Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:05
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr, Judy Morgan, I'm really excited about today's podcast, and our topic is, why should you keep chickens? Could they be more powerful than meditation, and I'm thinking, somebody else's chickens, not mine, because I am not going to meditate with my chickens, because they don't like me near as much as they like my mother. But my guest today is Johannes Hanns Paul, co founder of Omlet, which is a global leader in innovative and sustainable pet products, celebrating 20 years of bringing new meaning to chicken keeping with its state of the line, coupes and accessories, and we'll talk about those a little later on. Hanns, thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest today. I'm excited to talk about this.
Hanns Paul
I am thrilled to be here and to convince you of the meditative powers of even your mother's chickens Dr. Judy
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:02
yeah, they definitely love, you know, it's funny, when you get chicks, they imprint on the first person that they really interact with. And when my mother loves baby anything, whether it's a two legged or a four legged, she just loves baby animals and baby children. And so every time we get a new batch of chicks, my mother is just all over, you know, playing with the chicks and talking to them and and so I think they just instantly that it's like Mom, and I'm chopped liver,
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:42
All right, so I'm gonna give a little background. Hanns grew up on a farm in West Sussex, England, and I love this. A pet cat named Pudding and a rooster named Hen Solo. Awesome. He studied engineering at Brunel University and completed a master's in industrial design at the Royal College of Art London, and that's where he met the co founders of Omlet. I just love that company name perfect,
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:09
James Tuthill, Simon Nichols and William Wyndham. And after graduating the four chicken enthusiasts started Omelet with $5,000 in savings in a dream of transforming chickens from misunderstood farmyard animals. See, I don't understand them. To much loved. Too much love family pets through the power of product design. Omelet has 20 years experience in helping people start keeping chickens through coops designed for backyards of all shapes and sizes. Omelet makes it possible to keep a flock of hens almost anywhere. Notice hens, not my million horrible roosters. Omelet's commitment to making chicken keeping possible for the masses runs deeper than product. With their latest campaign, Omelet is spreading the word on the mental and physical health benefits pet chickens can bring. This is so cool. So how do, how do I make my chickens into something I want to meditate with?
Hanns Paul
Well, the beautiful, beautiful thing is they already come pre programmed by that for you, straight out of the box. Thank you for that wonderful introduction by the way. that was pretty, very nice.
Hanns Paul 3:21
Yeah, I think just winding the clock back 20 years ago, when we started out, we just had this, I don't know, I honestly struggle to explain it, why we just had this sort of complete, passionate belief that more people needed to keep chickens because they were misunderstood. You know, it was like a real underdog story. We were like, gonna kind of bring the underdog out and make it into the hero. And, yeah, I grew up with chickens on a small holding, and my mom was, you know, one of these incredible people who seems to be able to juggle everything, four children, a farm. Yeah, we just, it was a little bit like growing up on Noah's Arc, it was like two of everything. As you know, I just always loved the chickens. They were right outside the back door, and go out, feed them in the morning, collect the eggs and things and and then later in life, when I was at the Royal College of Art and I met Jim and Simon and Will
Hanns Paul 4:18
we, we just started talking about chickens one day. And Jim had kept chickens as a child growing up and stuff. And he was like, Yeah, they're really cool. Like, more people should keep chickens. And we started to talk about why people don't, and we realized it was because they had become somehow, like, totally misunderstood, like, people just really associated them with a farm yard type hobby, you know, something you would do if you had a farm, lived in a rural area, and our thing was like, but why couldn't you do it if you lived in a suburban area or urban? Because I not just for the eggs, but there's such a cool pet. So we set about trying to figure out how we could change people's perceptions.
Hanns Paul 5:00
And we ended up designing the first Eglu, which didn't look anything like a chicken coop. When we when we launched it, people literally came up to us and went, what is it? And we would go, it's a chicken coop? And they would go, really and we say, yeah. And then they would say, Wow, does this mean I can keep chickens? And we really realized at that point, there's almost like there's something very, sort of deep in people's DNA, almost that they there's almost an instinct in some people, like an instinct to keep chickens. I would love to keep chickens. They've never kept chickens before. They don't know, really, what's involved, but they just like, I would love to do that. And I think it's I don't know, like it's to do with the sounds that chickens make. It's the it's maybe the nostalgia of it a little bit, you know, linking it to a time which maybe people now feel was simpler, made more sense. You know, was more community based. And I think when we talk about keeping chickens, we talk in a way which actually is so much more than just the chicken. It's about the connections that you get with other people, the connections they foster with your family. Maybe, you know, you've got teenage kids, you know, and and there's like, often it's a bit stressful, but if you've got some chickens in the backyard, you go out, you come out with a hope. You're in nature, you're you're outside, and that also brings this other element to it, where people just feel a little more literally grounded. You know, you take shoes off, you're walking in the grass, you're hearing the sounds of chickens. I mean, I don't know, like it just, it just all happens. It just naturally drops your blood pressure and lowers your heart rate.
Dr. Judy Morgan
You know, I will say my favorite time of day is first thing in the morning when we go out and do all of our barn chores and take care of the chickens and the horses and the donkeys and
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:50
cats, dogs and I listen to the chickens in the coop. We have, we have about 30 chickens right now, and a few roosters are part of that mix. And they're so funny because my mother normally is in charge of taking care of the chickens, and she hasn't been able to get out to the barn recently. And the chickens sound exactly like my mother. They like I listen to them in the coop while I'm cleaning the horse stalls, yeah. And it sounds just like my mother is in there talking to them, because she has this high pitched sort of baby talk that when she talks to the chickens, and I literally can't tell the chicken voices from my mother's voice.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:33
So I feel like my mother is out there in the barn with me every morning, because I've got all you know. And I'm like, you know, some mornings those chickens are so loud, and it's like, it's like, everybody around the water cooler gossiping,
Hanns Paul
yeah, definitely, like, what are they chatting about? Like, what went on that night?
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:54
I don't know, but now we've got the roosters, and I will say, like, we never, we've started with chickens in 2016. And we lived like you said. We lived in a suburban area. We were actually in town, but we had two acres. We are in town. We weren't allowed to have any farm animals, but we had two miniature horses, and we got six chickens. So it was sort of exactly, it was sort of one of those, don't ask, don't tell. And our neighbors were like, Oh, that's so cool.
Hanns Paul
It's just some very big dogs and some funny looking cats.
Dr. Judy Morgan
exactly. So nobody complained, and it was fine. And the chickens were able to free range on our two acres. And interestingly, the miniature horses were their protectors. Like, as long as the horses were out with them, we didn't have a predator problem, yeah, we did have a predator problem one day when I didn't put the horses out with them. So it's really interesting, because the miniature horses don't ward off anything. They're just a bigger presence, yeah. So what I discovered was, as long as the chickens are out there with them, yeah, it's okay, yeah. Otherwise, free ranging, was it? And, I was one of those people. I knew nothing. I mean, I had to take a chicken class in vet school. But chicken class in vet school is flock management. It's not single bird or so you know, if a bird dies, how do you
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:18
Or if your birds get sick, yeah. How do you decide what that is? Well, in flock medicine, you kill a few do a necropsy. Do some cultures do when you have a flock of six, you don't kill a few birds to figure out what's going on? Yeah. So I got six chickens, I had no idea what to do with them, and we literally winged it, no pun intended. And you know, we've, we've actually been really lucky through the years with our chickens.
Hanns Paul 9:46
I think you're just a fast learner
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:49
I don't know. I think we're just lucky,
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:52
but I will tell you that my grandfather had a pet rooster. Yeah, twice.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:58
These roosters would just wander in. To their yard. They lived in town, and a rooster would show up, and so he had a huge Rhode Island Red named Clarence. And he brought it in the house, and they had a dirt floor basement, rolled house, and the rooster roosted in the basement overnight, and then every morning, Clarence would come out and follow my grandfather around. All day, he had a furniture store, and the rooster followed him around, walked to the post office with him every day. He taught it to crow on command. It learned a whole bunch of tricks, and when that rooster met its demise, he another one walked into his yard, and they named that one Clarence too.
Hanns Paul
That was so cool. You know, often I take issue with like
Hanns Paul 10:38
this phrase, like man's best friend, and everybody automatically assumes it's a dog. Why is it always a dog? You know, I think what you've just explained there is like, it can just as easily be a chicken. And
Hanns Paul 10:50
I think they this is like, this is what. So, I think possibly because people's expectations of how chickens can be as pets is really quite low, that they are so surprised when they get them they realize what characters they have and that you can even train them. You know, they are so much more similar
Hanns Paul 11:09
than like other pets that people have, like cats and dogs in terms of their capabilities and the warmth and the companionship that you get from the pet. You know, that's really, that's really something that's misunderstood with chickens, because people just haven't had that direct contact with them.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:26
I would agree. I mean, I have a great picture of my mom, where the she and my husband and I were playing Scrabble on our back patio, and my mother is holding one of the hens in her arms as she's playing Scrabble, and the chicken is just, you know, sort of nestled in there, like, happy as can be, and she's, she's holding this chicken, just like you would hold a cat or a dog, just as you know, part of her bonding with her chickens. So I think it's, I think it's part of my problem, I think, is these chickens are really bonded to my mother, and they're not really very happy with me. They're like, I mean, they're not mean, but they're, they're just like meh.
Hanns Paul
You see the relationship that your mother and the chickens have. You're like, what? Why are we not like that?
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:15
Well, and the roosters, we have, uh, two little silky roosters, yeah, who are very friendly. We have a third silky rooster that I had to send to live at my daughter's house because that one was attacking my mother.
Hanns Paul
Okay, so there's no, it's not a 100% success rate, but it does sound like your mother is a real chicken whisperer, like she's really got a connection.
Dr. Judy Morgan
We actually call her that. She's pretty funny, but she, I mean, she just likes all animals. So,
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:39
so what? How if somebody wanted to have a little backyard coop and they lived, oh, thank you, and they lived in a suburban area.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:53
We need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want an answer on how many chickens should people start with, or what's a what's a good number to have in your backyard? We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. Stay tuned. We'll be back in just a minute.
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast, and I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, my guest today, Hanns Paul, co founder of Omelet, is explaining to us what wonderful pets chickens can be and they really can. And I've seen it with my grandfather. I've seen it with my mother. I'm not as bonded to the chickens,
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:07
but, you know, I did have I had an Amazon parrot, I had a cockatoo, I had lovebirds, finches. I've had a lot of birds over the year, years, and
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:19
birds are really interesting. They kind of bond to one person like my Amazon loved me. Nobody else could get near him. so that, you know, it may be very similar with the chickens. But if somebody wanted to get started with chickens in their backyard, you know, they could be like me and just say, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm gonna go down to the farm store, buy some chickens, put them in the yard.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:44
What would you recommend as a starting point? How many chickens is a good number to start with?
Hanns Paul
Yeah. That's a great question, which we get asked a lot, and because I think we we become very well known for helping people get started with keeping pet chickens and.
Hanns Paul 15:00
So I guess the first thing to say is, chickens are a flock animal, so they do like to have another, at least one other chicken in that flock. So I would always say, like, as an absolute minimum, two chickens.
Hanns Paul 15:13
But mostly, I think people, when they've got a limited space, they will start with, you know, three, maybe four chickens. And that's like, a, you know, a really good number.
Hanns Paul 15:24
So if you have a small, you know, small garden, maybe a suburban area, or even an urban area, then 2, 3, 4, chickens, great number.
Hanns Paul 15:34
You get the smaller Bantam breeds, which are, like, perfect for a small garden, you know, these, these, these chickens are, well, how big? Like, roughly the size of a football, I guess. So, really, quite small and very, you know, very easy to look after in a back garden, the eggs will be a bit smaller. So if your, if your main goal is to provide eggs for your family, then you want to get the sort of the larger breeds you mentioned, Rhode Island reds, you know, that's the absolute classic egg laying chicken. But there are a lot of really great egg laying chickens. And then, you know, a one chicken can lay six eggs a week. So, you know, you can see very quickly you can actually produce a lot of eggs. If you have three chicken, it's like six eggs a week. You know, you're going to be getting 18 eggs a week. So for a lot of families, you know, you don't need a lot of chickens to be able to provide all your eggs for you. So I would normally recommend start out with a small flock
Hanns Paul 16:32
and then build up from there, because I tell you something that's very real, chickens are addictive, and they should come with a bit of a warning, because once you start keeping them, you're wanting it more. And another thing that people that you haven't sort of discovered this world of chickens yet don't realize is just how incredible the breed selection is now. So you can go on a you know, there's some really great hatcheries, McMurray hatchery, Maya hatchery, cadcall hatchery, all these, great generational businesses where they've been breeding really incredible lines of chickens, and you can get birds that you wouldn't even realize they're a chicken. They're just exotic, talking about apparent level exotic here, so you can really amaze your friends with like, your selection of breeds that you would have in your back garden, to the point now, genuinely, people would say, like, wow, what is that? you go It's a chicken and they, is it?
Hanns Paul 17:28
So, yeah, it's a very cool, very cool hobby to get into, but it is a bit addictive.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, we, we've got a bunch of different breeds. We've we've gone to a couple of those specialty hatcheries, where we could pick out different different little peeps. And the cool thing about doing that is we have chickens of all different sizes and different colors. So they're they're really pretty, but we also get eggs of all different colors. So we have green eggs, blue eggs, purple eggs, light tan, dark brown, and we finally got some white ones. So, but it's really cool. When I give away a dozen eggs, it's like, opening it up, and it's like, oh, an Easter egg hunt. You don't even have to dye the egg.
Hanns Paul
Yeah. I mean, it's genuinely Amazing, isn't it? Like the colors of the eggs are just beautiful. And, I mean, they all taste the same, which is sometimes that, you know, people wonder, like older the chocolate brown ones taste a bit chocolatey. Sorry, sorry, guys, they don't. I guess they all taste the same. And, you know, the quality of the egg has nothing to do with the breed of the chicken. It's really 100% to do with, you know, the welfare of that chicken, or the well being, and how you feed that chicken. And it's, you know, it's environment. So keeping them in your in your in your backyard, means that you can really be sure of the quality of the eggs. You know exactly what they've been eating, and the freshness, obviously, is unparalleled. You cannot buy an egg that fresh. So you you can go out in the morning. You can pick some eggs from your chicken coop. You can bring them back in. You can cook them like I, personally, I like to poach the eggs because that, for me, you just get that real sort of, you see how fresh they are, and they just taste fantastic.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:12
Yeah, it's such a huge difference. And it's interesting, because we, now that we have almost 30 chickens, we get a lot of eggs. And so I bring eggs to the office and give them to our employees. And one of our employees was helping us out at the farm, and I handed him a dozen eggs, and he said, oh thank goodness, because I had to get store bought eggs last week. I ran out of your eggs. And he said I was so sick. They upset my stomach so badly, I can't eat store bought eggs anymore. I've gotten so used to these farm fresh eggs, which is, they are totally different. If you, if you take
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:47
a farm fresh egg that you just got out of your backyard, that was just laid and you crack that next to a store bought egg, the the color and size of the yolks, the the stiffness of the white, I mean, it is totally, totally different.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:01
and one of the things that people don't understand is storage of the eggs. We do not refrigerate our eggs. We do not wash our eggs, because once you wash them, you actually take that protective coating off the shell. And that's part of the problem with grocery store eggs, and why they don't last near as long, because they've been washed, and then they have to be refrigerated, whereas our farm fresh eggs, we can leave them sitting on the counter for 60 days, they never last that long, because they get eaten much quickly, or we give them away to somebody else to eat them. But it is, it is amazing. The difference
Hanns Paul
just think about, like, just picking up what you were saying there, I think this is, like, it's another thing we were mentioning about the community aspect of chicken keeping, and it's like, you know, they're very different from other pets. There's, there's not much that I can think of that you could gift that your dog produces or your cat produces, like, I don't think anyone would appreciate one of those gifts. But eggs from your chickens, you know, where you take them around to a friend, or like you do, you bring them into work like it's such a great thing to do, and it's a real conversation starter. And it just lets people into your world a little bit and and just brings people together. And I think you know many stories of people who have developed friendships and unexpected sort of connections, like a lady was saying to me the other day, she goes to a farmer's market. She was, she always goes to the Bee guy, and she buys honey from this guy. And she mentioned again that she just got 8 chickens, and she was getting her first eggs. And he was like, oh, you know, if you bring me some, I'll trade you. I'll trade you some honey for the eggs,
Hanns Paul 21:38
you know, so cool. And I think it's that that kind of thing that, you know, this sort of, we talk about meditative power of the chicken this morning, this sort of, this whole kind of world that they kind of open up in terms of, yeah, I don't know. Another way we talk about it is almost like chicken therapy, you know, they've just, they're just good for you,
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:58
true. Well, another positive that happens at our house Is all of our kitchen scraps go to the chickens. So like this morning, my husband cut up a watermelon. Well, the chickens go crazy for the watermelon rind and you know, normally that would go in the trash, or we don't even compost because we don't have any chicken or kitchen waste left over, because everything goes to the chickens, but we pretty much eat all fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. So anything that's left over that's going to the chickens, they're still getting fresh, organic food.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:34
And we actually just started a hydroponic garden, because I want fresh food for us and for the chickens.
Hanns Paul
That sounds amazing. The other thing I was going to say, I don't know if you you probably don't eat these yourself, but the chickens definitely do is, like, they're very good at controlling sort of pests and bugs, like ticks, for example, in your garden. So they will, they will do a great sort of natural job of keeping pests, and definitely things like ticks and another sort of mites and things in the garden as well. That's what they love to do.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:04
Yeah, they're, they're, we always think about Guinea Hens for that, but regular chickens are going to take care of that as well. So before we run out of time, I want to talk about
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:17
your products at Omelet so obviously, you're making coops. How? How from how many chickens to how many chickens like, how big do your coops go?
Hanns Paul
Yeah, so we have four coops in the range at the moment. The Eglu Go and the Eglu go up are our sort of starter sizes for up to four chickens. And then we go to the Eglu cube, which is for six. And then the biggest one, Eglu Pro, which is 10 large chickens.
Hanns Paul 23:45
So, yeah, it's when you've got 10 chickens. That's a pretty decent sized flock, and that's definitely manageable still in a sort of a regular backyard, like
Hanns Paul 23:57
I keep see we've got 12 chickens at the moment, we've got a mixture so bantams and larger breeds. So if you have bantams, you can have actually 15 in our largest chicken coops, and that's it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, cool. And how big up? How big a footprint is that coop for that many chickens?
Hanns Paul
the actual coop would be, it's around six feet wide and about three feet deep, and then you'd have you then you need to decide what kind of run you want with it. So, you know, like when you've gone in your coop at night and you see how they sleep, you know, they all huddling up together. And so in our largest Pro they have three nest boxes in there, and then you have the roosting area where they sleep. The main thing I would say to people is, really think about the outside space, because the outside space is where the chickens are active during the day of foraging like they won't really be in the coop during the day very much at all. You go in there to lay and egg maybe, if the weather's really bad, they would spend a bit more time in there. But the main thing is to think about, how do you want to keep them outside? And a lot of people will create
Hanns Paul 25:00
What we call a walk in run, so a large, sort of totally enclosed area which will keep out hawks, raccoons, you know, all those kind of annoying predators, coyotes, foxes, all sorts of things. And then your chickens can be out during the day, foraging, doing their thing, and you don't need to worry about,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, yeah. Otherwise, you're going to have to get them a protector. So either some sort of a farm dog that would be a good protector. And actually we have donkeys, and donkeys are very, very good protectors. The only time we ever had a fox get any of our chickens, it was absolutely pouring rain, and the donkeys hate rain, so they went inside the barn, and that Fox took advantage of the donkeys, kind of being in hiding, and came up and got a chicken. So, so it is a really good now, our chickens are in an outdoor, totally enclosed wire where nobody can get to them.
Hanns Paul
I think, in the end, is the right way to do it, because exactly to worry about them. And all of ours have got, like a special anti tunnel skirt to stop, like predators, like foxes digging in. And, you know, they're trying to test it. We've been doing this for 20 years, so we've kind of figured out all of these things and really solved
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:12
So, these guys have a ton of information about chickens and keeping flocks and getting started on their website.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:20
And let's see @omeletUSA is their Instagram, their Facebook and X, and the website is www.omlet, O, M, L, E, t.us,
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:33
which is so cool. And they've got all kinds of offers on there as well. You can get 10% off site wide, using the code DrJudy. So this is a great chance to go get some amazing products with a discount, and also learn a lot about chickens. And they give you free shipping if you're within the continental US,
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:59
so if you spend over $100 so that is very cool as well. So I know you sell the coops and chicken products? Do you sell feed, supplements, anything like that as well?
Hanns Paul
No, not so much. They were really about the kind of the hardware, which is keeping like automatic door openers and coops and fencing things like that.
Dr. Judy Morgan
I'm gonna check it out. So we had a, we have a big barn, and so we actually had the coop built in as part of the barn.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:30
But if you don't have that, and you want something that's free standing and
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:37
obviously well researched, and something your chickens are going to love check out Omelet. I'm going to go check it out. I think this is very cool. Thank you so much for your time today, Hanns, I really, really appreciate what you guys are doing.
Hanns Paul
Thank you. Dr Judy it's been an absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.