Arizona Chickens

[BenC in QC]

@Sill

I do mostly automotive fabrication, suspension parts, turbo kits, etc, but I've done larger scale projects as well... like our barn, lol.

 

[Sill]

Well my yard is getting really noisy. I have a bunch of rooster juveniles that are making noise, I have a polish roo who gets the collar this weekend and GASP the three month old BLRW, one of them at least, is crowing too. His crow is tiny and adorable and makes me giggle. The others, not so much. Even with the ones I am keeping I still have at least 4 that need to go. I am SOOOO over roosters. No one wants them and now I have to eat them, but like someone else said, they seem very skinny, so I am kinda not excited to cull them now, but the noise is getting out of control and I am afraid of one of my neighbors getting fed up. I REALLY need to move, but That isn't in the cards until this time next year.

My muscovy duck plans are an abysmal failure. The one hen went psycho broody, so we let her sit in the nest and do her thing with visions of ducklings dancing in our heads... and the other hen stopped laying. So fast forward 40 days and I dragged her off the nest and she had 3 rotten eggs. THREE eggs! They usually clutch up on upwards of 30 eggs. I had a few in the incubator and they all died in their shells at hatch. So now I am back to square one. Houdini just started laying again yesterday so I am taking her eggs and starting over again once I have enough to incubate a big batch. @Sill I haven't forgotten you. Hopefully I will get some live ducks this next go round in the incubator. Muscovy have been a freaking nightmare, while I drown in chickens. HAHAHHA.

We have a flat of Quail eggs to go into the incubator so that we can try our hand at a batch to raise for meat. One of my hens died. I think she laid a double yolker and got messed up or something. She was fine one minute and gone the next on the same day we got a double yolked egg.
DF made me a watering system for both the Quail and the big chicken coop. It will be a huge help as it gets hotter and hotter.

We are planning a wedding and it is severely cramping my chicken plan budget. HAHAHAHAH.

Sorry about the ducks, I understand they can be difficult to incubate. No worries, not ready for ducklings now anyway.

The nice thing about extra quail roos is they are more than ready to process at 8-9 weeks (even sooner if sanity is at stake), nice and meaty little things. Simple to process, takes only minutes each. And they are yum!


Sorry you lost a quail hen. Young hens don't usually have egg issues, it's the older ones. I wonder if something didn't spook her and she boinked her head? That is unfortunately a common way to loose one, especially if it was fine one minute and gone the next.

How exciting to be planning a wedding! Might even be worth cramping the chicken budget for a while.

 

[Diannastarr]

so sorry to hear that you lost one of your little peeps my gosh that is so sad indeed , well to keep our ladies cool in AZ we have a cooler going all the time for our hens on a covered deck and we have a large fan going all the time, they love to spend the day in the cool shade. we let them out of the chicken coop before the sun comes up, so they wont get hot in the coop. they have free range all day long , we ended up with a giant new Hampshire red rooster, who was one of the chicks we got from a feed store , his name is Chicky boy he is quite gorgeous, but a tough guy who will only listens to me, but all others he dislikes and will chase.....lol...he is a great yard guard...

which i really like the protection aspect of having a rooster around , we also have 3 NHR hens plus 4 barred rock hens & 7 silver laced wyandott hens so we have 14 ladies , & the roo , and we get about 13 eggs a day , but i wish that one of my girls were into hatching out some chicks , I guess we will have a few Sex-Links they are very good egg layers or a few NHR they lay giant brown eggs or Golden Comets my dad had those chickens when i was a child good layers to, plus our Silver Laced Wyandottes crossed with our New Hampshire red ,would be Cinnamon Queens i guess, from what Ive read ,they are also good layers, so i will post if we have any for sale, im waiting for any of our ladies to go broody and do her thing , a few of them we have found sitting in the nest boxes on eggs at night when we go down to fill the feeders & and lock the door , so im telling my hubby to let them stay and dont disturb them and lets see what transpires...? fingers crossed one of our girls will be into hatching out a few peeps..?

 

[MagicChicken]

Hay, does anyone know where the seed box is??

@cyborg picked up the seed box from my place a few weeks ago. Not sure if it has moved on from there.

I confess I've never processed a chicken for eating ... if I have to cull more I might have to learn just so it doesn't feel like such a waste   they seem so skinny when they're juveniles, though ... is there really enough meat to make it worth the effort??

Advise me, o wise ones of the message board!! 

Ever since I learned how to spatchcock a bird I look forward to those extra young cockerels. Spatchcocking is removing the backbone and flattening out the bird which makes it cook faster and more evenly. It also makes it much easier to gut a small bird. Removing the backbone is easy to do with a good set of poultry shears. I actually learned how to do it from the quail processing links someone posted a while back. I processed some 8-10 week old birds a while back and got 1-3 meals per bird. They had dressed out at 1.5 - 2.7 lbs apiece. Large fowl dual purpose breed. Tasty. And definitely worth the effort.

 

[Ddou102308]

@alohachickens I am fairly new to the whole "chicken thing". So bear with me whilst I figure all this by posting stuff out. I have had my girls about 5 months. I have a white leghorn pullet, black star pullet, Easter egger pullet and a fleur d' uccle hen. Tragically had 2 pullet die in an accident in my yard when they pulled an industrial wire shelf down on top of them. I was crushed. Anyway, I then acquired the ee and the d uccle to replace them. Hoping the other 3 will start laying soon. They are about 6 mos old. I have the chicken bug BAD. Next would like to try hatching and / or adding some of the following to my flock::
Silver/blue/gold laced Wyandotte
Cream legbar
Barred rock
Cuckoo or red marans
Hamburg
Ancona
Speckled Sussex
Golden lakenvelder
Lavender Orpington
We live in the city of maricopa and cannot have Roos but would love any hens that you have extra of.

 

[Ddou102308]

Depends on how much reflected heat there will be.  Bouganvilla can take any amount of heat!  Grapes are great since they give you fruit.
[/quote]

Aren't bougainvillea poisonous"

 

[lacymorgan]

Anyone know where I can get a chick shipping box I only have until tomorrow to ship these or I will lose my refund from ebay and the person who sent me the wrong eggs will get to keep my 100.00

 

[lacymorgan]

@alohachickens I am fairly new to the whole "chicken thing". So bear with me whilst I figure all this by posting stuff out. I have had my girls about 5 months. I have a white leghorn pullet, black star pullet, Easter egger pullet and a fleur d' uccle hen. Tragically had 2 pullet die in an accident in my yard when they pulled an industrial wire shelf down on top of them. I was crushed. Anyway, I then acquired the ee and the d uccle to replace them. Hoping the other 3 will start laying soon. They are about 6 mos old. I have the chicken bug BAD. Next would like to try hatching and / or adding some of the following to my flock::
Silver/blue/gold laced Wyandotte
Cream legbar
Barred rock
Cuckoo or red marans
Hamburg
Ancona
Speckled Sussex
Golden lakenvelder
Lavender Orpington
We live in the city of maricopa and cannot have Roos but would love any hens that you have extra of.

would love to help but don't have any of those breeds hope you find some and welcome to the page

 

[alohachickens]

@alohachickens I am fairly new to the whole "chicken thing". So bear with me whilst I figure all this by posting stuff out. I have had my girls about 5 months. I have a white leghorn pullet, black star pullet, Easter egger pullet and a fleur d' uccle hen. Tragically had 2 pullet die in an accident in my yard when they pulled an industrial wire shelf down on top of them. I was crushed. Anyway, I then acquired the ee and the d uccle to replace them. Hoping the other 3 will start laying soon. They are about 6 mos old. I have the chicken bug BAD. Next would like to try hatching and / or adding some of the following to my flock::
Silver/blue/gold laced Wyandotte
Cream legbar
Barred rock
Cuckoo or red marans
Hamburg
Ancona
Speckled Sussex
Golden lakenvelder
Lavender Orpington
We live in the city of maricopa and cannot have Roos but would love any hens that you have extra of.

Many of these Alohas are Sussex mixes, if you want to try hatching some out. I have some older eggs that I can't sell. (Prefer to sell eggs no older than 3 days old, if they are paying.) You can have a dozen eggs for free, but you'd have to hatch them out.

I am happy to give hens and rooster "breeding flocks" to set up new breeders, but that's about the only time I give away sexed and started chickens. And it is very rare that I do that. I'd have to know that the home is a good safe home with great caretakers before I hand them over. It takes a bit of money to feed them to a certain age, and I never have a problem selling the young girls that I don't need. I use the money to offset the cost of feed on the ones that I do keep.

I'm happy to donate a few eggs to "pet homes" where the Alohas would just be members of a flock, but you have to feed the babies and then give away the boys. LOL!

However, I'm always looking for safe "breeding homes" where people will keep a rooster with several hens, to diversify the bloodlines and as a safeguard in case something happened to my flock here. The big requirement, though, is the chicks are free to homes where an Aloha rooster will be kept. Sterile eggs aren't much use for hatching. LOL. It would be nice, though, to have other Aloha flocks in the area, with slightly different bloodlines, where I could come by and pick up hatching eggs if needed, from time to time.

So if anyone is willing to keep a rooster and hens, especially if they live in the West Valley, please let me know. I can set you up with a small breeding flock. Probably of started chicks or teenagers. Home must be SAFE - not looking to spend money feeding pullets just to provide snacks to coyotes, ha ha.

The roos do crow of course, but at least they are pretty. LOL.


Happy to give away 15-20 baby chicks to breeder homes, if people agree to keep a rooster and at least 4 of the best hens. (Rest of chicks can be sold or given away.) Since the newborns haven't been eating yet and don't really cost me anything to hatch, I'm very generous with giving baby peeps to folks who could keep a roo and a few hens. Just ask if interested.

Started stock - I get really picky on who those go to. Expect a home visit, interview, and would need full contact info, since basically it's like giving away money. (Started chickens sell great on Craigslist, so a flock of five hens and a roo is worth at least $50. I'm pretty poor, so I need to know that the investment won't be wasted and the new flock will be safe.)

 

[DesertChic]

Anyone know where I can get a Polish or Frizzle here in Arizona?

I think @ChinoChix raises Polish, but I don't know about Frizzle. Her webpage is http://www.fancyranchchicks.com/.