Arizona Chickens

[City farm]

By the way, we have one from your design..

 

That surprised me!  Did you build it? 

Really why? If everyone could build stuff they would have your treadle feeder..

 

[City farm]

Oh, those grapes look soooo good.  Raisins, though?     lol.  My grapes were another loser due to my vacation.  I guess the caretakers let them get too dried out and all my grapes withered.  So disappointed since it was the first year my vine produced anything.  There's always next year....

Haha, Cityfarm, wow, your broody and my broody look too similar!  I've only let a broody hen raise chicks twice, and the first one was eaten by a coyote when the chicks were about 6 weeks old.  The second broody (1st broody's sister) raised the chicks till they were about 3 months old.  She had no interest in leaving them.  These were both Polish/silkie crosses.  I think I've read that most hen moms leave their brood much earlier. 

I'd have to say the silkie/Polish is my sweetest chicken.  But she only turned sweet after raising chicks and then getting bullied after trying to re-integrate into the flock (still an issue).  After that, it'd be the EE.  The barred rocks and BCM don't register on the sweet list. 

PBR, not friendly in our expierence.. However, the BCM from @bostonbryce is completely sweet. She always comes running to see what I have.. I love her, she is raising 5 chicks.. EE ugh,ok, but not to friendly.. One of them from @flower is the sweetest out of them.. Hay, where is @flower? Anyone know??

 

[City farm]

Hey everyone! Here I am again, looking for chickens! Over the summer, I lost 3 hens. I'm looking to build my flock up again. If anyone within a half hour away from Apache Junction with under two year old hens they want to sell/give away, I am interested! Please PM me. We will be gone for a couple weeks starting this Friday, but I will be checking my inbox. I will let you guys know when I get back. (We're off to Colorado!) Thanks!
-Serena

Glad to see you are back... If we hear of any will pass along your information. We are behind 7 posts, so you might already have them..:yiipchick

 

[City farm]

I went out this morning to check on the Moringa tree seeds that I planted last week and found this! Yay!

Oh wow, how wonderful.. Totally keep us posted on the progress..

 

[City farm]

I went out this morning to check on the Moringa tree seeds that I planted last week and found this! Yay!

Great to see! Something ate my moringa seedlings I got from the seed exchange seeds. It also got my luffas and blue potatoes. I'm not a happy gardener.

Hay we still have the seed box, come by and get more.. There is thousands of seeds..

 

[City farm]

Nice! I managed to keep a few moringas alive that I planted late last winter. Most of the ones I planted in the ground died. There is one exception that is doing well in the ground and it is almost as tall as me. The moringa trees I kept in pots are doing very well. One is probably about 8' tall now. I did some reading that suggested they should be cut off at about 1m height once they reach 2m tall. Has anyone done this? Seems like such a brutal thing to do but apparently it makes them bushier rather than tall and spindly.

I've got one past the eaves of my house and I know I've got to hack it in half, but I'm just dreading it. I think I can root the cutting, so I'd have two trees, but after babying the darn thing for a year I just hate to do it. It is starting to branch out..but on the very top so I would not be able to reach any pods.

Oh, that always makes me so mad! What do you think it was? Birds? Rabbits? Cutworms? Try the potatoes again at the end of Aug. or beginning of Sept.

It might have been birds but I'm sure it was snails. They have been a scourge in my garden. I do strictly organic so no poisons. Baits only work so well and I usually hand pick them. I can tell when I let them go too long, I get my plants eaten!

Good reminder! I'm going to try planting some panic grass this year. I haven't done devil's claws in a couple years but I want to again. For a long time they worked as a fantastic trap plant for hornworms. When I had them planted the moths laid their eggs on them and ignored the tomato plants. I could pick handfuls off every day and feed them to the chickens. Sadly though, after several years of doing that they no longer preferred the devil's claw and started going for the tomato plants again. I think I removed the individuals with genes that preferred the devil's claw, leaving the tomato plants as their most preferred. I'm hoping that if I plant them again enough outbreeding will have occurred that they'll prefer them again. This time I'll let them have them so I can have pollinators for my passion fruit vines. [COLOR=B42000] [/COLOR]

I don't know, I think I would prefer some other type of pollinator for the passion vines. Those are some seriously pudgy caterpillars! I've never gotten hornworms on my devil's claw, they seem to prefer the flowing vine/bush (I don't know the name of) I usually plant them next to so my devil's claw grow without getting eaten. I don't usually have tomatoes this time of year so I don't know if those would get infested or not. It's been a few years since I've grown panic grass, I need to try some again.

At the 4th seed exchange someone brought devils claw.. Never grown it, you guys have inspired us to try..

 

[Sill]

Well, maybe so. I've never seen them around here, figured it was too hot or too dry, or both. My point is, there are "organic" methods of dealing with snails that are extremely effective. Turn your chickens loose on the bugs, and your ducks on the snails! I wonder if guineas would eat them? Probably so.

So, did you Phoenicians get any rain? The storm blew through the north county around 6:30 and headed north, but then circled around and came back at about 11.

Zero rain!

Oh no! Gardening can be frustrating. We had last years garden decimated by some kind of small striped beetle that ate everything right down to the ground in one day. There were thousands of them.

I ordered my Moringa seeds from Whatcom Seed Company and have tons of them. I'll send you some if you want them. Just PM your address and I'll send them to you.

Will do

I've got the Nichol's tomatoes growing this year, and those things are gangbusters. Growing great, lots and lots of medium sized tomatoes. So far, no hornworms, but still struggling with packrats, antelope squirrels, and round-tailed ground squirrels.

There's a little nursery on Oracle Rd, just north of my kid's dance studio. We went there one Saturday in Feb after a rain, and snails were everywhere! The older gent that owns the place was delighted that my daughter wanted to collect all the snails that she saw, and told us about the time that he made escargot with the ones he caught. We gave the snails to the chickens--I guess they pecked the flesh out, since the shells were empty later that evening.

We used to live in northern CA when I was a kid, and snails and slugs were a huge problem. We even had banana slugs. Pretty cool as a kid, probably not so cool as a gardener!

You need some good terriers to keep those rodents at bay!

Cutting them back is recommended. Like I just posted, a packrat did that for me....but they weren't tall enough for such a pruning yet! I haven't decided where to plant mine. I want to try a few in the ground and keep some in pots. I ended up with only 10 trees out of 100 or so I started...if I get more seeds, I will definitely not try starting them in the cool season, that was a mistake. I hope they like the mish-mash potting soil I mixed up to transplant them into, in the bigger pots.

Moringa definitely likes heat!

Ok Gallo and any other aquaponics ppl I have a question. When I build mine how do I get the bees to go in and pollinate for me? I am allergic so I cannot take them in there but I have a friend that is wanting to set up bee boxes on my property. I really want natural pollination if possible but we are planning to have it in a temp controlled structure. any thoughts will be appreciated

Can you net up some lacewings? They are great little pollinators. Other things can be pollinators too. I had house flies pollinating my mint plants this year. I've had a ton of someone else's bees visiting my duck weed pond but they don't seem to hang around to pollinate much, other critters are doing their job instead.

Hey ladies I have read many posts on here but still have many questions.... I am a newbie and not sure if I went about my chickeness in the right way haha


When you free range your hens do you lock them up at night or let them be? (I live on 2.5a in chandler)

How big of a coop do they really need???

Man do mine seem to poop a lot!!! does that mean I feed them too much?

Do you cut the wing so they don't fly over the fence?

is there a way to mix chicks and hens together and have them be friendly?

I have many more but this is a start hahaha

I got 5 2yr old brocks
and 4 chicks brocks

Welcome! Always make a bigger coop than you think you will need, and make sure it has a lot of ventilation. Mine don't free range because of my dogs, but they have a large covered run. I think even in the city they need a covered run and definitely a coop to sleep in.
Good luck mixing the ages of your chickens.

Hay we still have the seed box, come by and get more.. There is thousands of seeds..

I need to, I have seeds to put into the box!

At the 4th seed exchange someone brought devils claw.. Never grown it, you guys have inspired us to try..

You should try some! Now is the time to put in devil's claw.

 

[City farm]

 
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And DesertMarcy is closer to Eloy than most other folks in the Tucson area.  I live in southwest Tucson. It takes me 40 minutes to get to her house.  30-60 minutes to get to most other places in Tucson.  Pima County is twice the size of Connecticut and the Tucson area takes a big chunk of the eastern end of the county.

Both Nichols Heirloom and Texas Wild Cherry tomatoes from Native Seeds Search have done well  in my garden, and are now the only tomatoes I grow.  Mostly because they keep volunteering whether I want them or not. The plants usually produce a short spring crop before it gets too hot.  Most of them hang in through the summer without producing much, then give me a great fall crop.  Sometimes the birds even let me have some of the fruit. 

I planted a small patch of panic grass the other day as an experiment.  I screened the seeded area from birds.  Found it swarming with ants yesterday.  Hope there are some seeds left to germinate.  Also planted amaranth and desert chia.  Hope something will grow.  It's been a rough year for the garden.

The ground squirrel population has exploded here.  Squirrels have tunneled up into two of my garden beds, under my chick brooder, and under my air conditioner slab.  Haven't succeeded in trapping them.  Starting to feel like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. Outwitted by rodents. 

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Back in my great-great grandfather's time lobster was considered poor people's food.  It was abundant, easily caught, and the rich people wouldn't touch it.  Not any more.

Yeah, I'm about 40 min or so from desertmarcy too.  

I first planted the Nichols and Texas wild cherry tomatoes about six years ago here on this property and I still get volunteers from those original plants.  If it weren't for them and a couple Punta Bandas we wouldn't have any tomatoes right now.  We do have to pick them right as they start to turn in order to get them before the wild birds.  I used to have better luck with the Punta Bandas, but not this year for some reason.  Heck, my whole garden has suffered this year.  I don't know what's going on but it's not producing at all like years past.  The egg plants are starting to produce well though.

Ugh, ants!  I'm tired of the ants.

When we were young my wife and I worked summers on Martha's Vineyard to save and pay for college and we lived very frugal lifestyles amongst the rich.  We would get all kinds of incredulous looks when we collected mussels from the rocks to eat.  People thought we were savages for eating them; nobody there ate them.  Now I see them in restaurants all the time.

Weird how things change..
I do think, along with the chickens all calling eachother & telling eachother to go broody in this heat or remember when some of us on here said our girls were not laying in the spring? Nature does know things we don't.. One year we had a certain wild weed, I asked our neighbor if they had any & he said that his wife cooks it up..
So, I figured we would harvest next year, huh, I was wrong it was about 2 years before it came back.. Or I pulled all the plant , along with the seeds? Who knows.. But we have not had it return to our garden in years. I will look up the name..
I feel the same way about our garden this year.. Just not germinating, or those pesky ants, or possibly our soil..You know also about how your tortoise & their own schedule.. When we had ours they went into hiding at a weird time one year..

I do apreciate all of the advice regarding the moringa trees.. I have given up at this point. Now I'm thinking of where they originated from & the soil it grows in.. On that list of things to do..

 

[City farm]

Did y'all see this yet? Lmao

No, what? This has to be photo shopped

 

[City farm]

Hey ladies I have read many posts on here but still have many questions.... I am a newbie and not sure if I went about my chickeness in the right way haha


When you free range your hens do you lock them up at night or let them be? (I live on 2.5a in chandler)

How big of a coop do they really need???

Man do mine seem to poop a lot!!! does that mean I feed them too much?

Do you cut the wing so they don't fly over the fence?

is there a way to mix chicks and hens together and have them be friendly?

I have many more but this is a start hahaha

I got 5 2yr old brocks
and 4 chicks brocks

Hay, so glad you have joined in..
Yes, lock them up @ night unless you want to be chick less... Even when our flock is out free in the yard, we keep watch along with our dogs.. Well & our rooster.. Hawks will swoop down for lunch.
No, they constantly poop.. Use it in your compost for future garden soil.. Our flock is in a outside area with neting, I don't trim the wings, if they do fly over, it is probably because of something that scared them, no food or water.. Just chase them till they are tired then scoop them up $ bring them home..
More room for them to roam the better.. the coop is just a safe secure place for them to sleep.. & possibly a place for them to lay.. We have other places for them to lay away from the cooling the run. They don't use the nesting box in the coop as much.. Hope this helps..