Arizona Chickens

[BlueBaby]

I did an early candle of my eggs in my incubator last night, and they are looking good so far. More little NN's on the way!

 

[13lue]

The duck’s were having a fabulous time in the run this morning. I forgot to turn the misters off last night, the system was old & burst .. kinda sad now got another thing to add to the list..

Does that list ever end ? We were just offered an acre of land by the neighbor so now I have to pull 25 K out of the thin air and put up fence, run water, move horse and pigs ... guess Ill be adding a page or two to my list.

 

[igorsMistress]

@City farm

I don't think the list ever ends, it just gets shuffled based on importance.

 

[SonoranChick]

@City farm Beautiful duck! And I also have one of those never ending lists.
As soon as we get humidity I start getting chickens who cough and sneeze. Respiratory junk - not sick but like allergies. I'll give wet feed today with the heat - we'll add some oregano to it to keep up their immune systems. One of them is my oldest girl Aussie who is 6/7.
Now I also have an EE who wants to be broody - 2 days now and I've dumped her out of the nest a couple times. I don't want to put her in the cage in this heat. Besides she just hatched eggs about 10 almost 11 weeks ago!
PLUS I have two new roosters crowing. One is about two weeks older than the other so one is all hormones and the other is crowing. One has 10 girls in his posse and the other has two - we'll see how that balances. I've told my old girls to teach them manners now while they are young. I generally don't keep roosters - we'll see how this works out.

When you give them oregano, do you use fresh or dry? Does it matter? I thought they hated oregano but I was mistaken...it's the thyme they won't touch. Picky chickies.

 

[City farm]

What breed of duck is this? Very pretty

Muscovy..

 

[DesertChic]

I was just telling hubby today how lucky we have been this summer with the ants and the flies. Previous years have brought an obnoxious amount of both, but we barely have any ant hills this year and the flies are in smaller numbers. I do have a much better system for containing the chicken poop this year, last year it was tossed into a pile right in the garden, which turned into a breeding ground for flies. This year the poop is in a closed waste receptacle and dumped weekly into the desert, so it composts far from the house/coop area. No clue where the ants have gone this year but I don't miss them one bit!

That's because they're all at my house. Seriously...walking into the chicken cabin resembles a scene from The Exorcist or The Amityville Horror. I just spent a small fortune ordering poultry friendly fly control methods, and I'm really hoping they work.

 

[FeatherPugs]

@SonoranChick I use fresh from my garden. I have a large area planted and don't give it every time so the area planted seems to work for me right now. Logically I would think dried oregano would be okay - I'm going to stick to the fresh.
@DesertChic I love Arbico's fly eliminators - I get a quarter pack every month from Mar through Oct. BUT Arbico also has a solar fly trap that I am "saving for" that I want to get next year. I think it would only take one for my area but not sure what would happen at the neighboring places, etc. Right now the fly eliminators keep the flies at a real low level for about a 3 acre area. AND I can tell right now its time for new ones. Unfortunately the little wasps cannot breed fast enough to keep up with flies so they have to be renewed.
I've used them for 3/4 years now.

 

[igorsMistress]

I've been using those fly traps you put water in. They smell horrid but work pretty well.

 

[SonoranChick]

I've been using those fly traps you put water in. They smell horrid but work pretty well.

We call those "corpse traps" at my house They do work!

 

[BlueBaby]

@FeatherPugs I just looked up that fly eliminator stuff. It seem's like it would be a good natural way to take care of those fly lave to reduce the numbers of them, especially after the rain.