Arizona Chickens

[Sonoran Silkies]

Kota, I am sorry about your accident and hope you will feel better soon. I sure wouldn't mention you were texting while driving to any insurance or you may hurt your case.

She wasn't driving. Her car was broken down and she was awaiting the tow truck from AAA when she was hit.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Europe they have a lot of organic based foods, their cows, pigs, chicken, sheep, and goats do not get antibiotics in their food, they do not live under the same stress. Butchering, sadly I can say nothing, I do not know anything about. I do wonder, they have a lot of foods that are against the law in this country such as Cheeses, sausages, and slow aged meats, the meats have rotted, then turned the corner to safe (fermented). But we can't have it here. If I bought goat raw goat milk warm from the goat, you have to label it not for human consumption pet food only.
Antibiotics in chicken feed for laying hens or meat birds is illegal. Not at all common (if even still available) in chick starter anymore.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Gallo: The apricot is a Katy and the plum is a Santa Rosa. Both are on peach rootstock, the apricot is on Myro 29C and the plum is on Nemaguard. We got some fun varieties for the pomegranates, so we have that to look forward to as well. When I was there picking up my trees, there was a student from ASU who was doing some kind of a study on urban fruit trees, I signed up for it, mostly because I'm curious to see the final product. She said she'd be sending out a questionairre in 6 months to collect data on how the trees were doing, as well as where they were planted, and how often they were watered.

My next door neighbors have many, many fruit trees; they were planted many years ago. Plums, apricots, peaches, apples. I think I am forgetting something. They have at least two varieties of each, and up to several trees of each variety. Oh, and a couple of citrus, too...

Flood irrigation.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Hmmm! I am not too sure that a cherry tree would do well down in the valley. They seem to be a difficult tree even up in the mountains. My wife bought a couple for the house in Overgaard. I planted them, and then it took about three years for them to produce. The fruit was awful. They were montmorency cherries, not the sweet ones I like.

I suspect that cherries need a lot more chilling than we get in the valley. That said, I always thought that of apples, but now I hear people saying that they have apple trees that produce. So maybe I am behind the times on this issue.

I have a lemon tree that is bound and determined to commit suicide. The darn thing is four years old and looks smaller and worse off than it did when we bought it at the dead tree sale at Home Depot. It really looks sad. In Spanish they refer to that condition as "tristeza" which is a condition in which the plant refuses to thrive.

I covered it with a cardboard box during the frosty nights. In retrospect, I probably should have let nature take its course. Then I could replace it with something more viable. I thought of a black mission fig, but my wife thinks that fig trees draw a lot of bugs.

Maybe a plum tree. I am running out of space in my backyard, so it will have to be something small but really good. Maybe a loquat.

Different varieties of fruit trees require different amounts of chill. Sweet cherries tend to require less than tart cherries. I dislike sweet cherries, but love the tart ones. So far there is no variety of tart cherries with low enough chill hours for the valley; however, there are several varieties of sweet cherries that are supposed to be okay.

There are a number of varieties of apple that do well here.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I've got a question for Gallo, AZkat, any other of you green thumb experts. I asked this on the easy garden site but no one had an answer and since this is local maybe someone here will know???? What would cause a Golden Dorsette apple to not drop it's leaves and go into dormancy year after year? Every other tree does in my backyard (that's suppose to) but this one. I don't get it?

Sometimes mine does and sometimes it doesn't. I still get a good crop.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Well that's sorta the problem, it doesn't go dormant unless I force it to. Even last week with as cold as it was I would guess 80% of it was still thriving. I'm thinking if it's not dormant then all these chill hours don't really matter and maybe that's why I hardly ever get any blossoms? Oh well, this year we shall see. It was stripped of it's leaves and I know it has surpassed it required 150 chill hours, and it was pruned pretty good last year.

Could be how you prune it? Apples need to retain the stem to set fruit the following year. Never pull the apples off. If you do, you will lose fruit the following year. They will easily separate from the stem when ripe.

 

[maryhysong]

Antibiotics in chicken feed for laying hens or meat birds is illegal. Not at all common (if even still available) in chick starter anymore.

When did that become law? AFAIK it is still being done as of June 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/05/us-fda-antibiotics-idUSBRE85417N20120605

ETA this link http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/h...ict-use-of-antibiotics-in-livestock.html?_r=0

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: If you read the article, neither says that chicken feed contains antibiotics. Giving antibiotics to ill birds is allowed. I can't recall when the change was made, but it was maybe 8 years ago--plus or minus a bit.

 

[Demosthine]

Funny story. My wife and I just went to pick up our daughter who was having dinner with friends down on Fourth Avenue (busy pedestrian area with restaurants and shops here in Tucson). It's dark out and I was riding passenger for a change. As we turned off Fourth Ave. onto Fifth St. my wife suddenly exclaims, "there's a small dog running down the middle of the road, it shouldn't be running lose at this hour!" It was clear that she wanted to catch it and find its owner. I turned to look at it and said, "that's not a dog, that's a coyote."

Lmao! That is too funny! Reminds of a friend of ours who was much more "comical" than that, for lack of a better term. My parents were standing out on the sidewalk chatting with a few friends and a huge bird ran by. Rod hollers out "Wow, that's the biggest roadrunner I've ever seen!" Everyone quickly looks down the road, but there's nothing there, so he starts describing it. Our neighbor pipes up with "That wasn't a roadrunner! That was a turkey!" About that time, an EMU goes running down the street. We have an emu farm about a half mile away, through the open desert. Apparently, the fence broke and there were about fifty of them running around the area. It took them a good while to round them back up. but I'll never forgot that conversation...

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Apples:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1591/#b