Arizona Chickens

[MagicChicken]

Forecast called for a low of 41... it's already down to 37... maybe I should have left things covered. GEESH!!!

I was just thinking the same thing. They were predicting 34 here and it's down to 31. Good thing I was too tired to move all the plants back outside this afternoon. The stuff that's still out should be good to 28 degrees.

Just checked on the new chicks. They're all under the heat lamp but they're not huddled together. Looks like they'll be ok even if it drops a few more degrees. Phew!

 

[queenrilly]

queenrilly! such energy. Good luck. Advice: only regrets is that which I did not do, or try to do. go for it!Good things take time, good things are coming.

Welcome! I know I've seen a guest around the thread a lot... Now I know why!

Congratulations to all of you ladies sacrificing your bodies! (Just kidding...  )
Rezia

[COLOR=000080]WELCOME to Queenrilly.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=000080]you are going to fit right in here!!![/COLOR]

THANKS FOR THE GREAT WELCOMES EVERYONE!

Welcome Queenrilly, and you are correct, Stockton Hill Feed and Grain.  They are on Stockton Hill just South of Northern.  You can't really miss them, there is a large fiberglass horse (larger than life) out in front, which they recently covered with a Horse Blanket.

I went in to see them a few days ago, they will be taking pre-orders in February for March delivery.  I don't know if that means you prepay for your chicks, but you can call them and ask.  I would give you their phone number, but I seem to have mislaid the card I had on my desk.  However, if you look them up on the Internet I am sure that you'll find them.

The owner and the manager of the store, as well as several others that work there, also live here in Golden Valley.

There are some great lots with and without houses for sale in the area, you just have to drive around looking.  I know my sister has just about made up her mind to sell one of her rentals, it down on the south side of the Highway (State Route 68), but only by a mile, and it is closer to Laughlin than my property by a couple of miles. 

Most of the properties North of Shinnirup have all utilities, and the worst you'll find south of there needs water hauled in, but that's only a weekly job, drive a trailer with water tank to the water depot, fill it, and take it home, them pump it up to storage then gravity feed it into your home and acreage.  That shouldn't take more than an hour once a week or so.  Water depots are all over the valley, including one across the street from her rental property, and I am pretty sure her place has water on the property.

On the North side of "The Highway" (again that refers to State Highway 68) almost every one has all utilities.  And if you DO haul water, make your trailer do double duty, instead of having your trash picked up, take your trash to the dump every couple of months.  I think the average cost for trash pick-up is around $30 per month, but with a very small 3' X 4' trailer I go to the dump on average once every three months with three families trash and have yet to pay more than the minimum for disposal, $5.20.

As for raising chickens here, it was great until the bad weather set in.  I lost eight chickens one morning about a week or so ago, just about the time the cold set in.  I think it was wild cats from the mountains, maybe cougar, maybe bobcats, not at all sure, then my rooster died yesterday morning and I have no clue what happened to him.  I found him in the coop when I went out to check for eggs.  I still have my original eight gals, plus two surviving Leghorns from that attack.  I stopped at Stockton Hill F&G on Tuesday, and they took my order for March, I am going to have 50 more chickens this year, and possibly 50 more next year, I have wanted around 100 all along.  I'll be much more careful about Free Ranging them this time, it may only be when I am there to supervise.

A friend in Oatman lost his entire flock the night I lost my eight, so it ISN'T just Oatman or Golden Valley that suffers from predators, Oatman is a good thirty mines away from me.

Good luck on the move, and keep us informed.

Skip

Thanks for all the advice Skip! Haha my uncle lives down the street from the feed store.
My dad's friend owns one of the water-haul places lol! We were talking about it when I was looking at this 36 acre property.
Most of the ones I've found for sale in GV have water or wells, I think one was a haul but it was pretty wrecked inside. And definitely good to know about the landfill. What about burning trash? Is it allowed?
Sorry to hear about your chickens and your friend's flock! Must be easy pickin's when all the predator's other food is hiding trying to stay warm. "Well I guess chicken sounds OK tonight honey"
Awesome about the 100 you're going to have in the near future!

Got my very first hatch today!!!!
These are 5 little serama eggs. Three look promising


My husband is playing Call of Duty in the background... sorry for all his button clicking! LOL

THAT IS SO ADORABLE. My son an I just sat watching, I have to admit I was paying more attention to the one wiggling around in the cracked shell. Chickens have it easy, their babies do all the real birth work LOL!


Staff note- Please confine politics to the Random Ramblings forum per the rules. If you must.

I'm really impatient for it to be May so I can start building my chicken dream. Since I've been reading this forum, my hubby thinks I'm crazier than ever!

 

[Mahonri]

Quote:
I'm glad you're back too!
Wow.. post # 33333!!!

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Wow.. post # 33333!!!

I completely missed that!

 

[kevs-chickadees]

The city just replaced our water pipes in this neighborhood. It is all copper. The original pipes were in the alley and were installed in the early 1950's. The water runs so clear now that we are thinking of giving up the bottled water.

The new pipes are in the street rather than the alley. It makes me wonder what they have planned for the alley.

Hopefully they will be eliminating it and just making your back yards bigger. That is what they have been doing here to the neighborhood west of us. Some people will end up with a bigger yard than others and will have the main sewer running through it.

 

[Demosthine]

First, welcome to QueenRilly. It's always good to have some fresh, young blood to add some more energy to the thread! Glad I'm not the only one with those thoughts on the chihuahuas...

Bottled water in this country is a a Madison Avenue ruse. For the most part we have the best water in the world. If anything gets my blood boiling it is the misues of WATER. Water as a commodity is WRONG and wars will be fought over water. It is true that water directly from the faucet in some areas tastes awful but a filtration system fixes that . Also pouring out your drinking water ahead of time and letting the chlorine dissapate is good.

If you care about how our world is run by commerce do a search on Water and global limits. We could do so much better if we learned how to use this wonderful resource that so many people in the world sacrifice so much in order to have enough not to be thirsty.

I couldn't agree more! The only water that I think is actually worth bottling is the Fiji brand. It actually has a clean, refreshing taste to it. All of the rest have a nasty, bottled, dirty aftertaste that I can never get rid of. Personally, I have a reverse osmosis system installed at my house that runs a faucet on my sink and a link that runs to the refrigerator for water and ice. For the amount most people pay for bottled water or delivered water, I made that money back in a little under 10 months. The RO water tastes so much better, too.

The only drawback I've found to the RO water is that it evaporates far faster than tap water. It took me burning things numerous times to figure out it was the water. I find I need an average of about 25% more water to cook with, more so for long cooking stews and such. I cooked a pot of tap water and filtered water down to almost nothing and then compared the two for clarity and such. The difference was downright amazing. That was some nasty stuff in the tap. But from looking at Aquafina bottles and such, I'm sure those aren't any better than tap. It's a shame what they suffer in the other countries!

I saw an new product being developed for third-world countries that is a solar still. In about 8 hours, it's supposed to take the solar heat and use it to distill dirty water in to a secondary container. I'm not sure how much the final product will be or if he'll get large grants to provide it to the third-world countries for free, but it's an excellent idea. Elio Domestico Solar House Still

 

[Demosthine]

In other news, we had a tragedy with one of our new Silkies that we bought a few weeks ago. She squeezed through the pool fence and drown, unfortunately! Having the other girls out all this time, I never found them in the pool fence. They've always stayed inside the main yard. Now, I'm putting up some wire mesh that looks like a cross between chicken wire and hardware cloth. It has smaller holes in the bottom, but they get wider as they go up. In the meantime, the Silkies have not been allowed out unsupervised. Of course, they are too young to be left out in this unusually cold weather anyway. I'm working on getting the two Barred Rocks and the two Silkies to co-exist. It's slow going so far.

I think it was Mahroni that had the Houdini chicken. It just goes to show that no matter what you do to protect your girls, things are bound to happen. I just didn't expect that. Coyotes, hawks, my own dogs... There were contingency plans and expectations there. Not creeping through the pool fence. Such a miserable feeling. And to make it worse, my wife found her. I got the crap socked out of me. She packs quite the punch, straight to the chest...

 

[City farm]

O

...

Each year it will just get worst. Our food is so drenched with meds that supper flues and diseases are developing. Even our grains are not he same. Our wheat of today turns into sugar faster in our body's then the wheat of the 60's. taking our food in our hands gives hope. Monsanto controls our food...... Controls the grains, and the food that goes into our meats. Shot! what am I doing? We all know all of this, preaching to the choir again.

My dad had a friend that wrote a very successful political book. Being a man of research, he researched the people that were reading his book. Disappointed, the only people that were buying and reading his book were people that already agree with him. Money was not the point. He vowed he would go back to writing text books only.[/quote

Ok DO NOT EVEN get me started on that awfull company... Pure evil...

 

[City farm]

In other news, we had a tragedy with one of our new Silkies that we bought a few weeks ago.  She squeezed through the pool fence and drown, unfortunately!  Having the other girls out all this time, I never found them in the pool fence.  They've always stayed inside the main yard.  Now, I'm putting up some wire mesh that looks like a cross between chicken wire and hardware cloth.  It has smaller holes in the bottom, but they get wider as they go up.  In the meantime, the Silkies have not been allowed out unsupervised.  Of course, they are too young to be left out in this unusually cold weather anyway.  I'm working on getting the two Barred Rocks and the two Silkies to co-exist.  It's slow going so far.

I think it was Mahroni that had the Houdini chicken.  It just goes to show that no matter what you do to protect your girls, things are bound to happen.  I just didn't expect that.  Coyotes, hawks, my own dogs...  There were contingency plans and expectations there.  Not creeping through the pool fence.  Such a miserable feeling.  And to make it worse, my wife found her.  I got the crap socked out of me.  She packs quite the punch, straight to the chest...

OH NO!!! That really is a tragedy... So sorry ;(

 

[LadyKotaDoria]

...

O

Each year it will just get worst. Our food is so drenched with meds that supper flues and diseases are developing. Even our grains are not he same. Our wheat of today turns into sugar faster in our body's then the wheat of the 60's. taking our food in our hands gives hope. Monsanto controls our food...... Controls the grains, and the food that goes into our meats. Shot! what am I doing? We all know all of this, preaching to the choir again.

My dad had a friend that wrote a very successful political book. Being a man of research, he researched the people that were reading his book. Disappointed, the only people that were buying and reading his book were people that already agree with him. Money was not the point. He vowed he would go back to writing text books only.[/quote

Ok DO NOT EVEN get me started on that awfull company... Pure evil...

That's why I stopped....... I would still be writing ........ :