Arizona Chickens

[Macboat]

Sorry to hear that! Where are you located? I have a lot of nice pullets for sale, various breeds: Black Copper Marans, Barred Rock, red sexlinks, Blue Copper Marans, Delaware...need to thin out my birds. I'm in NW Tucson. PM me if interested.

Thanks Marcy. I know you have poulets for sale however you are located in Tucson. For what its worth I may just look around in phoenix.

 

[Jazzymedrano17]

Chicken Owners!! cooling Sys. for Chicken Coop - $40 (east valley)

condition: new size / dimensions: 5-gal. bucket
This cooling canister will refrigerate any small living space. Can be useful for keeping a chicken coop cool during hot summer days & evenings. It run's off electricity but if you hook-up an inexpensive solar system, it will run efficiently off of solar. All you are responsible for is for the acquisition of one or two 1 gal. plastic bottles. You fill the bottles with water. Freeze them. Then place one bottle in the canister. That will easily cool an area for about 4 to 5 hours. You have the other bottle in the freezer. You inter-change bottle to bottle. The canister holds a small 3-speed Turbo Force High Velocity Fan that blows cold air out of the 3 vent holes on the side of the canister. SPECIAL PRICE of $40.00..

 

[Mama Hen Chris]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to all the new peeps. Sorry about the losses and congrats on new chicks and eggs.

I moved into Bonnie's place (Ladykotadoria) on June 7th. Lost 5 girls that evening to ants. They must have sat on a hole in the evening. With the heat and stinging, they didn't have a chance. They were all in a heap. I was devastated. Then the next week, I lost one of my silkie girls. She had something going on with her that I couldn't fix.

So far the rest of the girls are doing well. I do not have internet set up at the house yet, so here I am at work as it is hard to type from my phone.

No crow collars...talk to pastrymama about her experience as it didn't work well with her boy.

jazzymedrano17...am interested in your system. Sent you an email.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to all the new peeps. Sorry about the losses and congrats on new chicks and eggs.

I moved into Bonnie's place (Ladykotadoria) on June 7th. Lost 5 girls that evening to ants. They must have sat on a hole in the evening. With the heat and stinging, they didn't have a chance. They were all in a heap. I was devastated. Then the next week, I lost one of my silkie girls. She had something going on with her that I couldn't fix.

So far the rest of the girls are doing well. I do not have internet set up at the house yet, so here I am at work as it is hard to type from my phone.

No crow collars...talk to pastrymama about her experience as it didn't work well with her boy.

Oh Chris!

That's so devastating.

 

[kpgoldstar]

@kpgoldstar , how is Lemon doing today? Any change in her behavior?

Thanks for asking. I was planning on posting an update today. She appears to be better. She is eating more and is more active during lawn play time than she was. The newly self-proclaimed bossy one (Snoop) has pecked her a few times. Jumped on her back Saturday and ended up with a mouthful of feathers; Sunday she gave her a couple less aggressive pecks. I notice Lemon just trying to avoid her. No one else has bothered her. It did seem odd that they were exhibiting pecking order behavior at their age, but I think it is just the heat and they are all on edge and a little irritated.
I don't know if it's my imagination but her head feathers seem to be thinning, at least they are thinner than the rest of the girls. There were lots of feathers in the run over the weekend. I'm not sure if they are pulling them out because they're hot or if it's a bit of a molt going on. I'm keeping my eye on all of them.

 

[kpgoldstar]

This pretty girl laid her first egg today!
Here it is next to an egg from one of my 2 year old EEs. It's tiny (only 32 grams) but I was so happy to see it.

She's pretty and congrats on the egg!

 

[kpgoldstar]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to all the new peeps. Sorry about the losses and congrats on new chicks and eggs.

I moved into Bonnie's place (Ladykotadoria) on June 7th. Lost 5 girls that evening to ants. They must have sat on a hole in the evening. With the heat and stinging, they didn't have a chance. They were all in a heap. I was devastated. Then the next week, I lost one of my silkie girls. She had something going on with her that I couldn't fix.

So far the rest of the girls are doing well. I do not have internet set up at the house yet, so here I am at work as it is hard to type from my phone.

No crow collars...talk to pastrymama about her experience as it didn't work well with her boy.

jazzymedrano17...am interested in your system. Sent you an email.

Oh no! So sorry for your losses. How sad.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
So, she's eating fine? That seemed to be the worrisome part in your first post. You might be right that some of your birds could be starting to molt, have you seen any flight feathers on the ground? Some of my older girls 4.5+ years old have been brutal to the lowest ranking young birds (1.5 years) and it seemed to get worse as the season got hotter. One of my lowest ranking birds, a FBCM is almost completely bald on the back of her head right now because of the other birds (mostly one) mounting her and pulling out the feathers. I feel sorry for her, but I'm not sure there is much I can do.

 

[kpgoldstar]

Today was a hardest day since I started raising chickens. I lost Two birds to the heat, both just started laying! It was devastating and a bit hard to get over with. I had a water leakage this morning so I turned the water off to fix the leak. When I was done I left in a hurry to meet my friends for lunch. They were all well when I left at 12:15pm. I had lunch and then did grocery shopping afterwards and got home at 2:40pm, in about two hours I found two dead birds! Only then I realized the mister was not on. I always think musters are nice to have but didn't think it as difference between life and death. SAD!!!!!

Now I have three vacants to fill anybody let me know if you have pullets for sale.

Oh that's just awful.

I did a ton of research on cooling methods before I decided on chickens. I also chose to not use any means of cooling. The way I figure it is my chicks could have ended up in Minnesota or Vermont just as easily as they ended up in Arizona. They don't know any different. They live here so they have to adapt to it. My coop/run is well ventilated and they have access to shade all day long. My run has a trussed roof so they only have morning sun, but during that time the coop portion is in shade. In the afternoon they would have about an hour of sun that they couldn't get away from so I hung heavy shadecloth on the west side of the run. After 4:00 or so they then get shade from the adjacent garden wall. I run my lawn sprinklers for about 20 minutes before they get let out to free range in the late afternoon. They spend 2-3 hours cruising around on the wet lawn until they put themselves to bed.

I have a water tray they could stand in if they wanted to but it freaks them out. Every now and then I will dip their feet and lower body in the pool if they act like they are really hot, but they aren't too thrilled about that either. Twice a week I thoroughly water down their run and fill all their holes with water so they have cool ground to rest in. My run is just native dirt, sand and some straw.

eta: We have had consistent temps of 105-110 for the past couple of weeks. Yesterday was 112 and they were panting laying in the shade midday but by the time I let them out they didn't appear to be stressed at all.

 

[a little chiken]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to all the new peeps. Sorry about the losses and congrats on new chicks and eggs.

I moved into Bonnie's place (Ladykotadoria) on June 7th. Lost 5 girls that evening to ants. They must have sat on a hole in the evening. With the heat and stinging, they didn't have a chance. They were all in a heap. I was devastated. Then the next week, I lost one of my silkie girls. She had something going on with her that I couldn't fix.

So far the rest of the girls are doing well. I do not have internet set up at the house yet, so here I am at work as it is hard to type from my phone.

No crow collars...talk to pastrymama about her experience as it didn't work well with her boy.

jazzymedrano17...am interested in your system. Sent you an email.

oh NO!!! that is such a huge loss. bad ants.

I hope you can recover soon.