Arizona Chickens

[LadyKotaDoria]

I keep the lawn for a few reasons.  First and foremost, my one-year old daughter absolutely loves being outside and always have.  She was out crawling in the yard at six or eight months old.  It's allowed her to get a nice amount of sun and outside play without worrying about her falling on rocks and gravel.

I also like the grass because it helps insulate the ground against the sun's heat.  During these extreme temps, dirt and gravel can both get extremely hot.  A plot of grass is comfortable to walk on no matter what the temperature.  All of my girls are bedding down on the grass in the evenings and being lazy.  (snipped)

Oh I love grass; I love to walk barefoot on cool green grass; that is total heaven. I get to do it once every few years when I'm at a big park at the right time of day.

In the future I hope to have a small patch of grass just to walk barefoot on. Maybe 6x8' I have no grass now because here AZ Water Co. just raised their rates and they were high before. My water bill last summer, with one person in the house, swamp cooler running only about 6 hrs a day, fruit trees and garden was $175 a month. In contrast, in the winter my bill runs $25 tops. So around here if I can't eat it, it doesn't get watered.

In Minnesota I used to get up early and walk out bare foot on frost covered grass. It is good for your circulation, if you have arthritis it seems to help.

 

[kacklinkelly]

Gotta love APS....I love that there's a "delivery fee"....really? I didn't notice a truck full of power back up and drop anything at my house!!

Also I seriously need to find a home for my red sex link, she's 15 weeks old and just too loud for my backyard. If anyone wants her PM me, I'm in Casa Grande. My EE's and Black Australorps are sooooo much more quiet than this loud girl! I was looking forward to the eggs from her, but with as loud as she is and she's not laying yet I can't imagine how loud she's gonna be when she's laying.

Hoping you find a good home for her. Our RIR is our loudest. Every morning!!!! She is a great producer but holy cow, I hope the neighbors can't hear her with their windows closed.
She wasn't too bad in the winter, but the sun wasn't coming up at 5am then. We also have EE (actually olive egger - when she lays an egg - buts that's a whole other story) and BA.
I would have a flock of BA's over the other two. Ours is a great producer, beautiful in the sunlight, typically quiet except for an egg song and just a love. I guess the RIR takes after
the rest of us loud mouths in our family! She fits right in.

 

[kacklinkelly]

Here's a picture of my patch of lawn. This is definitely the family gathering spot.



And since I've figured out how to post pictures on BYC, here's some of my coop (my coop, in relation to the above photo, is to the right, around the corner).

Here's the coop wall that we see from our "regular" backyard (the grass, garden, and coop are all in the "garden". This was during construction, so it's lacking a roof, etc:


Here's looking between the black wire fence and the above side of the coop. I had to put reed fencing up to distract my hound from the chickens. Hopefully the grape and blackberry will grow in and provide further visual barrier.


Facing coop. the orange box is a planter. Since this photo was taken, all sides of the coop and run have been covered with reed fencing for shade. Tonight I'm going to do the double shade thing and hang some shade cloth.






Flower girls:

Looks like a great set up - makes me smile just looking at it. I can imagine sitting in the area is even more enjoyable!

 

[MaddBaggins]

well maybe if you'd have let em wash it down with of that thar homebrew....

Right?

They are always curious about my glass when I'm enjoying a brew out there.

 

[MaddBaggins]

Does anyone overseed their lawns for winter? If so, how do you work that with the chickens? Do they eat all the seeds or are the grass seeds small enough that they miss most of them? I know it's too early in the season to worry about it, but it's something my wife and I were discussing the other day.

Lawn?????

 

[bcluff]

Does anyone wanna give a loving home to my 3 ducks? I love them to death and they are great birds but they tore up the lawn.

 

[nwebber]

Hey everyone. We got our new girls two weeks ago but the more we time we spend with them the more we notice one of them "Rossevelt" looks more like a rooster. Please let me know what you all think? We need to get rid of her. :-( and get another new baby ASAP. "She" has the thing on her head growing more and more each day and the other two do not have it. If you blow up the pic you can see it clearly.

 

[cbnovick]

Really dreading the up coming weather. My EE has me worried. She is molting terribly and not acting right. DH and I both checked to see if she was egg bound and nothing. I've read that molting delays if not stops the egg laying process and low producing EE's tend to molt first. Also that molting is harder on their systems then laying an egg. I'd hate for her to go through the molting during this miserable heat. We have been diligent on ways of keeping them cool. Any ideas?? Planning on keeping a close eye on her these next few days.

I finally figured out my watering can problem!! When I was cleaning the rust out of the dish part the other day I realized that the bar that releases the water into the dish is actually copper. I know with our hard water in Az and copper anything will rust and spread rust in the water. DH is finally back from boy scout camp and we can work on a new watering system for the birds soon. I found a 5gl watering system that was pretty neat. It used a 5gal sports jug (like those gatorade ones) and replaced the spicket with a 3 nipple watering valve. I like that the 5 gal sport jug is insulated. Water will stay cooler longer. Darn copper release bar. Oh well, it could be worse.

Plenty of extra protein helps with the molting stress that's caused by diverting most energy to producing new feathers...hence they usually don't lay during the most intense phase of it. I usually feed a handful of dried mealworms or no salt canned tuna...alternating each depending on their preference...also scrambled eggs, plain are excellent...at least every other day. Lots of fresh spinach offered daily in the summer is good as well.

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

Hey everyone. We got our new girls two weeks ago but the more we time we spend with them the more we notice one of them "Rossevelt" looks more like a rooster. Please let me know what you all think? We need to get rid of her. :-( and get another new baby ASAP. "She" has the thing on her head growing more and more each day and the other two do not have it. If you blow up the pic you can see it clearly.

What breed are your chicks? Some breeds develop combs sooner than others and some even within a breed develop faster than others.
Also, how old are they?

 

[nwebber]

My girls are two weeks old tomorrow and we bought them from Mesa Feed Barn and they did not know yet what breeds the girls were. He said you have about a 10% chance of getting a rooster. I was hoping wed get lucky and not grab one knowing we would have to get rid of it if we did.