
These are meant for me for meatand eggs, and I feel like they
would lose that.
Purpose if we turned them into ashow bird.
Because to raise a show bird,that's a completely different
mindset.
So that's just my opinion.
And if it upsets you, I'm sorry.
(24:22):
When you're raising a show,bird.
You're not thinking about what'sgoing on your dinner table,
right?
Which is, the other purpose in adual purpose bird, you're
thinking about what that judgeis gonna look at and compare it
to.
And like you said, there'sabsolutely nothing wrong with
that.
But when your goal is what looksgood on your kitchen table and
(24:46):
what you can fry up in themorning.
Then you know it, it'sdifferent, right?
Yes.
You want your birds to looklike, feel like, act like what
they should, or you would'vepicked a different bird.
But at the end of the day, whenyou're worried about, when your
(25:06):
goal is meat, eggs, essentially.
You're more concerned with thepicture that we can see right
now because, it's not helpingthat while we're doing this.
I'm hungry, but I would tearthat chicken up.
Okay, so obviously this isprobably just your run of the
mill Cornish rotisserie chicken,right?
(25:27):
But.
The reason why I wanted to putit up here was to illustrate
some things I think people maynot know when you're reading
about something and the breederor the author says, you really
just have to put your hands onit to feel it.
That's hard for somebody thatmay not have ever been taught
(25:50):
to, to feel something.
Okay, so obviously we have arotisserie chicken here and in
the front of the picture, thatwould be where the neck goes.
And so this bird is upside down,right?
So if the legs weren't tied,they'd be straight up in the air
and if you turned it over,they'd be standing on the legs,
right?
Okay.
(26:11):
The bone that runs and splitsthe breast meat right there,
that's the keel bone.
That is what?
When you pick up a bird and youput your hand underneath of
their gut, that's the bone thatyou're feeling.
And you wanna make sure thatit's straight, that there's no
(26:33):
curvature to it.
That it's not sharp, because ifit's sharp, then there's no meat
there.
It's just a bony chicken.
And if it's all squishy and.
Blubbery.
Then that's a big, nice, biglayer of fat and you need to go
back and listen to the podcasttwo weeks ago about overweight
(26:56):
chickens.
So what you want to feel wouldbe like if you went to the store
and bought a raw chicken and putyour hand on it and you could
feel that muscle, which is whatthe breast meat is.
Then put your hand underneath ofthe chicken.
It should feel about the same.
(27:18):
That's your goal anyway, right?
Now, next up would be, see thespace between the legs.
So on my birds, we're talkingabout how many fingers can you
put between the legs?
You'll see people talk aboutthat on my birds.
I have big hands and I canspread my fingers apart between
(27:38):
the legs of my birds and that'swhat you want.
You want a nice, big, wide birdthat stands up on its legs like
a Flintstone, Yeah.
You wanna be able to put your,if a bird's standing, you wanna
be able to put your fist betweenhis legs without touching its
legs.
And like mine, when I pick upsome mine, I have to like the
(28:01):
grown ones.
I pick'em up and then I have tolike, pull their feet in so I
can tuck their legs in myfingers and carry'em around like
footballs.
Because their legs are so wide.
'cause they're a wide bodiedchicken.
And so if you flip this birdover, of course you're gonna see
it's backbone.
And what you want is thebackbone.
(28:21):
To not be in a curve like aroach called it roach back.
You don't want that.
You want it to be nice andstraight and elongated, because
the longer the back, the longerthe bird, the more meat that's
gonna grow.
Because the meat is the musclethat's helping the bird to move
(28:42):
around and do chicken things,right?
So you, the more muscle you puton this bird, the more meat
you're gonna have at the end ofthe day.
So anything else we can think ofon this rotisserie chicken to
talk about?
No, but I will say this.
I know you like projects, so I'mcurious if when you finish one
(29:07):
of those breasts, if you give ita lot of that Italian herb
seasoning, if that willinternally flavor.
Oh I don't think that it workslike that, but I did have to buy
an electric roasting pan becausemy turkeys have now outgrew my
oven and I have a 42 inch oventhat I can't find a pan big
(29:31):
enough for it.
And so I'm thinking this nextround I'm going to go ahead and
pluck a couple of'em and putthem in this roasting pan and
see if I can't make a rotisseriemyself.
It's a challenge in the kitchenfor me.
Okay, so the eggs of the breastchicken we were having this
(29:52):
conversation before we hitrecord, so mine are this nice
off-white, creamy color.
There are a couple orpingtoneggs in this picture, so
disregard those.
They're the more tan ones.
But are your breast eggs notthis creamy white color?
No, mine.
(30:12):
Mine are that color.
Oh, okay.
Good.
That's what they're supposed tobe.
Okay, good.
Because again, we don't, I don'tcare about showing'em, I just
care if the eggs are edible andthe BS edible.
Disregarding that big 57.9 and59.2.
'cause those are both orpingtoneggs.
You'll notice that the rest ofthem are in the 60 gram range.
(30:35):
Those are the size eggs that Ilike to set.
Somewhere between 60 and 65, Ihave set larger.
I don't feel like.
That's necessarily a good thing.
You can get too big.
I also am super selective on theshape of the egg because you
(30:55):
want to make sure that the chickhas enough room to move and
orientate itself in there.
You don't want torpedo eggs orgolf ball, eggs, or.
Cracked eggs or dirty eggs.
My, I do not wash eggs.
This comes straight out of mynest box like this.
I just simply bring anythinginside that is not.
(31:19):
Conducive to hatching, in myopinion as are edible eggs.
Nothing goes to waste here.
No.
But that's a good place to doyour first coal.
Yes.
Yes, because whatever you selectis what you're gonna get.
Now you'll notice also that Ihave numbers written on all of
mine.
No, the Sharpie does not impactmy hatch rate.
(31:41):
It does not matter.
You'll see fives and threes andones and twos, and I think
that's all you see in there.
And if a sharpie really impactedyour hatch rate, then there'd be
times that I had zero hatchrate.
Exactly.
Because I write on a lot of themnow.
I do just write on the end, theblunt end.
I maybe if you wrote on a pointyend or something, it might
(32:02):
matter.
I don't know.
No, I do the blunt end becausewhen I put'em in the tray, I
wanna be able to read it.
Exactly.
So those numbers are.
From the pens that I got themout of so I can keep them
separated later.
And the other numbers, 63, 64.
Those I weigh my eggs.
(32:23):
Have been working on a littleside project to dial in my
incubators.
Precisely to my environment.
And an egg should lose 11 to 13%of its weight from day one to
day 18.
And right now I am hoveringright around 10% weight loss.
(32:43):
And so I have.
I have been using 40%, so I'vedialed it in again to 38% to see
if I can bump it to the 11 to13% weight loss.
The idea there is to shorten thehatch window so everybody
hatches at the same time.
They're healthier, you can get'em out quicker and get'em on
(33:04):
food and water doing it thatway.
So that is just an advancedthing and if you want more
information you can get that outof the incubation masterclass.
Alright.
These are Carries Hatch fromthis week actually.
What are they, three or fourdays old now?
Yeah.
(33:26):
Yeah.
I noticed you didn't use anyshelf liner.
There's no shelf liner in thesebaskets.
Okay.
They're okay, right?
Don't, I don't have a problemwith it on these, no.
Okay.
I don't know.
I just use it for everything.
So he sent me these pictures ina text'cause he was all excited.
(33:46):
He is no eyeballs.
And so when I saw the textbefore the picture, I was like,
oh crap.
He's hatching birds with noeyeballs.
Yeah, some, sometimes there,there's an area that I spend a
decent amount of time in thatthe cell service is less than
ideal and it's frustratingbecause, I think she's gonna see
(34:11):
that word before she sees thepicture and she's gonna be like,
what the crap is he doing?
But yeah.
That's thing.
So the idea we have here is whenyou look straight down on these
chicks, you cannot see theireyeballs.
And that tells you that theyhave a nice wide head, and a
(34:33):
wide head should carry throughto a wide bodied.
Older bird.
That is the idea behind that.
So if you can see theireyeballs, that is because their
head is narrower and they willhave a narrow body when they're
older.
I had a person that has beenaround chicks longer than I've
(34:54):
been alive, and they werestarting to help me learn to
select and that kind of stuffbecause.
When I was younger, we just, allthese look good, we'll put them
together and have some more.
And he's I did my first coal outof the hatcher and I was like.
(35:16):
What, why didn't he tell me howto do this like a year and a
half ago?
I could have saved a lot ofmoney on chicken feet and he
said you wasn't ready for it.
I say that to people because noteverybody can Cole ruthlessly
like that.
And I, I don't care if you do oryou don't.
(35:36):
That's not your program.
It ain't your program.
I run a breeding program, not ahospital.
And the ones where that doeshappen, I have an outlet for
those.
So they don't go to waste.
They don't go you just eatthose.
You can just eat'em.
You just want to band these.
(35:58):
What I do is I brood'emseparately.
So you would put these in onebrooder and put the skinny
headwinds in the other one, andthen you would ban these'cause I
banned it about 10 days.
And paint.
Paint, no polish.
Livestock markers work reallygood too.
I use a lot of livestockmarkers.
So I can't go steal that from mydaughters, but I can go steal
(36:18):
nail polish.
Okay.
But anyway, you'll need twobrooders or you'll need to band
them somehow, but two broodersjust pretty foolproof.
And then you can either sellthose chicks, as to somebody
else who wants to get startedbecause everybody has to have a
starting point, right?
So don't feel bad, just tell'em,say, look, I'm breeding for
width and these did not meet myneeds straight out of the
(36:40):
brooder, but they're a greatstart for you.
Just be honest.
It's fine.
If you went to my.
Page on my website, it will tellyou on there that I might have
some leakage here and therebecause you don't eat feathers
and I'm not overly concernedabout it.
So breeders should be honestwith the things that they're
working on and what may pop upand that's fine.
(37:03):
Yeah.
If I see the leakage, that's notnecessarily a deal breaker for
me to go to the breeding pen.
If.
Every other quality about youI'm in love with.
But if I'm not in love with allthe other qualities, if you got
one, if you've got a flawbesides the leakage, then I'm
(37:31):
going to eat you or something'sgonna eat you.
But it, again, it depends onyour goals.
I will end up with nice prettywhite birds, but right now that
is not in my top three thingsthat I'm concerned about.
Okay, so this is actually one ofmy, this is actually one of my
(37:53):
breeders and as of now he isabout 15, 18 months old without
pulling his band number.
He is probably going to be myfoundation bird for my flock
going forward.
So like we talked about at thebeginning, you're just hatching
quantity in order to shop yourown property for what you want
(38:19):
to move forward.
So when we do the selection onthese breasts, it's very
different than if you wereselecting, say, for the
Orpingtons or your Red Eye,Rhode Island Reds, because we
won't select those till they'redarn near a year old.
These guys, what we're doing orwhat I'm doing, I can't say that
(38:40):
it is.
Like the way it's supposed tobe.
This is just what I'm doing.
I took him at 17 weeks and Isaid, you know what?
This is what I want to see on mytable.
He had great spacing.
He had deep chest, he had astraight keel bone.
He had all the meat thatfleshing that people talk about.
(39:03):
He had what I want to see on mydinner table, and so that's why
I used him as a breeder.
No, dude, that bird has whatmost everybody wants to see in
their yard too.
He's, and he's so sweet.
Now he is 10 pounds, fourounces, but really that's not
relevant.
(39:24):
What's relevant is that he wasseven pounds and something at 17
weeks, and he was the shape andthe size of what I wanna see on
my table.
Because the 17 week mark for meis the selection point for the
boys.
The girls are point of lay.
(39:45):
Because once they get to pointof lay, they don't really grow
too much more the kind of theirbody's moving to, okay, we're
gonna lay eggs now we're donegrowing.
So your selection point in whatI'm doing for my birds is I'm
selecting for the table and thebirds that have those.
(40:06):
Positives that I wanna see onthe table at 17 weeks are the
ones that are gonna move forwardto the breed pen.
The biggest pain in the buttabout that for me is the hens
because you can pick out arooster pretty easy.
But if you wanna make sure ahen's laying five eggs a week,
(40:27):
if you wanna make sure she'slaying uniform eggs every time,
if you wanna make sure she's allof that.
It's a pain in the butt.
It is, but I have a fix forthat.
I have a fix more pen space?
No.
So I did some wheeling anddealing and I traded a guy in
Nashville.
(40:48):
Some stuff for a hutchin time.
Chicken cage, you've seen it.
It has nine holes in it and it'sbig enough and it has an egg
rollout.
It's big enough for these birds.
Not him, but it would be bigenough for pulls.
So what you could do, and Ihaven't done it with the pulls,
but I have done it with theboys, is put them in there.
(41:11):
Just put'em in there for, Idon't know, a day, even two
days.
And just to see what their eggis and looks like and what size
it is and make sure it's correctand then put'em back out.
We're not talking about keepingthem in there forever, but just
long enough to see who lays whategg.
I did have a hen, I do have ahen she's about a year old and
(41:37):
she is laying a wonky egg and Iwanted to.
Move her out to to, I wanted tosort them like that and figure
out which one she was.
But then I was like, you knowwhat?
I am not hatching off of thisgroup going forward.
She's not with this guy.
(41:58):
So I just, her egg always has aflat side.
I dunno why.
It's just weird.
It's just flat on one side.
And I don't know if they'restill super soft when she lays
'em.
And so when it falls down it'sjust flat.
But I just, you can tell her eggevery day and she lays one every
day.
'cause I always have a flatsided egg, so I just, so if I
(42:19):
had one like that, that wouldgive me an egg every day.
It just wasn't what I wanted tobreed.
That goal with my layer flock.
Yeah.
So def definitely dinner qualityand reliable.
And e every once in a while if Ididn't have enough extras from
(42:40):
my regular breeding flock, Imight even put a rooster in
there.
And some of them.
So she's with a guy.
But because her egg is soobvious, I just always just put
it, I always carry, I put myeggs in pitchers, like the
plastic pitchers to carry themeat in.
(43:00):
So I always put her egg in withthe eating egg.
It's so obvious it reallydoesn't bother me and she's a
placeholder with him, so that.
He doesn't wear anybody out,there's enough in there.
So it, right now it's working.
I may change that up later.
And that's the beauty of thiswhole situation is you can
(43:20):
always change it up later.
But as far as this guy isconcerned breasts should have
those blue slate legs.
That is the marker for a truebreast bird.
And that is the end of my fancyslideshow.
But I think, I mean we coveredeverything.
Yeah, we did.
(43:40):
We covered a lot.
And like I said, with not todaywe're talking about breasts.
'cause she and I both have'em.
We both love them.
With any bird regardless, youshould start with your goals.
And she and I were talkingprobably like a year after I got
mine, maybe.
(44:01):
About it and,'cause she did alot of Cornish and she's I've
been reading a lot about thosebirds.
And she's I wonder, she startedasking questions how often do
they lay and, this, that and theother.
And then, next thing I knowshe's wanting to get her some
'cause.
If your goal is selfsustainability.
(44:25):
Then in both of our opinion,this is the perfect chicken for
you.
Because it's'cause they lay alot of eggs on a proper diet.
They grow really well andthey're not jerks.
They're playful chickens.
Yeah, they have a little bitmore flightiness to'em than my
(44:46):
Orpingtons, but I always jokethat the Orpingtons are like a
step above dead.
So really anything is gonna bemore flighty than they are.
Like when I go look at mine,they're, the Orpingtons are like
just laying there Hey, did youbring me some food or a treat?
(45:06):
Why are you out here?
With the breasts and my reds,they, they come, hey Hey, what
are you doing?
Don't come over here.
Will you pet me?
I send my grandson in there toget the eggs.
They don't bother him.
They're fine.
I don't know that theynecessarily wanna be caught up
in.
Wanna sit in my lap or anything,but I can walk in there and pet
(45:27):
some of'em if they're standingon the roost or something.
They're not crazy like theywanna attack you.
But if a bird that was sittingin your lap was your goal, you'd
have silkies and not breasts.
One of these days we'll find asilky breeder who's willing to
come on.
We've asked, I don't know howmany we can't get.
And look, I'm gonna say this'cause there's a lot of people
(45:47):
out there that absolutely lovesilkies, and if you are a silky
breeder.
And you would like to come onthe show and tell us about
Silky, what you like about'emand your breeding program,
please by all means send eitherone of us a message.
Either carry at orjennifer@poultrynerdspodcast.com
(46:08):
or poultry nerds@gmail.com,whatever, and let us know, we'll
get you our scheduler.
And get you on because, we'vebeen trying to get people,
because a lot of people will askus, Hey, why don't y'all do a
show about Silkies?
I'm like, I don't wanna say,because they're, people hate
talking about'em because whenyou see their people, they love
(46:31):
'em.
But we just can't get'em on ourshow.
All right.
I got nothing else for today.
Nope.
Me neither.
I'm good.
So yeah, we're here.
Yeah.
How is everybody?
I hope they're doing good.
And from what I see on thescreen right here, we're gonna
fix them to talk about breeding.
One of my favorite meals.
It's been a hot topic here and Ithought, you know what?
(00:45):
I'm having to walk through itwith with David and the kids a
little bit, and I'm gonnaexplain why in a minute.
But I thought, you know what,let's just walk through it
publicly and maybe follow myconvo, convoluted trail of how I
get to point.
B from a It is, it's funny thatyou say that talking about
(01:11):
dinner is a hot topic.
Yeah.
So I just made what did youmake?
If you don't know already?
We live so rural, we cannot getgood Chinese food and I am a
really good cook and I can cookpretty much anything, but I'm
still trying to master like ourfavorite Chinese dishes.
(01:35):
And so tonight, or today leper,I guess I made honey, chicken
and rice.
And of course we made it frombreast.
I think we are finally out ofall of the Cornish, out of the
freezer.
I'm gonna have to dig throughthe bottom of it a little bit
and make sure, but if there'sany, there it's freezer burned
(01:56):
and it'll be dog food, but thebreasts they won't mind.
No.
So we eat a lot of meat and Idon't know from the first time I
made breasts dinner or chickendinner with breasts, I guess you
should say.
It was instantly like, why arewe even doing Cornish and.
(02:19):
People.
And when I see people say onlinethat they, they're stringy or
they're tough or whatnot I don'tunderstand unless they're, the
only thing David and I can comeup with is, you know how you go
to the store and you buy thechicken boneless, skinless
chicken breast that's in thelittle saran wrap.
Thing and you can just take itout.
And it's ready and you can cookit almost from frozen state.
(02:43):
I don't know what they do to itto get it to that point, but you
cannot do that with a breast.
There's a difference.
Cooking a heritage chicken andcooking, I guess a processed
Cornish like that, but.
I didn't do anything magical.
This was just a half, we do ourshalf chickens in va vacuum seal
(03:05):
and put'em in the freezerbecause he likes white meat and
I like dark meat.
And so that works pretty well.
And I took it out yesterday anddidn't make it last night.
So we made it today and I justtook it off the bone and.
Chopped it up into bite-sizedpieces and made the honey
(03:26):
chicken and you could cut itwith a fork, and it was just as
tender as.
It was just as tender as couldbe.
I don't know what else you couldask.
I say you can't really compareit to getting something at the,
at a restaurant,'cause thatdon't happen.
So if you go to a restaurant andyou get say, I don't know,
(03:47):
chicken tenders or something orchicken nuggets.
Per se, then those are moreprocessed.
I think they use like somepotato starch and some onion
powder and stuff.
They process it and then make itlook like a chicken nugget
again.
I've seen tiktoks on that, butthis was just straight up.
I took the meat, chopped it up.
(04:10):
Put it in the batter.
Put it in some tallow.
I think it was tallow.
It could have been schmaltz.
I looked at it in therefrigerator and I was like it's
some kind of a fatten.
It's the fat I'm going to use tofry this chicken.
And I don't know, because some,like you never know what you
have in your refrigerator.
No.
(04:30):
Because at your place it couldbe anything.
Yeah.
Kevin.
So that's why when you said it,I think it was tallow, I'm like.
It can be towel.
What was it?
It could be lard, it could besch small, it could be all kinds
of stuff.
You're still here, so it wasn'tbad.
No, regardless it's fat and youhave to have fat to fry
something, and so I just put itin the batter that makes the,
(04:54):
for the Chinese food, you knowit's a batter and you put it in
there and then you fry it, andthen you put the honey sesame.
Sauce on it.
And some rice.
I cooked rice in the instant potin five minutes and that's what
we had.
And it was good.
And David ate it all.
So that tells me it was good.
(05:15):
But what I'm getting at here isthe meat.
It was not like eatingOrpington.
Orpington would have somechewiness to it no matter what
you did, because they're older.
The breasts are like 17, 18, 19weeks when you process them.
So they're much more tender.
And so maybe people are waitingtoo long to process'em.
(05:39):
Yeah.
And I see a lot of that in someof the groups, people talking
about when should I process?
But that's really a hard thingto say because you have to know
your birds and you have to knowwhat you're feeding them.
Because if you're feeding them aration that's specifically
designed for that purpose, andyou finish'em out over a two
(06:04):
week period.
Then, you could have a juicy,tender bird probably what up to
at least 16, 18 weeks.
So I have finished'em and I havenot finished them.
And to be honest, I can't tell adifference and it's really quite
(06:25):
a pain to finish them with themilk and the oats and blah,
blah, blah.
And so I just.
I just don't do it.
The only thing, and don't hateme, but the only thing I do is I
take'em off of your feed and putthem on a blander feed and some
corn.
I was gonna say about a weekbefore, I ain't upset about that
because if I was finishing abird, I would, I'd probably feed
(06:49):
it a mixture of like cornmealand something, or.
I would run, Ooh.
I would run corn, barley, andoats through the grinder.
Mix it up because if it's thelast two weeks, yes, you want
(07:09):
your bird to eat good.
And that's a good mix of justgrains.
But the hatchability and allthat other stuff that comes
along with really good feed,you're not really worried about.
And so I would do that, man.
'cause I, that's what I did thefirst time I processed the
Turkey for Thanksgiving, and nowpeople don't want to store
(07:34):
bought Turkey.
And for that sucker, likeputting it on that diet.
For a couple weeks, is all thatchanged about its life?
Yeah.
So if you've ever had grassfinished beef and it was
processed in the spring, you'regonna get an onion flavor to the
(07:55):
meat.
So we always process our beef inthe fall or late summer.
You got those onions growing inthe pasture, you know exactly
the natural weed ones.
And so the breasts or Yeah, soyour feed has all got all those
good fishmeal things in there.
And while I can't.
(08:17):
Some people can't taste it.
I can and so I'm afraid to leavethem on it and Yeah.
Be fishy.
Yeah, I would.
I wouldn't.
Yeah.
So I just put'em on a plain oldoff lock with a whole bunch of
corn, cracked corn in it.
The other thing that's probablygonna make people gasp is we
don't pluck really.
We just.
(08:39):
We just batch cock'em and cut'emin half in order to vacuum seal
'em.
We don't eat the skin.
It's just, if you're gonna go tothe store and buy chicken,
that's how you should processthem.
So if you buy a whole chickenand you roast it and you eat the
skin, then by all means pluckit.
But we don't, we like choppedchicken in veggies or.
(09:00):
I don't know.
We, we just don't eat the skin.
I don't do rotisserie per se, orbaked chickens and stuff like
that.
So that's just not how we cook.
And so we just skin'em.
And that extra finishing at theend is what puts the fat between
the meat and the skin.
And if I'm just skinning themanyway.
(09:22):
Point doesn't really matterpoint.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean I do have a pluck and wedo use it for the turkeys and
for the orpingtons and stuff,but that's different.
You have a huge mother pluck.
I do like that thing is marriedfolks, just so you can get a
visual of those blue 55 gallondrums.
(09:42):
That's what that thing was madeout of and it's got the pluckers
fingers you know that you canbuy to fix your pluck.
Whoever made that thing spentsome time, but that thing works
great.
I have used the hose pipe whileyou stuck birds in it a couple
times and I like it.
(10:04):
Since you have been here, Taylorreplaced my pulley system under
on the motor.
Thing, that thing will throw aTurkey, 50 feet.
I think you have to watch it sonow you don't have to worry
about that.
Okay.
Yes, it's a big fluer.
You have to be really careful,but.
Let's let's just talk about theprocessing for a second.
(10:24):
So the, if you do decide topluck, you put your water
scalar, which we just use like aTurkey fry and scald at a
hundred fifty five degrees, andit won't burn your fingers, like
unless you're dainty orsomething, but you're not gonna
be in there for very long.
So just leave the feet on andyou swish'em.
(10:47):
In the S you gotta leave yourfeet on because gotta have Soper
with Yes.
You gotta down.
So those are their dipperhandles now.
Yeah.
And so you put'em in the scalarand you, what your goal is to
plunge almost with them becauseyou're trying to get the
feathers really close to theskin wet.
And that's what your aim is.
You don't really care about theedge of the.
(11:08):
Feathers, right?
The, you want'em to come out ofthe skin.
So that's what you're after.
And I think people don't maybeget that done really well.
And then when you put'em in thepluck or you you turn it on and
then you take the feet and yougo around in a circle and then
you've got the hose in the otherhand.
(11:28):
And, and then you let go and itfinishes it.
So I would say in the s calder,maybe 20, 25 seconds max, and
I've got videos of them beingplucked in The longest one is 23
seconds.
Yeah.
If you got your, if you've gotyour alder as far as the
(11:49):
temperature.
It loosens those feathers up andit doesn't do, doesn't take
long.
With a Turkey, if you're onlydoing one or two once you let's
see, cut things out.
I'll say that and hang on for alittle bit.
The stress of that happeningmakes the feathers just.
(12:12):
Let's let loose.
So you start pulling real quickand you'll get all those pen
feathers out and two minutesyou're talking about turkeys, so
that's a game bird.
And when they are stressed.
Live or dead.
When they're stressed, they letthe feathers go, right?
So it's a really good opportunetime to pull those hard
(12:34):
feathers, like the flightfeathers.
But you can pretty much pickthem bald.
Before the flapping stops.
Now breasts are not game birds,so that wouldn't work with them.
No.
But anyway, so that's rabbithole number one.
Yeah.
Rabbit hole number one.
Okay.
So if you are going to try them,make sure you let them rest.
(12:57):
Don't go out there and get oneoutta the yard and cook it for
dinner today.
You wanna rest'em?
I would say three or four days.
Now, one thing that you can dois you can rest'em at the front
end or the back end.
So say you put'em in a coolertoday, bag'em tomorrow.
So they're good, what, 36 hoursor so before They're frozen,
(13:18):
solid 48 hours.
And then when you take'em out,rest'em again another day or
two.
So then you get three or fourdays of rest that adds up that
way.
And then, don't try to cook'emlike a Cornish.
At least not straight off thebat.
If they've been rested for fouror five days, you probably
(13:39):
could.
But yeah don't try to cook'emlike a Cornish.
It's not the same thing.
No.
And I can't really say anythingelse.
They're just, I can't find afault with them.
I really didn't know.
I didn't really have anexpectation really when I got
'em.
I just wanted to try'em, and I'min love with'em.
(14:00):
Honestly, I'll never forget thefirst time I was there.
And we were standing in thekitchen and you said, here, try
this.
I was like, oh, okay.
And I was like, man, this is thebest way I can describe it, is,
how a really, like a good, realpiece of fish, not something
that you bought at a store.
(14:21):
How it's got the flakes in itand the tenderness.
That's how the breast is.
Only it tastes like chicken andnot like fish.
Yeah.
It's got a silky texture to it.
Okay.
So the best part about thebreast though is that you don't
have to keep buying them.
Like every year, like theCornish they lay eggs, you can
(14:41):
incubate them, you can fry theeggs, like they're just a
general all purpose chicken andthey grow really quickly.
Of course now I'm comparing themto my Orpingtons.
Frozen molasses grows fasterthan my Orpington's, but.
Yeah, the breast, the breasts dogrow really quickly.
(15:02):
So we operate here on quarters.
We don't wanna be put'em in itin the freezer every like month
or so.
So we figure out how many wewant per quarter, and.
I raise enough here for at leastthree households, sometimes
four.
The kids, shop in the freezerwhen they come over.
(15:23):
And so I try to figure out howmany we're going through in a
quarter and then that's how muchI hatch off.
And then we just all gettogether and clean out the pens,
put'em in the freezer, divvy'emup, and.
See you in a quarter, basically,right?
Hey, you know what?
It's good.
(15:44):
I'm not gonna say clean funbecause it makes a mess, but
it's something that you can doas a family.
And by God, if you only get tosee'em once a quarter to,
because they want to comegrocery shopping at your house,
at least it's worth it.
Because, I would give my kidgroceries to, to have a routine
time where I could spend all daywith'em.
(16:05):
And, that's good.
And if you can't do that manylike at a time, then just do it
like every 60 days or something.
But there's no, it, you're ahundred percent in control.
It's not like the Cornish whereyou can't do it in the heat of
the summer or the cold of thewinter, or you have to be home
on a certain day or they'regonna start dropping dead.
(16:27):
It doesn't work like that.
The breasts just keep growing.
So anyway, so let's talk aboutlike how to get started with
them.
And of course there's differentways you could start with chicks
or started birds or hatchingeggs.
But regardless, remember thatyou're just starting you're just
(16:47):
getting your feet on the groundwith them, and then you have to
accumulate a quantity of them inorder to essentially go
shopping.
To find the birds that you wantto move forward, and then you're
gonna eat the rest of them.
So until you know the breasts,you're always going to be eating
(17:09):
your coals.
And I think there's a differentmindset maybe than what people
are expecting where they just goout there and the Cornish are
all the people have it in theirhead that they're all uniform,
but they're really not.
If you've raised Cornish,they're really not uniform man.
Ain't nothing uniform aboutthem.
Things are nasty.
So you could get some that'sfour pounds and you can get some
(17:30):
that's nine pounds at eightweeks.
So the expectation that theCornish would all be the same is
unrealistic, and to get thatuniformity straight off the bat
with whatever you bring home isalso unrealistic.
And that is just true with any.
I was gonna say that's true withany breed.
(17:52):
Almost gonna say any species.
Even if you were breeding dogsor something, you know it's
gonna be the same.
And the only way you're gonnaknow is if you have a
relationship with the breederand they specifically pick you
out a pair or trio or five.
For purposes.
(18:15):
And that's only if their goalsalign with your goals.
If y'all's goals ain't the same,then you're gonna have to get
with yours.
'cause like when I got'em.
(19:13):
Yes, I wanted meat, eggs, butalso wanted pretty, and I didn't
have to be perfect.
I just wanted'em to look good.
Who wants ugly chickens walkingaround their yard?
That's why I didn't want Cornishwalking around the yard.
They waddle anyway, they, theyare different.
And I've been enjoying workingwith'em for the last few years.
(19:36):
So it's a, I've only had'em fora year and a half, but they turn
over really quickly.
And if you step back and reallythink about what you're doing
with them, it's not a hardlesson to grasp on the breeding
side of it.
For example, with theorpingtons, you want them as.
(19:58):
My Orpingtons, you want them asbig as possible.
So what we're spending time withon the first six to nine months
is structure.
And then they're going to startfilling out on the breast is a
little bit different.
Yes, you want some structure,but we want them also filling
out by 17, 18 weeks.
(20:21):
So we don't want them spending aton of time growing structure
because we wanna be able toharvest what we need at the 17,
18 week mark.
So if you harvested a.
17 week old Orpington, youprobably would get more meat off
of a quail.
I was gonna say you would've achicken sandwich instead of a
(20:44):
meal.
Don't that, it's all bone.
You'd have some good bone broth.
But you're not gonna get reallyfar.
So just keep that in mind.
Whatever you get started with,think of it as an investment in
quantity.
And then you are just going tofeed your incubating and
(21:05):
hatching habit addiction likecrazy so that you can then
select from all of those.
The actual breeders that youwant, because those chickens
will have been raised in yourenvironment with your feed.
Yep.
The way you are gonna take careof'em, and that is a huge, I
(21:30):
don't know.
What am I to say?
And you may not do that may notbe the first, when you hatch out
all you can hatch out and yougot a yard full of birds, you're
going to make some groups andpick some stuff out.
And, when you give a, like whenyou have a plan and you're
(21:51):
looking for something.
You, you can't start at thebeginning or start at the end
and work your way back.
You gotta start at the beginningand work your way forward.
So you know, the first timeyou're gonna look for birds that
you like the way they dideverything better than the ones
you started with.
(22:12):
And then, you know those, you'llput in a breeding pen and you'll
have some really good chicken.
Yeah, and then you get to belike, Ooh, let me hatch out
everything I can and do itagain.
And if you find something thatgrows up to be better than
what's in your second generationpen or your foundation pen, then
(22:37):
they get replaced.
And you have cocoa van.
So you know, it's, you're tryingto better it, but you have to
know your goals, people alwayssay, what kind of chicken, what
kind of chickens should I get?
I don't know, there's like amillion kinds, but what are your
goals?
(22:58):
Because that's what works yourway backwards to what you should
have.
Okay.
So if you guys are listening tothe podcast, I actually did a
little slideshow, so you mighthave to come check it out over
on YouTube or the website.
It's not fancy, but it is somepictures to illustrate what
we're gonna talk about.
So this is just a shortintroduction.
(23:19):
The breast chickens come fromFrance and they've been in the
United States for 10 to 12 yearsnow.
Depends on if they came overlegally or not.
And they're just a real, they'rewhite.
Ours are white.
There are different varieties.
There's black and there's blue.
I think somebody's working onsplash maybe.
But there I've seen some.
(23:39):
Yeah but I think those are morefor like pretty, and.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So there's two schools ofthought on the breast.
There's a group of people whoare trying to write a standard
to get'em put in the a PA toshow them.
While, yes, I do the show worldto a degree.
I do not have any interestmyself in showing breasts.
(24:02):
These are meant for me for meatand eggs, and I feel like they
would lose that.
Purpose if we turned them into ashow bird.
Because to raise a show bird,that's a completely different
mindset.
So that's just my opinion.
And if it upsets you, I'm sorry.
(24:22):
When you're raising a show,bird.
You're not thinking about what'sgoing on your dinner table,
right?
Which is, the other purpose in adual purpose bird, you're
thinking about what that judgeis gonna look at and compare it
to.
And like you said, there'sabsolutely nothing wrong with
that.
But when your goal is what looksgood on your kitchen table and
(24:46):
what you can fry up in themorning.
Then you know it, it'sdifferent, right?
Yes.
You want your birds to looklike, feel like, act like what
they should, or you would'vepicked a different bird.
But at the end of the day, whenyou're worried about, when your
(25:06):
goal is meat, eggs, essentially.
You're more concerned with thepicture that we can see right
now because, it's not helpingthat while we're doing this.
I'm hungry, but I would tearthat chicken up.
Okay, so obviously this isprobably just your run of the
mill Cornish rotisserie chicken,right?
(25:27):
But.
The reason why I wanted to putit up here was to illustrate
some things I think people maynot know when you're reading
about something and the breederor the author says, you really
just have to put your hands onit to feel it.
That's hard for somebody thatmay not have ever been taught
(25:50):
to, to feel something.
Okay, so obviously we have arotisserie chicken here and in
the front of the picture, thatwould be where the neck goes.
And so this bird is upside down,right?
So if the legs weren't tied,they'd be straight up in the air
and if you turned it over,they'd be standing on the legs,
right?
Okay.
(26:11):
The bone that runs and splitsthe breast meat right there,
that's the keel bone.
That is what?
When you pick up a bird and youput your hand underneath of
their gut, that's the bone thatyou're feeling.
And you wanna make sure thatit's straight, that there's no
(26:33):
curvature to it.
That it's not sharp, because ifit's sharp, then there's no meat
there.
It's just a bony chicken.
And if it's all squishy and.
Blubbery.
Then that's a big, nice, biglayer of fat and you need to go
back and listen to the podcasttwo weeks ago about overweight
(26:56):
chickens.
So what you want to feel wouldbe like if you went to the store
and bought a raw chicken and putyour hand on it and you could
feel that muscle, which is whatthe breast meat is.
Then put your hand underneath ofthe chicken.
It should feel about the same.
(27:18):
That's your goal anyway, right?
Now, next up would be, see thespace between the legs.
So on my birds, we're talkingabout how many fingers can you
put between the legs?
You'll see people talk aboutthat on my birds.
I have big hands and I canspread my fingers apart between
(27:38):
the legs of my birds and that'swhat you want.
You want a nice, big, wide birdthat stands up on its legs like
a Flintstone, Yeah.
You wanna be able to put your,if a bird's standing, you wanna
be able to put your fist betweenhis legs without touching its
legs.
And like mine, when I pick upsome mine, I have to like the
(28:01):
grown ones.
I pick'em up and then I have tolike, pull their feet in so I
can tuck their legs in myfingers and carry'em around like
footballs.
Because their legs are so wide.
'cause they're a wide bodiedchicken.
And so if you flip this birdover, of course you're gonna see
it's backbone.
And what you want is thebackbone.
(28:21):
To not be in a curve like aroach called it roach back.
You don't want that.
You want it to be nice andstraight and elongated, because
the longer the back, the longerthe bird, the more meat that's
gonna grow.
Because the meat is the musclethat's helping the bird to move
(28:42):
around and do chicken things,right?
So you, the more muscle you puton this bird, the more meat
you're gonna have at the end ofthe day.
So anything else we can think ofon this rotisserie chicken to
talk about?
No, but I will say this.
I know you like projects, so I'mcurious if when you finish one
(29:07):
of those breasts, if you give ita lot of that Italian herb
seasoning, if that willinternally flavor.
Oh I don't think that it workslike that, but I did have to buy
an electric roasting pan becausemy turkeys have now outgrew my
oven and I have a 42 inch oventhat I can't find a pan big
(29:31):
enough for it.
And so I'm thinking this nextround I'm going to go ahead and
pluck a couple of'em and putthem in this roasting pan and
see if I can't make a rotisseriemyself.
It's a challenge in the kitchenfor me.
Okay, so the eggs of the breastchicken we were having this
(29:52):
conversation before we hitrecord, so mine are this nice
off-white, creamy color.
There are a couple orpingtoneggs in this picture, so
disregard those.
They're the more tan ones.
But are your breast eggs notthis creamy white color?
No, mine.
(30:12):
Mine are that color.
Oh, okay.
Good.
That's what they're supposed tobe.
Okay, good.
Because again, we don't, I don'tcare about showing'em, I just
care if the eggs are edible andthe BS edible.
Disregarding that big 57.9 and59.2.
'cause those are both orpingtoneggs.
You'll notice that the rest ofthem are in the 60 gram range.
(30:35):
Those are the size eggs that Ilike to set.
Somewhere between 60 and 65, Ihave set larger.
I don't feel like.
That's necessarily a good thing.
You can get too big.
I also am super selective on theshape of the egg because you
(30:55):
want to make sure that the chickhas enough room to move and
orientate itself in there.
You don't want torpedo eggs orgolf ball, eggs, or.
Cracked eggs or dirty eggs.
My, I do not wash eggs.
This comes straight out of mynest box like this.
I just simply bring anythinginside that is not.
(31:19):
Conducive to hatching, in myopinion as are edible eggs.
Nothing goes to waste here.
No.
But that's a good place to doyour first coal.
Yes.
Yes, because whatever you selectis what you're gonna get.
Now you'll notice also that Ihave numbers written on all of
mine.
No, the Sharpie does not impactmy hatch rate.
(31:41):
It does not matter.
You'll see fives and threes andones and twos, and I think
that's all you see in there.
And if a sharpie really impactedyour hatch rate, then there'd be
times that I had zero hatchrate.
Exactly.
Because I write on a lot of themnow.
I do just write on the end, theblunt end.
I maybe if you wrote on a pointyend or something, it might
(32:02):
matter.
I don't know.
No, I do the blunt end becausewhen I put'em in the tray, I
wanna be able to read it.
Exactly.
So those numbers are.
From the pens that I got themout of so I can keep them
separated later.
And the other numbers, 63, 64.
Those I weigh my eggs.
(32:23):
Have been working on a littleside project to dial in my
incubators.
Precisely to my environment.
And an egg should lose 11 to 13%of its weight from day one to
day 18.
And right now I am hoveringright around 10% weight loss.
(32:43):
And so I have.
I have been using 40%, so I'vedialed it in again to 38% to see
if I can bump it to the 11 to13% weight loss.
The idea there is to shorten thehatch window so everybody
hatches at the same time.
They're healthier, you can get'em out quicker and get'em on
(33:04):
food and water doing it thatway.
So that is just an advancedthing and if you want more
information you can get that outof the incubation masterclass.
Alright.
These are Carries Hatch fromthis week actually.
What are they, three or fourdays old now?
Yeah.
(33:26):
Yeah.
I noticed you didn't use anyshelf liner.
There's no shelf liner in thesebaskets.
Okay.
They're okay, right?
Don't, I don't have a problemwith it on these, no.
Okay.
I don't know.
I just use it for everything.
So he sent me these pictures ina text'cause he was all excited.
(33:46):
He is no eyeballs.
And so when I saw the textbefore the picture, I was like,
oh crap.
He's hatching birds with noeyeballs.
Yeah, some, sometimes there,there's an area that I spend a
decent amount of time in thatthe cell service is less than
ideal and it's frustratingbecause, I think she's gonna see
(34:11):
that word before she sees thepicture and she's gonna be like,
what the crap is he doing?
But yeah.
That's thing.
So the idea we have here is whenyou look straight down on these
chicks, you cannot see theireyeballs.
And that tells you that theyhave a nice wide head, and a
(34:33):
wide head should carry throughto a wide bodied.
Older bird.
That is the idea behind that.
So if you can see theireyeballs, that is because their
head is narrower and they willhave a narrow body when they're
older.
I had a person that has beenaround chicks longer than I've
(34:54):
been alive, and they werestarting to help me learn to
select and that kind of stuffbecause.
When I was younger, we just, allthese look good, we'll put them
together and have some more.
And he's I did my first coal outof the hatcher and I was like.
(35:16):
What, why didn't he tell me howto do this like a year and a
half ago?
I could have saved a lot ofmoney on chicken feet and he
said you wasn't ready for it.
I say that to people because noteverybody can Cole ruthlessly
like that.
And I, I don't care if you do oryou don't.
(35:36):
That's not your program.
It ain't your program.
I run a breeding program, not ahospital.
And the ones where that doeshappen, I have an outlet for
those.
So they don't go to waste.
They don't go you just eatthose.
You can just eat'em.
You just want to band these.
(35:58):
What I do is I brood'emseparately.
So you would put these in onebrooder and put the skinny
headwinds in the other one, andthen you would ban these'cause I
banned it about 10 days.
And paint.
Paint, no polish.
Livestock markers work reallygood too.
I use a lot of livestockmarkers.
So I can't go steal that from mydaughters, but I can go steal
(36:18):
nail polish.
Okay.
But anyway, you'll need twobrooders or you'll need to band
them somehow, but two broodersjust pretty foolproof.
And then you can either sellthose chicks, as to somebody
else who wants to get startedbecause everybody has to have a
starting point, right?
So don't feel bad, just tell'em,say, look, I'm breeding for
width and these did not meet myneeds straight out of the
(36:40):
brooder, but they're a greatstart for you.
Just be honest.
It's fine.
If you went to my.
Page on my website, it will tellyou on there that I might have
some leakage here and therebecause you don't eat feathers
and I'm not overly concernedabout it.
So breeders should be honestwith the things that they're
working on and what may pop upand that's fine.
(37:03):
Yeah.
If I see the leakage, that's notnecessarily a deal breaker for
me to go to the breeding pen.
If.
Every other quality about youI'm in love with.
But if I'm not in love with allthe other qualities, if you got
one, if you've got a flawbesides the leakage, then I'm
(37:31):
going to eat you or something'sgonna eat you.
But it, again, it depends onyour goals.
I will end up with nice prettywhite birds, but right now that
is not in my top three thingsthat I'm concerned about.
Okay, so this is actually one ofmy, this is actually one of my
(37:53):
breeders and as of now he isabout 15, 18 months old without
pulling his band number.
He is probably going to be myfoundation bird for my flock
going forward.
So like we talked about at thebeginning, you're just hatching
quantity in order to shop yourown property for what you want
(38:19):
to move forward.
So when we do the selection onthese breasts, it's very
different than if you wereselecting, say, for the
Orpingtons or your Red Eye,Rhode Island Reds, because we
won't select those till they'redarn near a year old.
These guys, what we're doing orwhat I'm doing, I can't say that
(38:40):
it is.
Like the way it's supposed tobe.
This is just what I'm doing.
I took him at 17 weeks and Isaid, you know what?
This is what I want to see on mytable.
He had great spacing.
He had deep chest, he had astraight keel bone.
He had all the meat thatfleshing that people talk about.
(39:03):
He had what I want to see on mydinner table, and so that's why
I used him as a breeder.
No, dude, that bird has whatmost everybody wants to see in
their yard too.
He's, and he's so sweet.
Now he is 10 pounds, fourounces, but really that's not
relevant.
(39:24):
What's relevant is that he wasseven pounds and something at 17
weeks, and he was the shape andthe size of what I wanna see on
my table.
Because the 17 week mark for meis the selection point for the
boys.
The girls are point of lay.
(39:45):
Because once they get to pointof lay, they don't really grow
too much more the kind of theirbody's moving to, okay, we're
gonna lay eggs now we're donegrowing.
So your selection point in whatI'm doing for my birds is I'm
selecting for the table and thebirds that have those.
(40:06):
Positives that I wanna see onthe table at 17 weeks are the
ones that are gonna move forwardto the breed pen.
The biggest pain in the buttabout that for me is the hens
because you can pick out arooster pretty easy.
But if you wanna make sure ahen's laying five eggs a week,
(40:27):
if you wanna make sure she'slaying uniform eggs every time,
if you wanna make sure she's allof that.
It's a pain in the butt.
It is, but I have a fix forthat.
I have a fix more pen space?
No.
So I did some wheeling anddealing and I traded a guy in
Nashville.
(40:48):
Some stuff for a hutchin time.
Chicken cage, you've seen it.
It has nine holes in it and it'sbig enough and it has an egg
rollout.
It's big enough for these birds.
Not him, but it would be bigenough for pulls.
So what you could do, and Ihaven't done it with the pulls,
but I have done it with theboys, is put them in there.
(41:11):
Just put'em in there for, Idon't know, a day, even two
days.
And just to see what their eggis and looks like and what size
it is and make sure it's correctand then put'em back out.
We're not talking about keepingthem in there forever, but just
long enough to see who lays whategg.
I did have a hen, I do have ahen she's about a year old and
(41:37):
she is laying a wonky egg and Iwanted to.
Move her out to to, I wanted tosort them like that and figure
out which one she was.
But then I was like, you knowwhat?
I am not hatching off of thisgroup going forward.
She's not with this guy.
(41:58):
So I just, her egg always has aflat side.
I dunno why.
It's just weird.
It's just flat on one side.
And I don't know if they'restill super soft when she lays
'em.
And so when it falls down it'sjust flat.
But I just, you can tell her eggevery day and she lays one every
day.
'cause I always have a flatsided egg, so I just, so if I
(42:19):
had one like that, that wouldgive me an egg every day.
It just wasn't what I wanted tobreed.
That goal with my layer flock.
Yeah.
So def definitely dinner qualityand reliable.
And e every once in a while if Ididn't have enough extras from
(42:40):
my regular breeding flock, Imight even put a rooster in
there.
And some of them.
So she's with a guy.
But because her egg is soobvious, I just always just put
it, I always carry, I put myeggs in pitchers, like the
plastic pitchers to carry themeat in.
(43:00):
So I always put her egg in withthe eating egg.
It's so obvious it reallydoesn't bother me and she's a
placeholder with him, so that.
He doesn't wear anybody out,there's enough in there.
So it, right now it's working.
I may change that up later.
And that's the beauty of thiswhole situation is you can
(43:20):
always change it up later.
But as far as this guy isconcerned breasts should have
those blue slate legs.
That is the marker for a truebreast bird.
And that is the end of my fancyslideshow.
But I think, I mean we coveredeverything.
Yeah, we did.
(43:40):
We covered a lot.
And like I said, with not todaywe're talking about breasts.
'cause she and I both have'em.
We both love them.
With any bird regardless, youshould start with your goals.
And she and I were talkingprobably like a year after I got
mine, maybe.
(44:01):
About it and,'cause she did alot of Cornish and she's I've
been reading a lot about thosebirds.
And she's I wonder, she startedasking questions how often do
they lay and, this, that and theother.
And then, next thing I knowshe's wanting to get her some
'cause.
If your goal is selfsustainability.
(44:25):
Then in both of our opinion,this is the perfect chicken for
you.
Because it's'cause they lay alot of eggs on a proper diet.
They grow really well andthey're not jerks.
They're playful chickens.
Yeah, they have a little bitmore flightiness to'em than my
(44:46):
Orpingtons, but I always jokethat the Orpingtons are like a
step above dead.
So really anything is gonna bemore flighty than they are.
Like when I go look at mine,they're, the Orpingtons are like
just laying there Hey, did youbring me some food or a treat?
(45:06):
Why are you out here?
With the breasts and my reds,they, they come, hey Hey, what
are you doing?
Don't come over here.
Will you pet me?
I send my grandson in there toget the eggs.
They don't bother him.
They're fine.
I don't know that theynecessarily wanna be caught up
in.
Wanna sit in my lap or anything,but I can walk in there and pet
(45:27):
some of'em if they're standingon the roost or something.
They're not crazy like theywanna attack you.
But if a bird that was sittingin your lap was your goal, you'd
have silkies and not breasts.
One of these days we'll find asilky breeder who's willing to
come on.
We've asked, I don't know howmany we can't get.
And look, I'm gonna say this'cause there's a lot of people
(45:47):
out there that absolutely lovesilkies, and if you are a silky
breeder.
And you would like to come onthe show and tell us about
Silky, what you like about'emand your breeding program,
please by all means send eitherone of us a message.
Either carry at orjennifer@poultrynerdspodcast.com
(46:08):
or poultry nerds@gmail.com,whatever, and let us know, we'll
get you our scheduler.
And get you on because, we'vebeen trying to get people,
because a lot of people will askus, Hey, why don't y'all do a
show about Silkies?
I'm like, I don't wanna say,because they're, people hate
talking about'em because whenyou see their people, they love
(46:31):
'em.
But we just can't get'em on ourshow.
All right.
I got nothing else for today.
Nope.
Me neither.
I'm good.
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.