Arizona Chickens

[City farm]

BOSS
I went out a few days ago to the local PetSmart and bought a 40# bag of black oil sunflower seeds. Ultimately, I want to grow as much feed as possible. In the Tucson climate, sunflowers grow like weeds anyway. To make sure the seeds would sprout, I put a handful in a bowl and covered them with a wet paper towel. After 3 days, SUCCESS! they are all sprouted. Since my growing area is not yet prepared, I just removed the paper towel and put the bowl in the brooder. OMG! You would think these chicks had never seen food before! Now I have to prepare some ground (where the chickens can't get to 'em) and get with the program!

What a great idea.. Sunflowers are so good just sprouted..

 

[City farm]

 

For those of you who have large fowl ducks... How big is your water source, how often do you clean it and refill, and what do you do with all the water? I'm down here in Vail, considering getting some ducks for eggs. There's a large mesquite tree right next to the coop, if I dumped the dirty water near there, would it be too much for the tree?

Are you prepared for your mesquite to take over? Mesquite can take all the water you can give it.

We water the thing with the hose every other day, and it's big and leafy, providing lovely shade for the southwest corner of the coop. So if I use the water from the ducks (is a kiddie pool a good size?) I won;t have to water it with the hose anymore, would I? And a kiddie pools worth of water wouldn't be too much? 

Here is how we water our trees.. 20 feet high, trickle the hose for 20 hours.. We move the hose around the base & go around the whole tree. Citrus deep water under the unbrella 3 feet deep in all directions... Every 2 weeks in the summer.. 1x a month in winter..

 

[carnivore]

What a great idea.. Sunflowers are so good just sprouted..

@k9Dave, I plan on growing the sunflowers between my yard fence and the dirt road behind my house. That way, I can still water them with my chickenyard hose, but the chickens can't get to 'em. I remember reading another post somewhere here on BYC, the poster said she just cut off the flower heads and threw them in the yard for the chickens to pick apart.
For another facet of the "program", I just laid down a thick layer of compost in the chickenyard, and watered in about half a pound of buckwheat groats. I've heard chickens kinda like buckwheat, too!

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

BOSS
I went out a few days ago to the local PetSmart and bought a 40# bag of black oil sunflower seeds. Ultimately, I want to grow as much feed as possible. In the Tucson climate, sunflowers grow like weeds anyway. To make sure the seeds would sprout, I put a handful in a bowl and covered them with a wet paper towel. After 3 days, SUCCESS! they are all sprouted. Since my growing area is not yet prepared, I just removed the paper towel and put the bowl in the brooder. OMG! You would think these chicks had never seen food before! Now I have to prepare some ground (where the chickens can't get to 'em) and get with the program!

I have a series of square 4-gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom for sprouting BOSS and hard red winter wheat. I put a small amount in a bucket every couple of days and nest the buckets together (on top of an intact bucket with water in it). For the first 24 hours I keep the seeds completely submerged in water and water them once a day thereafter. I don't do it all the time because other things always seem to get in the way, but it is fun to feed to them.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: With the Chickenionization, we pay low prices. I pay $10.00 for free range skinny breasted chickens, with heads and feet still on. Cheaply feed up CX is about 6 weeks then to market..... Yummmmm.

Growth hormones to feed for max 4 weeks. The last 2 no hormones. Then they can be labeled hormone free. Work that goes in to them is mostly picking up dead birds every day. Auto feed and water. Never clean their building while they are in it, after off to market, front end loader clean it out with the decaying body's if dead chickens that were missed. Yes it is cheep, it is tender, you think it tastes great. If that is so why do people from Europe and other country's think our chicken is tasteless. They agree they are fat, a lot of meat, and very tender, But tasteless. The chicken we send over seas goes into the low end stores. Our chicken is the spam of their world.

No of eggs by breed, 300 eggs for laying breeds, 260 to 160 a year for some, 60 a year for others. A chicken will take a day off from laying at intervals by breed. They are finding, thanks to BYC keeps that some chickens will lay at 5 yr and 6 yrs quite reliably, at a slower rate (instead of 6 eggs 4). A guess for a good healthy happy layer 1,200 plus eggs in 5 years.

http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/chooks/chooks.html

Link to a chart that will give you an idea of how many eggs to expect by bread.

Feeding hormones to chickens is against federal feed regulations. No commercially available chicken or poultry feed contains hormones.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Try filling the cups with a bit of water by pressing on the trigger. The birds will see the water and in their efforts to drink it, should trigger more. Don;t give them another water source or that is all they will use. Just keep an eye on them and make sure they GET it.

 

[carnivore]

Another feeding experiment. I just took a yellow summer squash and quartered it lengthwise. Put it the brooder, and it got a few halfhearted pecks, so I took another quarter and chopped it into 1/8-1/4" pieces, put it in a bowl in the brooder, still not much interest. Sprinkled some mealworms on top, and they didn't last more than 30 seconds. But now, everybody is playing "chicken keep away" and running all over the pen with little chunks of squash!

 

[pimachickens]

As for planting something low-growing between the flagstones, can you grow Dichondra there?  Dichondra doesn't like being walked on but might do well between the stones where it would be more protected.  It would probably look better than purslane in that setting.  Purslane is a much bigger, more sprawling plant.

I would use dicondra seeds or chocolate mint! if I remember tomorrow I'll show you pictures of the chocolate mint growing between my flagstones an invading my backyard grass. And it smells wonderful when you trim it. on the other hand with dicondra grass, it's an old grass that you never have to mow. It fills in the space, it almost looks like a round clover but its not a clover and you just give it a sprinkle everyday in the hot summer and it should be fine.

Those are great suggestions, thank you both! I have a wonderful nursery nearby, so I will talk with them about the pros and cons of each.

 

[pimachickens]

BOSS
I went out a few days ago to the local PetSmart and bought a 40# bag of black oil sunflower seeds. Ultimately, I want to grow as much feed as possible. In the Tucson climate, sunflowers grow like weeds anyway. To make sure the seeds would sprout, I put a handful in a bowl and covered them with a wet paper towel. After 3 days, SUCCESS! they are all sprouted. Since my growing area is not yet prepared, I just removed the paper towel and put the bowl in the brooder. OMG! You would think these chicks had never seen food before! Now I have to prepare some ground (where the chickens can't get to 'em) and get with the program!

Yeah, they LOVE anything sprouted. I have also heard that sprouted seeds are supposed to be better nutritionally than the seed itself, but to be honest I have never researched this for myself. I did something similar to Gallo with his bucket system, when I had chickens and rabbits before, and they loved it. Every so often a grocery store will have a crazy sale on wild bird seed...that stuff sprouts great as well.

 

[a little chiken]

I have 8 ducks and my pool gets changed every 2 days. I am using the water from their water bucket for my aloe vera.

My garden and trees are on an auto drip. Its set at 9 pm and the trees are on a 15 min until we hit 100 degrees then they go to 30 min a nite.
The flower bed is 10 min a nite. And the garden is 10 min until 100 degrees then up to 15 - 20 min a nite.