Arizona Chickens

[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..

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

Just like chickens.. I want one of all breeds.. Plants are so great.. I have gone so far as to plant on 2-3 different properties on our block.. With permission.. They are rentals, however we all have to look at the homes near by, so why not make them nice..

 

[carnivore]

I am growing some of the Glass Gem right now, but it's not doing well. I have it in a raised bed out in my yard, and it may be getting too much sun. I put it in the yard to keep it from cross-pollinating with the Hopi blue dent I have in the greenhouse. The blue is going great guns, already 7 feet tall and popping out the first ears. I think the Glass Gem is slowly dying.

 

[City farm]

 
They were from multiple fly traps that I left laying out in the sun for months and months---finally got tired of looking at them all and dumped all the contents in a 5-gal bucket. Very dry and no smell at that point. Then I kept adding to it. Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to things. I am really sorry I fed them to the chickens, tapeworms are hard to get rid of. I have too many chickens for meal worms to make a dent in their diet. Down to about 115 adults now, but I've been hatching for a couple of months and don't even know how many chicks I have, probably 2-3 hundred, I'm guessing. Pretty soon I'll be going through them and culling some out. I held back some males I wouldn't have otherwise kept because I want to learn how to caponize. If my kits ever get here from China. For extra animal protein for the chickens, my property generates a large # of mice and packrats.

Do you trap the mice and packrats for the chickens?  How do you feed the rodents to them?

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

I think we have over 100 potted 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..

Yikes!  No more plants?  Wait they said you cannot bring more home, but what if you get some trades?

My family knows better than to limit my plants. I'm happiest when I get more plants.

Seeds, now those are great to hoard. They take up so little space.

Oh my God! I have seeds! No, I mean I have seeds!!! $$$.¢¢ of seeds. Looks like I will need a home for seeds as well!

I have a home for your seeds.. & can help you with this problem.

 

[City farm]

Does anyone in the valley know of a beekeepers supply store? I had several boxes of bee hive parts sitting on the side of my house and with the warmer weather, noticed a few bees interested. So when I went to start relocating the boxes, I found a colony had established an actual hive in one of the deep supers. There were no frames inside, so they just built their own combs. You can see them in the picture below. But tonight, I took the rest of the pieces out and actually set up the hive. I moved the deep super over to the corner of the yard and set it on the base. I added six frames to it to fill the other half where the natural combs were not at. After a few weeks, I'll check it all again and probably remove the wild combs. In the meantime, I need to get some equipment. I gave everything I had to City Farm, who's friend set it up and immediately attracted a swarm of her own! I need to start building more supers and frames in the meantime.

​

On an interesting note, the wax combs from the old frames is a black color, which strikes me as very odd considering everything else I've seen is white or yellow colored. It has a very strong chocolate flavor to me, too! I really wish I had have been able to talk to the ol' timer when I got them from his wife, but he wasn't there. He was from out of state, so the possibilities are endless. I'll try to post some photos of the wax that I removed when the lighting is better. It smells so good, though. This new hive's wax is pure white. I need to research the differences.

You don't even want to get me started on this subject. When I gave my neighbor the box's I said, " let's do some reasearch before we set it up" do you think they listened ?? Huh, NO! Come to find out their family is terrified of BEE'S..FIRST NO, NO... Put in on a table that would not support the hive, ect... They had a guy come out Tuesday evening. The man said the hive is so big that he will have to come back. Plus he said they are "probably Africanized" we have a few friends that have connections to get a local Queen Bee that is not Africanized.. From what I understand those bees end up taking over anyho.. Agh, what a mess.. One other thing you mentioned that I had said to her, what if there was some type of disease prior? We would have to either completely sanitize or rebuild.. I planned on going out & helping for more education before setting up.. Getting insurance & what not..This is it in a short explanation..

 

[Demosthine]

Hey, check out this really neat decorative corn! OMG is this stuff cool:

http://shop.nativeseeds.org/products/ts363

I broke down and ordered a packet. Um, problem though. I'm lousy at growing things, PLUS I'm planning on being out of town for part of the summer.

Is there anyone here who wants a few seeds to try? I'd love an ear back if it works! Because I really don't have a lot of faith in my own personal growing skills, sigh!

Especially if I'm not around to water it . . . .

I'd love to get some and I plan on ordering a package or two if I end up staying at my current house, where I set up the raised garden beds. After lots of reading, it seems that you need no less than about a 5' radius of corn crops in order to properly pollenate and grow the ears. A 5' square is very common, but the corners don't get proper pollenating, so a circle seems to be more recommended. It's creative. I wouldn't have thought to do a circle in order to prevent useless growth in the corners. Another key to the native corn seems to be that they want the typical hard, dry Arizona soil, so raising in the garden bed may not be the best idea. I'm still trying to get more feedback on that.

Another thing to note that it is not considered an "edible" corn, meaning you don't eat straight off the cob. It is a flint corn, used for making flours or popcorn. Obviously, it's also a great ornamental corn.

I am growing some of the Glass Gem right now, but it's not doing well. I have it in a raised bed out in my yard, and it may be getting too much sun. I put it in the yard to keep it from cross-pollinating with the Hopi blue dent I have in the greenhouse. The blue is going great guns, already 7 feet tall and popping out the first ears. I think the Glass Gem is slowly dying.

From my understanding, this is more of a desert and mid-West area corn than the typical sweet corn varieties. Complete sunlight works just fine, and it prefers more of the hard packed, clay soils as opposed to the great garden soil we develop for our raised garden beds. Another thing is that over watering seems to be very common and problematic with the Glass Gem. Did you try planting it with the "Three Sisters" or did you plant it by itself? Corn in general is very heavy on it's nutrient consumption, so additives are heavily recommended. I haven't grown any yet, but that's all information I've read so far. Hopefully that can help you, though.

 

[Demosthine]

You don't even want to get me started on this subject. When I gave my neighbor the box's I said, " let's do some reasearch before we set it up" do you think they listened ?? Huh, NO! Come to find out their family is terrified of BEE'S..FIRST NO, NO... Put in on a table that would not support the hive, ect... They had a guy come out Tuesday evening. The man said the hive is so big that he will have to come back. Plus he said they are "probably Africanized" we have a few friends that have connections to get a local Queen Bee that is not Africanized.. From what I understand those bees end up taking over anyho.. Agh, what a mess.. One other thing you mentioned that I had said to her, what if there was some type of disease prior? We would have to either completely sanitize or rebuild.. I planned on going out & helping for more education before setting up.. Getting insurance & what not..This is it in a short explanation..

I'll call you shortly, but that's all crazy talk there! I'll try to borrow Bonnie's suit (or just clothing up like I did last night) and come Sunday evening and we can look over and work with the hive. Tell them not to mess with it, unless it starts getting really problematic like the table is bowing or looks like it'll break. We'll get a real stand set up for it and see about reducing the size of the hive to minimize it's growth. I'll check the honey stores as well. Just don't let them kill it off and tell them not to have anyone else come back out, PLEASE?!? I hate it when people just jump in to things like this!

 

[City farm]

Awesome!  They know a good place to live when they see it.  About the black comb, when I go help my friends at the Zia Queen Bee Company in NM in the summer, I spend a bit of time cleaning and repairing old frames and boxes and it seems that the older the box is, the blacker the comb.  I don't know what causes it, I'll have to ask.  I really love that smell too.

I guess the age would make sense. I think they'd said it'd been about five years without a colony. And considering DaPhane said a hive took up residence within about a day of her friend setting up the other hive I gave them, I think there's something special about these boxes. In 17 years of being in this area, we've never seen very many bees and never had a swarm. I am really looking forward to getting flowers and stuff planted. I missed the window for the garden, though.

What was the best way to clean out the frames? A few have the plastic starter sheets and the scraper doesn't do a good job. The heat gun made the wax bubble and pop, more like it was burning instead of melting. And the hot water didn't help. I'll definitely be making frames this week.

I will call you. At work

 

[a little chiken]

Yes, you can keep them outside as long as they don't get hit with direct sunlight or rain. A cover is essential to keep lizards, geckos and mice from eating them. Our summer heat really makes the colony explode and mine are currently outside.

I hide my colony in various places of the house during the winter, moving it every time Gallina del Cielo finds it. By the time she's completely fed up with it, it's spring and they can go outside. Surprisingly, that's worked out for us for about a quarter of a century.

But, for the sake of marital bliss, outside is fine, even in the winter here. I like it inside to keep it warmer and speed production.


ETA: When I say cover, I mean something like mesh or screen that doesn't impede air flow.


I know people say they can fly, but all the years I've raised them I've never seen one fly or otherwise escape, even during the ten years that I was maintaining 20 or so colonies indoors and without covers. Those latter guys only got fed once or twice between September and March so they'd be highly motivated to escape.

Maybe you can give me some advise on growing them. My husband wants to order some to raise for the chickens.

 

[a little chiken]

With everyone talking about bee's I have a question. I have a friend that asked if he can set up some bee boxes on my property. I have 1. 1/4 acre and have some live stock, a vegetable garden a few flower beds, trees, fruit trees etc. I see bees all the time especially on my lilac and my fruit tree blooms. I am allergic to bees but I know that I had a wild hive set itself up in my mesquite tree 2 years ago for a week then it left. Should I let her put a box and what will that mean for me. They are trying to encourage me but I just try and stay away from them since they make me very sick. You all seem very knowledgeable and I know we need them so any help would be awesome.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
Here's my page on raising mealworms. I use the single-bin method, which is the easiest and least labor intensive way to raise them. You can separate pupae from larvae and raise them in multiple bins too (although it's never been quite clear to me why people do this), I don't have any experience raising them that way but you can find instructions in the first page of this massive mealworm farming thread. Mealworms are about the easiest thing in the world to raise and you can spend as little or as much time on them as you want.