Beyond The Coop: Science-Backed Secrets For Healthy Backyard Chickens | SOP Ep. 116 - Dr. Maurice Pitesky, AKA "Dr. Cluck"

Welcome to Speaking of Pets. We're the Novotny Sisters from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Dr. Alice Novotny-Jeroman, a board-certified veterinary dermatologist. And I'm not. I'm Janet Novotny-King, the Dr. Sister, podcast co-host, pet owner, rescuer, and lover. We're here to provide pet owners with science-based information to help them be the best pet parents they can be. Here's today's episode, created just for you and your pets. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. Janet, you know several of our friends have chickens as pets. And the kids carry them around. They name them. Well, we have our own Dr. Cluck today, Dr. Maurice Pitesky, who is our favorite chicken expert. He has a new book, Dr. Cluck's Backyard Chickens, which is a fabulous reference from beginning to end of how you adopt chickens, what you feed them, how to house them. What you do with the eggs, all that stuff that we have no clue about. And even as a veterinarian, Janet, if you would ask me a question about chickens, I would be emailing Dr. Pitesky ASAP. So anyway, Dr. Pitesky out of UC Davis. You guys got to get the book, Dr. Cluck's Backyard Chickens. And you can actually submit questions to Dr. Cluck if you have a question about your chickens. But we'll get into that. So welcome, Dr. Pitesky. So great to see you again. Great. Thanks for having me on again. It's great to be here. So tell us about the characters in the book, because it's not like a, it is a how-to book. Yeah, there's humor too. But it's a comical, lighthearted book. So tell us about the characters and how they came to be. Yeah, so I think that the whole concept of the book is that there's a lot of backyard chicken books already out there. So what we really wanted to do, Evan Adler, who's also a veterinarian, and myself is, we really wanted to kind of identify, you know, what the best science is. And we're at a university. It's kind of our job to kind of not only do research, but convey like what works and doesn't work to the general public. And there wasn't really a book that, in the backyard poultry space, that really covered, you know, what does the research say with respect to apple cider vinegar or fermented feed or, you know, what types of antibiotics. What does the research say? What does the research say with respect to apple cider vinegar or fermented feed or, you know, what types of antibiotics. when they want to really focus on a specific topic, but people could also read it like, you know, as part of a coffee table book and just kind of something humorous. So we do have all these different characters. Dr. Cluck is kind of the, the kind of straight guy who, who, who kind of tries to steer everyone in the right direction. And then we've got this character Henrietta. So most backyard poultry owners are, um, you know, raise their backyard birds, uh, for eggs. So Henrietta is actually a broiler breed. Um, so she has to kind of hide that from everyone because the broiler breeds just don't produce as many eggs. And she's afraid that she's going to get culled, uh, for example. And then we have another character, Clara, who's dear to my heart, who's a wonderful Polish breed. And, and she's kind of this know-it-all. If you guys remember like Cliff Clavin from Cheers, she's the one who says everything wrong, but says it was such confidence that everyone's like, oh, Clara must be right. Um, and then we have another character, Betsy, who's like this little bantam and is, you know, a little firecracker. And, uh, she's kind of the Bart Simpson one, always getting into trouble. Um, and then we have Gloria, who's also one of my favorites and Gloria is a hypochondriac and Gloria is always convinced that she's got Merrick's disease or avian influenza or whatever things going on. And then we have, uh, Boots, um, and Boots is all you see ever is Boots is Boots. Um, and, uh, that's the owner. Um, and, and Boots has a good heart, but doesn't always do everything right. And then, uh, little Boots, um, is, is little Boots's, uh, child. And you'll see some little Boots there. And, you know, every chapter starts off with, um, a one page long kind of cartoon, you know, with like about five to eight different panes in it. And it's just telling kind of a story about biosecurity and nutrition or welfare or eggs or hatching. And it's supposed to be a little silly and goofy, but kind of gets you into that topic. So one way to read the book is just to read all the cartoons at the beginning of each chapter. And then to look at some of the cartoons, like these kind of just one single cartoons that were buried kind of within each chapter that, that still have those same characters and are meant to kind of poke fun at the characters and chickens in general, because chickens are just kind of silly. Um, so that, that's kind of the, the, the big picture there. And, um, it's been a fun project to work on. We have a wonderful illustrator, um, Will, who's just brilliant. Um, and, uh, I used to joke with them that whenever I'd go to his office, he would, uh, have less and less pictures of his kids and more and more pictures of the characters that he was, that he was working on. Um, so it was, it's been a great project for, for Evan, uh, Will and myself. And, um, it's, it's, uh, finally come out, which is great. It's the first book I've ever written. Wasn't on my bingo board of things to accomplish in my life, but, um, hopefully, um, there's other opportunities. Moving forward. Today's episode is sponsored by Dr. Tim's Pet Food. Learn more at drtims.com. You know, Janet, so many people in science that we've interviewed on this show end up publishing a book and it, and without any intention of doing so. And I love that because that's sharing all of their knowledge with us. Like Janet, you and I were raised in the city. We don't know anything about chickens. Like where would I buy baby chicks? If I wanted to. Our story growing up in Cleveland. Is every Easter on Good Friday. We don't know where my dad went, but he'd drive to some farm. We've probably told you this. He'd drive to some farm and he'd come home either with ducklings or little chicks. And we had ducklings. I don't ever remember chicks. We had Phoebe chicks, Gromel, Juliet, and Phoebe. But we had, I had Zyatt was my bunny, but we had chicks at school. They, the egg turning thing. So anyway, so dad would bring home ducks or rabbits and the whole, all the neighborhood kids would come down and we'd feed them and dress them up and play with them and create a house on cardboard boxes for like maybe three weeks. And then they mysteriously went back to the farm. Yeah. Yeah. The farm. But we didn't know what we were doing. And let's face it back then there were no references out, let alone no fun references, like what you're, what you're doing. But so where would we buy if we're very interested in this first, I guess we need a shelter because you don't want to go buy chicks and not have anywhere to put them. So what's the perfect home look like? Yeah. So literally we, that's how we start the book is basically like, you know, if you're, you know, kind of interested or curious, um, you can, you can start, you know, kind of thinking like, okay, what, what, if I was going to have backyard chickens, what, what do I need? Um, how much space do I need? What is my coop going to look like? Um, what are the, um, things that are around my backyard that I need to be aware of? They, they, they might have arborage for rodents, for example, or maybe you have. Owls and other Raptors that are flying overhead. And, you know, what are all the things that you need to think about? Um, what kind of time commitment is it? Um, where am I going to get birds or chicks, or am I going to start from the beginning and get, and get hatching eggs? Um, you know, all those things we kind of talk about, um, in the beginning, um, do I have a veterinarian? That's, as we all know, that's a real problem in the U S we don't have enough. Um, and we're working on this at UC Davis among other vet schools. We don't have enough, commercial poultry vets, but we also don't have enough small animal vets that do dog and cat stuff that know just a little about, about chickens. And actually this book, what I really enjoy about, um, working with, uh, people that have backyard birds is because we don't really train our vet students yet to really, you know, kind of know how to treat and know the basic husbandry of, of poultry. This book can actually be used, um, all the way from kids to adults to vet students. Um, and it's, it's really meant to be accessible for a really, an enjoyable for a large group, um, with the goal of ultimately, you know, making sure that, that we're all, um, using the best science in order to kind of figure out, you know, what, what works best and what works best for some people might be as simple as, you know, buying chicks at a feed store, but we walk you through, like, if you're going to buy your chicks at a feed store, make sure the feed store, for example, is, um, vaccinating. Those chicks against Merrick's disease. And if they're not vaccinated against Merrick's disease, you need to ask them. Um, if I tell the feed store as a professor, like, Hey, you guys need to vaccinate your chicks against Merrick's disease. They're going to roll their eyes at me because I'm not the customer, but if the customer becomes more knowledgeable, um, that is gold. And the reality is like a disease like Merrick's disease, which is 99% preventable. That's the number one killer of backyard birds in the U S. So what does it do? And it's M A R E K. Yeah. M A R E K and apostrophe S and how did they get it? It's, it's a viral disease. Um, it's a herpes virus, actually just one little small joke. One of our, one of my professors in vet school always joke that there's two things you can never get rid of. Uh, one are herpes viruses like Merrick's disease and the other is land in Pullman, Washington. and then he would always joke that he has one of those he wouldn't tell us which one did he want to sell you that land see that's that would be a good question but the merrick's disease the virus actually it's it's a herpes virus and it can persist for a long time in the environment and there's a very very effective vaccine that you can actually buy over the counter and we talk about in the book um how to give the vaccine we've made a video on youtube that we've got the hyperlink to in the book um and um you you can kind of learn how to do that or you can have your feed store do it or have your vet do it um but but just you know kind of reaching out to feed stores and saying hey i just read in this book by these uh veterinarians that that we need to start asking for this vaccine do you guys do that and and that's the way that we nudge um you know the industry the backyard poultry um hatcheries and feed stores to start vaccinating because it is it is super easy to do and it's probably you know if i was really gonna kind of pick one thing that i really want people to focus on that that would be it that that is preventable and the commercial poultry industry to their credit actually does a really good job with merrick's on the backyard side that's where we need to do a little better job well you know i live in oh go with janet i live in a small town in it's called hinkley ohio you can't go two blocks without seeing fresh eggs for sale so i have to tell you when we're done taping this today janet i'm sharing this youtube with the hinkley community area that you can do that because i want to make sure these people are are doing right by these chickens yeah well and i think chicken whatever you call it taking care of chickens or having chickens kind of started getting hot during covet when people were doing the victory gardens and the you know and then the egg prices increased and all that because i live in suburban outside of manhattan and there's a lot of chicken coops in these backyards when i'm walking around i see really okay oh yeah i saw one the other day oh yeah i saw one the other day i was at someone's house and i could see there there was a big puffy red one in there and that's my other question you can get chicks but they're like exotic chickens yep so there are i mean and we talk about this in the book there are over 300 different breeds of chicken if you look at the commercial world you know there's just a handful there's this few breeds that are very productive that have very low feed conversion ratios they are machines right but in the backyard world you know you don't buy backyard chickens you don't buy backyard chickens you don't buy backyard chickens and we talk about this in the book you don't buy backyard chickens to um to kind of uh save a few pennies or nickels or dimes on on on eggs it does not pencil out for all kinds of reasons in part because the feed is just too expensive um egg prices right now are super low so this would not be the time right now to say oh i'm going to um you know kind of i'm going to get five uh layer hands and and i'm going to save money but but people don't have the time to say oh i'm going to save money but but people don't have the time to say oh i'm going to save money but but people like the process and um they like you know having either with themselves or their families they like having you know food in their backyard whether it's fruits and vegetables and and to your point janet now people are getting much more keen and excited about about backyard chickens and the eggs that they produce and some are even kind of pushing into the meat um kind of space so we talk about that what are the ways that you might want to process your layer bird when she's older and not very productive anymore for meat versus euthanasia which is a much different thing um or some people are starting to raise their their their they're starting to actually find backyard breeds that are a little better for meat and they're raising those and processing them or working with um there's mobile processing units and all kinds of of kind of i would say parallel um business models are kind of evolving around this kind of um niche of backyard chickens so i i think we're at a time actually where hopefully a book like this informs people um not just who have the birds but but are you know in work on vaccines or processing and things like that and we can you know kind of do all of our parts to make sure that the best science um is is helping guide us when it comes to welfare and food safety um and husbandry and nutrition and all those different things hope you're enjoying today's speaking of pets podcast every week we feature a board certified specialist dermatology oncology internal medicine orthopedic surgery ophthalmology dentistry you name it if it affects pets we're on it we're here to share some really good information for pet owners practical information that is science-based so that you can be a petter owner and have a healthier pet to learn more about your pet's health check out our other episodes wherever you get your podcasts hi everyone i'm larry some of you know me as grandpa larry and i run larry's animal safari on youtube where we share sweet and educational videos about baby gorillas zoo animals and the amazing teams who care for them if you love animals of all kinds i'd love to have you join us you'll meet little ones like jamila and kaiambi learn how zoo families grow and enjoy real moments that bring joy and curiosity to animal lovers everywhere just search larry's animal safari on youtube or click the link in the show notes new videos go up weekly and each one supports awareness for animal care and conservation thanks to speaking of pets podcast for all they do now let's get back to the show so okay so you need a chicken coop what do you need to start you need a coop you need a run how much space do you need yeah so we talk about that so so i would say let's say i think the most common scenario is people will buy their chicks um basically one to three day old chicks at a feed store and then they'll they'll bring them home so um what you first need is you need to identify in case disaster happens what is um who's your vet right so do you have a veterinarian because that's not trivial to find um dr cluck is always available but dr cluck can't prescribe medications from from california doesn't want or see your chicken yeah yeah or see your chicken or things like that so it's really key to have like a relationship with someone like dr cluck but it's also really important to have a a vet you know kind of flag just in case disaster happens but the first if you are going to do that most common route of having those chicks then you need a brooder and and a brooder is just like um basically a nice uh warm area to raise those chicks after they hatched um for the next four to six weeks depending on the climate outside because when the chicks are born they can't really thermoregulate very well so they're not going to be able to eat them so they can't keep themselves very warm so um the brooder is is basically just a heat lamp and um a nice circular space usually like in your garage or somewhere semi-temperature controlled where there's no big winds and things like that and then you're you're putting a starter feed and water in there and the brooder lamp um and you're you're just making sure those birds are are nice and warm if they're too warm if the lamp is is emitting too much heat you'll actually see the birds go to the edges of the brooder for example and if they're too cold they'll they'll kind of huddle together so we talk about that in the book what are the things you want to look for because you want to follow you know the directions but you also want to you know use your eyes and your head just like when we're working with vet students we want them to be aware of what you're supposed to do but also what's reality um so um during those four to six weeks we're slowly uh lowering the temperature because they're getting hardier and they don't need as much um heat we start off at about 100 degrees fahrenheit and then slowly ramp down each week um so the first thing you need is a brooder you need a brooder lamp you need feeders and waters and we talk about all those things and then after four to six weeks then they go into the coop um you know that kind of rookie mistake that some people make going back to the brooder really quickly is they'll they'll bring their birds home and then they'll be like oh shoot i need to put the brooder lamp on and it takes a little while to get that that nice warm temperature in there so you want to make sure that you're getting the right temperature and you want to um do that before you you bring your chicks home and then after those four to six weeks then the birds can go um outside in your coop um and um where this also gets a little complicated is that some people already have their own backyard birds so you're trying to think like how to you know what are the strategies you can use to kind of um integrate that those new chicks into your into your current flock and and we go over you know some kind of recommendations that are there um but if you're starting from scratch then it's a much easier kind of transition and you're just moving those birds and to your point janet about space space is important um and we talk about our space recommendations inside the coop and in the run um but i i my one kind of thought is don't always use space as the end all be all it's also you know what kind of entertainment and enrichments you have because if you give your kids more space but there's no new toys they're not gonna do much right so you know having those enrichments is really key and enrichments um are really important because that's one of the ways that the birds get um that you can reduce any inter-flock um kind of drama because we you know there's drama llamas there's a pecking order that's why they call it a pecking order so so one of the ways we can kind of reduce that especially if you have a rooster or two which which you know depending on the community you can have um one of the ways to kind of reduce that is to have a little bit of space for the birds to the tension and the inter-flock drama is by having lots of enrichments and those type of things. The other thing is to your space point. So in the coop or outside the coop, you want about two to four feet per bird. And in the coop, I'm trying to remember what we recommended. I believe we said one and a half to three feet or something on there. I'll have to double check in all honesty. But again, you need things like perches because perches are really important to allow their prey species. So they need that perch at night to perch on so they can kind of be able to be comfortable while they're sleeping. So we go over all the different recommendations on perches. And as I was talking to my sister, so she's a retired astrophysicist. She's brilliant. I can't keep up with her. And she was reading the book and she's like, my God, I didn't realize this is like, you know, basically, you know, the astrophysics of raising chickens. And it's not meant to be, but. But she, well, you know, just because she's an infovore, she'll try to capture all the different pieces of information and try to connect them together to understand what's the best way to raise these birds. Here's something we love about Dr. Tim's pet food. Every formula starts with a question. Does this actually help the animal not just look good on a shelf? Dr. Tim has spent decades as a working vet, and that experience shows up across the entire product line. Whether your dog is a little old or a little old, it's not a problem. If your dog is a little old or a little overweight and needs a healthy, balanced food to help shed a few pounds, or could be a picky eater who won't touch their breakfast without Dr. Tim's vagabond freeze-dried toppers, or just a regular couch companion who deserves real nutrition in every bowl. Speaking of pets is committed to bringing you science-based information and partners that align with that mission. 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If your dog is a little old or a little overweight, or just a little obese, or just a little overweight, anecdotally and just based on my experience working with backyard birds it's probably the minimum number that you want um but to your entertainment point you know something as simple as just a bale of straw or hay that's dangling down they love that they love that and and um you know we try to keep the treats at a minimum um i i'm a veterinarian i love animals i can look at my dog or cats or pigs and i could be like wow that's the sweetest thing in the world and i give them cookies because i'm spoiled i look at chickens and i don't want to give them chicken scratch it doesn't it doesn't evoke to me that that i'm gonna give them food but but people love love love to give them things like um insects like black soldier fly larvae um it's become like a really big thing and we talk about that the only thing i recommend is that when you are giving treats it's not ideal but people love to give treats um it's not ideal because you're basically just giving lots of carbs with chicken scratch but minimize it to about five percent of their daily ration so if we're dealing with an adult laying hen um they're gonna eat about um 120 130 grams of feed basically about a half a cup of feed a day okay so you can't go over that five percent rule because if you start keep if you keep on going over five percent you got to remember that they're pooping out basically an egg a day yeah and that egg has about four to five grams of calcium in it so if you are displacing this perfectly formulated layer ration with all this calcium in it and you're displacing that and giving them basically carbs you know from chicken scratch now you're going to start having soft eggs and and when you start having soft eggs and things like that disaster can happen um and they can actually die if one of those eggs cracks inside them that's a real problem because coli then start coming in and there's not much you can do at that point so i think when it comes to nutrition we all love love love to spoil our animals i'm sure of that but i think we just need to be a little a little cautious and in a perfect world just keep them give them a layer ration they'll get insects and all kinds of stuff from from kind of um just interacting with with um the environment because they've got a coop and they've got to run and there's just all kinds of stuff going on um but but if you must just try to keep it at that five percent dish wow i never realized that we use i'm part of this greenhouse group when we grow plants and we put chicken scratch on top of the um seeds that we're growing in the dirt because it keeps the little gnats and bugs away oh interesting i'd never even work isn't that bizarre they're like we're putting chicken scratch on top and i'm like really and so we sprinkle it on top of the you know little seedlings you start and it keeps the bugs i don't know why but it works interesting isn't that nutty it's kind of weird when they do lay eggs um i remember in florida we we had friends that had an egg farm and they always had to wash the eggs what does that mean you can yeah too so the washing of the eggs is is i i joke with people there's three things you don't talk about in polite company when we talk about this in the book you don't talk about politics religion or whether or not to wash your backyard chicken eggs because people get so passionate about this topic it it's it's kind of interesting so in the united states if you sell commercial eggs you have to wash your eggs because of why well yeah because of on the outside of the egg um there are bacteria now most of those bacteria are harmless but there's bacteria there so in the united states the way we deal with those bacteria let's say it's we're dealing with god forbid salmonella or um you know some types of what we call pathogenic you know e colis and things like that we don't want them we're not going to sell those bacteria we're not going to sell those bacteria we're going to sell those bacteria we're not going to sell those bacteria so in the united states the way we deal with that is we we require our eggs to be washed and then they go in the refrigerator at the store that's great that's one solution if you're in other parts of the world like for folks that have traveled to southeast asia or europe you'll see eggs um that are um a little dirty um and the eggs when they're when they're laid there's actually this thing called a cuticle or a bloom and that actually has some kind of antibacterial kind of properties to it so it's almost like a cultural thing some parts of the world you know trust the balloon um and they because when you wash the egg like we do you you wipe off that bloom now there's there's arguments for and against and like i said it's we could spend believe it or not hours going back and forth on this for backyard birds i tell people don't wash your eggs um and the reason i tell them not to wash their eggs is because when people wash them the eggs are kind of porous they're kind of porous they actually have about 10 000 little tiny holes in them and when you wash them a lot of people dunk them in water like i was actually watching one youtube video where the lady's like um they tell me not to dunk them but i dunk them anyway and i'm like oh my god like so when you dunk them um that has a tendency to drive bacteria through those pores into the egg so um i would say um there are and we go over the ways that you can wash your eggs if you feel it necessary to wash your eggs we live in in a country of abundance um so if people have poop on their eggs um you could make an argument and we talk about this you could make an argument to let the poop kind of dry and then take a little piece of sandpaper and then wipe off um the the outside of the egg with one of these um kind of commercial backyard egg washing solutions that's totally legit um but because we live in such abundance i just tell people like just throw that egg out and if you have a lot of eggs that have poop on it then we've got a problem and we need to deal with that that's not normal so i i feel like sometimes we're arguing about these kind of one percent type issues literally like you know it why why are we getting so much if if we're having you know 50 of our eggs that have poop on it and because they're they're not laid in the in the nest for example um or our coop is dirty that's the issue not not so much that the symptom is that we're not having you know a lot of eggs with poop on them what do they wash them in yeah it's it's kind of like a dilute um bleach solution um there's some disinfectants there's different ones um but basically you know some some kind of disinfectant but okay refrigerate or not refrigerate yeah so that's the next question so uh if we were in other parts of the world um we we might not refrigerate when you go to you know parts of europe for example you'll see the eggs um and and on the um on the shelf which is very strange to us because we're used to you know kind of clean sterling it's kind of funny whenever we sell you know let's say there's some um opportunity for our layer industry to sell eggs to Mexico. They actually don't like our eggs because they're too clean. They look like they came out of like robots or machines to them. They actually like them a little dirty. Kind of just gives them confidence that it came from, you know, a real farm or things like that. But refrigeration is great, as I think a lot of us know, in the sense that every bacteria, the E. coli and the salmonellas, they can actually grow orders of magnitude faster at room temperature versus in a refrigerator. So God forbid you have salmonella inside your egg in the yolk, where there's lots of nutrition. It's not just having the salmonella, but it's having enough to actually cause disease. And if there's one in there, your immune system will be fine. But if there's 10,000 in there, you're going to get sick if you're exposed to that raw egg. As we all know, if you cook the eggs to 165 degrees, just like meat, just like poultry meat, it's fine. But I'm like one of those people, I like a runny egg, right? So just like a lot of other folks. So out of an abundance of caution, it makes all the sense in the world in our country with a very stable electric grid to put your eggs in the refrigerator. Now in other parts of the world, they won't put them in the refrigerator because the electricity is not as stable. And if you keep on going from hot to cold, hot to cold, hot to cold, that actually draws bacteria because of the way that the physiology and the anatomy of the egg, you're kind of creating this opportunity for the bacteria on the outside to basically be sucked through those pores. So in other parts of the world, we can have maybe a slightly more nuanced conversation, but here, don't wash them, but put them in the fridge would be my recommendation. And if you have a lot of, over 5% of your eggs have dirt on them, then we should probably, you can send Dr. Cluck an email, or you can read the book or Google around to kind of look at it. But if you have a lot of eggs that are in the fridge, you can send Dr. Cluck an email and we can kind of learn more about what, why that's happening. So how old are the chickens, the hens before they start laying eggs? Yeah, so great question. So, so they are chicks for about, you know, six weeks or so, and then they become pullets, kind of like teenagers, a little unruly and a little, you know, kind of, attitude looking. Yeah, they're, they're, they're not, they're not the best looking at that point. And then they kind of blossom into these, you know, hens around 20 weeks of age, but the eggs can be a little small. They can sometimes be double yokers, where you have two yolks in there. Yeah, well, those are actually illegal. Because, yeah, they, so the farms are supposed to remove them from the supply, I think, because you're probably getting twice the cholesterol, if I had to guess. But how do you know? Oh, yeah, they'll actually, so it's really incredible. If you ever go onto these farms, you know, there's a million birds and things and just, you know, tens of thousands of eggs coming down these assembly lines, they can candle them. So they have basic, and you can do this yourself, you can take the flashlight from your cell phone, and look at the eggs. And actually, that's one of the ways, if you, if you want to kind of complicate your life, like, like many of us do, and you want to be the the gold star student, you can actually, you know, incubate your, your hatching eggs. And using that, that cell phone, we've got pictures in here from a wonderful vet, who does a lot of commercial work, on hatching eggs. So we've got these amazing, beautiful photographs, actually, of what you're looking for at each stage of embryo development. And that's really important, because you want to make sure you have a good, not just a high percentage of eggs that are hatching, but you want to make sure that those chicks are, you know, nice and healthy when they when they finally hatch from the incubator. Hey, I feel lucky when I get one of those from the grocery store eggs. I know, I know. I'm on your side, I feel like this should be, that's a great business opportunity for someone to sell double yokers. And we actually even talked about that there was a triple yoker. And we were, I think in our, we have these footnotes that are supposed to be these kind of fun factoids. So we talked about the probability of getting a triple yoker. So I think we made a comment that if you ever get a triple yoker, you need to immediately drop everything and go get a lottery ticket. Oh, absolutely. That's jackpot. Yeah, that's very, very, very rare. But the double yokers, you can kind of sort of, they look a little bigger. If you're ever suspect, you can you can kind of take your, your cell phone flashlight. If you live in a seasonal area, like winter, and we had a bad winter, really bad winter. What happens to those chickens in the winter? Where do I put them? They're actually pretty hardy. So I, you know, it's, it's interesting, because you'll see every single winter, unfortunately, on social media, you'll hear these kind of really bad stories about people that have that they're using some kind of space heater to heat your coop. And they kind of like set it and forget it. And then you know, you imagine you're in a coop, it's cold, but it's also very dry. And you've got a lot of dander and almost like kindling kind of stuff that's in there. And every single winter, you hear a story about a coop burning down. Yeah. I know we all want our birds to be, you know, comfortable and warm. And actually, they do really, really well in the winter. They don't produce as many eggs for obvious reasons, for all kinds of reasons. Yeah. But they huddle together. They eat more, they don't produce as many eggs or any eggs if they're molting. But they do actually well. What I'm concerned about, I'm from California in Davis, our summers are really hot. Yeah. And I worry a little more about the summers sometimes than I do about the winter, especially for these big hardy breeds. And then, as we all know, some of us spoil our pets or our pets are a little on the plump side. And we go over like how to identify that and what are the strategies to reduce that. But if they're, if they're a little, you know, kind of obese, especially in the summertime, that's more body weight to cool down. And that can be challenging. You can set up misters. Those have advantages and disadvantages. You can actually take the bird and if they'll tolerate it, and I've had good success with this, where you take the bird and you put it in kind of just a relatively cool, not freezing, kind of almost like a tank of water just to kind of cool off the outside of them. And then you can also put some ice cubes in their waters and things like that. But I have seen it where some of these, especially kind of more obese birds, they will have some. At the minimum be stressed, you'll see some open mouth breathing. But I have seen it and heard from people where it's been, you know, it's unfortunately resulted in mortality. So what's like the, so the costs of chickens are the coop, the food, right? Fresh water, the vaccine. But also, how often do you have to keep that coop pretty clean, I'm assuming? When it comes to feeding our pets, we believe in results you can see over hype. And that's exactly why we're proud to partner with Dr. Tim's Pet Food. Dr. Tim Hunt is a practicing veterinarian who spent decades formulating nutrition for every kind of pet from the laid-back lap dog to his own Iditarod sled team. Check out Dr. Tim's Pet Food and see what science-backed nutrition looks like for your pet. They'll have a shiny coat, more energy, healthy weight, and more. Because every great adventure, even a nap on the couch, starts with a healthy pet. Yeah, actually, so the main, the biggest cost that you're going to have is at the beginning when you're setting up your coop and your brooder. And those things can last for a long time. The other main cost that you'll have moving forward, kind of on the operation side, is feed. And that's usually about, you know, 70% of your operating cost. And feed, you know, it's just basically corn and soybeans. But feed is going to be by far the most expensive thing that you're going to, that you're going to have, as far as your cost. But you can, all the others, you know, some people, you know, we're in Davis, people, we used to have this kind of wonderful community kind of backyard, come to our backyard chicken coop, go from place to place with all kinds of biosecurity kind of steps in there to prevent disease. transmission but people would show off their coops and you you'd have these wonderful beautiful um coops that you know are are more for the owners obviously than the birds um but um or you can just go you know to the equivalent of costco or amazon and yeah you can order these things now so all kinds of great opportunities the most important thing to do is use material that's easy to clean and i think sometimes we so focus on all the different disinfectants and things like that and we can have a whole conversation about that but um perhaps the most important part is what we call dry cleaning and that's just literally just getting all that feather dander and dust off of off of your coop um to your point about poop though um if um most birds are actually pretty fastidious so um if you have litter like sometimes like i'm from california so we have lots of rice holes um we have a lot of rice holes um and then we have um we have um a lot of rice holes um but but some people you know we use other kind of um um litter material and uh and we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of all different types of litter but they'll actually kind of roll mototill the poop into the litter and it basically breaks down and composts so when you walk inside the coop you shouldn't smell you know a strong smell of ammonia that's bad for us that's bad for the birds um but but you don't have to treat it like a litter box per se where you have to go in there every day and take the poop out and and if those kind of things are happening if it smells bad if it's really poopy in there um you know those are things to kind of think about like well what what am i doing wrong is it a density issue to have too many birds in the space do i have not enough litter do i not have any litter at all which is a common thing and now i need to put some litter in there you know what are what are the potential solutions to kind of um you know kind of science it out when you say litter well go ahead isn't it isn't it just straw or no no actually so so straw is great for nest boxes um because it's you know we don't want the egg to come out right right right um but straw is actually not very absorbable so i actually don't like straw on the ground at all um i like something much more um absorbable like things like rice holes for example are wonderful um opportunity are wonderful for that um purpose are they picky about their diet are they finicky um i don't think so um just from what i what i've seen but but what i what i do see is where people will take a good idea where they'll you know take some of their scraps and you know take some of their scraps for example wait a minute i just want to show you what's going out outside my window wait wait he's right here wait you see atticus i don't see anything here he is he's like let me oh i see him he wants to come in look he's such a chicken i swear to god no offense chickens no i have this face going at me i would worry too about getting back to when you're talking about the feed like you want to buy the feed from a place that has good turnover right yeah yeah so so you're absolutely right and and actually so what we need to do on our end is um we need to make sure that we're not buying so much feed that it's being stored for months at a time because some of the vitamins can actually break down or oxidize that's a problem especially in chick feed that's a real problem um and we also want to make sure that we're storing the feed um in a place where there's no rodents or we're protecting ourselves against rodents because rodents love and we talk about that in the book and and kind of poke fun at at the rodent kind of issue but rodents love love um uh love chicken feed um and we actually go over like the different types of rodent poop so you know what you're dealing with because rodents are ubiquitous right we're humans rodents are wherever humans are um and they definitely are wherever chickens are so um we just need to make sure that we're we're protecting our because not only do the rodents eat the food but they poop there too and that's a great way to transmit a gazillion and one diseases um so controlling against rodents is is really fundamental even just things as simple we we talk about this in in the book even things as simple as um when you look at a roof rat a roof rat can jump um from a tree uh three to four feet from the tree onto the top of the tree and it's not going to be able to jump off the tree it's going to be able to jump off of your coop and then kind of work their way into the coop so we talk about pruning your trees back um in um more than three feet or so yeah so it makes it much harder for them to kind of get into your coop um and and start spreading disease and the other thing is you know just making sure that the perimeter um whether we're dealing with mice or or rats um kind of understanding where their nesting grounds are how far away they are um from from your coop is actually really really important um and is a great way to kind of help kind of control or mitigate you know kind of rodent issues there are all kinds of and we talk about this in a book in in a pretty extensive fashion there are different ways to kind of control rodents um whether using baits we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of that whether you want to use um you know organic um um poisons um whether you just want to use what are called tin cats basically little traps um to to trap them and then dispose of them in different ways we talk about all those different types of things um and and there is no kind of perfect solution um and and rodents are ubiquitous so we're really just trying to kind of mitigate um their um their presence and the potential for disease spread what about mold in the food oh mold in the food yeah I mean you probably can't let that food get wet when you're saying yeah that's really important and and to your point about feed stores you know some of us especially in more remote areas we are going to have access to feed mills um which is great but I have noticed um if the feed mill doesn't have experience with poultry feed that could be a really big problem in the sense that I was on one farm once just as an example where if you the feed should kind of crumble in your hands so as a poultry vet you'll go on to a farm you'll put the feed in your hands and you'll try to kind of just make sure it kind of these pellets turn into a nice little dust if that doesn't happen then they're basically making these pellets too hard and they sometimes make them too hard because it's for pig feed right so they're making poultry feed it's formulated like poultry feed but the pellets they're pelletizing it in the same way that they would pelletize pig feed so the chickens can't they they can't basically digest those pellets because they don't have teeth right um so so it is really important to work with a um a feed mill um that does have experience with with chick feed and pellets are great um they're eating them they're easy to clean up they're just a tiny bit more expensive but they they don't um contribute to as much kind of spillage and wastage um so pellets are great I think it's a good use of of you know kind of um the limited resource of money um when your birds are layers but I think it's also just really important to make sure you're working with it with a good feed store which most of these these females are actually really good at it but I have run into a few where there's this learning curve trying to figure out how to how to pelletize the feed correctly for birds yeah so how do you go on vacation yeah that's a great question so and we talk about that beginning of the book um if you're if you're um you know kind of not there a lot um that's that's a problem now I have seen um some very clever Solutions about that so uh in Davis um there was one uh couple um they were empty nesters um aside from the chickens of course and they built their coop um across the fence line with their neighbor um so it was brilliant I thought it was like a really clever solution it was really just amazing so and the other family was young you know they had they had kids and things like that so it worked really well actually so the the empty nesters would take care of the birds the majority of the time but when they wanted to go on vacation see grandkids whatever um then they would coordinate with their um with their with their neighbors in that way um but that's that's one way but but obviously just like you know when you have someone pet sitting um that's that's also um you know kind of something um that can happen as we all know disaster usually happens when you're when you're away yeah so um we've all we've all been there and and birds are you know chickens are are amazing animals um in in all kinds of ways um including they at some point it becomes a relatively low maintenance kind of gig and you're just getting eggs and you're going out there you know one thing I always tell people is make sure you always go out at least twice a day and just kind of observe because you really you know you don't want to you know you don't want to really want to know just like when we're in vet school you want to know what normal is so when you see abnormal you you know it and then the other thing to think about is and I know we all slack on this is to keep just some basic logs of uh how many eggs they produced a week right because when I get these phone calls um including from large commercial farms they'll tell me something's wrong and I'll be like well what what's is our egg production down is our feed consumption wrong what's going wrong and they're like I know something's wrong but I I think it's down a little um but but you know kind of keeping some data which is great for kids so if you're a 4-h-er yeah we have some uh sheets in here that kind of tell you what you want to kind of start keeping track of um how much feed they're consuming a week how much water they're consuming you know sometimes the feed's going down and you're like well what's going on well it's maybe because they don't have access to water if the one of the rate limiting steps of feed consumption is water they drink twice as much as they eat so for some reason your waters aren't working and things like that but you're not keeping track of that then we have to kind of try to figure out why aren't they eating right what's going on when it's hot out for example they'll they'll have decreased feed just like we all don't want to eat as much when it's hot out but there's so many different reasons and just keeping some basic data which we have which we talk about um is also a great opportunity to kind of um um kind of start troubleshooting on your own um what what what might be going on so you have a you just mentioned a waterer you don't have a bowl of water there's an actual waterer like a thing with a tray is it like the hamster waterer with the tube there's a lot of different options and water is is a tricky one because you want the water to be clean and birds don't always um aren't always cooperative when it when it comes to to water sometimes they want to perch on the waters um there are the bill waters which are are great um and they can be easily cleaned oh my gosh There are these nipple drinkers, which I like a lot because it's a little harder to contaminate the water from the nipple drinker but they if you don't pay attention to them they can leak and and making sure that they're there that the nipple parts cleaned out periodically because you can get biofilms in there is a problem so water is you know we all kind of take it for granted but water is not trivial we have fiddle around with all kinds of different you know being a university is great I can work on all kinds of brilliant engineers so we fiddle around with all kinds of kind of like um kind of hanging systems that are almost like a long cylinder of plastic but when it gets windy those can kind of start spilling water and we have a lot of spillage water that creates you know a nice home for bacteria and parasites like coccidiosis and things like that so there's no perfect solution other than whatever you do pay attention and stay on top of it because if you don't stay on top of it it whatever system you use is is gonna is gonna bite bite you back Janet I have to ask a question about dermatology do you see a lot of lice or mites in absolutely yeah because I know when I was working with pelicans they all had lice yeah lice stays on the pelican it didn't like me but so speak about that Dr. Pitesky yeah so those are you basically just you know kind of identified the two biggest ectoparasites that we deal with there's so one of the great things about the book is we have you know so Evan Adler and myself we're both vets we both work with a lot of poultry we talk about what we talk about but there are experts in poultry behavior and there's a wonderful professor who's a poultry entomologist at UC Riverside who really helped us when it comes to parasite control because full disclosure that's not my area of expertise I don't know you know that kind of stuff and she's done this remarkable work with diatomaceous earth and how diatomaceous earth can be efficacious as a dust bathing tool not just as an enrichment which which we talked about a little earlier and makes the birds really happy because they like the dust bathe but also as a way to basically control mites and we talk about you know kind of what are the right types of sand and diatomaceous earth and how to mix them up into you know the equivalent of like a bigger litter box so you can control those but those are very common and you know again the most important part is is setting it up correctly and then not just going away but just periodically checking in on it the only problem with the diatomaceous earth two small things I get a little concerned because diatomaceous earth is very volatile today's episode is sponsored by dr. Tim's pet food until next time keep asking questions keep learning and keep loving your pets learn more at dr. Tim's calm so I get a little concerned when there's young kids around and making sure that when we're pouring more diatomaceous earth that that kids and grown-ups are being cautious and then the only other thing with diatomaceous earth that that I get a little concerned about is just making sure that that people are I keep hearing how people sometimes just put it on the ground and I'm like nope that doesn't work and if you talk to Amy Murillo that his name I'm finally remembering the wonderful poultry entomologist at UC Riverside you know we've basically been able to working with her really identify what the best practices are to control those two ectoparasites and identifying ectoparasites some ectoparasites are on the bird some are on the in the coop and on the bird and and we go over the really common ones and she was a wonderful resource for that part of the book we drew all kinds of life cycles which as people from vet school remember was was a slightly traumatic experience but we made them kind of fun and interesting we're in the life cycle you can make the biggest impact right we kind of flagged that part of it as opposed to having these big complicated life cycles so and trying to make it a little funny too of course because that's you know I can just imagine her going to the DMV and they ask occupation I know that I was joking with her once like she's living the dream that's what that's what she always wanted to do I wanted to be an astronaut she wanted to be a poultry entomologist I can't believe your sister doesn't come up with some like these these coops remind me of catios you know Janet where people have all these catio type things so these people that have these coops for their chickens and try to outdo one another I can't believe your astrophysicist sister like hasn't like developed like a moon shaped one or something I'll call her after this okay good well this has been I mean it makes me want to have chicken friends I don't know I'm worried I want someone else to have the chickens because this sounds like I'm I don't know that I could do all this and get it right you know as I think we all know from vet school that the people that that are doing it wrong are the ones for some reason that are everything's going great so I'm a big fan you know in all honesty I'm a big fan and I we talk about this don't make perfect the enemy of good so if you are doing bad then doing moderate is wonderful you're you don't have to do everything here no judgment one way or the other that's and you know it's all about what what works and and doing the best you can whatever that version of the best you can is it does not have to be perfection obviously what you scaredy-cat that was outside it didn't want to come in because the dog was by the door literally went like if this is the dog I wish we could have seen that I literally was like Mike Molder just came over here but I you know what now I'm dying to drive up to all these egg places that are for selling say hmm I'd like to take a look at your coop but you know then they think I'm some kind of nut so well we gotta wrap it up but this has been fascinating I think I might be getting a chicken coop I got to talk to Janet I know three people I'm sending this book to seriously she has a red chicken and I remember the name is scarlet and I think that's so cute okay so we have to ask you a question a guest question what is your life's theme song oh my she always rolls her eyes at this I hate these questions with your own okay I don't know I mean I'm a big baseball fans and I'm thinking of like what kind of walk-up music I would have is the way I'm interpreting it right sweet Caroline from the Boston Red Sox I like the Savannah bananas they're my love take me out to the ball game no it's got to get you like like going so you do a good batting stand man I don't know I think about this but I am I mean I I'm 52 year old dad so there's definitely some dad rock vibes going on right now a cheeseburger in paradise yeah yeah I could do that I don't know I gotta think about that I don't want I I gotta I gotta put some thought into that I got another one for the peanut gallery second radio head I like if that's if that's kind of working that works well thank you this has been really enlightening and we're gonna put a picture of the book up and a link to the website I can't wait to read the book I'm serious actually I'm buying four of them one for me right and thanks for having me on and and like I said dr. cluck is I can either confirm or deny whether who dr. cluck is but I I do look at dr. clucks emails and I will respond so if people have any questions on the book you can obviously email me or they can email dr. cluck and and I'm always willing to chat email phone whatever that's part of the line around mr. cluck I know if there's a feed store that's listening I I want to make dr. cluck branded poultry feed yes and I all kinds of swag opportunities here so Janet more artsy and creative than I am which is I'm sure I love swag we can we do and all right you know what I predict a second and third book I'm telling you I do well you know they say careful what you wish for it might come true so that's right well you're gonna do just let me know I've got I've got them I've got them all simmering in here listen there's something in there she loved oh geez well anyway we're gonna wrap it up hey listen to all of you out there feel free to submit questions on the web page SOP podcast calm and that's where we got so many of the questions for dr. Patesky today so I sent pictures of your pets and your coops we could have a comparison that'd be fun yes we would we'll judge coops we will send them to dr. Patesky to you know to see Janet which one gets the dr. cluck award that's right new award new award well thanks for listening don't forget to like share and listen and tell your friends about us we appreciate you and we'll see you next time thanks for listening thanks everyone hey thanks for watching and listening we like likes don't forget to like share and subscribe you can follow us on social media at speaking of pets and give your pets a big kiss from the Novotny sisters the speaking of pets podcast is an SLA video production