Inside the Ohio National Poultry Show: Gossip, Gamefowl, Winners, Weird Birds & Behind-the-Scenes Stories

Welcome back, Poultry Nerds! In this packed episode, Jennifer finally gets Carey to spill all the juicy details about his trip to the 2025 Ohio National Poultry Show — one of the largest, loudest, and most legendary poultry events in the country.

Carey shares his full unfiltered experience:
 • Meeting fans and podcast listeners in person
 • 8,100 crowing birds under one roof
 • Anxiety, atmosphere, and the unbelievable energy
 • Gamefowl appearing at the show for the first time
 • The gorgeous birds… and the birds that should’ve gone straight to chicken dinner
 • Youth exhibitors with lab coats, trophies bigger than they are, and serious showmanship
 • Modern Game, Silkies, huge modeled birds, and a stand-out black-and-white Polish that stole the show
 • What people get wrong about standards
• The chaos of the sale barn
• Traveling challenges, show specials, and how he avoided another hotel trailer theft
• Why Carey might actually show birds next year (even after swearing he wouldn’t)

PLUS — Jennifer reveals details from her new feed trial research, why fertility and chick vigor matter more than anything, and how even small breeders can run accurate feed comparisons like the big commercial companies.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to attend the Ohio National… this is the no-filter, boots-on-the-ground episode you don’t want to miss.

Ohio National Poultry Show, 2025 poultry show, gamefowl standards, poultry exhibition, youth poultry showmanship, poultry breeding, poultry judging, Polish chickens, Silkie chickens, Modern Game birds, sale barn poultry, chicken shows USA, poultry podcast, gamefowl podcast, poultry community, hatching eggs, feed trials, poultry fertility testing, breeder flock management

Join Carey of Show Pro Farm Supply and Jennifer of Bryant's Roost as we delve into chickens and quail (mostly)  to help you enjoy your birds more and worry less. Backyard chicken keeping shouldnt be stressfull, let's get back to the simple days

IncubationMAsterclass.com is an online course designed to walk with you during your incubation journey to maximize your efforts.  Invest in yourself with Incubaiton Masterclass

Transcript

Jennifer: 0:38

Welcome poultry nerds. So we are going to discuss the Ohio National Show because I didn't go and I have reframed from asking Carey all of the good stuff so that he can tell Bo all of us at the same time. So Carey, give it to me. Tell me all the juicy gossip.

Carey: 1:01

I really had a good time and this is my third year in a row going. And it's, it's like become a thing. I see people that I talk to on the internet all the time'cause it's one of the biggest shows of the year and I see'em, we get to chit chat in person, stuff like that. So that's a pretty cool aspect of it. I took a 30 minute long video Wow. With my camera. Walking up and down several of the aisles looking at the birds, I probably have to edit parts of it out because I was judging the birds in my mind that, you know, that's the whole past my game, foul judging test. So like I started going up that row and I looked at the birds. I couldn't take'em out, but I looked at'em, made mental notes. I went back after the judging to see what the cards say, and I was really close. I mean, you really can't judge a bird without touching it, but yeah, that's pretty cool. But I'm gonna have to do that because a lot of people, if you've never been, unless you're like in the room hearing the extreme number of birds crowing

Jennifer: 2:29

8,100.

Carey: 2:31

Yeah. And like the people, and it's like a, it's an atmosphere thing. It's really cool. Now, my anxiety was really high at some points because there's a lot of people there, but I mean, at least they're all chicken people. And I'll say this, this will give you an idea of the fate that I have in chicken people. Last year I was like, okay, I'm gonna. Pack up my stuff in my trailer, go to the hotel, go to bed early, get up, make the 500 and some odd mile drive home. I'll be good. Trailer gets broke into at the hotel, they get some of my inventory, they get my, a lot of my tools. Bam. This time Jeff says, Hey. There's no sense in us both driving. Do you have anything in your truck that you need? I said, I have my backpack with my laptop. He was like, okay, grab that. We'll take mine back to the hotel. I left my truck in the parking lot at the para ground. I didn't have a scratch on it.

Jennifer: 3:46

Oh, good.

Carey: 3:47

I was so glad everything was still there and still locked up. But I got to meet a lot of people. That were, first time I'd ever met'em in person. I had some poultry nerd stickers out on the table and one person just, you know, I see'em walking by casually'cause I am a watcher. And they looked at the table and they stopped and they looked at me and You're Carey. I said, yeah, I love your podcast. And I was like. My people, they listen. I don't know if they all follow instructions, but they listen and I mean, that made me feel really good. And I, I saw Bronwyn and a few other people that we've had on the show as guest and some I met before, some I haven't. And I gotta see her birds and I will say. She has made a lot of progress in the past year with her modeled ginormous birds and you know, when I first got introduced to the model bird thing, I really wasn't that into it. But now I hate them less than some other types of birds. So, yeah, but like, it's an atmosphere thing. I, I enjoy going, so we'll definitely be back next year. I had several people ask me about the show specials and, if I'm there, I'm gonna do'em. But it, it was, it's a good time. Beautiful birds, the ones that won some of the, the places. I really like seeing the youth'cause I mean, that's the future of any hobby is the young people. But like some of those little kids standing in front of that big Ohio National sign with their trophy, that's almost as big as they are holding their bird. Just proud as they could be. I'm like, yeah, that's cool.

Jennifer: 6:02

So Michael mjs dad sent me a picture yesterday of mj and he went up there just to do his showmanship with his little mankins. Did you see him up there? Mm-hmm. He won third in the junior showmanship.

Carey: 6:18

And look, some of those kids are so serious. Like I saw'em with lab coats that had their name on it.

Jennifer: 6:26

He has one.

Carey: 6:27

Probably an embroidery of one of their birds or the same type bird. That's, and that's cool. You know, I really like seeing kids get into stuff and learn a lot about it. You know, I, I always thought when my son was a teenager, people were like, I can't believe he's does this and does that. And I'm like. You know what, if he's spending a couple thousand dollars on a hunting dog and a hundred dollars here or a couple hundred dollars there on the chicken, I ain't gotta worry about him with drugs and women'cause he ain't got enough money for neither one. And I, I, I can honestly say I never had a problem with either with him'cause he was too broke, but he loved his hunting. He loved his chickens

Jennifer: 7:24

So do you happen to know who came the furthest to get there? Yeah, I know they do travel all the way from the west coast though.

Carey: 7:33

There was, I do know there was a lady there from Canada. I'm not sure what part, but she had some really nice looking birds and there was a big deal about that, probably how she got'em across the border. I don't know. Yeah, because that's a challenge, but you know, they, it's, the place was Okay. I did hear rumors that the APAs like big annual national event is gonna be there again next year. So that'll probably bring a whole lot of extra people. You know, it might be another 12, 14,000 bird year. And, got the show bug. Never, never been a fan of it before because of all the T that goes in with it. And which there, there's still some lines that I ain't crossing, but you know, there's a show in December, 2025 depending on when you're listening to this. And, um. I've downloaded and printed out in entry form.

Jennifer: 8:44

You said you weren't ever gonna show.

Carey: 8:47

Like I said, I've downloaded it and printed it.

Jennifer: 8:52

Yeah. You know, I did it for a while and it's a lot of work. I mean, it's you washing the bird. Well, can, you've gotta keep the birds in condition. Then you have to wash the birds. Then you have to clean the, keep the birds clean after you wash'em, but before the show and then box'em, travel with them. You gotta take feed and water and baby wipes to keep'em clean. And then you gotta haul'em in and cage'em in. Oh, it is a lot of work. And then on top of that, you know, all your normal stuff and then somebody's gotta be here to take care of your stuff while you're gone. I just, I think I've pretty much decided that it, it just may be too much for me. You know, you can't, you can't do everything. And that's one of those,

Carey: 9:40

I'm gonna, do, I have all intentions to take birds up there. I'm not saying that won't be the only time I ever do it. I'm not real big on using a baby wipe on a baby, so I'm gonna have to just hope my bird don't have any accidents.

Jennifer: 9:59

So when it Jerry couch from, um, deep south of Orpingtons, he, he helped me a lot when I was getting started and one of the tricks he told me was, you know, those. Those brushes that we had like in the eighties growing up and had like one spindle every half for three quarters of an inch. Yeah. Those are the perfect size to go through the fluffy butts. So you can brush your chicken butts. So we bought a two pack on our way to the show and I put one in my purse and then one in my chicken pack. Mm-hmm. And I took it out and was brushing my hair one day. And David just looks at me and he is is that the chicken ass brush?

Carey: 10:44

And you probably looked at it and you were like. Is this the extra one or is this the one that I actually used?

Jennifer: 10:51

No, I knew what I was doing, but he just thought it was the same color.

Carey: 10:56

Mm.

Jennifer: 10:58

Okay. I have to say it was,

Carey: 10:58

I I know he didn't use it.

Jennifer: 11:00

No, he didn't use it. So the sail barn is supposed to be as big as the show, right?

Carey: 11:06

It definitely is. There, there was a lot to be seen in the sale barn. A lot. I don't know for sure about a count. I ain't gonna say that there was 8,000 birds in there, but there was several thousand birds in there and some of them were really nice looking. I. Some of'em should have been a coal.

Jennifer: 11:35

Well, somebody's coal is somebody else's cream of the crop, right? No. Not that. We'll go

Carey: 11:42

with that.

Jennifer: 11:43

That one was chicken dinner.

Carey: 11:44

We're being nice.

Jennifer: 11:45

Okay.

Carey: 11:47

Um,

Jennifer: 11:47

so you're going back next year?

Carey: 11:49

Year? Oh yeah. Yeah. I'll go back. Even if, just for the camaraderie. To see the people and the fact that it's going to be, if it is there, the a P'S big one. I know there'll be a lot more people there, so yeah, I, I'll go. I might actually try to talk David into going No,

Jennifer: 12:12

no, he won't go. He doesn't care. He only cares about chickens'cause I care about chickens. You have better luck taking Tamara.

Carey: 12:20

She's actually going with me to Knoxville.

Jennifer: 12:22

Oh, well good.

Carey: 12:23

Yeah.

Jennifer: 12:24

Yeah. All right then. So I guess the only last thing is is how many days exactly is the show?

Carey: 12:32

So this time the show started at nine on Saturday, coop in was all day on Friday. Vendors were unloading their trucks and. Exhibitors were some of them bringing in chickens by the droves. One I saw if I wanted to do lots of showing, I saw what I would build this dgu. It is probably even the conditioning cage, like these birds stay in it for, from the time they wash'em. Till the time they go to the show so they can't get dirty. This thing's like six foot tall, eight feet long on wheels and it I wanna say it had five tall and seven across birds

Jennifer: 13:34

silkies. Yes.

Carey: 13:37

So I saw a lot of silkies in one. And I saw a lot of them moderns in another.

Jennifer: 13:43

Oh, I love the moderns. They look like Barbie dolls

Carey: 13:46

to me. Like they got them, they got the legs. Yeah.

Jennifer: 13:49

They look like barbie dolls.

Carey: 13:51

I mean, it is like a chicken nugget with a head and legs.

Jennifer: 13:55

Okay. What was the most interesting bird there that you hadn't seen before? Or was there one or just the most interesting bird?

Carey: 14:05

I mean, I had seen most of them, but I will say this, this year is the first time, to my knowledge that Game F were in the Ohio show. And they had a couple rows of those. The owners were either. Don't know what they had or not being fully transparent because the names that some of'em had for breed wasn't what it was. Hmm. Which is kind of funny and kind of not because with a game file world, a lot of stuff has the name that they have given it. And that's not what the actual type and breed is of the bird. And a lot of people don't know. Two weeks ago I went to a game foul show in Alabama. It was their annual fundraiser had a good, many good size turnout. And there was people showing birds that didn't even know a standard existed, which was tragic. Because a lot of them were very nasty with what they had to say about what the judge put on the ticket.

Jennifer: 15:30

Well, if you're just getting started, I could see where, you know, you're missing information and you don't know. So

Carey: 15:37

true. But. Like when somebody tells you there's a standard that dictates everything about that bird, don't argue with'em.

Jennifer: 15:48

No. You should be open and open to learning when you go.

Carey: 15:52

But I mean that was, there was some of that going on. There's definitely a difference, but I will say seeing game foul at the A PA show and. Ohio was encouraging for people that do keep and breed game foul. And there were some that were pretty, and some I wouldn't have brought.

Jennifer: 16:20

That's okay.

Carey: 16:21

There was a ton of moderns and there was a ton of silkies. Well, I'll say this, so the bird that I saw that really stuck out. It was a polish. Okay. Jet Black, beautiful white snow fall, eraser head. Like poof.

Jennifer: 16:49

The crest was white.

Carey: 16:51

Yes, they were. They were, the birds were all black, white, crested, and like, it just looked really clean to me. Almost like a, like a penguin in tuxedo in one of the cartoon movies or something.

Jennifer: 17:07

So I'm courting a Polish breeder to come onto the podcast. They're interested but haven't fully committed yet.

Carey: 17:16

That'd be fun.

Jennifer: 17:17

Uhhuh.

Carey: 17:18

cause like, I mean, I've seen a lot of chickens in person, but I had never seen these and. I was unpacking some stuff and this guy comes by with a cart that has a lot of them in boxes. He's got one in his hand and I'm like, was this your ride or die buddy that rode in the front with you? You know, you've got like 10, 15 boxes on your cart. Was this an extra, which apparently was a thing because one lady says, oh, I brought 15, but I'm going home with 26. Like, okay. But he, he was carrying that bird and I just, I thought it was pretty.

Jennifer: 19:00

Mm-hmm. I

Carey: 19:01

liked it.

Jennifer: 19:03

There's a lot of neat birds. Yeah. I hope everybody had fun. I hope everybody remembered to bring all their birds home. I saw somebody forgot one and Yep. Uhuh saw the post, but I think it all worked out. And, uh, how do,

Carey: 19:18

how do you forget your chicken?

Jennifer: 19:20

Well, I think there was something else that happened there. Like maybe that somebody else bought it and didn't get it, or I don't know exactly. I just saw the post.

Carey: 19:28

No, now I have heard of that happening. Like people buy birds and they're like, I'm gonna pick it up on Sunday after awards, and they don't. Pick it up.

Jennifer: 19:38

Yeah, I think it all took care. It, it worked itself out on the post I saw so. Well, I'm glad you're home safe and everybody had a good time and um, so I was working on finishing up my next feed trial while you were busy running the roads and talking to show people.

Carey: 19:58

I mean, feed trials is important.

Jennifer: 20:00

Mm-hmm.

Carey: 20:01

They are. You need to do that.

Jennifer: 20:03

So the commercial companies like Ross or Cobb, they're always running experiments and testing because it's all about the bottom line. It's about how much does it cost to get this bird to this point? What makes this bird a grade, A quality chick versus mm-hmm. This other bird what parameters can change? And I'm having, I'm not gonna divulge all of what I'm doing right now, but I am working. On some stuff on the side, and I'm more, I couldn't

Carey: 20:42

imagine you working on stuff on the side.

Jennifer: 20:44

I am becoming more and more knowledgeable by the day, um, with the commercial companies and how they operate. And so like one of the tests may be if you heat the incubator up just a little bit, can that speed the growth to cut back on the number of days in the incubator? Yes, you can make them grow a little quicker, but you always sacrifice chick quality.

Carey: 21:15

Mm-hmm. So

Jennifer: 21:15

there's these, you know, these tests that they do and these parameters that they follow to get it exactly right and. And if you're going to learn, then you learn from the companies that are spending the millions and millions of dollars to study this stuff.

Carey: 21:35

That's just on research.

Jennifer: 21:36

Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly.

Carey: 21:39

Like I read, I read a book, Jeff told me, he said, look, if you really wanna see how a breeding chef program is done on a large scale look at one of those companies. And search through their documents and see if you can't find a breeder manual. And I was like, okay. And I did. One of those companies has a 56 page guide for their breeders on how to, how they want the bird raised from hatch. To point alay. Everything from temperature, light type, light, color, brightness feed the specifics on it, the bedding, every detail is in there. And that ram me down a rabbit hole one night that was insomnia driven. And I saw some where a lot of research is also done in Africa, which is kind of a weird place, but apparently they study chickens a lot over there. And I find the individual studies where people study for two and three years, the effects on different lighting on a chicken and what it does at different points. Down to how it affects the feed consumption, feed conversion ratios fertility, everything. And I'm like, I thought I studied it a little bit like these people.

Jennifer: 23:28

Yes.

Carey: 23:29

Really got granular. I'd like to have some funding that they had to do some study because some of them was highly funded.

Jennifer: 23:39

So chicken is one of those products, you know, people eat chicken probably daily, if not every other day. Mm-hmm. And so there's a lot of money in chicken around the world. And so moving them through the process quickly is money driven. Mm-hmm. So feed trials, while I of course, am not near on that scale, for me, I needed to know what feed. That was available to me would do the best for my purposes. And so to That's fair to figure it out. The first thing you've gotta do is know what your purposes are. So whereas the big companies, their purposes how much weight can I put on this bird? In, I think they've got it down to like 38 days or something now. My question is, yes, how much weight goes on this bird? But really my biggest thing is what is the fertility rate of my eggs and the vigor of those chicks when they hatch? Because the model of my business is shipping hatching eggs. Mm-hmm. And I shipped so many of them that I need the customer. To have viable eggs when they receive them, despite weather in the transit, despite treatment of the box in transit de I mean, it has so many obstacles that it has to get across. Then I need that embryo to be as strong and vigorous as possible when they receive it. In order to make it grow and hatch and live vigorously,

Carey: 25:34

and you can only test hatch so much.

Jennifer: 25:37

I can, I mean, I, I do have the ability to scale here to a point. I mean, I can't my incubators of course don't hold the a hundred thousand eggs like the big cob incubators do. And to me that's just awesome. I would just like to see one, you know, in person. But I mean, that's like a whole room and they move the eggs on these big racks. But anyway, I digress.

Carey: 26:01

Watch the Quail Ladies videos.

Jennifer: 26:04

Well, she

Carey: 26:05

has some really large ones.

Jennifer: 26:07

She does, but that's still, she's only hatching, 50,000, 55,000. These are incubators that hold only a hundred to 130,000 eggs. And they have entire buildings of these incubators.

Carey: 26:23

Yeah, they're like a walk-in cooler.

Jennifer: 26:25

Yes.

Carey: 26:26

Only it's an incubator,

Jennifer: 26:28

so believe it or not their incubators spend more time cooling than they do heating. They actually only heat for the first seven days, and then day seven to 14, they kind of maintain that, they call it that neutral zone, and then 14 to 21, they're actually cooling because the embryos are so exothermic on their heat production that the heat rises too high in the incubators. They have to keep cooling them down in order to keep'em at the 37.8 degrees Celsius. It's pretty fascinating, the science. But anyway, it

Carey: 27:11

sounds to me like you're taking a college course.

Jennifer: 27:14

We're not talking about that right now. We're talking about my feed trial.

Carey: 27:18

That's detail. But yes, it is fascinating at how some of these companies do it. And I see people asking all the time on in different groups, how much should I charge for this? Well, if you don't know what your costs are and the profit margin that you would like to have. You don't know,

Jennifer: 27:42

and it's not hard, but you do have to have a couple things. You have to have no waste feeders, and a lot of people don't have those. It's quail or just wasteful eaters by their very nature. So in order to have accurate results, you have to have no waste feeders. Um, and you gotta weigh everything. Otherwise, you're just adding your waste into your cost and that is not cost effective.

Carey: 28:14

I would say. It is great for the compost pile. But it's not cost effective,

Jennifer: 28:19

right? So we, um, here I brewed in tubs for the first five to seven days, well, depending on the weather. So let's say seven to 10 days. And, um. And then I move them in onto wire. They have no waste feeders. It's, it's easier that way. And um, and I can get a pretty accurate reading that way. The little, tiny, less than five days, they don't waste a tremendous amount of food. Not like the older ones do, but back to my feed trial. So all I wanted to do. Was, compare the feeds that were available to me so that I could get the best fertility, the best vigor in the chicks, and it be cost effective and put weight on the birds at the same time. And, and I did that. I got the information, I got all the raw data. It's going to actually be published this week on bryant roos.com. And you'll have all, are you gonna

Carey: 29:25

send out an email to all your subscribers?

Jennifer: 29:27

I, I will. So if you wanna be on my email list, you need to sign up for that. But you can go to brian.com, get the, actually at this point, I have two feed trials published, so you can download both of them. And then I've also done a separate video explaining what I did, why I did it, and my take on the results. So you know, it's there if you want more information and if you, you know, if you have different feeds available to you where you are. Just buy two bags of feed and the next time you hatch two, I mean, a set of chicks, just divide it in half and feed them separately and just weigh the feed. It's, uh, sounds easy. It, the concept is easy. Tracking it, weighing it not being distracted when the phone rings or the kid walks in the room or the chick runs by on the floor and you gotta figure out where he belongs to.'cause I had chicks escape yesterday. We're everywhere. So it's, it sounds simple, but in theory, but in practicality it's not, it's kind of tedious.

Carey: 30:39

And so if you do what she said. And decide to hatch two brooder fools, not one, and all of that good stuff, and you get in trouble. It's jennifer@bryantroos.com. Not that we're enablers or anything, if, if you have one, you know, everybody likes their feed. Mm-hmm. Or wonders about it. So if you have a feed that you like or that you wanted to try. Look at her feed study. See all the different data that she gathers. See what's important to you. Put your tenfold hat on and start tracking.

Jennifer: 31:21

Yep. And, and you know, maybe there's I hearing some talk about another fee called Blue Bonnet. I guess it's available on Chewy. Mm-hmm. Maybe that's something I can, I've never used it. But maybe that's something I can do next, next summer. Now I have to do my feed trials in the summer. Because shipping season is just absolutely too chaotic to try to do anything. And in the fall I'm trying to whittle down my chicken numbers. This year we had to whittle down over 200. Uh, to get'em off the feed bill before winter. You know, there's just a lot going on in the fall. So I have to do the feed trial in the summer when I have space and, and a little bit more time. And then it takes more time to sit and work all the numbers and write everything up and make it look.

Carey: 32:12

I'm gonna say in shipping season, you don't even know if you ate that day, much less how much and have time to track what your birds ate or how much they weigh. You're in shipping season, you don't really care as long as it they're maintaining.

Jennifer: 32:27

Yeah, today I'm trying to, I'm hatching and sorting, getting ready for shipping season and I went out to the barn I don't know, about nine o'clock or so this morning. I had a piece of toast on my way out there and it was over, it was like two 30 and I was like, good board. What is wrong with me? And I realized it needed to come back in and eat breakfast. And so I had some scrambled eggs.'cause we have a multitude of eggs.

Carey: 32:52

You can, when you have chickens.

Jennifer: 32:54

Yep.

Carey: 32:56

You should have eggs.

Jennifer: 32:57

Yep. All righty. So don't forget to check that out. It, by the time you hear this it, it will be live on bryant roos.com. And if you have any, go to poultry

Carey: 33:09

nerd podcast.com and subscribe.

Jennifer: 33:12

Mm-hmm. Please. So

Carey: 33:13

you can get all the latest tidbits on stuff that we're working on.

Jennifer: 33:17

And we will be back next week.

Carey: 33:19

All right. Have a good one.