Arizona Chickens

Happy New Year’s all...

When do you all start to transition your hens from Chick Starter to Layer Feed? I expect my two oldest hens to start laying in March when there about 6 months old. I am not sure if they need to start storing up the calcium and other nutrients/minerals before they start laying or not.

Marian

Mine are 14 weeks old right now. I was hoping to get eggs around March as well, but since they are most likely not true RIR's but a cross as a production red they may lay as early as 18-20 weeks. I was originally thinking around 25 weeks.
I am planning to switch to layer as soon as I get my first egg since they are all the same age and should start laying within a few weeks of eachother.
 
Happy New Year 2014!

Spent part of the new year morning out with the boys and girls. Such a nice day, going out again.

Phoebe

Roberta

No Name yet (one of Sonorans' girls by way of pastrymama)

Veronica

Josephine fleeing Barbarino's advances

Barbarino feeding my 3 month old Black Copper Marans roolet (haven't thought of a good name yet)

Vincenzo

Barbarino

BCM roolet

Vincenzo is successfully doing the deed
 
To make my self feel better, I look up prices of gas I n other country's. In Norway gas is $2.65 a liter (rounded) or $10.04 a gallon. It would cast me between $125.00 a- $135.00 to fill my tank. How much would it cost to just go to work? Can you afford to work in Norway? :rolleyes: Thankfully not in Norway.
 
True RIR are much darker--they almost look black their red is so dark. And they don't have any white on them ;)

I bought what I thought were RIR's from Pratt's. After much reading I have come to the conclusion that they are more likely a production red, but not a RSL. Mine are quite dark, almost black and have lots of black feathers in the tail. Much darker than Mikey D's pic of his pullet. Mine were never that light and had no white at all. I think Gallo posted a link to heritage RIR's and mine aren't that far off standard. Fewer black feathers in the body for sure..
Thanks for all the great knowledge on here. I wish I'd done more research or found this site long before I purchased my girls. I'd have definitely mixed my breeds and would have bought from local breeders instead. Next time around for sure!
 
 


Gallo that looks so great!  I'm glad I got to see it before because the after pictures are even more impressive!

I also had my garden destroyed, but by painters.  We had to have our house painted and when I interviewed painters the first question I asked was about how they would cover the garden.  I went with the painter that took my question seriously even though he charged more.  Of course, the guy that came out to talk to me wasn't there when they painted the garden side of the house and when I got home I found paint splatters on Everything in my garden!  I had to completely remove all plants and scrape the top layer of soil out.  We lost a whole season of beautiful lettuce and greens.  The painter reduced his bill quite a bit, but I'd still rather have my garden.
This year's garden was a  bust.  I don't know what's wrong but I think something(birds?) is eating everything but the garlic and some kale as soon as it sprouts. :(



Becky mine was more devastating than paint and top soil. Our city mandated sewer installed. My son dug out a garden for me 20+ years ago. He dug down 2 ft and sifted all the rocks out of the dirt, placed it back in and we amended to get it perfect. My garden area is 15 ft x 30 ft. For years we had huge harvests out of this desert land. One year I counted over 3000 tomatoes off of 36 plants. Every crop you can imagine other than corn.

The sewer project required that our existing septic tank be crushed so a homeowner couldn't hook back up to it on their own. Most new houses have a septic in the front yard. Guess where my septic was?? Yep, right under my garden. They had to dig up the garden to smash the tank. I BEGGED them to PLEASE take out the first couple feet of soil and put it in one pile, then dig out the rest and put it in another pile. Crush my tank then put the rocky soil back in and top with my good soil. Did they listen? NOOOOOO! They took a bobcat and dug like the dickens and piled all the soil together and dumped it all back in the garden.  

My pH was completely off, I had giant boulders in my planting beds. I would try to plant and the seedlings would die just after sprouting. My roto-tiller couldn't even make it through the soil without taking out a limb from the huge rocks. I was devastated. My heart and spirit for gardening completely broken. It has taken me about 6 years to even plant a seed. I have bought potted herbs for my little side garden and have had success.

I had a similar situation as yours with seedlings being eaten I planted bok choy, chard, kale and spinach.. 2 rows each. I put floating row cover on them, started to see seedlings and a day or two later, NOTHING! the entire rows vanished! I am guessing a lizard of some sort cause who else could get under row cover? Certainly not birds or bunnies! I will forge on...


By chance do you have any photos of the process of the removal? Not that I want you to re-hash the incident..
 
I looked up cut worms, very interesting. 'Not all cutworms or cut worms but act like cut worms and are called cutworms'. :th
What dose that mean? All cutworms are cutworms, and all cutworms that are not cutworms are cutworms too?

Very interesting.........
 
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[COLOR=FF8C00]Happy New Year 2014![/COLOR] [COLOR=FF8C00]Spent part of the new year morning out with the boys and girls. Such a nice day, going out again.[/COLOR] Phoebe Roberta No Name yet (one of Sonorans' girls by way of pastrymama) Veronica Josephine fleeing Barbarino's advances Barbarino feeding my 3 month old Black Copper Marans roolet (haven't thought of a good name yet) Vincenzo Barbarino BCM roolet Vincenzo is successfully doing the deed
[COLOR=FF8C00]Happy New Year 2014![/COLOR] [COLOR=FF8C00]Spent part of the new year morning out with the boys and girls. Such a nice day, going out again.[/COLOR] Phoebe Roberta No Name yet (one of Sonorans' girls by way of pastrymama) Veronica Josephine fleeing Barbarino's advances Barbarino feeding my 3 month old Black Copper Marans roolet (haven't thought of a good name yet) Vincenzo Barbarino BCM roolet Vincenzo is successfully doing the deed
[COLOR=FF8C00]Happy New Year 2014![/COLOR] [COLOR=FF8C00]Spent part of the new year morning out with the boys and girls. Such a nice day, going out again.[/COLOR] Phoebe Roberta No Name yet (one of Sonorans' girls by way of pastrymama) Veronica Josephine fleeing Barbarino's advances Barbarino feeding my 3 month old Black Copper Marans roolet (haven't thought of a good name yet) Vincenzo Barbarino BCM roolet Vincenzo is successfully doing the deed
Hope this quote turns out correctly.. I had to hit the button 3x.. I think your Veronica & our Cheryl are sisters.. I got Cheryl from redrocketrooster.. She is a doll.. Actually we call her the "kittychicken" Happy new year everyone!!:yiipchick
 
[COLOR=FF8C00]Happy New Year 2014![/COLOR] [COLOR=FF8C00]Spent part of the new year morning out with the boys and girls. Such a nice day, going out again.[/COLOR] Phoebe Roberta No Name yet (one of Sonorans' girls by way of pastrymama) Veronica Josephine fleeing Barbarino's advances Barbarino feeding my 3 month old Black Copper Marans roolet (haven't thought of a good name yet) Vincenzo Barbarino BCM roolet Vincenzo is successfully doing the deed
CORRECTION .. No name & Cheryl must be sisters....
 
Kpgoldstar, that looks like a pre-fab coop, and if it is, how do you like it? It looks like one of the CConly coups, I'm straddling the fence about whether to buy or build. I've read a lot of pros and cons about, them, but with a bit of reinforcement, they do well for a small flock. --BB

Bobby Basham
Tucson, Arizona

Hi Bobby!
Nice to see you back! I started with a prefab this link
http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Chicken-Coops/The-Clubhouse-Coop-with-Run-Ships-Free-p1167.aspx
For some reason the last few days this thread won't let me cut and paste. I have no idea why. Anyway it is the Clubhouse coop from mypetchicken

We researched a ton and looked at lots of coops at Cal-Ranch, etc. The problem we found with many others was inferior soft Chinese fir, and thinner wire, shoddy construction. I think this one with the deeper dropping tray, higher elevation, better wood was the wisest choice. For the price and free shipping we couldn't have built it for this. It assembled in 30 minutes, all the holes are pre-drilled and everything lined up amazingly well. It appears to be quite sturdy to hold up to monsoon winds. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to build from scratch.

We added the extended run this past week, that is the cedar and pine portion you see. The building costs for just that was about $100. We made it 3' x 3' x 6'.
 

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