Arizona Chickens

[kpgoldstar]

Update on my fly trap. As of yesterday afternoon (48 hrs after installing) it was finally starting to smell. Not horrid, but a slight stench. There were probably 200 flies in the thing. YUCK!!!!! So gross! As I watered my garden and watched, at least 6 flies entered the lure, never to return. I think it has made an enormous difference already, and I only hung one about 6 ft from the coop.

I got a 10-pack from Amazon that will arrive today. I am planning to dispose of the first and hang about 3 at a time in different areas of my backyard. I have roses and my bottle-brush especially that were loaded with flies over the weekend. I will report back the success of the bags placed in other problem areas. So far I am extremely pleased with my first attempt.

Thanks Marcy for the tip on not feeding flies to my chickens. I give them the ones I swat in the house, not thinking I will do that anymore. I never thought about giving them the ones from the traps but now I know for sure they won't be getting those either.

 

[Hannah'sCoop]

~~I guess I should update you all on the Easter chick saga at our humble coop! It is fun to be able to share all of this with folks who care to hear all the nitty gritty details So...I placed 8 fertile eggs under two broody hens - a red sex link and a bantam cochin. I candled them at about day 8, and only 2 were growing. I left those eggs under the red and put two fake wooden eggs under the bantam....On Easter morning, one of the eggs hatched! According the to breeds it came from, it appears to be a barred rock, and the kids named her Jelly Bean.

The bantam (who is very mean and pecky, by the way) was still sitting on fake eggs, and I felt bad, as this is about the 5th time she has gone broody with no payoff, plus we really wanted more chicks and to take advantage of the hens mothering them for us -- so I went and bought four 3-day old chicks from Ace Hardware (2 black Austrolorps, an Americauna, and a RR) and put them underneath the chickens in the dark of night -- the blacks under the bantam and the other two with the red hen and Jelly Bean.

They accepted them! But by mid-morning they all re-arranged, and the 4 new chicks ended up being with the bantam. The hatched chick (Jelly Bean) stayed with the red....All seemed great, then I went to check on them in the afternoon, and the bantam was hunkered in a corner with a bloody face with the chicks all pecking at it. Then I saw the red go after her again, and also after any of the other chicks that came near to her. I think she was even keeping them from food and water. So...I had to figure out a way to separate the two groups. Took much of the day to get it all straightened out. Meanwhile, I sustained a lot of serious pecks from the bantam while trying to doctor her wound or do anything with her chicks. You can see in the picture where the bantam's face was injured, and I applied purple Wound-Kote...until I was able to really hold her down, she shook a bunch and threw semi-permanent purple spots all over my face and hands
~~Super cute though, eh? And all worth it?

 

[pipemum]

Cute babies, HC. Too bad the little mama chicken was beat up, glad you got them sorted out!

 

[mom-to-5]

I got half of my broody's eggs in the mail today. The others should come tomorrow....BUT, I ordered 12 total and didn't really account for the "extras"

. The six I recieved today had 4 extras and the ones I'm recieving tomorrow told me they included 2 extras....that's 18 eggs!! I'm assuming that there is no way my broody would be able to cover all 18. Should I just leave some out? Let her sit on all then candle at 5 days to thin them out?
I don't have an incubator.
I hate to just toss fertile eggs I paid for, ugh!

 

[City farm]

Is arbico fly eleminator something you spread out or ???? I will look it up, yes keep us posted... I have been off for a few weeks.. Just catching up..

We might have roasted marshmallow's Saturday night.. I will post Saturday around lunch if we do.. Hope some of ya can make it..

Yes, the fly eliminators are small predatory wasps.  They come in a plastic baggie with some sawdust and lots of pupae.  You are supposed to wait till a certain number of wasps have hatched out, and then the pupae are ready to be spread in the fly areas--compost piles, dung piles, etc.   I have one bag that isn't ready to spread because the wasps just aren't hatching, I'll take a picture of the pupa.   

Huh.. I think those grow in our compost ?? I have not had time to look them up.. Awesome..

 

[City farm]

NOOOO!  Tell me it ain't so!  Bakers is my favorite nursery!  Pretty soon we will be left with the big box DIY stores to get plants from. Picking up our organic chicken feed there is a great excuse to buy some new plants for the yard. 

Exactly.. Any excuse to go there, I am IN!!
I think we have over 100 poted plants.. If I ever have any extra clippings, we will share.. My favorite sentence is,
"I have a free plant for you!!" my family said I can not bring another plant home.. So now I have over 500 seed packets..

 

[pipemum]

Huh.. I think those grow in our compost ?? I have not had time to look them up.. Awesome..

Ha, omg, keep reading! Gallo pointed out to me that those are FLY PUPAE. The wasp parasitizes the fly pupae and emerges, so those are not actually wasp pupae, but indeed, flies.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote: Exactly.. Any excuse to go there, I am IN!!

I think we have over 100 poted plants.. If I ever have any extra clippings, we will share.. My favorite sentence is,
"I have a free plant for you!!" my family said I can not bring another plant home.. So now I have over 500 seed packets..

I think there is a 12-step program for that.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

 

[City farm]

I checked my second bag of fly predator this morning. Looks like enough have hatched that they are ready to spread tonight. For those that are curious, I took some pictures of the pupae and the wasps. The wasps are tiny. Sorry, there is no scale from which to judge...but the pupae are about the size of a shortish packrat turd. The wasps that hatch out of them seem much smaller that the should from the size of their pupating form. Those black specks in the bottom corner of the bag are the wasps. Gallo, what are your release containers like? I put mine in the compost piles and in a few places throughout my garden and chicken run (safe from the chickens though)...and covered them lightly with soil and debris. I'll have to watch the videos on spreading that desertmarcy mentioned for this next bunch (I ordered a free sample and paid for one bag). I wonder how easy these things are to raise? Probably not too hard, but I'm guessing easier for me to purchase every month rather than attempting it myself.

The pupae you see in the bag are fly pupae, not the wasp pupae (they are inside the fly pupal cases). The female parasitic wasp seeks out fly pupae in the ground and lays eggs in it. We had a couple Arbico scientists come and speak at our Tucson Aquaponics Project meeting and they recommended nailing a coffee can to the inside wall of your chicken coop (out of reach of chickens) and put them in there. I use cottage cheese containers with the lid on and about a 1" hole in the side and then hang them in a shady spot around the garden and coop area with a piece of wire out of reach of things that would like to eat them (ants and birds). I think it would be fairly easy to raise them yourself, but that would mean maintaining a big mess of flies. Yep, I'll leave that to Arbico.

Wow you guys ism totally fascinated.. Can't wait to get some..