University Place

The Right Chicken for the Right Family

[Twain Lockhart, Poultry Consultant, Nutrena]

Good afternoon everyone, my name is Twain Lockhart. I’m here at the Wisconsin Garden Expo from Wisconsin Public TV to give you a presentation about breed selection –

[slide with graphic with the title Breed Selection: The right bird for the right family with illustration of chickens, roosters and chicks underneath]

– and the right chicken for the right family.

So, I know we kind of distinguished –

[Twain Lockhart]

– how many people are new and how many people already have chickens, and it kind of works for both of you. The reason why is – well, let me back up. If you are unfortunate enough to get stuck in a dentist’s waiting room with me, we’re probably going to chat. Now you dont – may not want to chat, but we’re going to chat, and it’s probably going to go something like this. Hi, do you have chickens?

[laughter]

And you’re going to probably say either yes or no. If you say yes, we’re going to talk about your chickens for the next 20 minutes. If you say no, well, I’m going to spend the next 20 minutes trying to talk you into getting chickens.

There is a third answer that I don’t like. That third answer is No, we don’t have chickens. We did that once. We’ll never do it again. Yes, aw is the right response. Everyone all together, aw.

See, this is how I feed my family is by you guys getting chickens and buying chicken feed. So, that being said, the number one reason why people do this, why they were inoculated to this wonderful hobby was they got the wrong breed of chicken. Saying that all chickens are the same is kind of like saying all dogs are the same. We all know dogs have different characteristics. Chickens all have different characteristics. So, we’re going to run through some great beginner chickens, some that are not so great, and some that are flat-out not for a beginner. So, with that –

[slide with the title Selecting the right breed is important and a list of selection based on purpose or space]

– you can basically break it down into three categories: egg-laying hens, meat chickens and then fancies or bantams.

[Twain Lockhart holding up chicken]

He’s a fancy, he’s a bantam. Does anybody have bantams at home?

We have one. Thank you, sir.

Anybody do meat chickens?

Anybody done them in the past?

Not your bannies though, right? You don’t eat your bannies? No, okay good. You wouldn’t get much. He weighs about 10 ounces, so do the math on that.

[laughter]

Alright, so that being said, your best bet as a beginner is probably to start off with egg-laying breeds.

[return to the Selecting the right breed slide]

Those are the most forgiving, best temperament, and you get –

[Twain Lockhart]

– you know, pretty much a direct result after about six months of age.

We could basically break these laying hens down –

[slide titled the bird breed level system with the levels of chickens based on traits like friendliness, egg laying and show worthiness]

– into what I call easy, moderate and difficult.

[new slide with Level 1 as the title with an illustrated chicken saying, Well shes nice!]

These are the easy ones.

[new slide featuring the Rhode Island Red chicken and its pertinent information including egg color, egg size, egg production, meat production, behavior, brooding, hardiness and maturing]

Anybody have any of these at home?

Pretty good chickens, aren’t they? Yeah, she’s kind of the valedictorian of the backyard chickens. Arguably the easiest, the best. She lays a big brown egg.

[Twain Lockhart]

They’re sexy too, huh? Yeah.

[laughter]

They lay big brown eggs. They have a good temperament. They’re reasonably intelligent. Not all chickens have the same intelligence levels. We’re going to get into that. She’s pretty intelligent, good temperament. She’s probably around 260 eggs a year, somewhere in that neighborhood.

She’s also the state bird of Rhode Island.

[slide featuring the Barred Rock chicken with its pertinent statistics]

How about these, does anybody have these, the Plymouth Barred Rocks? Those are also pretty good chickens. I – I call these quart of vanilla ice cream chickens because you’re traveling down the country roads, everybody has some of these. Grandma has them, everybody’s got them. There’s a reason.

[Twain Lockhart]

They’re great chickens. They’re great beginner’s chickens, but they’re also great for intermediate and even advanced people. She’s another one that’s great disposition, big brown egg, about 250-270 a year. She’s a great beginner’s chicken.

Now neither one of these chickens are what we call broody. Do we all know what broody means? Well, maybe I’ll explain it. That means they want to be mom. All right, now you might think this is a good thing, and for some of you it might be, but for most of you it is not. What happens is, it’s always your favorite chicken. You come out one day, Henrietta’s missing. Oh no, the fox got Henrietta. So, you have the funeral service, and you move on. About three weeks later, Henrietta comes out from underneath the house with a string of baby chicks. Well, I mean, that’s not all bad except half of them are going to be male, at least.

Here’s what normally happens, though. Henrietta’s missing, several months go by, you’re underneath the house working, and you find Henrietta sitting on a clutch of rotten eggs because you don’t have a rooster. Henrietta doesn’t care. She was determined she was going to hatch them. She will sit on those eggs pretty much indefinitely.

So, while she’s doing this, she’s not laying for you. Being a broody breed is generally not a good trait. So, they’ve bred that out of a lot of these. That’s not to say you won’t have the occasional one that will do it, but for the most part, they’re not. These are all generalizations, by the way. It’s my opinion, my experience. I’ve pretty much raised every one of these breeds. I’m very opinionated on the breeds. You may have somebody that disagrees, but I am generalizing.

[slide featuring the Easter Eggers chickens with their pertinent information]

Easter Eggers, anybody have any of these?

Lots of confusion with this breed. I’ll try to clear it up.

[new slide titled How do Easter Egger differ from Araucana and Ameraucana? with the differences noted in bullet points on the slide]

You have an Ameraucana, an Araucana and an Easter Egger. You will see feed stores, even big ones, interchange these names, like they’re all the same chicken. They’re not. They’re related, but they’re not the same chicken.

The Araucana was the original one. They came from South America. If you don’t go to chicken shows, and since nobody raised their hands, I’m assuming nobody’s been to a chicken show, you probably have never seen –

[Twain Lockhart]

– one of these in real life. They’re a little tiny bird. They’re not a lot bigger than this guy. They don’t have a tail. They call them a rumpless bird. And they have these tufts under their chin, and they don’t lay a lotta eggs, but they lay very dark-tinted color eggs. They’re kind of neat, but they’re not that bright a chicken, either. I always thought they were kind of stupid.

[slide titled Araucanas with their pertinent info below in bullet points]

Anyway, somebody decided to cross those with a heavy breed, White Rock typically, and you get the Ameraucana. The Ameraucanas only lay blue eggs. They are considered a – well, they show these. So, you will hear that term thrown around, but it’s a bigger chicken. You’re getting more like 200 eggs a year. An Araucana might lay two dozen. I mean, they just don’t lay that well, and they’re little, tiny eggs. Big Brown – or usually a big blue egg, much better disposition. What you buy at the feed store –

[Twain Lockhart]

– is an Easter Egger. Think of an Ameraucana without a pedigree. Is that where most of you got yours?

Do we have anybody that actually raises Ameraucanas? Do you? Do you show your Ameraucanas? No, okay, then I’ll continue.

The reason why is if you take an Easter Egger to a show and try to show it as an Ameraucana, the Ameraucana people will like, chew your butt out. They’re – theyre a little weird about that, so.

[slide featuring the Orpingtons chicken and its statistics]

Anybody have these? This is a great beginner’s choice chicken. These are great with kids. Kids love these chickens. She’s a great disposition. She is sweet to a fault. I mean, she has no street creds whatsoever. She’ll walk right up to a coyote. [sigh]

[laughter]

My friend had eight of these, and he said that he was in the yard, and he watched a hawk circling, and they didn’t run, and sure enough, the hawk came down, nailed one, ate it in his backyard –

[Twain Lockhart]

– and while all the girls stood there and watched.

[laugher]

And then the next day it came back. It like set up housekeeping. It was going to raise a family on his Orpingtons because they don’t know to run. Even though they watch their sisters get nailed by the hawk, they don’t seem to pick that up. They’re not a stup – well, kind of. I was going to say they’re not a stupid chicken, but if you put a smart chicken in with them, and somebody tells them to run, they will run. I’m sure somebody’s going to be an Orpington breeder and go No, that’s not true. But, eh, generally speaking, they’re – theyre sweet to a fault. They’re real sweet birds. They’re not a great layer. They’re okay. They’re about 200 eggs a year, big brown egg. They’re a big chicken.

Now, everything we’ve covered so far is what we call a dual-purpose chicken. Does anybody know what that means?

Okay, that means that when they get done laying eggs, you can throw them in the Crock-Pot. When they hit what we call henopause, and they’re done laying, you can throw them in the Crock-Pot. Notice I say Crock-Pot, and I said it twice. You try to eat these chickens after they’ve gotten over about six months old, and you have a rubber chicken. It – it’s going to be really tough, so they need to be a stew chicken. Okay, where’s my chicken namers again? Let’s see.

[audience members raise hands]

Okay, now we – we lost a couple. Somebodys embarrassed. Namers, do you name your chickens? Oh, thank you, okay. If you name your chickens, pretty good chance they’ll never see a Crock-Pot. They’ll probably get a funeral, and that’s okay. Keep in mind, they’re still out there eating ticks. They eat like four pounds of feed a month. It’s not going to break the bank, so if they’ve been good girls, and they don’t misbehave. Now, your chickens can misbehave. My wife names her chickens. Those are her girls. Those are her babies. If she catches one eating an egg, it’s over. That’s a Crock-Pot offense right on the spot.

[laughter]

So, if they don’t do that, they get to die of old age. And she claims, my lovely wife, claims that they’re – theyre mentors to the other chickens. I don’t know that I buy that. They’re really mean to the rooster. They have no use for him anymore, and they’re kind of grumpy, but they – they’re out there. I mean, they eat ticks and stuff. Anyway, I digress, and I do that a lot.
Anybody have these?

[slide featuring the Australorp chicken and its vital statistics]

They – they – these are a pretty good chicken. Anybody know what the record they hold? Okay, they hold the world record for most consecutive days laying eggs. It’s like 366, I believe. Now don’t be fooled by that. The reason I’m telling you this is –

[Twain Lockhart]

– you may read about this on the internet, and you may think she’s the best layer. She’s not. Shes not quite as good as the Rhode Island Red or the Barred Rock, but she’s a good chicken. She’s probably about 250 eggs a year, big brown eggs, reasonably intelligent, good temperament, good beginner’s chicken.

[slide featuring the Wyandottes chicken and its statistics]

Anybody have Wyandottes? Pretty good chickens. I like Wyandottes. They’re really colorful. They come in gold and silver. I think there’s a couple of new colors as well, but the main ones are gold and silver. That’s a silver. She’s an okay layer. I would even say good. She’s about 200 eggs a year. They add some color to the flock. By the way, if you get them all at the same time as baby chicks –

[Twain Lockhart]

– they can all be raised as sisters. They grow up, they get along. You’re going to have your alpha hen and everything, but they -they get along. You don’t have to just stick with one breed.

[slide titled Sexlink Breeds: What Breed is it? and the explanation of sexlink breeds in bullet points below]

Anybody have Sexlinks? Nobody, oh good. Of – of everything we’ve shown so far, this is probably my favorite for a beginner. They – they’re pretty good chickens, right, sir? Yeah, lay a lotta eggs. They’re a smart chicken. Let’s talk a little bit about inbreeding. Now, you – your chicken –

[Twain Lockhart]

– breeders will call it line breeding, but that’s a nice way of saying like uncle daddy. They – theyre – they’re inbreeding, okay?

[laughter]

So, when – and I know I’m going to have some chicken breeders get mad at me. I’m kidding, guys. But when you inbreed chickens, one of the things that goes is the brains and then the disposition and the immune system, so you end up with this stupid, mean chicken that’s sick all the time. Not that great a combination, and that really isn’t. I’m being extreme there.

The Sexlink is two different gene pools. So, it’s a cross, you’re getting the best of both worlds. Is your – do you have exclusively Sexlink, sir, or do you just have one or two? Okay, are those your top – are those your top chickens, like your alpha chickens? No, okay. Okay. I was asking him if they’re the alpha chickens because typically because they’re smarter chickens, they end up being the boss chickens. They’re just smart chickens. They have a great immune system. We’re up around 300 eggs a year on these guys.

Anybody know why they call them Sexlinks? There’s a reason. They’re hybrids, and when they hatch, the roosters are one set – are one color, the hens are another color. So, an untrained eye can look at these chickens and tell you the – the gender. Normally, they have to pay somebody that sexes these chickens at the hatchery, and they do what they call vent sexing.

So, let’s see if I can demonstrate. They flip the baby chick. These are day-old chicks. They flip them on their back, and they give them a little squeeze, and a little jet of poop comes out of the vent. Now birds have a vent instead of a rectum, so they pass waste and eggs out of the same opening. They give them a little squeeze, a little jet of poop comes out, and they look at the shape of the vent, and they can tell if it’s male or female. No, I don’t know how to do it. They go to school for six months, and they do a two-year apprenticeship to learn how to do that. There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe went to Murray McMurray, and that was right on the money.

Okay now, before you sign your kids – before you laugh at them, they make about six figures a year. They make a lotta money. Before you sign your kids up to go do this, stop and think about their dinner-table conversation. It wouldn’t change much from Monday to Friday-

[laughter]

– you know, looking at chicken butts all day. So, but that’s what they do. So, on a Sexlink, they don’t have to pay. They get paid by the chick, typically. They don’t have to pay somebody to sex them. So Sexlinks tend to be a little less expensive. The odds of you getting a rooster are pretty slim.

Now if you show chickens, there can be a negative because a lot of the shows will not let you show Sexlinks because they are a crossbreed. But they’re kind of easing that up a little bit. They’re great chickens. They come in different colors. There’s black and red and there’s different types, there’s different breeds, I should say, within that. There’s Cinnamon Queens, there’s I.S.A. Browns, there’s Gold Comets.

[slide featuring the Gold Comet chicken and its pertinent stats]

There’s the Gold Comet. They kind of look like a Rhode Island Red, but they’re not. There’s a Black Sexlink. They’re good breeds. I – I really like the Sexlinks.

[new slide with the title Level 2 with an illustrated chicken saying, I think I like her!]

Now these are listed kind of as moderate difficulty mostly because of the –

[Twain Lockhart]

– they’re harder to find, okay? They’re not as readily available, but they’re still good chickens to – to start off with.

[slide featuring the Buckeye chicken and its statisics]

Anybody have a Buckeye? Anybody familiar with those? Oh, wow, I’ve been doing some seminars, and this is like my 10th seminar this year –

[Twain Lockhart]

– you’re the first person to have a Buckeye. Do you like your Buckeyes? Yeah. Okay, she’s sweet unless she gets upset. That sounds like a woman, but okay.

[audience laughing]

Theyre – theyre – they’re a good beginners chicken. They’re just not that common.

[return to the slide of the Buckeye chicken]

Anybody – do you know what’s unique about your Buckeye? Okay, they got them with a bunch of Rhode Island Reds, and they found out she was a Buckeye. What’s unique about the Buckeye is that’s the only breed of chicken that was developed by a woman. So –

[Twain Lockhart]

– I’m sure there’s some jokes there, but we’re just going to keep going. She lays a big brown egg. She’s got a good temperament. She’s about 260 eggs a year. She’s a good layer, a good cold hardy breed.

[slide featuring the Delaware chicken with its statistics]

Anybody have Delawares?

How many eggs will this one lay, anybody?

Yeah, that’s a rooster, he won’t lay any.

[laughter]

They’re kind of an unsung chicken. The Delaware –

[Twain Lockhart]

– is a much better breed than we give it credit for. They lay, I want to say, the largest egg. It seems like I read that somewhere. They lay a huge brown egg. They’re about 200 eggs a year, great temperament, cold hardy, reasonably intelligent. Not all the hatcheries carry them, but if they do, get a couple. You’ll be very happy with these. I – I really like these birds.

[slide featuring the Speckled Sussex chicken]

Anybody have Sussexes? All right. The Sussex, she’s a good layer, not a great one. She’s about 200 eggs a year. They’re very pretty.

[Twain Lockhart]

They add some color to the flock. I like them. I – I like Sussex.

[slide featuring the Naked Neck/Turkin chicken with its pertinent statistics listed]

How about the Turkin? Anybody have Turkins? Do you like your Turkins?

[audience member, speaking underneath the slide]

We love our Turkins!

[Twain Lockhart, speaking underneath the slide]

They’re great chickens. You gotta get over the buzzard neck, and if you can get over the buzzard neck, they’re – theyre another hybrid. And – and its – they’re just really – theyre smart – theyre smart chickens, aren’t they? And they lay a lotta eggs.

[Twain Lockhart]

Yeah, they’re a great chicken. You just got to get over the aesthetics of it there, you know. And no, they’re not actually a turkey and a chicken cross. I like them though. They – they’re a good chicken. Not that easy to find, though.

[slide featuring Maran chicken and its pertinent statistics]

How about the Marans? We have any Maran people? No? Okay.

The Maran is a French chicken. They come in several colors. They are known for laying a very dark color egg.

[Twain Lockhart]

That’s kind of what the Maran is known for. Maran breeders are still more interested in breeding for shell color than they are for production, so you might get 80 or 100 eggs a year out of her. I mean, she’s not a great layer, but the eggs are really cool. They’re almost like a chocolate egg, they’re so dark. And they kind of put the value on the birds by how dark an egg they lay. So, it – it’s a little different. In another 10 years, I would imagine they’ll probably have these where they’re up producing a lot more eggs. Otherwise, they’re a great chicken, great disposition, just not a super great layer. I tell people get one, and – and just so when you sell your eggs to your neighbor you can put one of those chocolate eggs in there, and then your neighbors will keep coming back because the kids love that.

[slide titled Egg color and breed with a photo of 12 different eggs of differing color in a circle]

Over there on the left, you can see that’s – thats like a Maran egg.

[Twain Lockhart]

They’re really a dark color, and actually I’ve seen Maran eggs that are darker than that.

[slide with the title OMG! Mini chickens!]

Okay, where’s my bantam guy? What kind of bantams do you have, sir? These – think of bantams, think of ponies of the chicken world.

[Twain Lockhart]

Okay, they’re miniatures, all right. They – almost every breed we’ve covered, there’s a bantam version, except maybe the Sexlinks. So, they’re a little guy. Now, this is good and bad. I mean, he’s a bantam.

[holds up chicken in his hand]

They’re little, they’re cute, kind of ends there. This is sort of one of the ones that I have trouble with that inoculate people from the hobby because they don’t do their research, they think a chicken this size is going to lay great big eggs and a whole bunch of them. They don’t do really well in the wintertime in – in the Midwest either. They kind of need to have heat on them. Not everybody agrees with that, but they don’t do as well in the cold.

[slide tilted What are bantams? and a bulleted list below describing the traits of bantams]

But in the show world, there’s more bantams than there is standard-sized chickens. The kids love to show bantams, but they’re not real practical. That’s kind of where I’m going with this. I mean, you wouldn’t get two McNuggets out of this guy, and the eggs are little.

[Twain Lockhart]

Oh, by the way, we talked about broody. Very, very broody as a rule. Do you always want to hatch everything they lay? Yes –

[slide titled Bantams with the pertinent statistics about bantams below]

– that’s just kind of what they do. They’re good for kids if they’re in 4-H. Do we have any 4-H age kids in here? Anybody’s kids in 4-H? Poultry is the number one growing aspect of – of livestock –

[Twain Lockhart]

– in poultry in 4-H.

[slide featuring Silkies chickens along with their vital statistics]

Okay, let’s go back to the dentist’s office. [sigh] Number one on the hit list. I have been accused of hating Silkies. I don’t hate Silkies –

[Twain Lockhart]

– but this is kind of number one that gets people turned off. Anybody have Silkies? Wow, we have a smart group.

Okay. Silkies are little and they’re cute, and –

[return to the Silkies slide]

– it kind of really ends there. They look like a cotton ball with legs. They don’t lay a lotta eggs. Whatever they lay, they want to hatch. They’re not too bright. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say they’re – naw, I’m not going to say that because they’re filming this, and who knows. I don’t want to upset some Silkie people, but they’re not known for being a real smart chicken.

[Twain Lockhart]

Unfortunately, the Silkie has kind of been inbred in the last 30 years or so, and remember what we talked about with inbreeding, what happens. So, they’re just not real predator safe. They’re not real cold hardy. Now, now that I’ve thrown rocks at the Silkie, what’s kinda cool about em, how long have they been around? Anybody venture a guess? Marco Polo wrote about them, so like the 1200s. They’ve been around a long time.

Okay, my poor wife, when we go to the movies – we’ve established I’m kind of strange – when we go to the movies, and we’re watching like a period piece, a cowboy movie or something, and the chickens trot across the, you know, in the background, if it’s the wrong chicken, I’ll say something.

[laughter]

Before I can even open my mouth, she’ll say, Shut up, nobody cares.

[laughter]

[sigh] So, that being said, the new Conan movie that came out a couple of years ago, Conan had Silkies. So, I started to say, Wrong, and then it dawned on me those might of been the right chickens, actually.

[laughter]

But you know Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, he’s drunk and he wakes up, and the chickens are looking at him. Those were Gold Comets, and those are like, from I wanna say, the middle of the 1900s. I mean, they’re only off by like 300 years or so. Imagine watching a Civil War movie and they’re carrying M-16s. I mean that’s kind of how blatant this was. But, unfortunately, I’m the only one that cares. There’s like four people in the U. S. that notice this, so, and – and it irritates her because you know, Wrong chickens! Nobody cares.

[laughter]

[slide featuring the Sizzle chicken]

Anybody have Sizzles? This is a Frizzle and a Silkie cross. It’s also little and cute. It kind of ends there.

[slide featuring Frizzle chickens]

There’s the Frizzle.

[laughter]

Again, little, cute, kind of the trifecta of stupid chickens. They’re not so much stupid as they’re not super hardy, and they’re not going to lay like you want them to. They’re not going to produce like you want them to. It’s actually a genetic mutation. The feathers came in upside down –

[Twain Lockhart]

– and so, somebody thought this was cool, and they bred for it. So, anyway, a lot of this stuff goes back to who was the first crazy chicken lady? Anybody know?

There’s a distinct person that kind of changed chickens as we know it. Nobody? Queen Victoria. In the 1840s, one of her ship captains came back and gave her a trio, well, it was more than a trio, it was like six chickens. They were Cochins. She so fell in love with them it became a craze in England, which came over the pond to the U.S. and she immediately banned cock fighting. So, when she did this, all the English gentlemen that were fighting their chickens, turned their attention to showing chickens. And so, a lot of these weird breeds of chickens that we have now, and a lot of your laying hens kind of came out of that Victorian era because they were no longer sporting chickens, they put their efforts into other things. So, just a little bit of useless trivia.

[slide featuring Polish chickens]

Anybody have these? When you get started with chickens, and you start down the road with the quart of vanilla ice creams, you start getting the hatchery catalogs in the mail. This is a very terrifying time of year for me, when my wife is on the couch thumb – thumbing through these, and you think, You know what, these are really cool. Let’s get some of these.

[Twain Lockhart]

All right, now, in – in a really distinct effort not to make an ethnic joke here, they are kind of dumb, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re Polish, all right? It has to do with that crest on their head, and they can’t see.

[return to the Polish chicken slide]

They don’t see very well, so predators pick em off. They’re not a great layer to begin with. They’re a novelty. So, if you get these, get – just do these by themselves or the other chickens –

[Twain Lockhart]

– will beat up on them.

[slide with the title Level 3 with an illustrated chicken saying, Shes a little crazy.]

All right, you ever heard the saying that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous? So, this is another one I run into at the dentist’s office. Well, we decided to do chickens.

[Twain Lockhart]

You know, my wife said we wanted them. I said we didn’t want them. And we compromised, and we got chickens.

[laughter]

So, I said, If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. So, I Googled what chicken lays the most eggs.

[slide featuring the Leghorns chicken with its pertinent statistics]

There she is.

Any – Anybody have Leghorns? Yeah. Are yours crazy? Yeah, they’re horrible, yes. They’re egg-laying machines. It’s a little scrawny white chicken –

[Twain Lockhart]

– that lays about 300 eggs a year. You will not believe how big an egg comes out of these little scrawny birds, okay? They’re not a stupid chicken. They do pretty well if you free range them, but they’re not pets. They’re very – almost like a wild chicken, and where this comes into play is you’ve got these chickens that you’ve raised from day one, and every day you go to feed them, it’s like first contact. They’ve never seen a human before.

[laughter]

They’re flying all over the coop and buzzing around, and you get tired of that pretty quick. That’s one of the things people say to me. You love your chickens, but we had some, and they were really wild and crazy. Oh, you had Leghorns, didn’t you?

Now, I’ve had people that will tell me their Leghorns are wonderful. You can tame anything down. These are just going to create a lot more work taming them down than everything else we’ve covered, so. But they lay a lot of eggs.

[slide with an illustration of a cooked chicken next to an illustrated chicken saying, Looks tasty!]

Getting into meat chickens. There’s nothing graphic. Okay, we talked about intelligence levels on chickens.

[slide featuring Cornish Cross chickens along with their statistics]

These guys are absolutely on the bottom, dumber than a bag of hammers. I’m not afraid to say that. Nobody’s going to disagree with me. They don’t have much of a personality, and what they have is generally not all that good. About 99% of what you eat in the market –

[Twain Lockhart]

– or you go to K.F.C. or Popeye’s or whatever, this is what you’re eating. You’re eating a Cornish Cross. They are – there’s nothing nefarious going on here, guys. It’s 60-plus years of genetic – selective genetics. It’s not a G.M.O. thing. It’s not steroids, anything like that, but they grow crazy fast. 56 days, eight weeks, from beginning to end, from hatch to freezer, and that will give you about a five- to six-pound dressed bird. They’re really, really, efficient.

If you’re thinking about doing these, I recommend you master laying hens for a year or two before you jump into the meat birds. Keep these separate from your other chickens. They’re way too docile. The other chickens will dominate them, probably kill them. They just don’t do well with other chickens. You feed these different.

The beauty of chickens is they self-regulate. You stop and you think about it guys, you really don’t see fat chickens. Every other species, including us, you will. Chickens self-regulate pretty well. They eat what they need, and they stop. Not so with these guys. You have to restrict their diet, or they will eat themselves to death. They have heart attacks. So, they’re just a little different. Do you want me to go into more depth on the meat chickens or – Okay.

Now, you will always run into somebody that’s going to tell you When you buy your baby chicks, just get straight run and eat the roosters. All right, well let’s talk about that a little bit. Straight run means just how they come out of the hatchery, just out of the incubator. It’s about 55% male.

[return to the Cornish Cross chicken slide]

Well just eat the roosters. You’re saving 50 cents a chick. Well let’s talk about this. These guys are eight weeks beginning to end. On something like, let’s pick a dual purpose, how about a Rhode Island Red, you’re looking at more like 26 weeks to get that chicken big enough to eat. You’re not saving anything. You’re going to burn through, that 50 cents that you saved per chick, you’re going to burn through all that feed really quick.

[Twain Lockhart]

50 cents, that’s nothing. So, you’re better off to buy pullets and get the occasional rooster as opposed to getting half roosters. If you want to do meat chickens, do meat chickens. That’s what these guys are.

If you’re going to do these, think about it, maybe start slowly. I hear people all the time go, Well honey, they’re only two bucks, so let’s get 100 of them. Well, think about fruit that all comes ripe at the same time, because after about eight weeks, you’re on borrowed time. 10 weeks is okay. After that, you’re going to really start seeing leg problems and heart attacks and all sorts of things. So, you kind of have to do them all at the same time. You can stagger it some. You can start at six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks, but 100 chickens.

Whos ever – has anyone here ever butchered like 50 chickens in one day without a chicken plucker? It’s a lotta work. What was the last thing you wanted to have for dinner that night? Chicken, yeah. So, it’s a lot of work, so you may want to start slowly and work up to getting a whole bunch of them as opposed to buying a whole bunch because it – it’ll inoculate you. You’ll be like, Oh, yeah, we did that, we’ll never do it again. And that’s not what I want to hear because guess what? They do taste a lot better, don’t they, when you raise them yourself.

For one thing, you’re not pumping them full of saline and stuff when you process them like they do commercially. They just taste a lot better.

[slide featuring Red Rangers chickens with their vital statistics]

There’s another one out there that’s not as common. It’s called a Red Ranger. The Red Ranger is more of a free ranging. Your Cornish Crosses, I mean literally, they lay around the food dish. They don’t get up, they don’t move. They won’t run from a predator. These guys will. You can mix these with your other chickens.

You don’t have to restrict the diet on them, but they’re more like 12 weeks as opposed to eight, and it’s going to be mostly dark meat.

[Twain Lockhart]

Now last year, at CLUCK the Chicken Store, we did a taste test. We did a farm-to-fork experiment. I had some friends raise 10 of these, 10 of those, and then we bought 10 store-bought chickens. We had 65 people show up. We had a local chef who prepared them, and he went to great pains of cooking them all exactly the same way. They were all seasoned and cooked exactly the same way. Then we did a blind taste test. What we found was, first off, nobody, zero out of 65 people picked the store-bought chickens. Surprisingly –

[return to the Red Rangers chicken slide]

– most people, about 52 out of the 65, picked these, which I – that kind of surprised me. The – the striking thing for me is that nobody picked the store-bought chickens.

[Twain Lockhart]

None, not even one person, so they do taste a lot better. Basically, I think this is about all I’ve got. I want to thank everybody for their attention.

Thank you everyone.

[applause]