It’s time for our birds to start their annual molt. This episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast is a replay of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live recorded on June 27, 2024. The show features Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon as they delve into the critical topic of molting in poultry.
Jeff Mattocks provides comprehensive insights into the molting process, emphasizing that it's more than just feather loss. He explains how the birds experience flu-like symptoms due to hormonal changes and increased body temperature. Key care tips include providing ample shade, cooler water, and adjusting feed to lower energy and protein during molting.
Practical solutions for water management are shared, including using frozen water bottles and cat fountains. Jeff also touches on post-molt nutrition, recommending high-quality protein feed and increased vitamins. Throughout the episode, patience and monitoring a bird’s weight is stressed to ensure a successful molt and a healthier flock.
The PowerPoint used during this show, including sample feed formulas, can be found in the Files section of the Poultry Keepers Podcast Facebook group.
It’s time for our birds to start their annual molt. This episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast is a replay of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live recorded on June 27, 2024. The show features Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon as they delve into the critical topic of molting in poultry.
Jeff Mattocks provides comprehensive insights into the molting process, emphasizing that it's more than just feather loss. He explains how the birds experience flu-like symptoms due to hormonal changes and increased body temperature. Key care tips include providing ample shade, cooler water, and adjusting feed to lower energy and protein during molting.
Practical solutions for water management are shared, including using frozen water bottles and cat fountains. Jeff also touches on post-molt nutrition, recommending high-quality protein feed and increased vitamins. Throughout the episode, patience and monitoring a bird’s weight is stressed to ensure a successful molt and a healthier flock.
The PowerPoint used during this show, including sample feed formulas, can be found in the Files section of the Poultry Keepers Podcast Facebook group.
Hi! Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. I'm Rip Stalvey, and together with Mandelyn Royal and John Gunterman, we're your co hosts for this show, and it's our mission to help you have a happy, healthy, and productive flock. Good evening, poultry keepers, and thank you for joining us for another Poultry Keepers 360 Live. We have a really good show for you, and coming up in just a few seconds, we are going to get Jeff to talk to us about the molt. We've covered it before, but we've got a lot of questions, and we've learned a few things since then. You stay tuned. We'll be right back. Okay, and you can see we got a new face with us tonight. We have Terry Blackman. He's our Poultry Keepers 360 team member, and Kerry, it's nice to have you here tonight. Glad you could join us.
Carey Blackmon:
Good afternoon. It's good to be here.
Rip Stalvey:
Take just a couple of minutes and tell the folks a little bit about you who may not, they may not know you.
Carey Blackmon:
Oh Lord. So my name is Kerry Blackman. I live in central Alabama. I raise large fowl, single comb Rhode Island reds. Pretty fond of them. And I also raise Cortunix quail. I have pharaoh and a few other lines of those. I've been in poultry probably the better part on and off the last 30 years. And a little over a year ago I started diving deep into the genetic side of it and the nutrition side of it. Which is part of how I met these two guys here, and it's exciting. It's been a journey. I've learned a whole lot and I look forward to learning a whole lot more.
Rip Stalvey:
Very cool. Like I said, we're so happy to have you with us. And tonight, Jeff's going to get into the molt. So Jeff, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Jeff Mattocks:
You guys are going to help, right? Oh, absolutely. You're not just going to be there. All right. Again, it's that time of year and we decided it was time to talk about the molt again. We only talk about it pretty much one time out of the year. And people forget, what did we talk about last year? So look for those of you who have communicated with me directly, that I am a short and maybe not sweet kind of individual. Look, the molt, they're going to lose their feathers, right? That's what everybody thinks about first, but they don't understand is that the body temperature of the bird actually is going to slightly increase and be above normal. So it's going to be running a mild fever. The molt is actually driven by hormonal changes in the bird based on the season or time of life, right? So think of it this way, your bird feels like crap. It's uncomfortable, it's lethargic, it's droopy, it's like you have the flu symptoms. If you've ever had the flu, you know exactly what we're talking about, right? It's body aches, a little bit of fever you're not really going to the bathroom the right way. You're not eating right. It's very similar to that.
Rip Stalvey:
So many people think it's just about regrowing feathers. They don't really realize there's so much more to it. And that's the key thing to remember. It's more than just regrowing feathers.
Jeff Mattocks:
Yeah, it's a complete recycling. This is a complete recycling. Things you want to consider when you want to help your birds through the molt. And and right now we're coming into the middle of the summer, right? And for most of it, it's hot. The sun's up in the sky for a longer period of the time. To make sure they've got really good shade space. And shade in a way that they're not too close to another bird, right? So you've got really good airflow. Look at ways to be able to supply cooler water, right? Not water that sits in a reservoir, gets up to 100 degrees picking and choosing what your water supply is going to be or, how you're going to serve that water can make a huge difference. Look at ways to alter the feed. We need to lower the energy and we want to lower the protein. Both energy and protein will cause that body temperature to go up during digestion. And, we want to try not to push that body temperature any more than it already is. Basically we're looking for cooler feeds that are less stress on the digestive tract and the metabolism. And the biggest thing, and dealing across a broad spectrum of poultry keepers not just breeders, some performance fowls, some exhibition, even in the commercial, on the commercial side, small commercial side, really the most important thing is patience, right? Patience patience, because as soon as birds start dropping feathers, I see all of these chicken owners out there. Oh, we got to up the protein. Oh, we got to do this. Oh, they're, it's what I call a knee jerk reaction and they're going the completely wrong direction. So it's a recycling, it's a process, and we need to understand it and what's going on inside that bird, to help the bird through that process.
Rip Stalvey:
Here Stacy commented, says everyone says to use more protein to help with feather growth.
Jeff Mattocks:
You know what, once all the feathers are gone, and once all the internal fat is gone, and once the bird's gone through the recycling process, having really good, high quality protein feed coming out of the molt is going to give us the best feather growth. But, it's timing. Don't start your additional protein at the beginning of the molt, you want that high quality feed and that better protein coming out of the molt, right? So once the feathers drop and you start seeing those the feather follicles, forming and developing, that the new feathers are coming, That's when that better protein, I don't want to say high protein. It doesn't have to be high protein. Tonight I wore my amino acid shirt for a reason. It's more people need to understand more about the amino acids than it is the protein. And we've talked about it. I don't know how many times on the show in the last two years, Rip, but I think I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. I agree. Yeah. It, it's quality, not quantity. Let's talk about the water a little bit and, just simple thinking guidance here, right? And I've said this before, I'll say it again, as long until I die, you will hear me use this phrase, if you're not willing to drink it, it's not good enough for your animal. That's any animal. And tonight we're talking about chickens. You take a cup or a glass with you to the barn, try a little bit of that chicken water. Is it good enough for you? Ain't none of us, including me, that's willing to drink that chicken water. At the end of the day when I change it out, but I'm never going to leave that water for the second day or the third day and having large reservoirs of water because I'm lazy and I only have to fill it once a week, right? That is not happening.
Rip Stalvey:
When you let that water just stay in the waterer day after day You're just asking for trouble, folks. You really are.
Jeff Mattocks:
Yeah, bacteria's growing, algae's growing, there's a little bit of feed residue. I don't care whether you're using pellets, crumbles, mash, whatever. There's a little bit of residue on the bird's beak, even if she was out on the ground digging around for bugs, there's going to be some residue in the beak the water is going to be contaminated, right? At least every 24 hours is a minimum to refresh that water. And right now when it's hot, the more often you can replace it or refresh it or whatever, the better off we're going to be.
Rip Stalvey:
I was just going to say, you sent me a video one time of, oh gosh, pastured life, turkey waterers they had created. Yeah. And I thought that was the most neat setup for attracting birds to water and encouraging them to drink more water at the times when they need it. And folks, if I can, I'll go back through the files and see if I can dig that up. And I'll post that up tomorrow to get it at the top of, Remind
Jeff Mattocks:
me, if you can't find it, I'll dig for it also but basically they were just, they were using what we call spaghetti tubing, which is the black quarter inch rubber tubing that you can get just about anywhere, and you can use 8 inch, it doesn't really matter, and you just, you dial the pressure down, so it's just dribbling and dripping into a reservoir but it attracts the birds to drink, but it also keeps the water fresh coming through the line, Cause it's constantly dripping and recycling. Yeah, that was one of the greatest ideas I ever saw. The other one was Carol Wilson down in Texas. She got some smaller 16 quart coolers and, she drilled out the drain on them and she plumbed them. So there was a hose going to the drinker and she can freeze large blocks of ice to put in the cooler with the water. It was keeping the water colder all day long, and, she's down in Central Texas so it's an issue. Think about how you can set up a water reservoir with ice blocks. Be creative, think outside the box, talk to people, ask questions. There's gotta be a plan for cooler and cleaner water. Because the more water we get into your birds, the quicker they're going to get through the molt and the happier they're going to be.
Carey Blackmon:
So I'm a huge fan of bell waterers. I really like them. And when the water comes out the side, even as it trickles down the side of the bell waterers a lot of times those birds will go crazy pecking at it, trying to get it as it's fallen. They don't care about what's in the bottom though. So they want that because what I'll do is. I've got a deep freeze in my barn and I'll get me a couple of cases of water bottles and I'll freeze those water bottles and in the morning I'll go out there and put them in my reservoirs to cool the water down and then I'll go check all of my bellwaters. I'll dump them over a couple times so it gets cool water in the lines. To circulate it through. And that's the water that they get that day. I do the water in the morning and I feed them in the afternoons.
Jeff Mattocks:
So what kind of, what are you using? You, I think the pictures I'd seen from you carry were five gallon buckets for your reservoir.
Carey Blackmon:
Yeah. So what I do, I use the five gallon pail. And what I'll do is I've got a float valve that hooks up. Probably three fourths of the way towards the top that a garden hose hooks to that end of it. And so there's two and a half, three gallons worth of water that stays in the pail and then off about an inch off the bottom of the pail is where I hook up my quarter inch line. So if there's any trash gets in it, it'll fall to the bottom. And I've also got three half inch, no, three, three quarter inch. Copper elbows, just so I have some copper in there to keep it cool. Yeah. Are you looking at
Jeff Mattocks:
that working for you?
Carey Blackmon:
Since I started using three of those fittings, cause I found a place where I can order 10 packs pretty cheap since I use three in them, which is a little over one per gallon, I have no issues with algae, no issues with anything. And I think it's a combination of the water going through there quick and not sitting. In there, and it constantly pumping fresh water in, but also the copper fittings have really made a difference.
Jeff Mattocks:
What Carol was using in Grimes Cadillac, chickens what she was using, as I told her to get the one gallon like painter pails, right? You can go get a fairly inexpensive one gallon pail. Any good hardware store, Home Depot, Lowe's, whatever, right? And freeze those, fill those with water, freeze them in the deep freeze, and in her heat, or your heat, or even Florida's heat, in a few minutes, they'll slip right out of that pail. So if you put a one gallon chunk, you've added to your water supply, and you actually have a larger chunk to last you longer in your five gallon bucket, if it'll fit.
Carey Blackmon:
I put about four of those water bottles in my, in the pails. I carry around a couple five gallon pails around the yard and I'll take the old ones out and put them in the empty bucket and then put a three or four frozen ones in there. And depending on how hot it is, sometimes they'll still have ice in them in the evening when I feed. All right.
Jeff Mattocks:
But they're still in the plastic, right? Her thing was she was adding to water deliverable cause she wasn't refilling. So she had a static, she had a static, water reservoir. So throughout the day she was adding to her water total with that ice chunk. Yeah, that makes sense. Cause she didn't have a pressurized system with a float on it, right? Gotcha. So depending on what people have, there's options out there and there's people to definitely talk to. This is just an example of what I would put out there for a moult type feed. If somebody wants to mix it at home, it's mostly oats, mostly alfalfa, so it's a really high fiber and the oats and the alfalfa will satiate the bird. So it'll fill the crop, fill the gizzard and stay in the system for quite a while. So they don't feel as hungry because you only want to feed two ounces. Okay, to an average bird that weighs four to six pounds, about two ounces of this mix. Okay, so this is like really low energy. Energy is way down. Protein is way down. If you look at this is a calculated twelve and a half percent protein. Pulled the fat out of it. Fiber is really high. All of this is intentional, but I'm keeping the amino acids up. I've got a little bit of fish meal in there. Just to help the birds out, sunflower seeds don't have to be in there. Sunflower seeds are just more of a treat, so the birds know you still love them, but you're not trying to kill them, right? It makes them a little bit happy, even though they're being grumpy, because, they're not getting enough feed, and it adds to the fiber. It helps keep the fat level there. Again, just an example, something can be devised where you live. It's not going to be, it's really not that hard. I think people overthink it all the time. The key is high fiber, lower carbohydrates, lower protein. You only feed this for two weeks. And just in the last two weeks, people asking me about molt rations and Oh, I can't find that where I live. I, Oh, I don't know how to do that. And I'm like, folks, this is so easy, even if you're feeding like an all flock or a flock raiser or, something like that. So even if you want to go this easy and I don't recommend it, but if you want to go this easy, it's one part, all flock, flock, raiser, whatever you're feeding, so it's one pound of that, three pounds of oats. Still give them some extra supplement, like some breeder supplement or something, a little bit of oil to make it stick. Okay, you're only gonna do this for two weeks. It may not even be two weeks. We want that full feather drop. We want to keep, we want to keep the, the temperate body temperature down. We don't want to feed things that are gonna push higher body temperature, right? So we're trying to, we're trying to give them easier digesting thing. Easier digesting same thing, same formulation that I've, put up here. Again, high fiber, low calories. I'm going to do pretty much the exact same formulation that I have on screen right now. We can fine tune it to make it, soy free if we need to. But actually this is soy free the way it sits. Can make it happen and it just, I, I don't want people to be afraid of it and it's really, okay, it's easy for me to sit here and say it's not that complicated, it's easy, but again, I've been doing chicken rations for 28 years, so to me it's easy and it doesn't take long to make the adjustments.
Rip Stalvey:
Jeff, we've got another question here or comment, really. They say they have five chickens and they use one of those cat fountains. And I think I've heard you talk about that before.
Jeff Mattocks:
I have one here. Yeah, I have a one gallon fountain that, circulates and I, my cats and my dog all use the same drinker and I know that they are consuming way more water just because of the entertainment value. So they can hear it and it trickles. I watch them. So when they want a large volume, they drink out of the trough and when they're playing, they come and drink out, where the fountain dribbles down. It's, it's a hundred percent stainless steel. I take it apart once a week, put it in the dishwasher, scrub it up good. Put it back together. I can hand wash it if I'm in a hurry. Mine comes with a charcoal filter, the pump's in the bottom. I think we're on year three or four of continuous use and the pump's still going. I'm very well satisfied with it. Think chickens would have a blast with it.
Rip Stalvey:
No doubt.
Jeff Mattocks:
Yeah. If you're thinking, Rip, if you remind me in the morning, I'll get a link for it. You can get it from Chewy. com or you can get it from, direct from the, I think it's a PetSafe product, if you look at a water fountain, is it, isn't it a PetSafe?
Carey Blackmon:
Yeah I've actually got one of them at my house and it is the PetSafe. What I did was I put it in my cart. On Chewy, the first time you told me that, and a few days went by and they actually sent me a coupon. They knew what I was thinking, I don't
Jeff Mattocks:
know. You played the game, right? You got the 10 off because you sat there and waited for a week. Yeah. Think for a small number of birds, I really think that, I think the chickens would love it. I really do think that not just chickens, any bird just because of the running water. The initial purchase isn't cheap. But it's also, what'd you, I don't remember Gary, what'd you pay for it? Do you remember?
Carey Blackmon:
It was like 70
Jeff Mattocks:
or 75. Yeah. Again I'm three years in service and it's held up well for me. Yeah. And Joy's head says her girls like it and it has a yellow flower on top. All right. So getting back to malt feed. Again, so for a typical size, not a large fowl, for a large fowl, if you're talking about a New Hamp, a Brahma Orpington or something like that, I'd probably go to three ounces only, three ounces, right? Roughly half of what their normal feed by weight. This is not a measurement. This is a weight. That's in my top 10 list of overall frustrations working with poultry keepers. They don't know what the feed weighs. They go through with a scoop and everybody gets a scoop. What's the scoop weigh? How am I supposed to help you? If I don't know how much feed they're getting, right? Oh, they get a scoop. Oh, what kind of scoop? I don't know. That's a Vienna sausage can. It's a potted meat can. It's a, it's a one third cup. It's a it's amazing the different things that people use to feed their birds with, and they have no idea what it weighs. No idea what it weighs, right? Anyway, half the normal feed. This is by weight, not measurement. It's going to be 14 to 21 days. Now, To do this correctly and I'm glad this is being recorded so nobody comes back later and says, oh you told me, okay, you need to monitor body weight to achieve desired weight. Desired weight on a proper molt is to take any older bird or mature bird back to very close to pullet or cockerel weight. Okay. And because we, if we can shrink the ovaries and if we can resize the testicles, you get more eggs, you get higher hatches. You get better chicks, okay if you let them go through life with 25%, body fat, BMI we're losing out, right? The bird will never achieve its full genetic potential carrying extra weight. Now, for folks who contact me directly, I'm, the easiest way for me, okay, this is for me, to check body fat because I'm not good at pinching the abdomen. I feel the pelvic bones. If the pelvic bones are sharp and close together, then I feel that the fat content is good. If they're very rounded and feel soft to the touch, then there's still a fair amount of fat in there. On most fowl, the pelvic bones will hold fat, okay, around them. That's a typical area for body fat. Fat just works for me, alright? Whatever works for you, use it. I'm not, I'm just saying it's easy for me to stick my fingers up a chicken's butt and feel whether or not it's fat or skinny, alright? Alright. Rip, I know you've done it, right? Don't laugh.
Rip Stalvey:
I'm just chuckling with you, not at you.
Jeff Mattocks:
Yeah,
Rip Stalvey:
How many
Jeff Mattocks:
times you did a COVID exam? Yeah. It works. How many pelvic exams have you done, Rip?
Rip Stalvey:
I'd rather not say. All right laura said that that cat drinker is 59. 95 on Amazon and Chewy. Chewy.
Jeff Mattocks:
Now you know how to do it. Give me another one. Yeah, that's a good deal. I'm really happy. I started putting pennies in there to keep the biofilm and algae under control I actually only need to clean it for my three cats and the dog about once every three weeks. And that's it. It's fairly simple. Take it apart, and I put the pump down in a large bowl, in a bowl along with the filter, and I put a little bit of white vinegar and distilled water in there, and let it soak while everything else is in the dishwasher, just to keep that free, fresh, and sanitized. Can take it apart in three minutes, put it back together in about three minutes. So it's not, it is not rocket science. All right, post molt feed, somebody talked about, what that protein needs to be, this, I put this together for this purpose, but it's so here, we've got the corn, we've got the soybean meal, we've got the wheat, the oats. Very typical ration that you would see coming from me, alright? And I feel an 18 or 19 percent is fine. We've got the fat back up to close to 6%. Group fiber is always going to be 5 percent with me. Calcium, phosphorus, everything is pretty normal. And, but we did add the extra amino acids. Anyway, post molt higher vitamins. We're running the vitamin levels back up. And that we've got the added lysine added vitamins, which is the RC gold, that's where I'm getting up to 7, 000 instead of 36. Got a little bit of methionine, a little bit of threonine in there. If you don't want to do it individually. I try and break it down so people, can do it individually. The breeder supplement will get you where you need to be at its normal levels, at one teaspoon per bird, one tablespoon per pound, that's a rounded tablespoon one cup per twelve and a half pounds.
Rip Stalvey:
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.