Conditioning Birds For Show-Part 1

In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, the hosts engage in an unplanned discussion on conditioning birds for shows. They delve into the reasons for showing poultry, from camaraderie and breeding improvement to competition. The conversation covers various aspects of conditioning, including nutritional requirements, the benefits of outdoor rearing, and the importance of avoiding stress. They discuss historical and practical tips on finding and preparing show-quality birds, the impact of genetics and environmental factors, and the misconceptions about show-quality labeling. The episode wraps up by emphasizing attention to detail as crucial for success in poultry showing.

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Transcript

Rip Stalvey: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to another Poultry Keepers podcast. We're really excited to talk with you today. We've got a great show. We're going to try something very different. John and Mandelyn wanted to do something on conditioning birds, and I said, Yeah, we can do that, but I said rather than working off an outline like we normally do, I said, I want you to just ask me questions that you have about conditioning. So this is going to be absolutely unprepared. Mandelyn, I know that you're just jumping up and down there because you've got a question you are just dying to ask me. What is it?

Mandelyn Royal: 0:43

Before we dive deep into conditioning and things like that, my first question is why should we consider showing? What's to be gained from just getting in there and doing it?

Rip Stalvey: 0:53

Oh, wow. There's so many things. The reason I got into it because I saw the value in having somebody else assess my birds. Okay, some people do it for that reason. Some people do it to promote the breed more than anything else. Some people will do it because they enjoy the competition. But honestly, by getting into showing, it made me a better breeder. It really makes you study the standard and you have to learn your breed and all the ins and outs and minute details that goes into how do you correct an issue that you're having, or can you correct it?

Mandelyn Royal: 1:32

Yeah, that's where the camaraderie part comes in, where you do want that open sharing of information. Oh, absolutely. To help the beginners out.

Rip Stalvey: 1:41

Mandelyn, when I started showing back in the Late 60s, early 70s I would go to a show and you would see all these groups of people, just standing together, chatting and visiting and catching up on what they've been doing, how their birds are doing, and invariably you would see this group of older gentlemen.

Mandelyn Royal: 2:02

Oh, I've stood around those groups before.

Rip Stalvey: 2:05

I learned very quickly if I wanted to learn about poultry, just go sit where I could listen. I didn't have to participate. And the information that flowed out of those people's mouths freely, it was absolutely incredible. And I miss that. I miss that.

Mandelyn Royal: 2:21

Yeah, that's a pretty good part of it too. They still do that, but I bet the groups used to be bigger.

Rip Stalvey: 2:26

Oh, and my friend Walt Leonard, who used to be chairman of the standards committee who's since passed away, but he did the same thing and he explained it a little bit different than I did. He said, I would go hang out with the old guys who were not senile.

Mandelyn Royal: 2:41

So how do you find out about? Show locations and their dates. You just want to go visit one.

Rip Stalvey: 2:47

Back in the day, it was, you pretty much had to subscribe to the Poultry Press because all the shows are advertising and still do by and large in the Poultry Press which is a monthly newsletter that comes out and it's just all, as the name implies, all about poultry. But with the internet, it's become much easier to find out. where poultry shows are. There's one site, poultryshows. com, that has a heck of a searchable database. You can search by state, by date and it, gosh, it seems like And they're not close together, but it seems like there's so many poultry shows, you can literally almost go to a poultry show every weekend if you wanted to, but I would start with that PoultryShows. com. And that's the best source that I can think of. Occasionally, the shows will not keep the information updated, but usually they have the contact person's name and email or phone number that you can reach out to get the current information.

Mandelyn Royal: 3:50

And a lot of them tend to fall on the same weekend within the same month, year after year, so you can come up with your own little schedule, I think.

Rip Stalvey: 3:56

Yep my home club here in Florida Florida Poultry Pantry Association, their show is always, has been ever since I've known, the second weekend in January.

Mandelyn Royal: 4:09

Yeah, I think it's like that for Ohio Nationals. It's just always, what is it, the second weekend of November?

Rip Stalvey: 4:14

Yes, the advantage to doing that is really is it keeps so many shows from being on top of one another. Because if I'm planning a show here in Florida, I know I need to be cognizant of when the Florida Poultry and Fanciers show is, when the Gulf Coast show is, and we have three or four local shows here, so I don't schedule a show on top of them. Some of them are based originally on the time of year, basically when would the birds in that area be in peak condition? When would they be in the best show shape? What time of year?

John Gunterman: 4:51

Is it time of year or age of the bird?

Rip Stalvey: 4:54

It's the time of year, roughly. For example, here in Florida, our birds start peaking out in condition, December, January and February, but you talk about states like the Pacific Northwest, there can be three or four months later when most of the birds in that area are in good condition. It's just, it's what we talk about in breeding and selection and all this kind of stuff. It's your geographical location. Plays a big role in it.

Mandelyn Royal: 5:29

There's not very many spring shows.

Rip Stalvey: 5:31

There are, but they're not in our areas.

John Gunterman: 5:35

Okay, Rip, keep saying, in condition. What does that mean to the novice person who's never showed?

Rip Stalvey: 5:43

In condition means that the bird, is in physically great condition. Their fleshing is good. The feathering is good. Some of this is breed dependent because you can you can do things to improve condition, okay, but some breeds it's very difficult to keep a bird in condition for very long. Some breeds, I could take them to a show today and three or four weeks later, they were out of condition and they were not even worth taking to a show.

John Gunterman: 6:16

So when I hear condition, I think if I've got a wedding coming up, I'm going to go to the barbershop three days before to make myself all, presentable. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Rip Stalvey: 6:27

You bring up a really good point, John conditioning to me. Is much more detailed than that. What you're talking about is grooming and fitting.

John Gunterman: 6:38

Okay.

Rip Stalvey: 6:39

Similar, but entirely different things. Conditioning most. I don't know where people got this idea. Most people think that you can get a bird, go out there in the yard, a couple of weeks before the show, throw it in a conditioning coop, and have that thing shining like a million bucks in time for the show. But actually, good condition starts well before the hatching egg is even laid, and it goes back, and you can directly trace it back to the feed that your breeders are on. Does it have adequate, do they have optimum levels of amino acids? Are the vitamins and minerals at those optimum levels? Because if you do that, you're going to hatch more vigorous chicks, healthier chicks, and they are going to hit the ground running. But condition also applies to the brooding period. Okay. Because you've got to be on top of your game on poultry nutrition and management to keep those. Birds growing and finishing out the way they should. And some breeds will finish out much sooner than others. I don't know if you've seen that picture I posted of Sue's Rhode Island Red Cockbird.

Mandelyn Royal: 7:52

Oh, I saw that one. That's a beautiful bird.

Rip Stalvey: 7:55

That's the same bird she won the national champion Rhode Island Red in Ohio last year. The bird looks better now than he did then.

John Gunterman: 8:06

I noticed the shine on his feathers. Oh yeah. It looked like somebody put Simonize on him.

Mandelyn Royal: 8:11

He has my favorite temperament too. When I met that bird, he was just as chatty and easily handled. And he was a cool dude. I liked that bird a lot.

Rip Stalvey: 8:21

That's so typical of Rhode Island Reds. That's one of the reasons I like them so much.

Mandelyn Royal: 8:25

That's the temperament I look for in every breed that I put my hands on.

Rip Stalvey: 8:30

They're calm, but they're not subdued. Okay. It takes a lot to get them riled up and cause them to spaz out, but you can do it. Sure. But birds like Oh, I had some Anconas one time. They were horrible. They could see you from 500 yards away and they'd be freaking out trying to get away from you.

Mandelyn Royal: 8:51

Taking off in the opposite direction.

Rip Stalvey: 8:53

Oh, at a high rate of speed, too.

Mandelyn Royal: 8:55

Bouncing off the walls.

John Gunterman: 8:57

Leaving feathers in their trail.

Rip Stalvey: 8:59

Exactly.

Mandelyn Royal: 9:01

When it comes to showing, you wouldn't want to bring those jumpy birds like that, would you? Because they're not going to present well in the cage, right?

John Gunterman: 9:08

If that's part of the breed, then it's accepted and encouraged,

Rip Stalvey: 9:12

right? Most judges know. Which breeds are going to show better than others? And I know at least I tried to take that into consideration. I didn't have my expectations up too high for skittish breeds, but I also didn't have my expectations too high for the really calm, sedate breeds. And you can pick a good show bird. If you've had your birds three or four years. And you want to start showing. By then you've got a pretty good idea of what the standard of perfection is and whether your birds meet that standard and how well they meet that standard. Okay, but you can have a passel of birds. I remember the first time I went up to Mr. Reese's house to buy my Rhode Island Reds, and he had like about 250 cockerels in one pen and the same amount roughly of pullets in another pen. But you could stand there and look at them. They all look good. They all look good, but there's a few of them that just, I don't know what it is about them, but they catch your eye, and they will Invariably show better and do better in shows than those birds that are middle of the road type birds.

Mandelyn Royal: 10:29

That makes sense. So here's a question. When a seller is offering show quality hatching eggs or chicks, does that mean all of them will be show quality? Because based off of what you just said there, is there a percentage you can hope for or is that just a gimmick for selling?

Rip Stalvey: 10:47

That's a gimmick. I would never sell anybody eggs or chicks or stock say this is a show quality bird.

Mandelyn Royal: 10:55

Because if they don't know what they're looking at and they don't have a good mentor yet, then they're trusting the word of the seller.

John Gunterman: 11:02

Even with the best genetics, unless your husbandry skills are there to support those genetics and allow them to express to their full potential, you can't make that guarantee. No. Yeah, because I'm,

Mandelyn Royal: 11:16

I believe the bird, each individual egg needs to have the time to hatch into a chick, and then that chick needs time to grow and then show what it's made of and show what its specific traits are. And then out of a batch of 25, maybe you'll find one, two, possibly three that come up as everything you were hoping for, and that's only if they have the breeding behind them.

John Gunterman: 11:43

I would think more than a hundred. Just 10, you got, you're going to have 10, 10 birds that are good enough. And maybe one of those I would think would be good enough to show, but I don't know about showing. Yeah. Finding a show bird is about as elusive as finding a good breeding bird.

Rip Stalvey: 12:02

You're exactly right. You're exactly right. As they will look different in most cases. I've bred from Rhode Island Reds, people would look at them and say that bird is junk. But yet. The junk I got off of that bird, chicks, would clean his clock at a show. It's all in knowing how to put together your breeding pens.

John Gunterman: 12:21

And your test hatches and pair mating and all the things that we've been talking about to get you there.

Rip Stalvey: 12:28

And Mandelyn, you were talking about buying quote unquote show quality bird. What is show quality? What does it mean? I guarantee you, if you ask 10 different people, you're going to get 10 different answers of what it means to them. And when I see birds advertised at show quality, I usually don't even slow down to look at them.

Mandelyn Royal: 12:48

I do because I'm nosy.

Rip Stalvey: 12:50

And there was a time I was that way too, but I have learned that you can't predict what kind of chick's gonna come out of an egg. You can't predict what kind of an adult that chick's gonna mature as. You just can't. You just can't.

John Gunterman: 13:06

Even with a show champion hen and a show champion rooster, pair mated, what's the likelihood of those offspring producing a champion? One in a hundred? One in a thousand?

Rip Stalvey: 13:18

Less than twenty percent. Far less than twenty percent.

Mandelyn Royal: 13:22

It depends on how compatible they are, too, because if you breed champion to champion, but they don't actually have really good what's that term you like, Rip? The compensation mating?

John Gunterman: 13:32

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal: 13:33

They might not produce anything show quality. Depending on how their genetics mesh together.

Rip Stalvey: 13:38

Absolutely.

John Gunterman: 13:39

Going and buying somebody else's blue ribbon bird is not a shortcut.

Rip Stalvey: 13:43

No, there are no shortcuts in breeding poultry, contrary to what people are told.

John Gunterman: 13:50

Except investing in a solid genetic line, knowing where your birds came from and knowing that they have a proven track record gives you an advantage of going forward.

Rip Stalvey: 14:00

A slight advantage, yes. But you still throw in the variables. of geographic location, nutrition, your management practices compared to the person's management practice you got them from. There's just a lot of worms in that can to sort through.

John Gunterman: 14:16

And it's going to take probably a generation or three for everything to settle down and for them to find their groove in your farm. So one, one thing that I think about when I hear about people who show birds, I think that the bird's just going to be raised a life on wire. It's never going to be outside in the environment. It's going to be, super protected to the nth degree. Is that an accurate perception? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Rip Stalvey: 14:46

Actually, I view it as a bad thing. Birds that will have the best condition are raised outside. They're into elements. They get rained on. Wind blowing them around. Birds that are inside in a barn, they don't get that. They don't get a chance to be a chicken. They are pampered to death. You can't pamper chickens and raise a good chicken. You just can't do that.

John Gunterman: 15:16

It's like a hen raised chick is always, has a certain quality that just makes it better than a human raised chick. And that, I think that should translate. It's a show, but I don't know.

Rip Stalvey: 15:32

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. John, going back to your question just a minute or so ago when you were talking about being raised indoors and on wire, I was getting ready to go to a show in Thompson, Georgia. And I had entered, I don't know, four or five Rhode Island Red Bantam males and whatever. But there was one that I had planned on taking that I really, I didn't like all that much. Okay. And I had for the longest time from the time he was about half grown, a little Rhode Island Red Bantam male running around loose the yard that I just couldn't catch. And this was after dark, and so it just worked out great. I had a little shed there where I kept my birds I was going to show, getting them ready. And as I started out the door, I looked in the branch, low hanging branch of this oak tree over the shed. Oh, there that little rascal sat. And my first intent was just to grab him, catch him, and put him in a pen until I could deal with him. I grabbed him, and by force of habit, when I catch a bird, I'm looking at feathers, and I'm looking at color, and all this kind of stuff. I gave him the once over I thought, you're going to the show. And that bird was show champion. He'd never been raised in a confined situation. When it rained, he got wet. When it was cold, he got cold.

John Gunterman: 16:59

This is Florida so colds' relative.

Rip Stalvey: 17:01

It was cold for us. There is something about a bird that's raised like that. It's just much, you raise a much different looking bird. I think they would have access to a broader nutritional profile. And just naturally, they'll produce more oils and preen more. But what about, I think of the sun's effect bleaching out feathers or just doing weird things or turning stuff a dingy color. It will. Breeds like buffs blues, those are two that popped to mind that the sun really works on their colors. First birds I ever had were large fowl Buff Plymouth Rocks. They were beautiful birds. I got them from a guy up in Pennsylvania. He shipped them down here. I thought I had died and gone to heaven because I had never seen a bird with that beautiful medium buff color, just almost golden. And after about four or five months down here in beautiful sunny Florida, it was getting dingy. It was getting dull. The feathers look mottled almost, by mottled, one would be a different color than the ones next to it. And the sunlight really works on them. Yeah, it works on some colors, some whites, okay will go brassy or get this yellowish tint on their hackles and on their saddle feathers, the secondary sex feathers in the males.

John Gunterman: 18:26

Get that in my Chanticleers.

Rip Stalvey: 18:28

Some folks say that's from feeding corn, some folks saying that's from feeding grass. My thoughts on it are that those birds that are inclined to be brassy genetically are going to be brassy. At some point in their adult life, no matter what you do and how you try to prevent it. Now, the corn in the grass may accentuate it and make it turn that way faster or make it appear worse than it is, but basically it's the rule of thumb is those white birds that are on a red base of some sort are the ones that go brassy. Those that are on a silver base, like white Plymouth Rocks they were sports from Barred Plymouth Rocks. So they carried that silver gene that the Barred Plymouth Rock has. You can put them under a sunlamp 24 7 and you can't make them go brassy.

John Gunterman: 19:22

You touched on a couple of subjects that I'm sure we're going to have to loop back around to, and that was colors and primary colors. And yeah, that's probably a couple episodes in the future. I don't even know if we want to get into that now.

Mandelyn Royal: 19:35

Not today, because boy, do I have questions about basic white feathers because sometimes it's a little tricky. I was a hairstylist and salon manager for a long time. And I know there's little tips and tricks to cancel out yellow, and just the other day I was wondering what if I use purple shampoo on a bird that showed a little bit of a yellow cast because I know a blue purple base strips that yellowing out in hair, so does that work on feathers?

Rip Stalvey: 20:04

It does. Is that faking? No, that's grooming and fitting, okay? Because you're not changing anything physical about the bird. And Mandelyn, to get back to your question on the white feathers, washing them. There are some shampoos for horses or for dogs that are used for white breeds, as I'm sure you probably know. And they will help make the white on a bird a little brighter, more intense. And John, you brought up blueing. They use that for many years. But you had to be very careful. Because even one drop of blueing in the rinse water, too much. Turn those birds the most beautiful lavender, light sky blue color you can imagine. And it doesn't come out until they molt.

John Gunterman: 20:59

Yeah, I've ruined some chef whites that were, they were beyond bleach, so I tried to use bluing and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Processing day jacket now.

Rip Stalvey: 21:07

Yeah, but see, most people think of solid colored birds like whites and blacks and blues and buffs as easy colors to breed. And they are by and large some of the worst colors to work with you can ever imagine.

John Gunterman: 21:23

Yeah, I thought I was lucky. I got Chanticleer. They're white. They're easy.

Rip Stalvey: 21:27

Little did you know.

Mandelyn Royal: 21:29

Like even on blues. You have to avoid shafting, I think is the term.

Rip Stalvey: 21:35

On all breeds you have to worry about shafting. Yeah, that's where the shaft of the feather is a lighter color or a darker color than the body of the feather. Yeah, and then there's supposed to be just a nice little lacing along the perimeter of that feather because you would think, blue is blue, but no, there's little details in there and that all falls in with the pattern. And if it's correct or not for the show. That they're looking for when it comes to that pattern. Even though it's a solid colored bird, it's not so solid after all. Let's talk a little bit I'm going rogue here, and I'm not waiting for your questions, but I want to make sure we get this in. Let's talk a little bit about how do you condition a bird? And how do you not condition a bird? And we've already touched on that a little bit, but first off, I want my show birds to be chickens, okay? They want, I want them to have the same opportunities to grow outdoors. I don't like birds that are raised indoors. You wind up with pale faces instead of red faces. You wind up with a almost pink like color in their face.

Mandelyn Royal: 22:46

Yeah, that's true, from the lack of vitamin D.

Rip Stalvey: 22:48

Yeah, they're not, they don't have any sunshine. But it all boils down to, and like we were talking when we first got started, nutrition. You've got to have the proper amount of proteins and the proper amount of amino acids to give you good fleshing on a bird, to get good growth.

John Gunterman: 23:10

The amino acids are the building blocks to Everything.

Rip Stalvey: 23:13

Yeah. Exactly.

John Gunterman: 23:15

If you don't have the ingredients, you can't bake a cake.

Rip Stalvey: 23:19

And if you don't have enough fat in your bird's diet, and most poultry feeds today, the over count of the feeds are way low in fat.

John Gunterman: 23:29

It's an expensive ingredient.

Rip Stalvey: 23:30

Yeah. So these are some of the things you have to work with and you can. Boost up the fat percentage in your feed just by adding a little vegetable cooking oil to your feed. Certainly. Doesn't take much.

John Gunterman: 23:45

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey: 23:45

Birds have to have plenty of space because this, when they start getting crowded and they start pecking each other, that can really mess up your feather quality and lead to injury of the birds. But you got to raise the sexes separate. Males in one pen.

John Gunterman: 24:02

I was going to ask about if a female has a scar from getting spurred from a previous mating, is that looked down upon in competition in some way? Back when I was, back when I was judging, you could tell what it was. You could tell it was not a genetic flaw. I just ignored it and moved on. It's being a chicken. I would think there's more points for them.

Mandelyn Royal: 24:23

You don't get extra points for that. No,

Rip Stalvey: 24:26

it would be nice if they did.

John Gunterman: 24:27

Just the fact that, the chicken's out there living a chicken life.

Rip Stalvey: 24:31

Yeah but it's, there's a thousand and one little things and some of them are so breed dependent. What works for Rhode Island Reds, not necessarily going to work for Cochins. Entirely different bird, entirely different feather structure, entirely different body shape and you just can't raise them the same. Basically, it's the same procedures, but you've got to have these little nuances and tricks to know to make them come out looking their best. All right. You've got to be really on guard for parasites, internal parasites can really mess up with the bodies. External parasites can screw up the feathers. I don't know if y'all y'all work with mostly white birds, but if you've ever seen birds at a show or somewhere that have black tails or black birds, and they have this little fine straight line of purple going across the feather.

Mandelyn Royal: 25:26

I thought it was supposed to be green.

Rip Stalvey: 25:28

The whole sheen is supposed to be green, but this is a little small, almost not much thicker than a pencil lead bar of purple straight across the feathers.

Mandelyn Royal: 25:39

I've not seen that. I haven't looked that close.

Rip Stalvey: 25:42

If you're ever handling a bird and you see it you'll recognize it straight off. And people can't, they don't really understand what causes it. That's called a stress problem.

Mandelyn Royal: 25:54

Oh, so if the feather was injured while it was growing, it'll pick up the wrong

Rip Stalvey: 25:58

Or if the bird was sick at the time that feather was growing in. Kind of like getting a blister on your fingernail, eight months later, yeah, it just grows on out. If they were overcrowded or whatever, and they were stressing out because they couldn't get feed, you're going to see these little tiny bars of purple going across the feathers. So you have to really work hard to make sure your birds are not stressed. That's a whole new level of attention to detail. Yeah, it is. And honestly, John, you bring up a really good point. The people that are the best exhibitors. are the people that pay the most attention to the little details. Guarantee you.

Mandelyn Royal: 26:38

That makes sense.

Rip Stalvey: 26:40

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 poultrykeeperspodcast 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.