Arizona Chickens

[Mikey D]

MikeyD, thanks for the tips.... but even though I've never been good at math, I'm sticking to 8 max.

 

[Mikey D]

Quote: I got one of the waist high bent ones ($10 @ Homer) and put it under half of a plastic dog house (sorry Pastry) tipped up on edge to provide shade

I think I have seen all of them in there - it's like a car wash for chickens.

A chicken wash!

It doesn't look appealing in the yard but I'd rather have alive happy chickens!

 

[itsredcandy]

Quick question for all you garden gods out there....... can pine shavings from the coop go into my compost bin? My husband seems to think they might have some chemicals in them that we may not want to end up in our veggie garden. We get the large bags from the feed store and I don't see any info on the bags.

Any info would be appreciated!

I put pine shavings in mine. I've read that this is untreated wood that feed stores sell.

 

[itsredcandy]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Hi everyone. I'm brand new to this forum, I just signed up last week, and I'll do my darnedest to make sure I spell check everything before I post.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I was invited to this thread through in PM from [/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Gallo del Cielo[/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif], so thank you for that. I had no idea there were that many Chicken Farmers in AZ, but I should have known. I live between Kingman (the quick you-know-what stop between Phoenix and Las Vegas) and Bullhead City/Laughlin in the thriving Golden Valley. If you look on a map, north of Interstate 40, there is really only one way to get from Kingman to Bullhead/Laughlin, and that's on AZ 68. We live just north of marker 21.. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]My Lady and I are adamant supporters of the Mohave County Fair, and we are both Chairman(woman) heads of committees, she has been the Safety and Security Chairman for five years, I am a past Commercial Vendors Chairman and am now the Parade and Opening Ceremonies Chairman, plus she is the Chairman of the Committees. So we are quite involved.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I wanted to start a small entry into Chickens, but as we all know ... Chicken Math took over ... what started as two RIR two day old chicks too quickly turned into 24 chicks of various breeds, don't ask, I do NOT know all of what I have, but I DO know that we have five Leghorns, and only three of the chickens are named, and that's the first two, the RIR's. "Delicious" and "Delectable," and one still very small Runt (so named because of size), although I believe the Runt is a Banny, thus accounting for the size.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]My fist batch of ten were purchases over a week, and housed in a brooder box in my office/computer room, then I built a chicken tractor from plans I found on line, but I wasn't very happy with that. When they were about nine weeks old I went out and bough another batch of ten, plus I was promised a couple of roosters to be picked up a week later. These had names for a while. In order to know (at that time) which were the rooster, we made little bands for them from wire ties, one was green and one was blue, so they became Mr. Green and Mr. Blue.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]When these guys were about two weeks old we cut these off as they were getting to the point where they looked like they might be getting 'tight,' so rather than take a chance on them growing too fast, we cut those off and made new ones, but those were too loose, and fell off. I decided that we'd know soon enough who was a rooster anyway, so we left them off.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Then I built a second tractor, this one much larger and much lighter, and easier to move.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]At six weeks (and five weeks) old, they were just too crowded in the brooder box (remember, there were five Leghorns) and I decided they needed to be moved outside, but the new tractor wasn't done yet, but I moved them anyway.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I spent a whole day enclosing the tractor (lower half) in chicken wire with the intent of finishing the coop in a week or so. They have plenty of shade with the floor of the coop in place (4' X 4' and two feet off the ground), and eight feet by four feet of running room, so I am not too concerned about them being crowded.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Anyway, I still have tons of work to do, both for the chickens and myself, but eventually everything will get done.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]OK, I've introduced myself.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Photto[/FONT]​

Welcome to the Arizona Forum

 

[itsredcandy]

Lost my first hen to the heat today.

She laid an egg at about 4:45 PM, jumped down from the nest box and died. One of my most beautiful, pretty Icelandics from my NYD hatch.

They've been getting cold, cold water 2-3 times a day but it got up to 111 today and it's going to hit 114 on Saturday.

Makes me sad.

Maybe I should just forget chickens.

Oh no, that's terrible. My girls faired pretty well. It stays about 85 under the coop with the mister going.

 

[itsredcandy]

You were right....it was from the umbilical cord spot. It was a lot of intestine for such a tiny little chick (serama). I tried with a wet warm q-tip to gently roll/push the intestine back in, but it was a long length, and every time she peeped she'd push out more of it....

I cuddled her for a good while, talked to her softly and then DH put her down quickly and painlessly.

Sometimes my heart is just too tender for this.....

sorry to hear about your loose.

 

[Mikey D]

Quote: People have listed anywhere from 2 - 4 sq feet per chicken.

My combination coop / run is 4 x 17 so I figure I'm good up to one more chicken max.


Picture towards the inside:

 

[Novaleigh]

My chickens don't eat ants. From what I understand, ants taste awful to chickens, so they don't eat them. I used sevin dust plus amdro ant stakes and denied chicken access to the treated areas. I would put out tempting treats, such as watermelon pieces in the treated areas to test the ant population. When I saw no ants, I washed the treated areas and threw away the ant stakes. There is a pet safe solution that is used in the Phoenix zoo for fire ants. It is called Extinguish Fire Ant Bait. It is ordered online and is pretty expensive, but it is completely safe to use in locations that your chickens have access too. Here is a link the the website that you can order Extinguish Fire Ant Bait: http://www.extinguishfireants.com/ I would have used this product, but at the time I needed it, they were sold out.

Up here in Golden Valley we have the same heat you have, but without the humidity, and both of the tractors have plenty of shade for both of my flocks. That being said, we have ants. And more ants. And even MORE ants.

There is no place on this property that DOESN'T have ants. Small one's, big one's and everything inbetween. Actually I don't think there is a place anywhere ON the property that doesn't have ants. And if there is no colony of ants on a spot, they will migrate there, forage, then leave back to their ant hills or warrens.

I was under the impression that chickens would eat ants. Is this NOT TRUE? And if they DON'T eat ants, what can I do, and what did YOU do to "successfully killed off without harming a single bird?"

Photto

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

So, I've been looking through the breeds and trying to find what I like. I have a few questions, though, that I can't find answers to.

- The Climate Tolerance lists Cold and Heat. About what are the ranges for those two? I mean, obviously, here in Phoenix we qualify as Hot, but being on the outskirts of town, we do get into the mid- to low-30s during winter. Is that where I need to start looking at the Cold weathers or are we talking more about temps in the negatives?

- Everything on my full list of breeds I like are listed as "Large Fowl." Does that push the coop space from 3-4 sq. ft. to 5-6 sq. ft. or something? Or is the 3-4 sq. ft. pretty standard for all breeds? A quick search didn't show any good comparison for Bantams versus Large Fowl that I could find. There's just so much information, though, I can't get through it all.

- I've seen numerous posts were people bought the breeds listed below in Arizona, but I didn't see any where there were problems. Are they generally OK here?

As of now, I'm leaning towards (1) Black Copper Marans, (2) Easter Eggers, and (1) Silver Laced Wyandottes. I chose the Marans and Wyandottes for their dual purpose and their beautiful colors. I like the idea of being able to eat Mamma once she's at the end of her life cycle. Some may find this appalling, but... And the Easter Eggers are for their egg colors, of course. All of them are listed as "friendly, easily handled, docile." Those are perfect traits for my family.

Thanks ahead of time!

Here at the lower elevations of AZ you don't really have to worry too much about cold for the breeds that you want to keep. In fact, most breeds wouldn't be phased by our coldest days. There might exceptions, of course, perhaps Seramas?

The coop size issue is debatable. For the most part, my birds only go into the coop to roost at night and to lay eggs during the day. I suspect that is the norm for most here, especially if you free-range during the day. Mine do spend more time inside the coop when confined, but not a whole lot more. Depending on your design, I'd recommend spending relatively more than you might elsewhere on a slightly larger run and slightly smaller coop. Of course if the coop and run are combined as in some designs, you're looking at overall square footage. If they have to be confined more space is better.

I have a Buff Orpington (BO), Cuckoo Marans (CM), EE (Easter eggers), Black Austrolorp (BA), Delaware and a mutt. All have done fine here, some get a bit more heat stressed than others. For most of the common breeds I think how a given bird handles the heat might be more of an individual thing rather than a breed characteristic.

Hopefully, others will offer up their perspectives. I think it helps to have a number of points of view.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Anatomy of my coop

My coop has a footprint that is 4' X 10', for 40 square feet, which has housed eight hens and at times a number of younger birds. For most nights of the year, they hang out in the nearly 360 degree ventilated (south) end of the coop. That amounts to about 16 square feet. It also has about 12 linear feet of roosting space (I now have a board that crosses the gap between the two sides of the roost so that they can move around in different directions). During the months of Dec.-Feb. I staple plastic to all of the walls to prevent wind from blowing on the birds. The top part is kept open year-round.




During the very coldest or stormiest nights of the year (especially if the plastic is not up on the south end), my chickens hang out in the north end of the coop, which is open to the interior of the coop and enclosed on three sides. This space also amounts to about 16 square feet with about 8 linear feet of roosting space. That seems to be enough for all of my birds--when they're in that end it's usually colder anyway so probably a bit more cozy. They have the usual squabbles at roosting time, but even though they could spread out through most of the coop, they tend to hang together at one end or the other. It seems to be enough space.



If there was one thing I could change, I would want it to be wider than 4'. Even 5' would have been better and I think I could have squeezed it into the space. Long and narrow is probably not as good as the same amount of space stretched into more of a square shape for a variety of reasons. e.g. they'd have more space to flap wings getting up and down from places; it's easier to get past a bully in a more square shaped run than one that is long and narrow, etc. One thing I really like about my coop is the amount of overhang I have for the roof. It really helps keep everything dry inside.