A Biologist on Chicken Keeping

[00:00:03] You're listening to PBN. Your path back to stability. I guess the best place to start is how you got wrapped up in the world of chicken keeping, you know, in all facets.

[00:00:28] That's a good question. Well, actually, I always loved animals already when I was a small child. And later I wanted to study as a, you know, to become a veterinarian. That didn't work out. I was bored a little quick. And if you become a veterinarian, then also some things are, some of the work you do is quite repetitive. And I thought, well, let's explore other options. So I went to study animal sciences and that's how I kind of rolled into it.

[00:00:58] Animal sciences. Poultry farming. Yeah. Is animal science is pretty broad or they're like, like subcategories you can drill down into and that's how you wind up in chicken world? Yeah, it's mostly it's on livestock. So poultry, swine, cattle. Got it. It's not like cats and dogs. So it is agricultural. But then the topics you can choose are genetics, feed, management, all kinds of things, behavior.

[00:01:30] And I chose the feed and the physiology direction. And what was that like? What did you think about with the feed? How did the feed come up? Because that's an interesting one. If you hadn't, if you hadn't already had an interest, was it more of like the nutrition and improving nutrition, that kind of thing? To be honest, I found it interesting, but it was also kind of a practical choice because I thought, well, it's interesting. But there's also at that time quite a lot of work in it.

[00:01:57] And genetics and behavior were not my cup of tea. So it was either physiology or feed. And then, yeah, there are a multitude of feed companies you can work for. So I thought, well, it's kind of a practical choice. If it doesn't matter to me, I like both. Man, I like that. Somebody in college who was thinking about working after college. I don't see that much in America. Yeah, personally, at some point, I thought I'm very happy if school is over, you know? Yeah. You're like 24. I was 24.

[00:02:26] At some point, I was done. I just wanted to do something. So that was the starting point for chickens. And then was it getting into the industry and all that kind of stuff that made you sort of develop a passion for it? Yes. I always had a passion for agriculture in general. A lot of my family members also have farms. Oh, okay.

[00:02:53] I live in a very rural area. Yeah. Thanks. No problem. So I have affinity with that. And then, yeah, for me, it didn't really matter. It was either poultry or cattle that I liked. Swine, little, but not that much. Yeah. And I kind of rolled into poultry because I also like traveling. And, you know, poultry is present in all countries worldwide. So, yeah, that was a bit of the reasoning behind.

[00:03:24] I like it. I like it. This is the reason we all get to eat the way we get to eat, right? Yeah. If not for agriculture, it'll be back to, you know, borderline starvation for the human race most of the time. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, at some point, if you make a choice, you also, in my case, develop a big passion for it as well. That's a good thing. There's a big difference.

[00:03:49] I don't know what service is like in Europe right now, but it's a very clear distinction who has developed a passion for what they do and who has not. And it's pretty rough sometimes. You run into certain people with certain jobs and they are not happy to be there. So that's good. That's good to hear. You know, it's always better to deal with someone who's into what they're doing. Yeah. And in my case, I like animals, but I also like people maybe even more. And the things you can do for farms, sometimes family farms. Yeah.

[00:04:19] It's just a great feeling. So what are some of the things that you see maybe trend related or I want to say recipe related or something in animal feed that are happening right now? Sustainability is a big thing. CO2 reduction, environmental impact, antibiotic reduction. Reduction. Okay. Yeah. I don't know by, I don't know the situation in the US.

[00:04:48] I don't think antibiotics are allowed in feed. You can only probably get them on veterinary subscription. I don't know exactly. But in Europe, it's like that. Because you want to make sure that humans do not get resistance to antibiotics. Yeah, through the food, right. Yeah, exactly. So when you're talking about sustainability, that's the types of crops that are going into the feed? More sustainable growing practices, that kind of thing? For example, CO2 reduction is a big thing.

[00:05:18] But also, yeah, even other things like nitrogen, phosphorus. Yeah, all those things end up in the environment. And by feeding the animals well, we can, yeah, if you control the input, you can control the output. So, yeah, that is what we're working on quite a lot. And it goes pretty far into measuring the CO2 that goes in and out the poultry houses, professional farms.

[00:05:47] How often does something like that change in terms of feed recipe? Like, you've got this recipe that's making money. It's doing what you want a product to do. Do you guys evaluate like every year and say, well, we're going to change this and tweak this? Or don't get scared. But sometimes even weekly. Otherwise, your feed prices would go crazy. Because people that are not into feed, they think that if you keep the recipe the same, everything will stay the same. But that's not true.

[00:06:17] Because your protein level in your corn will vary. Every batch you get will have different, maybe slight differences. Wow. You have seasonal changes. So, if you keep the recipe the same, your nutrients will fluctuate quite a lot. So, we fix the nutrients. So, we say we want to have this much protein down to the 22 amino acids almost that are consisting of protein. Sure. We tweak it completely. And then you have on the one side the nutrients in the feed.

[00:06:45] And on the other side, you do have ranges of ingredients that you do want in the feed. Right. Ingredients that you do not want. But if it's wheat or corn, for me, there can be fluctuation. That doesn't matter for the bird. We do a lot of research on it. Wow. So, even though we go and we pick up that same bag and the pellet looks the same or the crumble looks the same, that thing is getting tweaked on a regular basis because of market price and nutrition and all that kind of stuff.

[00:07:14] And it's a good thing that it gets tweaked. Sure. Yeah. People are very anxious about it. But it's actually a really good thing. No, I think it makes sense. Well, look, I mean, I've kept chickens for almost a decade. So, I have a lot of confidence in the feed companies because that's what I feed my chickens. So, if they were doing something crazy, I'd be losing them all the time. I mean, I'd lose them, but it's not because of that. It's because there's other hungry animals around that want them more than I want them.

[00:07:44] Yeah, exactly. Or diseases or whatever. Yeah. There's so many things that can go wrong. So, I've only lost a really very few to diseases. And I don't even know how many were diseases. We have some poisonous snakes in the area. And when I look back on those birds that died pretty rapidly of what I thought was illness, I didn't really feel around their bodies a whole lot. I'm wondering if maybe they didn't run into a copperhead and get bit. I started to think about that. So, I don't know.

[00:08:14] We don't see a disease very often. I guess that's a testament, you know. Along with the feed, though, our chickens, like, they're out back right now kicking around, kicking up dirt. That's a very good sign. Eating bugs and eating grasses, that kind of stuff. And also, mature laying hens, they're quite resistant. They can handle quite a lot of stress in general before they already show the signs.

[00:08:38] I think it's like nature that, you know, the mother-type animals, they will produce offspring. And in laying hens case, eggs anyway. You can do quite a lot also in swine. Like, a mother pig can be totally skinny, but still produce offspring. It's crazy. It's biology, like, determined on reproducing, no matter the cost. Well, we're similar, right? Yeah, sometimes, yes.

[00:09:09] There were babies born in the concentration camps. That's amazing to think about. Exactly. Yeah, it's a resilient thing. Yeah, so feed, one of the things about feed, when we first started talking, that really blew my mind, was the effects of, in the prepping world, like our audience, when the wars started with Russia and Ukraine,

[00:09:31] we were really up in arms and alarmed about the breadbasket of Europe taking a hit and how it would affect food security. And then, you know, being so far away from the problem and having our own breadbasket, I kind of like forgot about it. And you had mentioned that you guys have seen price increases in various things because of that.

[00:09:54] Yeah, it had a huge effect because Ukraine is actually exporting quite a lot of grains to Eastern Europe and also Africa even by sea transport. And by the time the war happened, not only, yeah, between Russia and Ukraine, not only the energy prices went crazy, but also grain supplies in Europe and Africa really dried up. Or not dried up, but there were really huge price effects.

[00:10:21] At some point, the price quadrupled in some regions in Africa. It was really crazy. Yeah. And in Ukraine itself, the opposite thing happened. And we, yeah, it's never been that cheap. Not for a good reason, but yeah. Oh, so in Ukraine, so in Ukraine, since they're hanging on to the grains rather than exporting them, they got a ton. Yeah, it's a supply-the-on thing. And there is so much trade going on between countries that if something like that happens

[00:10:49] and it's an exporting country or an importing country, then all the other countries, yeah, they suffer as well. And I think even people, not only animals, but people in Africa actually suffer because in Europe, you know, you can pay for it. So you do it. But in Africa, maybe they can't pay for it. Maybe people have nothing for a while. Yeah, that's kind of what we were worried about was how far-reaching the effects of the lack of grains would go

[00:11:16] and if, you know, human life would be affected by it. But, yeah, but it's weird. It was just you bringing that up and the price of the raw ingredients to go into the feed raised that whole thing in my head about, oh, this has consequences that, you know, I just wasn't thinking about because my feed price stays the same, you know. But, yeah, that's a big one.

[00:11:44] And so being in chicken feed as you're in it, you probably are seeing different things. I know the avian flu is happening and taking its toll in Europe as well as America. One of the biggest stories here in our country is the price of eggs right now. It's really out of control. And people don't know how long it's going to be out of control for. Are you guys experiencing similar things with the avian flu, similar challenges?

[00:12:14] Yes, that's true. It's the same. I have to say that I don't know out of the top of my head the egg prices in all the European countries. It has went a bit crazy, but it's more related, I think, to feed prices. I think the AI, not artificial intelligence, but the avian influenza, has not changed the last year. The threat and the pressure is the same.

[00:13:07] Okay. Proposed solution beyond the mass slaughter? Well, vaccination is an option. Yeah. Yeah, you have several options, I think, in prevention in general. What do you think? What do you think is the best? Is it good to just go in there and wipe them out? Or do you think vaccination makes sense? I think advantage.

[00:13:33] But I think, yeah, I would say the best opportunity is just to rely on research. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the same with COVID. Something like that happens and quickly vaccines are developed and then we handle the situation. That's the only way to handle it. Yeah, that's... It will be interesting to see going forward how that... Because that just seems like such a crazy response, right? Everything gets killed.

[00:14:02] And then start over. It's got to be hell on the farmers. The farmers have to just be like, this is crazy. I can't do this. On the other hand, if you are in a location as a farmer where there are very much, yeah, a lot of other farms, you don't call and they all get it. And there are people living in this area as well. That's maybe even worse. So... Oh, good point. Yeah. It's like two evils. You choose the lesser one. And it's also, I think, depending on the... Yeah.

[00:14:28] First of all, you don't want a too high concentration of poultry farms in a certain region at all. Or close to a nature zone where there is a lot of migrating birds. That's the first thing you shouldn't do. But then, yeah, if it is like that and there are a lot of poultry farms located in a certain area and one gets it, then, yeah, sorry. But then this is the best opportunity to save at least the rest. So if you go show up to a...

[00:14:56] Have precautions changed for humans at all? If you go show up to a farm, are you doing anything different than you've done in years past in terms of masking? And I know you guys probably cover your shoes and wear suits and stuff if you visit and go in to see the birds. Yeah, this sounds totally stupid. But we have, like, suits, boots, mouthcaps and everything. But not... Yeah. I'm worried about my own disease. But if I infect a poultry farm myself, that's not what you want to do.

[00:15:24] So I'm more worried about the birds than about me. Oh, I get it. Well, that's fair. That's a good thing. But it's not good for your respiratory system anyway, right? To breathe in. Like, just a healthy bird farm, particularly those indoor ones, it's not healthy to breathe that stuff in, right? Well, for me, I am a really good... Yeah. In general, you have to have good ventilation in a commercial big poultry farm. Yeah. Because it's often closed housing.

[00:15:54] There's a lot of pressure, but also there should be really good ventilation. And we have actually, in our company, also people are specialized in that. If you have good ventilation, you have good air quality because then your birds will do better. Yeah, it makes sense. In my case, I have a really sensitive respiratory system. I start coughing right away as soon as there is a small particle in the air. So if I walk in and I start coughing, I don't need any equipment. I can say right away that it's not good.

[00:16:23] If the ammonia or dust level is too high, then I will start and I will not stop. Oh, no. Oh, God. Well, but that's a good sign, I guess. Plus, it probably keeps you honest in terms of bringing all your gear, your masks and everything that you need. Yeah. And in general, in the farms where I do visit, in general, the air quality is actually quite good. Because if it's not, then you're simply losing production. You're losing money, basically.

[00:16:52] You have to take care of your animals really well. Otherwise, you lose money. Sure. As a farmer. And often farmers also really care about their birds, but that's more the case for family-owned farms than for huge corporations. Yeah, definitely. I mean, so with flus and with government restrictions and with even the price of feed,

[00:17:18] do you think we're in a situation where keeping chickens is going to be something that we do more of on the personal level and in the agricultural level? Do you think the problems aren't big enough that it'll change? Or how do you see the future of poultry keeping both from a civilian standpoint and then also from people who do it for a living, farming?

[00:17:44] I think overall, poultry has the biggest chance of all the farm animals of a future. Backyard, I'm not so sure because the regulations that governments and local municipals. Yeah, different everywhere. Yeah, but they're quite strict and it's getting worse and worse. It's the same with building houses. You have all kinds of rules where you can put your coop and how far it should be from your neighbor. How many chickens you can have.

[00:18:12] You cannot have a rooster if you live in a small town because of the noise. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so for backyard people, I don't know. I think it's more up to those kind of regulations. And for big farms, I think that in general, a lot of people are moving from eating meat to being vegetarians to being vegan. So that's risk number one.

[00:18:33] But on the other side, poultry is the most, I don't know if you noticed, but poultry is the most efficient farm animal there is. Because what we call feed conversion ratio means the amount of kgs of feed you need for one kg of meat or eggs. Yeah. That number is actually the lowest. I believe that. Yeah, it's like 1.6 for broilers and maybe 2 for layers.

[00:18:59] But for swine and for cattle, the lumber is way higher. Wow. And you have to keep them for a much longer time before they start producing anything. Because it's a bigger animal. It takes up more space. I do think that, and we already see it, that a lot of the production sometimes is moving from cattle, swine, more to poultry. Unfortunately, also for my, at least for my profession, unfortunately, also from poultry to vegetarian to vegan.

[00:19:30] Yeah, those are the movements that are going on. Well, then you guys could just sell feed directly to the people. Yeah, exactly. Only one other thing that you may or may not know is that actually animals are fed, not, okay, grains. Those are also ingredients for human food industry. But for example, soybean meal, which is a big component of animal feed as well, which supplies protein.

[00:19:55] It's actually a byproduct of the food industry that cannot be used by humans. So it's also a way of efficiently getting rid of your human food byproducts. Wow. But if that would collapse, we may also need to pay extra money for soybean oil. Oh, I see. Because the big companies crushing the soybeans and extracting the oil cannot get quite a lot of money for their byproducts anymore. Ah.

[00:20:24] Yeah, that is weird, isn't it? Those little interlinking networks that we don't know exist, but they're back, they're working hard all the time. Yeah, I think maybe the grains, you know, that's, yes, that's human food, but all the other stuff is mostly not. So what kind of things locally and globally do you think are like the biggest effectors of food, not food, but grain price?

[00:20:53] And then the, you know, and then the follow through on animal feed prices, like what really makes animal feed prices go up that you've seen? Ooh. I think you have to first look at is your country self-sufficient, yes or no? Let's take the US. I'm not a, I'm from Europe, so I have less experience in the US, but I think you're self-sufficient, right? On grains, for sure. Yeah. Nobody's self, or almost nobody's self-sufficient for protein meals, but for grains, yes.

[00:21:21] So that's a big plus because then you're not impacted by any geopolitical stuff. Right. But the weather is a big thing. Definitely. Economic conditions. So if you have, if it has to go over land, then fuel prices and stuff like that, yeah, do matter. So still you're, you may be affected by, yeah, by other countries, geopolitics or big economical recessions or things like that.

[00:21:47] And if your country is importing, yeah, then you have heaps, heaps of affecting factors. Right. Yeah. Then there's trade and all that kind of stuff, I guess, get wrapped into it, right? Yeah. So that's quite, yeah, it's quite severe. But for example, the weather has a really huge impact. Yeah, it has a huge impact. Yeah, we see it. We get a lot of floods in central part of the country.

[00:22:13] And, you know, we get, we see the videos of cornfields underwater and that kind of stuff. It's, yeah, it's scary because you never know what the full extent of that is and what it's going to mean to the price of bread and so on.

[00:22:27] But what do you, do you think that the efficiency of the chicken, the taste of the chicken, the fact that a chicken produces an egg every day mostly is the reason that it's got to be the most popular agricultural bird, if not animal all over the world, right? Yeah. For my company, I work for an international company as a poultry expert and also nutritionist.

[00:22:56] So I've made recipes for millions of chickens throughout my career, maybe even billions. And I'm not exaggerating. Wow. So it's really a lot of birds. But then, yeah, still our revenue is 50% poultry. Wow. 50%. 50%. Wow. And the rest is swine, ruminants, aqua. Yeah. If you could do it without the overhead.

[00:23:26] Okay, here's a question. If you could do it without profits in mind, what would a feed mix look like? Like the ultimate feed mix? If you had to produce a recipe, you know, and you didn't have to worry about like, you know, costs whatsoever. You just, I want to give them the best thing I can. Cool. I would say still the same as the recipes that I make on a day-to-day basis because we formulate on feed conversion ratio.

[00:23:55] So we don't just look at the feed price per kg. We look at lowering the feed price per kg of eggs or per kg of meat. Oh, okay. So the production really counts because for farmers, yeah, that's a really big factor they look at. At least the developed ones, the underdevelopment ones. Maybe not. But yeah, so I would say almost the same. Wow. And then you have for laying hands, you have about 15% of protein in your feed, 15 to 16. But I'm not so much, I don't care about the protein level.

[00:24:24] I care about the amino acids of which the protein consists and then the digestibility of those amino acids and the ratio of one to the other. I can go into really amount of detail, but let's not do that. But yeah. Well, there is a valid question about, I mean, it probably doesn't matter that much knowing birds and what they eat.

[00:24:48] But the crumble feed and the pellet feed, is there, from a digestibility standpoint, do they handle both of those pretty well? Or should a laying head have a crumble or does it matter? It doesn't really matter because a crumble is actually nothing less than a crumble pellet. That's what I figured. So in a feed factory, you make the pellet and then you have an extra machine, which is like a crumbler, sort of a big wall that's crumbling the pellets. So the same heat treatment, everything else is the same.

[00:25:17] Yeah, give the quails the crumble because they're smaller, I guess. That is the only thing that matters. So for smaller birds, you cannot feed a pellet, you feed a crumble or really small pellets. But that's more difficult to produce in a factory. But mesh feeds for laying hands are also perfectly fine. Okay. For me, it's more about feed intake.

[00:25:41] So if you have laying hands that have difficulties eating enough feed, especially when they just start laying, they're not mature yet. Yeah. When they're around 18 weeks, they're still growing until they're about 30 weeks old. They're still growing and they start laying. So they have to eat suddenly really big amounts compared to before. And if they're not ready for that, they might go into like a negative energy balance that might give some issues.

[00:26:10] So that period is most critical. Yeah, that makes sense. And if you then give, yeah, if they have difficulties eating, then a crumble of pellets sometimes helps to increase the feed intake. Oh, I see. It takes them less time. Yeah. It's easier. For match feed, you have to pack a lot of times before you finally have your head or fill. Sure.

[00:26:33] And if you then are a beginning hobbyist and you feed a little bit too little, then all the big ones, they will be at the feeder and the small hots will maybe get nothing. Oh, right. The slow ones. The whole packing order thing will come into play. Yeah. So that is, yeah. Make sure that you always give your chickens that everybody has a space to eat.

[00:26:57] So don't just look at how many kgs should be in my feeder, but also that they all have enough space, not too close together, because otherwise the bigger ones will take everything and the smaller ones will have nothing. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, feeding and getting the right amount of feed to your birds is a problem that backyard chicken enthusiasts have to deal with.

[00:27:19] Are there any other things that kind of stand out in your head that could go wrong or that people could improve in their backyard coops that, you know, best practices from the farms or something like that? Yeah, for sure. Lighting is a big one because that's something you often forget. But laying in sometimes stop laying in the winter because the days get shorter because they have a biological clock saying, hey, the days get shorter. Let's stop laying.

[00:27:46] But you actually in big poultry farms, we give them artificial light so that the whole coop is lighted in the same amount of light intensity. And we give them about 16 hours. Yeah. What shall I say? It varies. But yeah, we give them the same amount of light during the year so that they keep laying. Because if you shorten the day length a lot when they're laying.

[00:28:09] So if you are not artificially lighting your hands and in your country, you have a winter with shorter days, the risk that they stop laying. That's really a pity. And it's not necessary. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. The lighting. Okay. So feed and lighting. Water pretty straightforward. Predation. Predation. I know that the chickens are kept inside at farms. So predation probably isn't that big of a deal there. Can you explain?

[00:28:39] I don't know that word. Oh, sorry about that. I'm not understanding. So predators. Oh, predators. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one as well. That's a tough one for me. I'm always battling predators in the backyard here. I think it's mostly just setting up your coop, right? I also have a few articles on my website about that, about most topics that we discussed. But I think that is more the setup of your coop at the beginning that helps.

[00:29:05] And just having the, how to say, routine to take the feeders inside, things like that during the night. Oh, that's a good idea. Put your chickens in the coop during the night. Because predators they like. Some of them attack during the day. But also a lot during the dark. Yeah. So that's a great segue. You know, we met via the website. And I think you have a really cool angle.

[00:29:35] Because, you know, a lot of these websites are new homesteaders, preppers like us, something like that. But you are probably the first chicken keeping website that I've ever been to where you're an actual biologist on the subject. So why don't you tell the audience about your site? Yeah. Yeah. So my site is www.chickenclucks.com. And it's really, yeah, aside for hobbyists. But then with expert knowledge for myself.

[00:30:05] Because I really have a passion for chickens specifically. And I would like to share some of that knowledge with people who are just in the backyard. And I see so many wrong information on the internet. Oh, I bet. But also really a lot of nonsense sometimes. So, yeah, this is kind of my own passion project, side hustle. I don't know what to call it. Yeah, I like it. I like being able to go to information that, you know, it's from a different source.

[00:30:35] And from your source, it's not just your sources from, you know, farmers that are, their lives are dependent on your recipes and your product working. You know, so I think that's really a cool angle. I don't know too many chicken keeping blogs that have a person with a four-year degree on the topic being written, you know, by those people. And there are a few really good ones, which you have to know them.

[00:31:03] And, yeah, I think sometimes also, I think it's just in general an agricultural thing that those people, you know, they're not too worried about these kind of stuff. Sure. They don't really focus on it too much. But then, yeah, you don't get any, how to say, media access as well. So, yeah, that would be a pity. Makes sense. So, chickenclucks.com is where to find your insight on chicken keeping. Yes. Awesome.

[00:31:30] And I actually also just made a free printable chicken log where you can track your, how many eggs you've got, how much feed. It's quite simple. It was a challenge for me to keep it simple. That's a great idea, though. I like that. I think it's earned by bright. So, yeah, you can go ahead and download it if you like. Yeah, we're big fans of lists around here for sure. Well, thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. And I hope the audience goes over and checks out your site.

[00:31:58] You brought in some chicken insight that we don't often hear about, more of the global and economic and nutritional and scientific. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. It was nice to be here. All right, PBN family, check out the website and download the list. Get your chicken keeping house in order. And we'll talk to you guys soon, okay? See you tomorrow. Are you prepared to be the family doctor in a disaster or emergency?

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