How Thin Shells Affect Incubation: Calcium, Phosphorus & Vitamin D for Hens

WEBVTT
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when a chicken lays an egg and we incubate that egg, the chick actually will absorb a lot of the calcium out of the egg shell to use- in its own formation.
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always an incubator issue.
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It's not always a shipping issue.
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We've got to go all the way back to the beginning
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So there's this new thing that, I mean, it- it's no secret that we have some nerds that are doctors and veterinarians and stuff like that.
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So with that, there's a lot of discussion about vaccines and diseases, and is it this, is it that?
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And really and truly, you could post in a big backyard group, one set of symptoms and come up with 50 different diagnosises and probably 1,000 different treatments, and maybe only one of them will actually work, unless more than one person says,"Cull it."
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Mm-hmm.
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So, Jennifer had the idea to put together a vaccine disease masterclass-type deal- where we- we've got, examples, actual diagnosises.
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That was a funny word.
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how to fix it, what you can fix, what you need a vet to fix, and then, had the vet look at it to make sure that we're right, which, you know-
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It's all based on research and- Yeah it is divided up, but it is not going to replace a veterinarian's opinion.
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But dealing with birds, we do probably rely on ourselves more than most animals.
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But this masterclass will be free on the poultrynerdspodcast.com website, because we just want you guys to have the information that you need in a central location.
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It will be searchable, and hopefully it will have, everything that you need in order to work with your birds,
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Yeah, like we-
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better
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we really want people to get factual information-
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Mm-hmm
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that is science-backed, especially before you give your bird some kind of treatment.
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not that we don't trust the farmer two miles up the road that's had chickens for 30 years, but sometimes they can be wrong.
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So-
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So- there's a lot of things that people do that...
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and they don't realize.
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Mm-hmm.
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We see it on Facebook, and that's what kinda prompted this idea, was there's a lot of things people do that, create a lifetime egg withdrawal.
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And once you do it, you can't undo it.
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The bird is, it's done, basically.
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You can't eat the meat.
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Like the blue
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spray paint.
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yeah, yeah, blue coat.
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So you can't eat the bird, you can't do anything with the bird.
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And what will happen is you'll go to, say, the poultry auction, and you'll buy a bird, and you have no idea what the history of that bird is.
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So just kinda keep that in mind, and if you realize that those things are out there and that people do them to their birds, either knowingly or unknowingly, you don't know what you're buying.
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And, so we wanted to put this information out there.
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it's gonna be free.
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All you have to do is go to the website and search for it.
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And, hopefully it will help some people make decisions on what to do.
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Hey, before we get into today’s topic—make sure you’re subscribed to Poultry Nerds so you don’t miss an episode.
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And if we mention a study, product, website, or other resource during the show, check the episode description.
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We’ll put the links there for you.
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Alright, back to the nerds.
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All right.
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So let's talk about calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D.
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Why do chickens need all three?
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So does it not just help to throw more oyster shells at a bird?
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I mean, only if they eat it.
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Yeah.
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And they need calcium.
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But- Which chi- chickens are smarter than they think, okay?
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Oh, well, than a lot of people think, even though they do some really stupid stuff.
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I'll give you one example.
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The...
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I have a custom blend that is a breeder feed.
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Obviously, when you have a breeder flock, it's gonna be mixed Roosters need X amount of calcium, 1.2 to 1.3, and, non-laying hens need that too.
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Well, when they're laying, they need more calcium because they deplete it a lot, and I use the, oyster shells in the feed to bridge that gap.
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So, a hen ne- needs extra calcium.
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They'll eat it.
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If they don't, they won't They do need them all because the phosphorus really helps make them utilize more efficiently other minerals.
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So Yeah, different.
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they need it
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Do they get vitamin D from the sun?
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H- how?
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Well, the skin is still, I mean, the sun is still touching the skin and stuff.
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yeah, like during the molt.
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Well, what about their head and their comb and that kind of stuff?
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I mean, I highly doubt that they absorb anywhere near enough vitamin D that way.
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I mean, I don't even think people do unless they live in one of those colonies where people walk around all the time.
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And don't slather in, sunblock.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So calcium, we need calcium for the bones.
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Yeah.
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the eggshells.
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Strong eggshells.
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Yeah.
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Nerves.
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Yep.
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Cell function.
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That's how...
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So if a b- if a bird has all the calcium that it needs, that can also b- well, calcium and B vitamins both play a role in birds that act kind of psychotic.
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like when you first open the pen, you got some that start running around and going crazy.
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They get real flighty.
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Mm-hmm.
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And, act like they're gonna fly up and break their neck or something.
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Mm-hmm.
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They typically are deficient in, vitamin B, one of the vitamin Bs, or calcium or both.
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And you don't even realize it.
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But, like I've told people, you can't buy a supplement, mix it in your feed, and expect it to work miracles overnight.
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It's gonna take a couple weeks for those extra vitamins and amino acids to get into their bodies.
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But once they do, you're gonna notice different behaviors.
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you're gonna notice them not to be as flighty.
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They're gonna be more friendly.
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They're gonna get up under your feet and make you aggravated because you're fixing to step on them, because they wanna see you.
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They wanna have fun.
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But that's because they need those vitamins.
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See, I did not know that.
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So I sell birds to people sometimes, and they're like,"Oh, your birds are so crazy," and, or they do this or they do that.
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And I, look over at mine, and they're all, got their faces mashed up against the fence waiting for me to come over there and see them.
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They're like,"Hey, what are you doing?"
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I, I don't have that problem, so
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cause you feed good feed.
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Huh, never thought
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about it.
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I never thought about that either, until about four years ago, and somebody, helped me put the two and two together.
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And I was like,"Nuh-uh." And so I started, I changed the feed just to those couple of birds and nuh-huh.
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And, fast-forward a few years, and got a feed company, feed store, and supplement, and, All because I got tired of mixing a whole bunch of crap together.
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So- Or got lazy, however you look at it
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where do they get, phosphorus from?
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Hopefully from their feed
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Oh, okay.
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So it has to be added in.
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Well, I mean, they're gon- they're gonna eat it one way or another.
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birds that free range a lot do typically consume less feed because they're eating grass, bugs, whatever, and they're getting a lot of those nutrients, provided that your farm has those nutrients available.
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one of the problems that we battle in the South is essentially sucky ground.
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our ground is nowhere near as healthy as it is up North and, we have to do stuff to it, but we can fix it and get it that way.
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But if you have good nutrient-rich dirt and grow, like grass, just regular Bermuda, alfalfa, whatever grass, birds can, they can survive in that environment.
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Hmm.
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But
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that-
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They'll get their protein from the little b- the little bugs that are gonna be crawling all in the grass.
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No, they're vegetarians.
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Yeah, okay.
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Just like you need a rooster so you can have eggs.
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Uh-huh.
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Okay, so the phosphorus comes from, like natural plants and things like that?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So what about vitamin D?
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Where is that If they're not getting it from, enough from the sun, where are they getting it from?
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their feet, feed.
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Jeff and I was talking the other day because there's a large number of people that love to put vitamins in the water.
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And do you know how many vitamins are actually water-soluble?
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Well, I know because you tell me, but go ahead.
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Touche.
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So if you spend that, like 70,$80 for that kilo tub, the two-pound jar-looking thing, that's got 100 different vitamins in it, that's cool.
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But if they don't drink it while it's in suspension, they're not gonna get it
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Okay, so this is gonna be sort of a tangent, but things that people don't think about is, you alluded to it, that the ground is not as healthy.
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If the ground isn't healthy, then the plants aren't as nutritious.
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If the plants aren't as nutritious, the feed can't be as nutritious, which means the birds don't get the nutrition they need when we feed it to them.
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Right.
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So it's important, I guess, to make sure that the ground is taken care of to grow the nutritious feed.
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I mean, y- everybody- It's a cycle will tell you, like all the farmers, the ones that are known for pasture-raised this, and I'm a member of APPA and I go to their conferences every year.
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That's the American Pasture Poultry Producer Association, and every seminar that I've sat in that talks about, it a- it all starts with the dirt.
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Because the dirt, you can plant whatever you want, but if the nutrients are not in the dirt, they will not transfer to the plant.
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And then the plant won't grow it and be able to give those nutrients to your chickens, your pigs, your cows, your goats, whatever you have grazing it and eating it.
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So i- it's very important, and in the South, a lot of it is acidic.
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So which I really hate that a lot of ag extensions is who people go to for their soil samples.
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they'll take soil sample and say,"All right, you put two tons of chicken crap per acre, and your stuff'll grow better." Well, duh.
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That- It's not gonna get worse, so yeah.
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But if you're in the South and your dirt is already acidic, and you put literally hot crap straight out of a chicken house on it, it's gonna be a little more acidic.
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And then your...
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what you're growing ain't gonna reap the benefits from it till, next year when the acidity level comes down, and that's assuming you don't put more crap on it the next year.
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more often than not, a pH test is as important or almost as important as a soil test because We have acidic there's people in the South that literally all they need is calcium carbonate lime on the, on their dirt to get the pH to, six to seven-
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Hmm
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to have healthy soil.
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Well, maybe you should test mine,'cause I'm fixing to disperse Mount Poopmore across my yard.
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I can do that.
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Okay.
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Well, we'll
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make a
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video about that.
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that's a service that we offer.
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we, we'll actually take small samples from all over, put them in a bucket that's been bleached so nothing from the outside gets in it to mess it up, and then we take your dirt and we mix it up real good, and then we fill the sample bag and send it to the lab.
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That way it's got a good mix of the whole area.
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So when you do get an answer, it'll be a good average, and you'll have better chances of it actually working.
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Interesting.
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But in the South, it is possible to graze animals and not buy hay If your dirt's healthy.
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Because people up north, they don't buy a lot.
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there's a lot of them up there that will make it and sell it down here.
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and, even My son and I have had this conversation because he's cheap, and he don't like spending money, and I tried to tell him about this.
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Texas has pretty good soil, and I'm like,"Well, why do you get cows You get cows from Texas, right?""Oh yeah, that's where the Beefmaster started." I,"Yeah.
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How much hay are they feeding out there?" none.""Oh.
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Hmm.
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Somebody probably They probably got healthy soil." I ain't spending that kind of money." we get in it every year.
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Last year, I did a five-acre plot there on his main farm, and I fertilized it like I wanted to, and I planted the cover crop like I wanted to, and I told him to keep stuff off of it for, 45 days after it was planted to grow, and don't let them eat it down below five inches, and keep them off of it again for 30 days.
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And if you could do that, I said it'll probably grow all year.
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Ain't no way.
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Yeah.
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Probably will It was the greenest part of his yard for two years
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Soil health.
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Mm-hmm.
00:17:53.828 --> 00:17:59.528
So that brings us back to our v- calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D.
00:17:59.998 --> 00:18:14.928
So when a chicken lays an egg and we incubate that egg, the chick actually will absorb a lot of the calcium out of the egg shell to use- Mm-hmm in its own formation.
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Right.
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So when we talk ab- when people ask, why didn't their chicks hatch, or why do they have these deformities, and we always say,"You have to go all the way back to the beginning," and this is one of the reasons why.
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Always an incubator issue.
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It's not always a shipping issue.
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Mm-hmm.
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We've got to go all the way back to the beginning, and that is why I feed your feed to my, animals that I sell the hatching eggs off of, because then my customers get the best possible hatch results.
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And that's a question that people should be asking when they're looking for sellers, what do you feed them?
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Because if they just feed them corn and they're in a cage, well, those eggs may not be as good to be used as incubating eggs as they would be just maybe for eating eggs.
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Well, and like our friend Brittany, the quail lady from Freedom, Freedom, bluh-lah-lah, Freedom- Freedom Flyers Flyers, they've got quite a few quail.
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Mm-hmm.
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And they make their feed on the farm, and they mix corn meal, soybean meal, and a vitamin premix that is specifically designed for their feed.
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it takes half to corn meal, half of it soybean meal.
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What you get from that, this vitamin mineral mix is all the other stuff to get it where it needs to be, and that's why, she has really good hatch rates-
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Mm-hmm
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which, her smallest incubator or hatcher only holds- 56,000.
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Yeah, I know.
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They're huge.
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So-
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Okay.
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So it's very important to make sure that just because you have thin shells or something one thing off, you have to look at the whole big picture.
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Yeah.
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This is one more ex- this is one more example of just sitting back and looking the whole big picture can answer a lot of questions.
00:20:26.598 --> 00:20:34.728
And so the last thing I'm gonna ask you, because it's always so controversial, can roosters- Oh eat laying feed?
00:20:35.688 --> 00:20:36.218
I hope so.
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If not- mine would be dead.
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Mine too.
00:20:42.152 --> 00:20:53.772
my brood fowl, whether it's a large fowl, game fowl, turkey, like during breeding season I feed them breeding feed.
00:20:55.012 --> 00:21:11.512
And, like I said before, mine uses the oyster shells for extra calcium, so the roosters, even though they do dumb stuff, they're smart enough to know that they don't need it, so they'll eat around it.
00:21:12.012 --> 00:21:12.522
Mm-hmm.
00:21:12.542 --> 00:21:24.202
it's just y- you feed the same stuff and you'll have times where there's lots of rocks in the bottom of your trough, and then you'll have times where there's none.
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Because, they don't need everything right then.
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Right.
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A-
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and they're smart enough to know that.
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And we cycle off, they don't get laying feed when they're not laying.
00:21:41.262 --> 00:21:43.662
we both- Mm I think, cycle off.
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And so in the off season, like my turkeys have already switched all the way over to off flock.
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And as everybody stops laying and they're going through the molt, everybody will be switched over to off flock.
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And then when laying season picks back up again in late December or so, then they all start switching back over to layer.
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So it's a-
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And like for me- it's an ebb and flow I'll use the, developer on young birds.
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I'll use the conditioner developer on birds that aren't laying.
00:22:18.682 --> 00:22:36.702
And when they start laying, if I still got half a pallet of developer, then I'm going to my, grow out and I'm gonna put me a scoop of eggshells in the other side of the cement block.
00:22:37.622 --> 00:22:46.672
And- That's what, that If they need extra calcium, that's where they're gonna get it until I change it- Yeah to where the extra eggshells is already in the feed.
00:22:47.122 --> 00:22:47.672
Mm-hmm.
00:22:48.692 --> 00:22:57.292
So, and, for those of y'all that haven't seen that before, I actually straight up hijacked this from our friend Gina over at Rather Farms.
00:22:58.042 --> 00:23:00.292
You take a concrete block and set it on the side.
00:23:01.692 --> 00:23:04.882
I mean, for chickens it's practically indestructible.
00:23:05.932 --> 00:23:15.902
You fill up one side with grit, fill up the other side with egg, air, I mean oyster shells, or eggshells and oyster shells, whatever, and when they need it, they get it.
00:23:16.852 --> 00:23:17.352
Mm-hmm.
00:23:17.842 --> 00:23:24.892
When it rains, the rain goes through it and cleans it out, but it doesn't make it spread out and go everywhere.
00:23:25.312 --> 00:23:25.852
Mm-hmm.
00:23:25.962 --> 00:23:27.282
So works pretty good.
00:23:28.052 --> 00:23:28.512
Yeah.
00:23:28.552 --> 00:23:29.842
Yeah, we're terrible salesmen.
00:23:30.842 --> 00:23:32.152
Here's a concrete block.
00:23:33.292 --> 00:23:34.812
So, yep.
00:23:34.882 --> 00:23:44.182
Yeah, I mean, I had a guy look at me funny the other day because he wanted something that I had already priced, and I chose not to carry it.
00:23:44.392 --> 00:23:53.102
And I told him, I said,"Well, the best place around here that I know to go get that is Tractor Supply." And he looked at me kind of funny.
00:23:53.102 --> 00:23:59.632
He's like,"You're gonna send me to Tractor Supply?" I said,"Dude, they have 50-pound bags of lime for five bucks.
00:24:00.292 --> 00:24:01.282
I can't compete with that.
00:24:02.022 --> 00:24:18.942
I'm not gonna try, and I feel wrong charging you$7 to$8 for it here when it's right up the road for a lot less." But- Even though I have insomnia, I still sleep good at night.
00:24:19.942 --> 00:24:33.912
Okay, so basically the moral of the story is just spend the money on quality nutrition, not on gadgets, like cement blocks, and grit feeders.
00:24:34.282 --> 00:24:34.302
Yeah.
00:24:34.362 --> 00:24:35.852
So we, I think-
00:24:35.972 --> 00:24:38.712
Oh, yeah, don't ever buy a grit or oyster shell feeder
00:24:39.582 --> 00:24:48.362
I think from the beginning of our podcast we have harped on spend the money on infrastructure and nutrition.
00:24:48.792 --> 00:24:48.812
Yeah.
00:24:48.822 --> 00:25:00.862
And we've never said,"Hey, go find the, find this$10 feeder because it's fantastic." I mean, we have some that we really like, but at the end of the day, I still use a lot of buckets.
00:25:01.622 --> 00:25:15.212
I'm gonna tell you right now, I got some feeders that cost a lot more than$10, but that's because a 10-foot long piece of gutter is more than$10.
00:25:16.052 --> 00:25:17.012
Mm, there you
00:25:17.942 --> 00:25:17.962
go.
00:25:17.962 --> 00:25:17.992
God.
00:25:18.302 --> 00:25:22.072
And it's really hard to cut a six-inch piece of pipe in half.
00:25:22.632 --> 00:25:23.492
It is really hard.
00:25:23.492 --> 00:25:24.042
We've done it.
00:25:24.832 --> 00:25:25.672
Makes a great feeder, though.
00:25:25.682 --> 00:25:25.732
All right.
00:25:26.072 --> 00:25:35.412
If you need more information on this subject or anything else, we have more information at poultrynerdspodcast.com, so join us over there.