Arizona Chickens

[flower]

If you live where you can get flood irrigation, it is by far the least expensive way to water your yard. Less than $100 for the YEAR. You will still have a water bill for that water that comes from the city.

I've never understood what is wrong with crab grass? Weeds that have stickers I understand being bad (I hate burr clover!), but grasses that simply don't happen to be the "preferred" species?

If you plant anything else in the same area as crab grass it becomes overgrown by the grass. It is invasive to all areas of my large yard. I work very hard to remove crab grass from my Roses, Iris, Peonies, all annuals and more. I want flax and other plants to overgrow the invasive plant. I would rather have mint be my invasive. Mint has value as a repellant crab grass does hold the earth in place but it does require water and is in the meantime a pest in my opinion.

 

[MagicChicken]

Thank you for all the help. Here is a silly question that I'm obviously not figuring out via the Internet on my own! Do most breeds end up with a crown on their heads whether they are a hen or a rooster?

Yes. Hens and roosters both get combs. (The "crown" is called a comb in the poultry world.) Roosters usually have bigger combs than hens of the same breed. Some roosters develop their combs early and some begin to mature later.

i need to make some money!! Do any of you guys have ideas?? My chickens seem to eat my money.And lets just say that my 16 year old boy salary cannot handle it

My chickens are eating my older-than-dirt adult salary. I feel your pain. What part of town are you in? Do you have transportation? Offering to do chores for neighbors sometimes works. Look around - do yards need cleanup? Do people need pet sitters or plant waterers while they go on vacation? Things like that can be convenient ways to pick up some extra money, and if you like it and do well you can sometimes transform it into a regular business. Good luck. It's not easy getting started.

 

[flower]

Yes flood irrigation is lovely if you live where it's available. But that is only parts of Phoenix and Tucson; the rest of the state we are at the mercy of the water companies and AZ water just raised their rates.

Crab grass is a short lived weed. It will crowd out the real grass, grow quick then die off leaving large brown spots all over.

But when it get water crab grass is revived and becomes larger and thicker because it spreads by rhisome type roots. I can not get rid of the stuff. I can cover the ground with several layers, never water but after several years, when I try to repopulate the area, the stuff comes back.

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

i need to make some money!! Do any of you guys have ideas?? My chickens seem to eat my money.And lets just say that my 16 year old boy salary cannot handle it

With your chicken talent, you could get chicken/pet sitting jobs.

You can ask here and there are farming and chicken groups on Facebook where you could ask.
It's really hard to find a reliable, knowledgeable chicken sitter.

 

[flower]

Crab grass is a short lived weed. It will crowd out the real grass, grow quick then die off leaving large brown spots all over.

I do Not agree. Have you ever had this pest in your yard ? The top area might be brown but if any moisture is applied the stuff will regrow. When I lived the past five years just south of Death Valley, I battled this weed. No it does not have burrs but it does crowd out everything but full grown trees !

 

[Arizonachicken]

Along with my other cockerels and one pullet for sale, I just figured out I have another cockerel. Here he is. He is trying a feeble attempt at crowing. I'm afraid that he'll have a nice loud crow before he's big enough to process. Yes, what I don't sell will be sent to freezer camp.


Here are the others for sale, if anyone is interested. Two cockerels and one pullet:







I'm asking $5 for the cockerels and $10 for the pullet.

 

[Menmyrc]

Since we're discussing weeds/grass, etc. I'm wondering if anyone can ID this weed/bush thing. Not the tumbleweed (darker green) on the left center, but the grayish green one. They grow to be a couple feet tall and diameter. When we had blister beetles blow through the blister beetles really liked them. The chickens will give them a taste but for the most part leave them alone. They don't die from RoundUp. Any ideas on what they are and what will get rid of them? Are they toxic to chickens?

 

[Demosthine]

i need to make some money!! Do any of you guys have ideas?? My chickens seem to eat my money.And lets just say that my 16 year old boy salary cannot handle it

On a different note than the others, there are numerous things you can do to decrease your expenses, too. I don't know how much you've read or know already, so here goes...

- Check with your local grocery stores for produce that is not fresh enough to be sold on their shelves, but is still plenty fresh for your chickens. Virtually all of this at most stores go in the dumpster, so they may be willing to give it away for free. I've heard of several stores in my old neighborhood that had designated nights that they would "put cases out for disposal" in a convenient place for the homeless to take it.

- Remember to feed any food scraps to your flock after your family meals. My one-year-old daughter always leaves a mess on the floor and her highchair tray, so I just gather up all the scraps and toss them outside. They will darn near lick the corn on the cob clean, too. There is never an ounce of scraps going to waste in our house. Just remember to try to keep it semi-balanced. Avoid large amounts of bread products, for instance. They don't need empty carbs any more than humans do.

- The same goes for any local butcher shop. On all meat scraps, there is a certain amount of meat that is left over. You can take a little extra time to trim off this meat and feed it to your flock for extra protein content. You can feed them a certain amount of the fat as well, but don't use it heavily. If you can get enough protein, free-ranging and produce to eliminate commercial feed, you will need to supplement some fat content in to their diet, so it's good to have that available. Not knowing your situation, you can also use all of that and any roadkill you may find to create a maggot bucket or black soldier fly composter for additional live feed. Both are quite easy to do and require little to no work. You can find ample items you can reuse on Craig's List for a soldier fly composter and a simple used bucket works for the maggot bucket. ** Some claim you can have problems with limberneck caused by infested maggots, but others are claiming that the symptoms and indicators they are describing are due to wet, spoiled commercial feed and are that the situation is not possibly caused by the maggot bucket. Take that with a grain of salt and do what you want with the idea. My philosophy is that the chickens are eating anything and everything they can find in the wild, so no reason to be overprotective in my backyard. **

- You can easily start a mealworm colony. Again, used items work great for a container to keep it all in, it doesn't smell at all, it's self-sustaining with the exception of a few potato halves every week, and it's practically free protein. I picked up a new tub of mealworms every few weeks for about two months so that I could offset the lifecycles and keep a continuous supply. I slacked on replacing the potatoes (their water source), and they have recently gone dormant, but adding more this week, I should have a nice explosion of them. It can be an interesting project for school, too.

- Keep your used egg shells, let them dry out in a bucket for about a week and crush them thoroughly. You can feed this back to them free-choice instead of purchasing crushed oyster or crushed limestone. I've been doing this with my flock and I have excellent quality egg shells.

- If your situation will allow it, use natural bedding that most people can find for free. Dead leaves work absolutely great in my coop for the bedding and I just rake up a pile once in awhile to throw in there. If you get in with the lawn work for your neighbors, for money hopefully, you can bring the various types of leaves back for your bedding. You can also add in grass clippings for extra bedding. You can utilize the deep litter method in conjunction with this and end with a great compost by the end of the year. I haven't gotten to the point of being able to get a bunch of compost out for the garden, but I'm not quite at the one-year mark for getting chickens. I think I'm at about 9 months and most of that was in a smaller coop. My new one is designed around this method and it's working fabulous!

- Contact your local restaraunts that offer "fire roasted" items. Many cook them using seasoned woods like mesquite and such. You can often request their wood ash occasionally and you can use it for their dust baths. It works great for this and has been recommended as a complete replacement for diatomaceous earth on several occasions. In addition to the dust bath, they will supposedly eat it periodically and it helps balance the acidity of their gastrointestinal tract. In general, it appears burning wood is more environmentally friendly than composting it and definitely better than sending it to the landfill, so you can also burn any dead and dry branches that you acquire through the landscaping work everyone has mentioned.


Just a few ideas... I might use this for the article writing contest that is going on right now... Hmm, interesting thoughts...

 

[Menmyrc]

Just a few ideas... I might use this for the article writing contest that is going on right now... Hmm, interesting thoughts...

These are some great ideas! My boss has a very large yard and always gives us his leaves to be used as compost for our garden. Of course some make it in the coop as bedding. Another co-worker does not have a garden but has a lot of kitchen compost materials that she feels bad just throwing away so she puts them in a bag in the freezer and brings them to me once or twice a week. Not all of it is edible for chickens but boy do they love picking through the frozen scraps looking for the tastiest morsels! This can either be put in the run or, if you let them free range you can put them in a compost pile. When they dig through the pile they are shredding the compost and leaving their own contributions to the compost pile! Most of our friends love that we have a large garden and that we have chickens and are more than willing to contribute in this way. Of course, the occasional gift of a dozen eggs doesn't hurt either!

We have also given them what we scrape off the dinner plates including mashed potatoes, vegetables, small pieces of meat, etc. Since doing all this we have seen a dramatic decline in the amount of commercial feed we are buying, and all of this is really free since it would go in the garbage or down the drain if we didn't have chickens.

 

[Billiam]

Ring necks are invasive, nasty-tempered doves that drive off the native doves. Pretty, but that is the only positive thing I can say about them.

Their breasts taste good and they are legal to take (hunt) all year round.