North Dakotans UNITE! - Page 3

Frosty thanks again for your reply. 
I am placing an order with efowl and the chicks have a delivery date for May 17th.  I am planning on using a playpen with a cardboard box bottom in my laundry room for my brooder. Hopefully it will work, I have looked at all of the brooder pics on BYC and think that it seems logical.  I am lucky and the former property owner left a lot of baby chick feeders and waterers so that is a couple less things that I will need to buy.  Actually the coop is pretty well set up with nesting boxes a large wall mounted feeder and a roost. All it needs is a little elbow grease and bleach water (just in case). 

Rooster0209 - I was very excited to see that you raise guineas as well as chickens.  I am little concerned about the tick population on our property and every biological remedy site that I found said the best way to get rid of ticks is to get guineas.  I probably shouldn't be as concerned as I am but being from south west Wyoming I am used to arrid conditions and not many bugs of any kind.  I don't know if I will get guineas this year, but it is definitely something I am going to look into in the future.

I can vouch for the fact that there are lots of ticks in this area... and I can vouch for the fact that guineas make a huge dent in the population of ticks.  Unfortunately, we grow veggies to sell and I can also vouch for the fact that guineas love to pull up onion plants right after you put them in the ground and turn your back for two minutes.  Though the guineas look kinda cute running around with the onions hanging out like little stogies...  Unfortunately, they don't eat mosquitos, which are jokingly reffered to as the state bird.  They can be really nasty, so don't knock down barn swallow nests and protect your bats. 

So what made you decide on North Dakota?

The tick population was why I got guineas in the first place. My dachshund loves to chase rabbits in the trees, she came out with 36 ticks crawling on her. (totally covered) That fall I had guineas. I noticed a big difference the next spring and 3yrs later, I dont use any tick control at all. They survive the cold if locked up during the cold months. I raise mine along side the chickens and lock them up during the coldest months of the year.

They are a bit noisy, but since I have 7 acres for them to wander around on, its not that noisy.

Now you have me rethinking not getting guineas until next year.  I know that there will be enough room for them to have there own room in the barn over the winter and we do have lots of trees for them to roost in. How ever I do want to plant a garden I probaby won't have time to have a big garden this year.   I have been warned about the mosquitos.  We do have barn swallow nests and my husband has hung four new bird houses and a purple marlin house although we are not sure they will stay the summer so far north. Do you know if there are purple marlins in the area?  I haven't seen any sign of bats. 

My husband accepted a promotion based in Minot and when we knew we were moving we decided right away that we wanted a small farm.  We put an offer on our farm the same week we saw it in the newspaper, I hadn't even see it yet.  Fortunately I love it and everyone we have met in the small community has been so nice and welcoming.  I know that my sons and dogs are going to love it there.  We still have another week before we actually make the final move. I am so excited to be done moving!

rooster0209, for a minute I thought you meant that the ticks survive the cold

I kept them with the chickens in the cold months, too.  The hardest part was catching them to put them in with the chickens.  The first few years here, our dog would come in covered with ticks, too (and so did the kids).  The year after I got guineas, we found maybe 5 ticks on the dog all season.  I got rid of the guineas because of the onion pulling, but am considering getting more and just keeping them locked up until the onions are started (at that point they leave them alone).  Or letting the turkeys go again... the year after having the turkeys free range, we had a lot less ticks and they did some serious damage to the grass hopper population, too.  Having either guineas or turkeys also cuts down on yellow jackets if you have fruit trees on the property with fruit falling on the ground.  Guineas eat the bees, turkeys eat the fruit that is attracting the bees (and probably eat the bees, too.)

LivinNewDreamInND, I would like to mention that these are wood ticks, not deer ticks.  What ever diseases they might carry, lyme disease isn't one of them.  I don't actually know anyone that got sick from them (Rocky mountain spotted fever, etc...), though both of my parents in PA got lyme disease from the deer ticks.

And yes, there are purple martins, as well as other types of swallows.  You won't see the bats until it gets warmer out.  If you get guineas, either get babies and raise them yourself, or if you get adults, lock them up for a few weeks first.  If you just bring home adults and turn them loose,  that will probably be the last you see of them.  The only problem with them in the garden was right after we put out the onion plants, after the onions were rooted they left them alone.  They are odd little birds, but a lot of fun to watch!

Purple martins...oops I said marlins those are fish, lol. I have never actually even seen these birds we were told about the martins by our friend who used to live in Missouri and my husband saw the houses at Menards and decided it was worth a try.  I haven't really thought to much about turkeys but there are a few mature fruit trees on the property.  Do you recommend any certain breed of turkeys? I know that they require higher protein feed but that is pretty much the extent of my turkey knowledge, are they much harder to care for than chickens?  Do you process your own birds for meat?

Huh... I didn't even notice that you wrote marlin!  I just read 'martin' because that was what I expected to see

If you want turkeys that get big fast and will turn into dinner, the broad breasted type work.  If you plan to keep any over, get a heritage type.  Of the heritage birds, Royal Palms tend to stay smaller, other than that just pick what you like.  I have heard that they are hard to raise, fortunately I never heard that until I had already been raising them for years.  I treat them just like chicken chicks and never had a problem.  If they behave and don't decide to do something like hang out in the neighbors garage, I let them free range in the summer, but put food out now and then to remind them that they live here.  When they are loose, the majority of their diet is what they find for themselves.  They have gone through the potato patch and picked off the potato beetles, too.   Do I process my own?  Let's just say that since I started with turkeys back around '95, I may have cooked one Butterball... I usually get 15 BB turkeys in the spring and raise them, then I get a bunch of folks that want fresh turkey for the holidays.  They all come to my place on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and we do the turkeys in.  Last year I had a bumper crop of apples and problems with a neighbors dog which meant very limited free ranging.  Every day I took a big bucket of apples to the turkeys.  I had accidentally gotten Bronze turkeys instead of the White, but they were the tastiest that I have raised yet!  So I got whites this year, but plan to finish them with lots of apples to see if it was the feed or the breed that made them so good.  My turkeys are due in a week after your eFowl shipment.  Right now I have 1 BB Bronze hen, 1 each Bourbon Red tom and Regal Red tom, 2 White Holland toms, and 5 White Holland hens.  My plan is to try to cross a WH tom with the BBB hen to see if I can get more size on a heritage bird for the table.  Then maybe I can get away from having to buy the birds every year...

The guineas were not too bad in the garden, really left it alone for the most part. The chickens and I raced to get the ripe tomatoes tho. I put  a 4' fence of that green welded wire around the garden with plain metal fence posts. It keeps the chickens and guineas out.

Our barn is also full of barn swallows but we still seem to have enough mosquitos to share. They were bad about building a nest on the light fixture on the front porch (luckily that door doesnt get used). I hung a wind chime there and it kept them away for 4yrs. Last year they built nest on the light fixture...and the wind chime.

It was fun to watch the guineas eat the bugs that swarm around under the apple trees when the fruit falls off. They will stay there all day.

I hear you about chickens and tomatoes!  It wouldn't be so bad if they just ate a few tomatoes, but they tend to just peck each tomato once.  They did the same with cucumbers.  We sell veggies at the local farm market, and you can't sell stuff that has a peck hole!   The guineas were only a problem with the onions, and that was just right after we put the onions out (we put out plants, not sets).  Once the onions were rooted, they left them alone. 
We have plenty of mosquitos even with the birds, too... but if they help cut down the population, I'm all for it.  They like to build nests on top of the lights up in the barn, but it hasn't hurt anything yet.  They also built one under the house eves once, right outside my bedroom window.  One of my cats spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out to the nest.  It was funny, because every time that cat went outside, the swallows would keep swooping down like they were attacking and the poor cat would run for cover.  They never bothered the other cats, just that one.  And a friend had an ex-husband who kept knocking the nests down, and the birds kept diving at him, too.  They are really smart birds, some of them in Minot a few years ago put their nest inside a building entry.  To get in to their nest, they flew around in front of the door sensor until the doors opened, then they flew in to the nest.