Condition Birds For Show-Part 2

In this episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast, Mandelyn Royal, John Gunterman, and Rip Stalvey discuss the intricacies of preparing poultry for exhibitions. The conversation covers essential practices such as conditioning and show training, the importance of reducing stress in birds, and techniques to make birds show-ready, including handling routines, dietary controls, and grooming details like cleaning scales and trimming beaks and spurs. The hosts also discuss the different aspects of show environments and offer tips on managing birds’ reactions to changes. Additionally, the episode touches on strategies for hatch timing to ensure birds are in their prime for shows.

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Transcript

Mandelyn Royal 0:00

Hi, I'm Mandelyn Royal, and I would like to welcome you to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast. Joining me in the studio are John Gunterman 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.

Rip Stalvey 0:27

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.

John Gunterman 0:41

That's a whole new level of attention to detail.

Rip Stalvey 0:43

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 0:58

That makes sense.

Rip Stalvey 1:00

Most people think that conditioning is something you do in two weeks. You bring them in, you put them in this small show type coop, and that's what I refer to as show training, not conditioning. And in show training, what you want to do is you want to get the birds, number one, used to being handled by people. Number two, You need to be able to control their diet, they need to be used to strange sounds. And what I do to do that is I bring them inside in my shed, put the birds in there, and I'll play a radio 24 7. So they're hearing sounds, they're hearing people talk, they're hearing music, something they don't normally associate with when they're out in the field. Okay, I will have some friends come over and pick the bird up, handle it, just like a judge would, and I'll show them how to do it. But it's not me always the person doing it. I want it to be new people from time to time.

Mandelyn Royal 2:05

That makes sense. That's a little bit of chicken psychology right there.

Rip Stalvey 2:08

Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to make sure that two weeks before the show, I've got my birds on electrolytes because that gives them a little bit of a boost. And let's face it, birds may be crowing and they may be, the hens may be singing and doing that, but that doesn't mean they're not experiencing some degree of stress and electrolytes can help with that stress.

Mandelyn Royal 2:32

Do you give it to them when they're at the show too? I do.

Rip Stalvey 2:36

I start two weeks before and I'll run it a week after the show, after I have them back home.

Mandelyn Royal 2:42

Oh,

John Gunterman 2:42

okay.

Rip Stalvey 2:44

And that brings up another good point. You go to a show, a lot of shows provide feed, Okay, and that's really good. Most of the time it's just scratch grains, all right? But nine times out of ten, it's probably not the same brand of feed that you feed.

John Gunterman 3:05

I don't know how I would feel about that.

Rip Stalvey 3:06

Yeah, I don't like that because anything you do to change and upset their routine, so to speak, will stress them out.

John Gunterman 3:14

Can I leave a note on that? Card that says do not feed. Yeah, I'd do that. Take care of it. Okay, cool.

Rip Stalvey 3:19

Yeah, owner will feed and water feed and water. Great. And I bring feed from my house.

Mandelyn Royal 3:25

And water.

Rip Stalvey 3:26

And water.

Mandelyn Royal 3:28

Yeah.'cause water can vary.

Rip Stalvey 3:30

Oh man. Can In the region. Yeah. Oh,

John Gunterman 3:33

County to county.

Rip Stalvey 3:35

Just something to think of. And a lot of times it's well around here, a lot of times when the show folks feed the birds. They'll go by, particularly if they're feeding scratch feed, they'll just throw a handful of scratch in the bottom of the coop. That's one of the reasons. The other reason is, we've all seen chickens scratching, picking up stuff in the yard. What do they do? They scratch for their feet, and then they back up.

Mandelyn Royal 3:59

Oh, and their tail hits the wire.

Rip Stalvey 4:02

Exactly. You just cram that tail into the wire of the coop. I always put my coop cup in there. I even brought my own coop cups hang it in there, put feed in there, but I didn't put it down low. I raised it up.

John Gunterman 4:17

You're at the proper.

Rip Stalvey 4:18

You do that because You can adjust how the bird looks, all right, by where you put the feed and water cups. If you have a bird that tends to stand a little bit too tall in the front, hang his feed and water cups down a little bit lower.

Mandelyn Royal 4:36

Sneaky.

Rip Stalvey 4:38

One that kind of walks stooped over all the time raise his feed and water cups up a little bit.

John Gunterman 4:42

So we train them, I always, Jeff got me. Always keep it at, the same level as their backs.

Rip Stalvey 4:48

And

John Gunterman 4:49

normally I would. And then when it's showtime, you can

Rip Stalvey 4:52

tweak it. You can vary that a little bit, yep.

John Gunterman 4:54

Okay.

Rip Stalvey 4:55

And another thing when I'm training my birds and getting them ready for a show, is one of the few times that I will religiously use treats. Particularly live mealworms, because when I walk up to a bird's coop, I want that bird to come up to greet me, all right. I want that bird to stand a particular way, so I use live mealworms, and I keep my birds just a little bit hungry. I cut their rations back a little bit because of this, but if you stand there with a little mealworm wiggling back and forth, Between your thumb and your finger, you will have that bird's undivided attention.

Mandelyn Royal 5:38

Do you want the side profile or the front profile?

Rip Stalvey 5:42

Side profile.

Mandelyn Royal 5:43

So you're doing it from the side of the cage?

Rip Stalvey 5:45

I feed it from the side of the cage. 99 percent of the people don't do that. Just because they haven't been taught or haven't learned that little trick. So when I come up to a show come up to a bird in a show, I look for birds that come up and then turn sideways to give me the best view of the body.

Mandelyn Royal 6:04

That makes sense. It was probably you that told me that, to treat them from the side so that they develop that habit to turn and present that view.

Rip Stalvey 6:13

And that's the reason I do it. And that's why I use, you could get a bird to stand up and down and do flips and flops just by what you did with that mealworms.

Mandelyn Royal 6:27

This is true. And I did apply that little technique of let them get a little bit hungry and then they'll put a lot of focus on you. And so I was applying that with older growouts where I let them get just a little bit hungry. And then, when I would go and I filled their feeder, they all gathered around it all at once, and I could get that top view of their body width and see them all together.

Rip Stalvey 6:52

And I will do that when I have people come over. I'll get them, I'll show them how I want it done, and I'll let them hand the treat to a bird, okay?

Mandelyn Royal 7:02

Because they do have a little bit of a natural stranger danger, like they learn from you.

Rip Stalvey 7:06

I want the birds to associate people with something good, not with something bad. So by having a stranger do that, once I get them to the point where they'll come up and turn sideways, they'll do it for the judge.

Mandelyn Royal 7:21

Waiting on the mealworm that never comes.

Rip Stalvey 7:23

That's right. Actually what I've been known to do is after a judge finished up the class my birds were in, I'd go in there and give my birds a little mealworm treat. But just to let them know they did good.

John Gunterman 7:34

Always positive encouragement.

Rip Stalvey 7:36

And this is also the time, that two week period is also the time I'm going over birds to make sure the scales on their legs are clean.

Mandelyn Royal 7:47

Do you take a toothbrush to it? How do you clean them?

Rip Stalvey 7:50

You can use a brush, depend, but if there's a lot of dirt crammed up under there, you want to use a toothpick to pick it out. And I know this is a pain in the rear to do that because they got nine jillion little scales on those legs and feet.

Mandelyn Royal 8:04

Yeah, I know, and to go through and outline each one with a toothpick, what if you soaked their feet in a bucket and then brushed it to loosen it up?

Rip Stalvey 8:12

You can do that some, but if it's really bad, you're still not going to get all of it out. I know some of the old timers used to make a paste out of olive oil and finally ground pumice. And they would smear that and rub it on the legs and use that to help clean them.

Mandelyn Royal 8:32

So if you were going to take 25 birds to a show to fill up a whole row of your own, you're going to be grooming birds every day for

Rip Stalvey 8:42

A while. That's the reason I quit taking so many birds to a show.

John Gunterman 8:46

All the while you're grooming them, you're also looking for defects or disqualifications and going, Oh, maybe this bird's not as good as I thought it was.

Rip Stalvey 8:54

Yeah. You're also trimming the beaks to make sure the top beak is not too far overgrown. I'm also trimming toenails.

John Gunterman 9:04

I was going to ask about that because that's been a common question, Trimming nails, just foot care in general.

Rip Stalvey 9:11

Trim the toenails on males, I'll look at the spurs not because I'm afraid a bird is going to want to fight a judge, but because I know from having it happen to me, reaching in to pick up a bird, I'll also, sometimes I wind up jamming the bird's spur into my hand. I'll take the Dremel kit. And if it's long, I'll shorten it up, smooth it. I don't want a sharp point on it. I like a little rounded point.

John Gunterman 9:41

But you leave the spur mostly intact.

Rip Stalvey 9:43

Yes. And if it gets really excessively long, you can remove that spur. You can actually twist it off.

Mandelyn Royal 9:51

I've heard of that, but I've never done it.

John Gunterman 9:54

Folks say grab it with a pair of ice grips or pliers and give it a little twist pop. I usually use dog nail clippers and I just trim it back.

Rip Stalvey 10:02

That leaves it a little bit too blunt. I try to make the bird look as natural as I can. I don't like spurs that are trimmed off blunt. I don't like beaks that are trimmed off straight. Now I'll trim them off straight, but then I'll Pick a round at it a little bit. Add a little

Mandelyn Royal 10:19

rounded.

Rip Stalvey 10:20

Yeah, round it off. Make it look natural.

Mandelyn Royal 10:23

Cause I know when we were showing dogs and we were primping them for show we were doing a lot of grooming. So for the birds, like for the combs and wattles, do you put a little sheen on those? Do you grease them up a little bit?

Rip Stalvey 10:35

I do. I'll take when I'm washing a bird. I'll take a really soft toothbrush and scrub the comb and the wattles real good, because they get all this dead skin on them, and they just look weird looking. So I'll clean them off, and then when I get them to the show, I don't do this beforehand, but when I get them to the show, I'll take a mixture of olive oil, and equal parts of alcohol. And I've got a little dropper. Put a little dropper in there and I shake it up and I put a little bit on my finger and I rub it on the comb. I rub it lightly on their face, stay away from the feathers because they look nasty when you goop up all the feathers on their face. And then I rub it on the wattles. The oil makes it shine. The alcohol makes it redder.

Mandelyn Royal 11:20

Without drying it out because the oil's there.

Rip Stalvey 11:23

I know some people have used, and I've even done this too, when it was cold weather. Instead of olive oil and alcohol, I would use mentholated petroleum jelly because the scent that they're breathing in off of having that petroleum jelly, it helps keep them open and unplugged.

Mandelyn Royal 11:42

Maybe like a little Vicks Vapor Rub. I was walking an aisle at a show once and I saw styrofoam. In the cages from a particular exhibitor. What's that about?

Rip Stalvey 11:56

They usually put something in there to keep the males from fighting.

Mandelyn Royal 12:01

So a distraction, because I've seen cardboard in between cages.

Rip Stalvey 12:05

Yep. Yep.

Mandelyn Royal 12:07

Okay, so you can do some things to mitigate how they react to their neighbor, because chances are they're going to end up next to a bird they don't know.

Rip Stalvey 12:14

I've used feed bags, anything in a pinch. The best thing to use to separate the birds is clear plexiglass sheet, rigid plastic, clear plastic. Put it to fit down inside the cage. The birds can still see, they can't fight. The problem with using solid separators, cast shadows invariably. And the lighting in most show halls is not all that great to begin with, and you take a bird that's standing in a shadow, it's going to throw the entire look off.

Mandelyn Royal 12:48

I always wondered about that at the shows where they'll do double decker cages, birds on top of birds, and I noticed walking down looking at that bottom row, A lot of them almost came up with a hunched look, like they were cowering from what was above them.

Rip Stalvey 13:03

All right, we were talking about Sue's Sue Dobson's Rhode Island red male that she won with in Ohio. If you looked at that bird, most of the time, he had never been trained to realize what that was. So he stood, neck drawn down a little bit, and the tail drooping.

Mandelyn Royal 13:22

Yeah, like they're trying to fit underneath.

Rip Stalvey 13:24

Exactly. They crouch. They don't, they're not used to having something over their head. How do you get around that? Put a piece of cardboard over the coop you've got them in training them.

Mandelyn Royal 13:34

Yeah, okay, so train them for it.

Rip Stalvey 13:36

Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal 13:37

Train them how to greet the judge, train them how to be in that environment. Okay. How to

Rip Stalvey 13:42

play nice with others, be good little boys and girls and

Mandelyn Royal 13:45

So if you have multiple pens, you can almost pick off birds that you know don't know each other and put them in a row next to each other and teach them it's okay to be next to a bird you don't know.

Rip Stalvey 13:55

If I had a bird, if I had a group of birds that I was working with in my conditioning house, I would change the location of those birds every day. I want by a different bird every day, just for that reason.

Mandelyn Royal 14:11

That's a good tip that I've never heard before. And I've been to a couple of shows, but I haven't taken birds to them yet, but I'm getting close to where I think I can.

Rip Stalvey 14:21

You need to do that. You need to do that in Ohio. That's a good place to get Bresse out in front of the public. And it's your home turf. That's right.

Mandelyn Royal 14:30

Ohio is very much a chicken state. Ohio is one of the biggest, if not the biggest shows. And there's a couple other big ones, especially when you get down in, what is that, Oklahoma and Texas, there's a couple more big ones. Oh

Rip Stalvey 14:43

yeah, they've got a big one in Shawnee.

Mandelyn Royal 14:45

And I don't know, I know you've been in a building with 15, 000 birds in it, but it is not a quiet place to be.

Rip Stalvey 14:53

No, and I was talking about playing a radio. Another thing you could do, I found this online, I was looking for it the other day, and I don't know where I stashed it on my computer, but I found an audio recording done inside a show, so I thought, huh, and so I put that on a CD, and so I could download it to my computer, I can download it to the radio, and so they're constantly hearing the sounds, From a show hall.

Mandelyn Royal 15:20

Oh, see, I was using talk radio as a predator deterrent in the barn. So that isn't great for that. Yeah, so my birds always got, the only thing that was always talk radio was NPR, so I apologize to them a little bit.

Rip Stalvey 15:35

Good for you. But no, I want to, I want them used to what goes on at a show. And Walt Leonard, his birds were almost shockproof. I'd see him at a show and nothing seemed to surprise them. I said, Walt, how do you do that? You're obviously training these birds in some ways. He laughed. He said, I got a little wooden dowel about eight inches long, and in my conditioning house, I've got all these cages lined up, and I walked down from one end to the other, just dragging that dowel stick across the front of that cage. Cl. Oh, probably

Mandelyn Royal 16:10

90 percent of my birds would bounce off the back of that cage.

Rip Stalvey 16:13

Yeah, anybody's would. But not Walt. You could have set a hand grenade off in there and it wouldn't have shocked them.

Mandelyn Royal 16:19

He probably didn't have game birds, did he?

Rip Stalvey 16:21

He did.

Mandelyn Royal 16:22

What?

Rip Stalvey 16:23

Yes. He had Ko Shamos he had old English, large fowl, bantam, gosh, he had everything in the world. Waterfowl.

Mandelyn Royal 16:30

That's amazing to me. You can completely change the frame of mind of those birds just by putting them in that environment and training them to it. Yeah. Chickens are smarter than we give them credit for.

Rip Stalvey 16:41

Absolutely, they are. They're just like us. If we go into a store or something that we've never been in before, man, we're on high alert. Where's the buys? Where's the good stuff? Or what's wrong with this? What's wrong? We're always on alert. Chickens are the same way. They're not any different.

Mandelyn Royal 16:57

I bet they're even more alert than we are because their level of predation is higher than ours.

Rip Stalvey 17:05

They're, they got that predator prey thing going on and they're constantly alert. They don't miss anything. At least not the good ones. They're not around for a lot, otherwise.

Mandelyn Royal 17:15

I was outside the other day, and I heard the turkeys throw up their alarm call, and then I heard a couple of boys pick it up, and I'm looking around to see what they're doing, and every single female bird booked it right back into their respective building. And I'm still looking around at what it was, and it turns out it was an airplane. But they still got themselves to safety, all as a group. So when you put them in those show halls, there's a lot for them to adjust to. How many weeks do you want to train them on that? Is it two weeks or is it a month?

Rip Stalvey 17:48

No more than two weeks because you can overdo it. It was like that. Yeah. Too much of a good thing's bad for us. Same thing with them.

John Gunterman 17:57

Okay, I was going to ask, because we're always cautioning people not to overhandle their chicks, because that can lead to aggression later on.

Mandelyn Royal 18:06

Yeah, if they lose total fear of you, some of those boys can't manage their hormones, and if they don't fear you

Rip Stalvey 18:12

When I'm getting birds ready for a show, they're already mature, so I don't really worry about that the way I do with youngsters.

John Gunterman 18:21

If you're raising up a batch of chicks that, you're hoping to show, are you going to give them any additional care or treatment or grooming along their lifetime, or you just raise them like chicks and pick the best and take it to the show?

Rip Stalvey 18:35

Just raise them like chicks. You want an honest representation of your breed. You can't do that raising them in these artificially sterile environments. I don't want anything to sneeze on them or anything. Doesn't work.

John Gunterman 18:51

I guess what I'm seeing is maybe kind of two mindsets going into a show. One is I'm trying to collect points to, achieve a title or some prestige versus I'm going to a show to get constructive feedback about my breeding program.

Rip Stalvey 19:07

That's pretty much it. And I understand. People are competitive by nature, and I understand grabbing those points are really important, but the other thing to

John Gunterman 19:16

take to show, because I can be a compulsive person, but

Mandelyn Royal 19:20

maybe that's part of your own evolution within the hobby, though, because when you go to your first show, you shouldn't expect a ribbon. You shouldn't expect to win the whole thing. If you do, amazing, but chances are that first season or two or three, you're there to get that feedback. You're there to learn the ropes of it. You're there to make your connections and contacts, maybe find your mentor, but that first entry in you're learning, but then later that probably. Very easily turns into your own competitive streak and then you start running with the big kids and then Like it's probably a natural evolution over time as you figure out how involved in it. You're gonna get

Rip Stalvey 20:06

yeah, I would agree

John Gunterman 20:07

with that

Rip Stalvey 20:08

Yeah,

John Gunterman 20:08

I would think just accidentally along the way it happens If you go to enough shows you get enough exposure enough experience you start collecting points you start You know, being recognized in the world. How many points

Mandelyn Royal 20:22

does it take to become a master breeder?

Rip Stalvey 20:25

I think it was like a hundred or something like that. But now here's the kicker to those master breeders and master exhibitors awards. What do you think of when I say I'm a master breeder?

Mandelyn Royal 20:37

I would think they know their way around the bird and their varieties that they're working with.

Rip Stalvey 20:42

Most people do, but there are those out there who are master buyers. They don't raise those birds. They don't breed those birds. You can earn a master

Mandelyn Royal 20:52

breeder through purchased birds?

Rip Stalvey 20:54

Absolutely.

Mandelyn Royal 20:56

Oh, I don't know how I feel about that.

John Gunterman 20:58

So you can buy a bird and bring it to a show and not even raise it?

Mandelyn Royal 21:01

See, I feel like there should be a distinction, like you can be a master exhibitor.

Rip Stalvey 21:06

Yeah, same way.

Mandelyn Royal 21:07

Wait how early before the show? That really implies you bred that bird.

Rip Stalvey 21:11

John, to answer your question, how early before the show, APA says 30 days.

John Gunterman 21:17

Okay, there is a But in

Rip Stalvey 21:18

reality, how do, how does a judge know? How does the show management know? It could be 30 minutes.

John Gunterman 21:24

It was in the sales floor 20 minutes ago. Now it's not, and it's over here.

Rip Stalvey 21:29

But who's going to check? Who has the time to check? When I'm judging a show. And I know I'm a slow judge, but I also believe in giving the bird his due chance to show me what he's got. But I was expected to judge starting at 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock in the afternoon, somewhere between 300 and 400 birds in that day.

John Gunterman 21:53

I wanted to ask how much time can, do you spend with each bird? Just on your first assess, first, so is it like a first assessment and then you come back and say, this one, and this one stood out and spend more time with them?

Rip Stalvey 22:06

About a minute total.

John Gunterman 22:09

Okay.

Rip Stalvey 22:09

What I'll do is I'll walk down a row and you may see me tapping on the bird's cages to get their attention to let them know what's going on. And I'll evaluate those birds just using my eyes and the birds that catch my attention, I'll turn the coop tag up. Then I go back and I'll still handle every bird in that class, but I'll spend more time evaluating the birds that caught my attention. I don't know. I know we're getting close to our timeline here, but have I answered your guys questions or at least the most of them, I hope.

Mandelyn Royal 22:43

Yeah, but I still probably have 15 more. Yeah, you've

John Gunterman 22:45

prompted so many more. Luckily, we're just at the beginning of season two.

Mandelyn Royal 22:50

Yeah,

Rip Stalvey 22:50

It's, we're coming up on show season. Said, it's just

Mandelyn Royal 22:53

started prepping for it last year.

Rip Stalvey 22:55

Sorry to hear before. Oh, there's something I want to talk about. You started saying prepping for it. When we talked about having birds in condition to show. You can do that to a certain extent based on when the bird was hatched. Okay? My Rhode Island Reds. I know that it takes me about six to seven months. To mature a female, all right, it takes me a solid 11 months to get a male mature enough to show. So if I wanted to show in December, I know that I need to hatch my males at least by January, but by then those females are going to be out of condition, they're going to be past their prime, so I need to hatch them late May, early June.

Mandelyn Royal 23:45

How do you know when they're in their prime? What are you looking for specifically that tells you they're in their prime?

Rip Stalvey 23:51

This is going to sound like I'm dodging the issue, but I'm not. When you see a bird that's in its prime, you'll know it. They'll have a nice red face. The feathers will all look very nice, very shiny, very smooth.

Mandelyn Royal 24:05

Completely grown in.

Rip Stalvey 24:07

Completely grown in. They'll look alert, they'll act alert. And if you can have them lay an egg, and this, the only way you're going to do this is just by sheer luck. But if You can have a bird lay an egg, a hen, I say a bird, you want it to be obviously a hen, but you can have those females lay their first egg at the show. They'll never be in any better condition than when they are at that moment.

Mandelyn Royal 24:35

So if pullets are six months to one year old and then they become hen and they show in that hen category one year and beyond that. But if my pullets are dropping their first egg at 19 weeks, that's below the six months.

Rip Stalvey 24:49

No, then you hatch your birds 19 weeks before you want to show them. I was just using that six months and 11 months as a point of reference.

Mandelyn Royal 24:58

So they don't actually put a specific age of entry, because how do you even age a bird accurately, really, besides fur growth and

Rip Stalvey 25:05

I can pretty well with males, with females not so much other than just going by the look, so to speak. But males, I think

John Gunterman 25:16

I thought my birds looked the best really at about between 30 and 34 weeks, 32 weeks, I think is their biological prime, has been my observation, at least in my flock.

Mandelyn Royal 25:28

Yeah, I was going to say for your breed, probably.

Rip Stalvey 25:31

One thing you can do I've had people when I was judging cockerels, anything under 12 months, males. And they will put a young cock bird in there, because they're usually finished out better than the cockerels would be. And they'll try to show it. A Cockrell, and if you ever see me judge a class of birds, you'll see one thing that I do when I'm going through the male birds. You'll see me as I'm holding the bird. I'll take my thumb and put it against the end of the spur and try to wiggle it. If it won't wiggle, it's a cock bird. Oh, if it wiggles, it's a cockrell. It takes a little bit more time for that, spur it. It may be starting to get long, but it may not be attached to the bone in the leg yet. But once it, oh, once it det attaches, it is not a cockerel

Mandelyn Royal 26:24

I'd be waiting around a while on my boys for the tails to come in. My girls are pretty well grown fairly early, but those boys, they'll drop that tail down at five months and I have to wait until the new one comes in.

Rip Stalvey 26:38

I'll tell people this. And they always want to know, but how do you know how far in advance to do it? Because I go to so many different shows, yada yada, I said, look.

Mandelyn Royal 26:47

Don't you need a pretty good little stagger going on and hatch for the shows you want to go to and have a couple of different ages? The big shows,

Rip Stalvey 26:53

I hatch for that show. If I was taking birds to Ohio, I would specifically hatch birds with the Ohio show in mind. But Kenny Bowles, who was an old breeder of Rhode Island Reds, He actually, and also originated in New Hampshire bantams. Kenny told me one time, he said, if you want to have birds in good shape to show, hatch a few chicks every other month.

Mandelyn Royal 27:19

And then pluck out who's ready to go and leave the others at home.

Rip Stalvey 27:23

Exactly. Exactly.

Mandelyn Royal 27:25

That makes sense.

Rip Stalvey 27:27

Just one of the little tricks of the trade.

Mandelyn Royal 27:31

Now I feel like we're a little bit closer to a conclusion before we go even deeper into this.

Rip Stalvey 27:37

I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I just felt like this format lended itself very well. You probably heard me talk more in this show than any other show we've ever done. Y'all kept me on my toes and not knowing what other

Mandelyn Royal 27:53

topics we could do this for. What else do you want us to sit down and do this to you?

Rip Stalvey 28:00

Oh, sure. Ask me. Let's ask the listeners.

John Gunterman 28:04

What do the

Rip Stalvey 28:05

listeners want to know? Maybe we do a thing like we do on Poultry Keepers 360 with the Flock Talk, where we answer listeners questions. I would thoroughly enjoy that. I think that would make for a good show. It's just a shame that we can't do live call ins with our podcast the way we can do them with the other Poultry Keepers 360 program.

Mandelyn Royal 28:29

That's true, but we can post the question in our podcast Facebook group.

Rip Stalvey 28:33

Sure.

Mandelyn Royal 28:34

I think we should ask our podcast group on Facebook and see what they think. Absolutely.

John Gunterman 28:38

Yeah, and this is just a different format for the same information, different people. Associate in different ways.

Rip Stalvey 28:46

Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think Mandelyn and John did a really good job of keeping me on my toes. And I didn't get into too many ditches or rabbit holes. So that's always a good thing.

John Gunterman 28:59

Could keep you going for hours and we probably will.

Rip Stalvey 29:02

And that'd be all right too. But folks, thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. We really appreciate it. We hope you, if you're not listening to our show on a regular basis, we hope you will become a regular listener because we've done a lot of things with our podcast that we've not been able to do with the Poultry Keepers 360 video program. And I'm pretty proud of what we've done with this podcast in a little over a year now.

Mandelyn Royal 29:27

This brings us to the close of another Poultry Keepers podcast, and we're very happy you chose to join us. Until next time, we'd appreciate it if you would drop us a note, letting us know your thoughts about our podcast. Please share our podcast with all of your friends that keep poultry, and we hope you'll join us again when we'll be talking poultry from feathers to function.