Continuing with our special series on the poultry industry in Indian Country, we have 3 egg-cellent ladies on this episode. Kathrine Minthorn (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation) the Technical Assistance Network Associate Director from IAC talks about her own experience as an egg producer and how she helps her community. Amelia Evans-Brow (Yup’ik & Passamaquoddy) a Technical Assistance Specialist at IAC, known colloquially as the Chicken Ribbon Skirt lady, talks about her love for her feathered friends and how IAC is trying to encourage more Native producers to take the leap into poultry production. Also on the podcast is Cary Fremin (Native Village of Dot Lake) a former Technical Assistance Specialist for IAC and a council member for her village talks about the challenges of raising chickens in the wilds of Alaska.

For more information on the roundtable discussions mentioned in the episode email

katherine@indianag.org or amelia@indianag.org

Welcome back to our special series Making

Scratch. Today's episode will focus on three of the

Intertribal Agriculture Council's technical assistants

and their interactions with Indian Country's poultry

industry. Not only do they help others on their egg-citing

journeys when raising poultry, all three women have their own

flocks.

Welcome to another episode of Rooted Wisdom. Today we have

three guests, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves,

starting with you, Katherine.

Hi. Good morning. My name is Katherine

Minthorn. I'm an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of

the Umatilla Indian Reservation based in Pendleton, Oregon. I am

employed by the Intertribal Agriculture Council as an

associate director of technical assistance. Thank you.

Amelia?

Amelia Evans-Brown: Hello. Good morning. My name is Amalia

Tumela Evans-Brown. I am Yupik from the village of Eek, Alaska.

I currently reside in New Hampshire. I am a northeast

Technical Assistance Specialist with the Intertribal Agriculture

Council.

And Carrie.

Hello, my name is Carrie Freeman. I'm an

Athabaskan and enrolled in the village of Dot Lake, which is

located in Alaska. I work for the Intertribal Agricultural

Council as a Technical Assistance Specialist for the

Alaska region.

So we're doing a series about the poultry

industry in Indian Country. And we want to start out a little

broadly. So Amelia, can you tell us a little bit about what

growth in the poultry industry you've seen in Indian Country?

Amelia Evans-Brown: Absolutely. So I guess I'll start off with

the poultry industry as a whole. So it's interesting, because we

have a lot of poultry production operations throughout the United

States and within Indian Country, so depending on your

region. So like, I'm in the northeast, so I support all

tribes from Maine to Virginia over to Ohio. And in my

particular region, we have a lot of tribes getting into the

poultry industry, but aren't established, then we have other

regions where we have very established poultry industries,

like in Catherine's region and Alaska, we're kind of starting

to see in the industry where it's starting to pick up, where

there's a lot more interest. So I feel like it's kind of mixed,

where we have heavy operations, and then there are kind of

tribes who are just getting started.

Awesome.

Catherine, can you tell us a little bit about

what your interest in the poultry industry is and what

your successes have been as a producer?

Well, my interest is only about four

years old. When the pandemic happened back in 2020, we had

just processed a steer. So we had just a freezer full of beef,

you know, we weren't worried about, you know, having any

shortages, or anything like that, of food - protein sources,

so to speak. But also kind of pretty well aware that we'd get

tired of beef if, if we couldn't get any any other source of

protein. So my friend and I that ran the cattle together, her and

her kids, and then myself and my grandson, kind of settled on

chickens. Eggs, actually. So we ordered chicks online, kind of

like it is today. Went to the feed store to buy chicks and

there was a lot of other people thinking the same way. So chicks

were hard to buy in stores. You could only buy five at a time.

So we went in on a day that that they were - Oh, the chicks got

delivered early, and we happen to be in the feed store, so each

bought five more chicks, and we had, gosh, I think, like, 30

chicks we ordered online. Because we kind of researched a

little bit. The mortality rate's high, you know, when they're

being shipped in a container, you know, through the mail and

all that kind of stuff. So we bought these other 10 chicks,

and we had them probably about maybe a month before the other

chicks arrived. Well, we must have been prolific chicken

producers, because all of our dang chicks survived. And there

we were with like 40 chickens. And we, you know, we raised them

through the adolescent chicken stage and all that kind of

stuff, and kept them alive. We were kind of pretty amazed that

we did that. We did a lot of research online. We made the

kids get on Google and research - each one of the kids had to -

we had two girls and a boy, and they were ages from, I think,

eight to 11, seven to 10, somewhere like in that age. And

each one of them did a little short research and gave their

report to us, you know, on how to care for chicks. Well, one of

the first ones that I can recall is the pasty butt. Had no idea

what pasty butt was, you know, with chickens, well, with baby

chicks, their little stomachs, their systems, they plug up when

you feed them. The cereal grain feeds that they're fed, it just

makes like it says paste, and it plugs those little chickens up.

And you can't just reach over there and pull that manure off

of their feathers and pull it out, because it evidently

attaches to their intestines, and it'll pull the intestines

out of those little chickens. So we had to learn how to take warm

water and a washcloth and basically clean that manure off

their feathers without pulling any internal organs out. Those

are the kind of things that we had to learn how to do, having

never done it in our lives, and again, our chicks - we ended up

with 40 laying hens. That was in the Spring, about this time of

year, about in March. And by August, going into September, we

had a whole flock of chickens. Had 40 some chickens that were

starting to lay, and there we were as more eggs than the two

families could use. And we were giving them away and whatnot. My

neighbor up the road, you know, kind of getting into the fall

then I was talking to her about her chickens, because she's got

pheasants, chickens and turkeys, she's been doing poultry for a

long time. And kind of talked about putting a cooperative

together and selling the eggs that we were producing, because

she already had probably 40 some chickens. And we got to work on

that and formed a cooperative, which I'll talk about a little

bit later in this interview.

But we've learned a lot. You know, really grateful to -

number one grateful to Google.

So the successes weren't just with being able to

produce a lot of eggs. You saw a lot of success in your kids

being able to learn about chicken production and that you

were able to help your community as well.

Correct. More than anything, number one

to be able to feed ourselves. And prove to these, or not prove

to the children, but make those children aware that they are a

vital part of their own existence. You know, being able

to feed themselves. And then these kids learned how to do

that, not only with their chickens, but with their cattle.

They, like I said, we had just processed a steer. Those kids

have learned this all along the way, how to grow sustainable

proteins, to keep yourself alive, feed yourself.

That's awesome. Carrie, what's your experience

been like as a TA in the area of poultry in Indian Country?

I'm a newer TA to the IAC network, but I've

been a poultry producer for a few years now, and have

definitely learned a lot of new things. I was always grateful

for mentors in this area. Specific to Alaska, we're

showing increased interest in poultry production, you know,

chickens that lay eggs and then just processing poultry due to

the lack of protein security for the state, where we're seeing a

lot of decreasing access to fisheries and large game in the

state, and a lot of tribes and communities are really starting

to look at poultry production to supplement that proteins for

their communities.

It gets pretty cold in Alaska, so I imagine

that might be one of the barriers that tribal producers

face. But what other barriers do they face when they get into

poultry?

Yeah, specific to Alaska and across the

country, you know, there's some different environmental

barriers. If it's too hot, too cold... Alaska, the other thing

that's a little harder for us is, if you don't have a local

poultry producer that's, you know, growing chicks every year,

then you have to have them shipped in. And there's not a

lot of them that make it really. I mean, it's like a 50% decrease

on the amount of chicks that you order. So, you know, always try

to find a local person. But there's a lot of barriers

around, like geographical stuff. So if you live off the road

system, you know, making sure you plan ahead of time to get

enough feed, get enough of the materials that you need to grow

your chicks.

IFAI is based out of Arkansas, which is a huge

poultry production area, and so we see the opposite of the cold

here, we see hot. And so keeping those chickens cool is very

important. Ladies, what support is out there to overcome those

barriers that you see in the Indian Country poultry industry?

Educating, you know, educating yourself,

like you're talking about weather conditions there. There

are breeds of chickens that are bred to be in hot areas. You

know, if it's for egg production, that they keep

laying through a hot season. And then there's also chickens that

are bred to sustain cold. There's so many breeds of

chickens out there. We were just talking about one a couple days

ago, it's called the Buckeye. It's bred to - it's an egg and

meat bird, but it also basically patrols the coops and keeps them

clear of any rodents. They're prolific rodent killers, and

they keep your coops clean like that, keep mice and rats and

everything else. Any kind of rodent is attracted because the

feed that goes into the chickens is cereal grain based.

And I know that you guys are technical assistant

specialists. So what kind of support can you provide for

tribal producers?

Carrie and myself will be hosting a Google

workspace, place for people to come and learn about poultry

production. And it'll be from hatching eggs to right up

through - and we plan on doing this every Monday for however

long people still want to talk to us. We're just there to

provide any kind of basically technical assistance that can

help people who are interested in poultry production. Amelia,

Carrie, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, so if people are interested in coming

it is invite only, but you can reach out directly to one of us.

Do you want me to give that email here? Or do you want to

put it in your podcast?

We'll be sure to include your emails in our show

notes, so that people can reach out to you.

Amelia Evans-Brown: Perfect, awesome. Yeah. So they can just

reach out to us, kind of explain what they're interested in, and

then we can invite them to our sessions.

Awesome. Amelia, I have heard that you wear

chicken ribbon skirts, and so I want to know what inspired you

to become a poultry producer and a little bit more about how you

incorporate your traditional knowledge in to your production.

Amelia Evans-Brown: Awesome. How much time do we have? So

everyone at IAC knows I am poultry obsessed, so I actually

have poultry ribbon skirts, poultry shirts. I actually have

a suit jacket that's all poultry material. I wear poultry

earrings. I'm a bit of a chicken nerd and poultry nerd. So I

would have to say, the story of why I am so poultry obsessed

comes from when I was very, very little. So I was three years

old, and my mom got me my first pair of ducks, and then the next

year, she got me my first 10 chickens, and taught me

everything that I know, and my great grandmother also taught

me. And so when I first started going to college. I went to

college for archeology, and then turned it into zoo archeology,

because when I was little, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. And the

obsession with chickens kind of links with that, because I've

always stood firmly on that stance - you know, what comes

first, the chicken or the egg: the egg, because they're

relatives of dinosaurs. So I own tiny raptors in my backyard.

And, yeah, the rest is history.

I love the idea that dino chicken nuggies are

just, like, a replication of dinosaurs, so you're technically

eating a dinosaur when you're eating a dino chicken nugget.

Amelia Evans-Brown: Yes, absolutely. And it's funny that

you mentioned that, because actually, one of my

presentations, I have a graphic I made of dinosaurs, chickens,

and then the full, you know, evolution of the dino nugget is

going back to the roots.

I love that. That's amazing.

Amelia Evans-Brown: Yes, I add humor to everything I do. If you

haven't noticed.

I do as well. I do as well. I love being able to

inject that humor in there and then also bring it back. My

background's in science education. So you're a poultry

producer, and you learned from your mother and your

grandmother. Is that something that was traditional in in the

village of Eek?

Amelia Evans-Brown: So I'm actually so I'm Yupik on my

father's side, and I'm Passamaquoddy on my mother's

side. And Passamaquoddy, they come from Canada. So my great

grandmother, she did chickens, and she brought them with her

when she moved from Canada to Massachusetts. And so the

poultry part definitely came from my mom's side of the

family. My dad's side of the family did reindeer, and then

when they moved to New England, they started doing horses.

Very cool. So Katherine, we've heard about

Amelia's inspiration for becoming a poultry producer.

What type of model do you employ on your poultry farm, and how

has that ensured your success?

Well, I am part of a egg producers

cooperative here on the reservation. We have five coop

members, meaning that each one of these members has a coop on

their own private property. We do, as part of the cooperative,

have a uniformity expectation. We all have - they're called

grandpa's feeders. It's a feeder that we have to train our

chickens to step on a treadle, and it pops the door of the

feeder open and they can feed while they're standing, while

they're bearing their weight on that treadle. Pops that door

open, and they feed; when they step off of it, it shuts the

door. That controls the rodents getting into the feed of the

chickens. We've also got a watering system. They can either

be five gallons, up to 50 gallons. And then on the side of

each one of these containers, we use a drill and put - basically,

they're just little watering spigots on the sides of these

barrels. And like I have a 50 gallon one, and can water about

15 chickens at a time. So that keeps their water - number one,

it keeps their water fresh, because they can't get in the

water and mess it all up. It's one chicken at a time gets

watered and keeps their water fresh and clean. We also have

what's called premier poultry netting. It's electric chicken

fencing around the perimeter of the area where the chickens

outside of their coop, but it keeps predators away. At my

particular coop, for the first two years, we had a neighbor dog

that came down. The first time it just, it just killed every

chicken that we had. We had, like over 60 chickens, and just

killed every one of them. We came back the next year, raised

the chicks, and it happened every time they were right at

laying age. When they were about six and seven months old. Did it

a second time, and this time, the dog broke into the coop and

every chicken, that was - because it was nighttime, killed

all of the birds in the coop that time. Today, talking about

it, I can't believe I went back a third year and bought more

chicks. And this time we put this netting up. We haven't had

any attacks for about, well over two years, going on three years

now. So this poultry netting really keeps any kind of

predators out, dogs, cats, anything, nothing goes across

that electric fencing, it got a pretty good shock on it. So

that's what has kept it safe. And all of our coops have the

same kind of security to keep our flocks secure from outside

predator. We've also - I call this a mark of success. In 2024

- actually, in the fall of 2023 the Cooperative was approached

by the tribe's FDPIR program and asked to be a supplier of farm

fresh eggs for the program. So in 2024 the cooperative started

supplying the farm fresh eggs to the FDPIR program on the

reservation. When we were first approached, it was probably - at

that time, it was 60 dozen eggs a month, is what they were

asking us to produce. And we were able to do that going into

2024 (this was in 2023 when they asked us) going into 2024 the

USDA Commodity Foods program increased the number of eggs

that each family member could receive. So say, like you've got

a family of four, in 2023 they would have received four dozen

eggs per month. Going into 2024 they changed that. They doubled

it. So it was then a family of four gets eight dozen eggs per

month. We really had to cut off some other long time customers.

Yeah, there was a couple of customers, like the little store

on the reservation. They had had our eggs in their coolers. We

also had a restaurant in the casino in the food court, and

they were buying eggs from us, so we really had to pull back on

them to double the other order. So for most businesses, they're

trying to figure out where to sell their products, and we were

trying to figure out how to get enough products to meet the

demands - not demands, but the orders that we had in place. So

we felt that was a big success. We didn't like not being able to

provide enough eggs for everybody, but we expanded this

year, and we've added more into the cooperative, so we're hoping

to meet everybody's needs now.

That's amazing. I love that, and especially in a

time where we're seeing egg production being affected by the

bird flu; we have Dr Clark, who is on a different episode,

talking about backyard flocks and how to keep those safe. So

how has the bird flu epidemic affected your farm and those

that you serve as a TA?

There's not a lot of poultry producers in

Indian Country that we work with yet, you know, we're hoping to

build that up. But in my own personal coop, in all of these

years, the three years that bird flu has been around, we haven't

had any issues. The closest it's been is about two or three

counties away from the county that I live in. I think there's

only been one outbreak in Oregon, in my part of Oregon.

Anyway, it hasn't impacted mine, my operation at all.

Amelia Evans-Brown: I can speak to my region. So in here in the

Northeast I have a few poultry producers that I work with. And

so as of right now, you know, knock on wood. We haven't had to

deal with anything as far as the bird flu goes with my own

personal flock, we practice biosecurity. So we have, you

know, certain boots for certain areas, and we try to be mindful

of where we're walking before we go into certain, you know,

poultry coops, because here at my farm, we have chickens, we

have quail, we have pheasant, Guinea, goose, duck, so we have

a little bit of everything. And when I'm, you know, working with

producers and educating producers on poultry, I always

talk about biosecurity and immune systems and things like

that. So luckily, here in the northeast, all the producers I

work with, we haven't had any issues yet.

And I would say for Alaska, we have had one

instance of bird flu that I know about, but it hasn't really

affected the producers that I work with. What I work on is

like the education piece on - I come into contact with new

producers, there's a lot of interest in making sure that

they understand the signs and symptoms of bird flu and the

appropriate process once it's been identified.

Absolutely. Dr Clark talked a lot about

biosecurity and covering your chickens, because it is spread

by wild birds. So it sounds like you guys have got it under

control there in Indian Country, we have greatly appreciated you

all being on today. Is there anything else that you'd like to

tell our listeners about Indian Country poultry?

It only takes a small land base to raise

chickens on. It's really doable. It's the most cost effective

livestock production, I believe, that you can get into is

poultry.

Absolutely, there's almost a one to one,

like one pound of feed to one pound of meat equivalency there,

where as with cattle, there's like a three to one. So they

absolutely are cost effective. And we're going to be speaking

to Nick Hernandez, from Makoce about how his program can help

people who are interested in producing chickens take that

next step. So thank you, ladies.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you again to all of our amazing guests. We

hope that you have enjoyed this episode and learned about how

tribal Food and Agriculture is thriving. If you would like the

contact information of any of the organizations or individuals

in today's podcast, check the show notes. Finally, if you'd

like to help support IFAI's work in Indian Country food and ag,

go to our website and donate. The link will be provided in our

show notes. As always, stay rooted in wisdom.