Mandelyn's Feed Trial-Part 2

In this podcast episode, we conclude our discussion with Jeff Mattocks about the feed trial Mandelyn Royal is conducting.  This trial uses a custom, breed-specific feed, designed by Jeff, for Mandelyn’s Breese. We cover the importance of grit, what healthy gizzards should look like, and why corn and soy-free diets are so hard to formulate.  We'll also talk about plants for future studies that Mandelyn would like to do to keep improving her flock.

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Transcript

John Gunterman: 0:00

Hi, I'm John Gunterman, and I want to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast. Joining me in the studio are Mandelyn Royal and Rip Stalvey, the rest of our podcast team, and we're looking forward to visiting with you and talking poultry from feathers to function.

Mandelyn Royal: 0:26

It's a mash and I was not anticipating the learning curve on feeder design and I saw that like we're very limited in what's locally available and now I'm looking at well what do I need to build because I can't just go up the road and buy it. Or what do I have to order online and have shipped in because the little typical one pound gravity chick starter they're like a round feeder. It didn't let the milled starter through. It just hung there. So they would empty out the bottom of the tray and no new feed would fall down. And I figured that out within a couple of days. And I noticed that just that first couple of days with that feeder malfunction, I They didn't eat as much as they would have. So I was pretty annoyed about that. And then Jeff was annoyed too. And he's

Jeff Mattocks: 1:12

yeah, unfortunately all the feeders that you can buy at tractor supply, Royal King, all those, feed type, farm stores because the commercial industry has gone to pellets and crumbles, the feeders design has also gone to being efficient only with pellets. pellets and crumbles, right? So there's not a lot of good feeders out there for a milled, mash type feed. So we, we have to go to a different route and I've always been a fan more. I don't, I really don't like gravity feeders. And I've always been a fan of a trough feeder, a large trough feeder giving more access and more space for the bird to be able to eat. Especially if you're limiting the amount of feed like in a layer operation where you only want to give four ounces a day, I definitely want access for all the birds to eat at the same time when the new feed is brought out. Commercial feeders are not going to provide that opportunity for you.

Mandelyn Royal: 2:17

I immediately switched over to the long chick trough with the little holes in it. And my birds, the heads are too big for them to use it past five weeks,

John Gunterman: 2:27

but it'll keep them from billing out and sorting, which is nice. I've noticed field feed, especially, or my new formulas, very

Mandelyn Royal: 2:34

limited waste.

John Gunterman: 2:36

Yeah. They were not wasting

Mandelyn Royal: 2:38

this fee. They were eating it down to the dust on the bottom.

John Gunterman: 2:41

That's good. You've got them trained well, then. If you get them habituated to eat their dust, then you don't need to worry about, Oh, they're not eating my dust! Later.

Jeff Mattocks: 2:49

Ha! I hear that a lot, right? It,

John Gunterman: 2:51

It hurts. I'm like, come on, finish your dust. But I just dump it out on top of the next day's feed. And if that stops working, or it's like mostly dust, then I just wet it. With some milk and give it to them in the morning and it's gone. And that happens about every two weeks, I'd say.

Jeff Mattocks: 3:07

Even still, John, if there's dust left behind, they're really not that hungry. And there's a good chance the bird might be slightly overweight. Okay.

John Gunterman: 3:17

Oh, my birds are.

Jeff Mattocks: 3:18

Yeah. If they're actually hungry, then they will eat, they'll eat that dust. And, but people think that, the dust is waste and, it's a problem. It's not, and it's a management thing. Yeah, I've looked at the enrobing process

John Gunterman: 3:36

in mixing the feed and there's plenty stuck on the grains that they're ingesting. I've actually put it on a magnifying glass and went, they're fine. It's a perception thing on, being a frugal person.

Jeff Mattocks: 3:49

Yeah, we don't want to waste it. I don't want anybody to waste the dust because that's where a lot of the good stuff is. The vitamins, the amino acids, right? We need to get that into them.

Rip Stalvey: 4:01

Jeff, I would probably be remiss if I didn't bring up the subject of grit.

Jeff Mattocks: 4:06

I'm surprised you brought it up, Rip.

John Gunterman: 4:08

I'm surprised you waited this long.

Jeff Mattocks: 4:10

You know how passionate I am about feeding grit. And, to me, I think someone should call the Humane Society if people have chickens and don't offer grit. Okay, so the grit is the only way. that a bird can properly break down, process the nutrients that you're giving that bird. It's the same as, serving someone a delicious steak. It, it, properly prepared and they have no teeth. You take away their ability to chew. And process. Grit is, and I really get it, I get an annoyed chuckle when people say, Oh, I free range them, there's plenty of stones out there on the ground. I'm like, come on, unless, unless you're living in a gravel quarry, or, a really rocky area, it's not going to happen. I have one or two customers who do live in an environment where their birds will not take free choice grit, just because there's enough in the soil. But you're talking about two people out of 2, 000 that have that, that case. So I noticed

Mandelyn Royal: 5:26

the grit consumption doubled when coming from a crumble to the milled feed. It easily doubled. I'm going through more grit than I ever have before. And then when we were processing a batch of cockerels what was that? Like two, three weeks ago, there was one bird where I pulled the gizzard out and it was misshaped. It was not shaped like everyone else's gizzard was. And I was like, I want to know what's inside this gizzard. So I split it open and there wasn't any grit in there at all. So I wonder for whatever reason, that particular bird didn't care about picking it up and it gave that bird complications that landed him on the dinner list because he wasn't developing as good as the others. And I was super surprised that there wasn't any grit in that particular gizzard, everybody else had it.

Jeff Mattocks: 6:14

You don't save your gizzards. You don't open them all up.

Mandelyn Royal: 6:17

Not all of them. And it depends on how much time we have. But when I do, I. Just split them open on one side, see what's in there, and then peel them. And put them in the bowl for the dog treats. I personally don't eat the gizzards.

Jeff Mattocks: 6:33

I grew up on gizzards, so I really like gizzards. Hearts and livers and gizzards. Yeah, I'll skip the livers, but hearts and gizzards, I can eat all day long. We're doing this for the Bress folks and other dual purpose people. So it's important. Even if you don't eat them, to open them up and see the contents of the gizzard, it's very important. If you're going to be a really good poultry person, especially if you're processing for your own meat purposes, when you open a gizzard, And you, that first glance, when you peel it open, it should be about 50 percent grit and 50 percent other, grains, fibers, grass, whatever, but it should be almost 50 50. That's what I

Mandelyn Royal: 7:22

saw yesterday when we were doing the one year old hens, we did do all of the gizzards because my meat buyer wants them and everybody had a good, Load of grid in there, and the assortment of greens and their feed, all of them yesterday were normal and perfect.

Jeff Mattocks: 7:39

That's what it should be. Hopefully you took pictures so you can share with people what a gizzard should look like on the inside. I'll do that next

Mandelyn Royal: 7:48

round.

Jeff Mattocks: 7:49

A lot of people have no idea what they're looking for. Oh,

Rip Stalvey: 7:53

it would surprise a lot of people how much grid is actually in that gizzard.

John Gunterman: 7:59

So I pull feed the day before processing. My birds still have access to water up until the moment that they're processed to make the crop and that whole system easier just for the evisceration process. But any ideas on how to make that gizzard, flush it out a little bit before processing so it could be more usable and less gritty in the kitchen?

Jeff Mattocks: 8:21

And you're not going to do it, John. Just, you

John Gunterman: 8:23

know,

Jeff Mattocks: 8:23

look, so when the food entered, when the food leaves the crop and it enters the gizzard, it's the particle size is larger. Okay. It will not pass out of the gizzard until it is very small, almost like a paste. So your oat fiber, some of your corn chunks, a lot of your grass or your alfalfas will stay in the gizzard a little bit longer. And you would be talking almost a week without feed before you would get that gizzard to really empty out.

John Gunterman: 9:00

Okay, so split and rinse.

Jeff Mattocks: 9:02

Sorry, there's no easy way to do

John Gunterman: 9:04

that. That just highlights the level of involvement. That some folks probably would have with their birds. I want to utilize the gizzard and I want to make sure that the gizzards are functioning correctly. So we're eviscerating, we're splitting, we're rinsing, and I'm throwing gizzards in a bucket and hearts in another for bagging and later use.

Jeff Mattocks: 9:23

Yeah. Most people set their gizzards off to the side and when they're done processing, they'll come back and specifically just clean gizzards. That's like their last task. They're cleaning feet, they're cleaning gizzards, they're, right? So that's like that. Even the next day, if you throw the gizzards in a little bit of salty ice water or something, you can come back and clean the gizzards after you're done processing. So if it was a hard day of processing, the last thing you want to do is stand there and clean gizzards.

John Gunterman: 9:53

Mandy's customers, they want the bird as complete as possible, correct?

Mandelyn Royal: 9:59

Yeah. I did let my meat buyer take over for me yesterday. Cause normally I'm the one doing the evisceration and I showed him how I do it. And he said that he's faster. I was like okay, then you go ahead and do it. So he showed me his way and while it wasn't as pretty of a result. He's not worried about what they look like in a shrink bed. Like he's not looking for retail, pretty carcasses. He's looking for how fast can I get this bird to where we can cook it and eat it. And so he took off a lot more skin than I would. He split up both sides and I wouldn't do it that way, but he was faster than me. I'll give him that.

Rip Stalvey: 10:39

Mandelyn, I'm curious, has this feed trial caused you to adjust your management practices with the birds in any way, or are you still doing it pretty much the same?

Mandelyn Royal: 10:50

The level of involvement is definitely a lot more time intensive, especially doing the weigh ins when I have to catch everybody, record their tag number. Get their weight, keep track of who I already did. So I take totes until they outsize those totes and then I'll switch over to a cage. So I know that I got everyone like Jeff was saying, I only needed to do a percentage of them. But I've been doing all of them every time. And I usually need to allow sometimes as much as three hours to get through everyone and then clean their pen, set them back up again and taking that little extra time every day to feed. Cause I'm a big fan of bulk feeding to where I don't have to do it again for a week, but I want to know that daily intake. It added a lot more chore time, but with what I'm learning from it, that's worth it.

Rip Stalvey: 11:42

Gotcha. How many birds do you have in each study group? I

Mandelyn Royal: 11:47

think it's something like 54 total now. I did have to cull one pullet who got a leg injury that was outside of an easy fix, and so that gave me the opportunity to go ahead and see what was happening on the inside, and there was already great fat development at eight weeks. Everywhere that I would expect to see the fat, it was already starting to develop in there. The fleshing was great. So that was a good little peek.

Rip Stalvey: 12:12

And I'm assuming that as you're weighing these birds, you're also evaluating the fleshing.

Mandelyn Royal: 12:20

Yeah, that's what makes it take so long, because I'm checking out their bone spacing, I'm feeling down the keel on either side of the breast. Because I've noticed in some genetic pools, you'll get a lot of breast meat up front, and then you lose it about halfway back. And as I go through trial after trial, I'll start to see, is this a genetic thing, or is it a feed thing? And then when I see it out of the same hatch batch, where One bird will be a lot better flesh than another. Then I'm they're on the same feed. It must be genetic. So it helps me a lot in the selection of who I want moving forward as a potential breeding bird and who's going to come up for dinner.

John Gunterman: 12:58

You've adopted a much tighter. And you used to do open pen mating, where you had, multiple suitors? Yeah, I split

Mandelyn Royal: 13:05

off a couple of trios, but I haven't gotten down to the pair yet. But, freeing up the space that I did yesterday, we processed 11 one year old hens. So that dropped me down to 24 remaining, emptied out two pens, so I can backfill with better youngsters out of this growth cycle, because I'm always hatching every year. I never take a year off. And then I keep filtering as they grow through different milestones to get down to the very best one and a half, two year old birds. I like to do it complicated and really get to know them.

Rip Stalvey: 13:45

Jeff. Just out of curiosity how will the information Mandy collects, how will you be able to use that data in some way? To improve what you're doing?

Jeff Mattocks: 13:56

Yeah, always. Every time we have a field trial, regardless of what it is, whether it's management, whether it's feed, whether it's breeding, no matter what. Every time we do a field trial, everybody gets to learn from it, including me. Anxious to see it, if Mandelyn says I think we can do better. Which I doubt she's going to tell me that, but I think, there's always room for improvement. I'm a person who believes there is no perfect and there's always something we can do to make it better. And I'm going to keep doing that.

Rip Stalvey: 14:30

Very good. Mandelyn, how will you How do you think this will help your breeding efforts moving forward now?

Mandelyn Royal: 14:39

If you rule out complications from environment, husbandry, nutrition, once you have really dialed in how you're raising your flock up, then that shows you who the better birds are because you know that they're not held back for any reason. They're not overloaded with parasites, they're not covered in mites, they're not living in filth, they're not living in you know what I mean once you dial in everything, then you see what's what in the genetics, and then you can start sorting and selecting through them, because I have learned over the last several years that when I see little four pound hens, like while they're a really productive layer, they're not producing meaty offspring. Even if they're with a really well built fleshy male, a lot more of the type and the growth and all that comes from the female side of it. And so I'm looking for very particular traits coming from the females especially. before I even consider hatching from them and this feed is really bringing the rock stars up to the front.

John Gunterman: 15:48

It's really setting you up for pedigree mating and trap nesting and a really controlled breeding program.

Mandelyn Royal: 15:55

Based on how things are going this year and what I'm seeing from the grow outs next year is probably going to be another really great season even better than this one. I'm excited.

Jeff Mattocks: 16:03

So what are we going to try next year, Mandy?

Mandelyn Royal: 16:06

Pair hatching to get the percentages of how many Good usable chicks come from it. So let's say I take this pair, I get a total of 50 eggs into the incubator. What is that rate of cull outta that pair? Am I keeping 10% or 50%? Awesome. I wanna see what the rate of cull is when you narrow it in like that.'cause right now I just bank on having a 50% cull rate. While I'm clan hatching, but I haven't, because I don't know who the specific parents are, where are those culls coming from? Is it spread out equally or is it just certain birds that don't need to be in that breeding pen at all? So we're not doing another field trial or another feed trial next year. We'll see if we come up with any more ideas, but after I get through I was talking to Jason, the owner of Kraut Creek, and I asked if he was interested in doing. A comparison of a corn and soy free version, because some folks in the market want to have their eggs and meat as corn and soy free, and I know that it's going to change the growth rates. So if I use the same genetic pool of birds and compare and contrast what those changes are, that'd be neat.

Jeff Mattocks: 17:21

You brought it up, I wasn't going to. There are only a few feed mills or feed manufacturers who can make a corn soy free diet that is even close to being adequate. That is the toughest feed to formulate, is corn soy free and you can't do it with anything, right? You need very unique, specific ingredients and everything has to be done perfectly. To see the true genetic, to see the real growth rates and performance of the bird that is a really tough feed to make, especially for a breeder feed.

Mandelyn Royal: 18:05

Yeah, and it's very expensive to do it that way, so I'm not going to do a long study, just one grow of corn and soy, like the regular feed that we're on now, versus, because I'm curious to see does it lengthen out the grow time past 18 weeks? What changes specifically? Because I don't know.

Jeff Mattocks: 18:26

Usually we see at least an additional two week grow out. About 10 percent more feed consumption to get the same body weight. And for birds that you want to keep as breeders, I don't know that they get the same reproductive organ development. And, while they're growing. So if you do that, I would want you to almost keep few pullets and cockerels to keep for, to see how their breeding performance is the following season, right? Because I think we're going to see a deficiency in fertility hatchability. And so on. Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal: 19:05

See, now I want to try it.

Jeff Mattocks: 19:07

Yeah. It's no fun at all, but you live close to a feed mill that I have confidence we can make the feed right. But still, I think we're going to see a lag in overall breeder performance. Sure.

John Gunterman: 19:20

Something I've been interested in seeing but I don't have the heart to do myself. Is my birds back on a commercial off the shelf feed to see how they perform after being on this optimum nutrition? Cause I worry about that when people buy my chicks and my pullets, how are they going to respond to somebody feeding them the 16 percent off the shelf feed if I can't educate them enough? You had mentioned a possibility of doing a grow out side by side with a, just a bagged commercial feed.

Mandelyn Royal: 19:50

Yeah. That's my next one.

John Gunterman: 19:51

And that, that really piqued my interest and it would be interesting to see after your breeders have been on this optimum nutrition how they perform down the road.

Mandelyn Royal: 20:02

Right, and Jeff was saying that I should see a drop of consumption anywhere from 20 to 25 percent.

Jeff Mattocks: 20:09

With the high quality feed, yeah.

Mandelyn Royal: 20:11

So I want to do that side by side of the old chick starter we were using versus this new custom formula. And see what all those differences are all the way down to the penny.

John Gunterman: 20:23

Cool. That's so that's next. Awesome. I'm excited.

Jeff Mattocks: 20:27

So it is exciting stuff, right?

John Gunterman: 20:29

And it comes down to the penny. Your profitability really matters. And I've said it so many times,

Mandelyn Royal: 20:36

what you have to charge for your market birds.

John Gunterman: 20:39

Yeah. I keep repeating, I never started saving money on feed until I stopped trying to save money on feed. When I started providing optimum nutrition at the, moment that it's required, along with grit, is when I saw some relief in the bottom line.

Jeff Mattocks: 20:57

It doesn't make any sense though, because when you calculate your price per bag of feed, and then adding grit on top of it, and it costs more, right? And then all of a sudden You're seeing a 10 to 20 percent decrease in total feed cost. The math doesn't add up for the average person, right? So you got to take that leap of faith a little bit and try it for yourself. Don't make the assumption that all feed is created equal. And that's the other thing we're proving with Mandy's trial, right? It's yeah.

John Gunterman: 21:31

And having a background in human nutrition and physiology and recognizing the declining nutritional content in our food and, how they bulk it up to compensate for that and the health, although it makes perfect sense this is happening in our poultry as well.

Jeff Mattocks: 21:48

Oh yeah.

Rip Stalvey: 21:50

Mandy, you're what, about halfway through this study?

Mandelyn Royal: 21:53

Yeah, I'm halfway through.

Rip Stalvey: 21:55

I really hope we can get everybody back together. After you have finished the study and had a little bit of a chance to digest the data and see where it goes. I think we got a pretty good idea where this is headed, but we won't know for sure until all the.

Mandelyn Royal: 22:11

So far it seems like Jeff was right.

Rip Stalvey: 22:14

Never question Jeff. That would make a good t shirt. Jeff was right. Jeff is always right.

Jeff Mattocks: 22:21

It's not about being right. It's about helping people be better.

Mandelyn Royal: 22:25

And the birds be better too.

John Gunterman: 22:27

Just the difference in the adult birds.

Mandelyn Royal: 22:30

My adults, when I switched them over to the feed that doesn't have any fillers, doesn't have any garbage in it, there's a difference in their temperament and contentment. They're not standing around acting like they're starving while they have a full feeder. They're going outside a bit more. If I go outside the barn door, I look down the runs and they've all come out to see where I'm going. And if I'm going to throw them some greens or not, the activity level is better. And even my husband noticed that the eggshell was better. He was like, these eggs are looking good. What'd you do different? And I was like you know how I'm driving two hours to go get feed now. Because of that.

Rip Stalvey: 23:08

Folks, I think this brings us to about time to call it a show. And Jeff, thank you so much for coming in and spending an hour with us today. Hey, thanks for having me on. And we look forward to having you on more in the future. Doesn't necessarily have to be when Mandy's doing the feed trial, all those sounds like this is going to be a long term project for her going with one trial after another. And Mandy, I kudos to you for. We're knuckling down and biting the bullet and doing this trial because I think it's going to help not only you, but I know it's going to help a lot of the other people as well.

Mandelyn Royal: 23:46

And it keeps giving me new questions to answer. Yeah, it keeps it fun. Otherwise it's boring. It's just going out there and doing the chores, collecting eggs, and you don't think anything else about it until you have a problem with your flock. And then depending on what those problems are it's going to be either feed or management or environment, or, and you go through that process of elimination. And once you really go through all of that learning, because you don't get to learn everything about keeping poultry that first year or two or three, because I have had chickens. pretty much over 30 years and I'm still just now realizing how much I still don't know.

Rip Stalvey: 24:26

I agree. I feel the same way. I feel the

Jeff Mattocks: 24:29

same way. Come on, Rip. You got 50 years experience, buddy. You know what? It just shows us that we don't, we never know everything.

Rip Stalvey: 24:38

The more I learn, the more I realize I need to learn.

Jeff Mattocks: 24:42

I'm right there with you.

Rip Stalvey: 24:44

All righty. We're going to wrap it up for this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. We hope you'll join us again when we're all back together. Thank you for joining us this week, and before you go, make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they're released, and they're released every Tuesday. And if you're enjoying this podcast, we'd like to ask you to drop us an email at Poultry Keepers Podcast at gmail. com and share your thoughts about the show. Thank you again for joining us for this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. We'll see you next week.