Arizona Chickens

[moms3cuties]

I had the privilege of meeting with @City farm

And @houdiniduck tonight!
...
.......and of course I was greeted by city farms duck's as I came down the sidewalk, lol!

What was strange was that the EE was sired by a non true to breed BCM, and the chick looks like a BCM chick!
To make things stranger, the white leghorn has a few tiny black pepper specks with feathered feet! Ooh my!

I won't be buying off Craigslist any more! ....I ended up with 2 roos instead of hens and they are not bred to sop standards! I really don't like when somebody tells me something and I'm not getting what it I'm told it's supposed to be!.. Well now that I read BYC and talk with other members, gratefully I'm learning quite a bit and still have more to learn.

 

[moms3cuties]

Hi @Bobby Basham
And
@girlchick!!

How are you all doing! Long time no see!

 

[Sill]

I had the privilege of meeting with @City farm

And @houdiniduck tonight!

...
.......and of course I was greeted by city farms duck's as I came down the sidewalk, lol!

What was strange was that the EE was sired by a non true to breed BCM, and the chick looks like a BCM chick!

To make things stranger, the white leghorn has a few tiny black pepper specks with feathered feet! Ooh my!

I won't be buying off Craigslist any more!

....I ended up with 2 roos instead of hens and they are not bred to sop standards! I really don't like when somebody tells me something and I'm not getting what it I'm told it's supposed to be!.. Well now that I read BYC and talk with other members, gratefully I'm learning quite a bit and still have more to learn.

The ducks are some surprise greeters aren't they? @City farm has some nice ducky ambassadors. My DH even liked them, which is good. I'm hoping to get a couple someday.

 

[kevs-chickadees]

It would not be so exhausting if the treatments worked. But I have to keep going back and retreating. I wonder about all the chemicals, too, and if it is affecting hatching since I'm hatching right now. Not all are making it out of the egg. But like you, I feel like I have to do it. I have spent hundreds of dollars on wormers. Literally. I wasn't going to redose on the Zimecterin Gold, so they each got a big glob of it. Dawg53 said a pea-sized amount. That is subjective. They got at least that. I have some stainless steel measuring spoons for small amounts and used the largest spoon. Filled it, then swipped it out on the end of my finger, then opened a beak and stuffed it in their mouth. They were not keen on that of course! I think one tube treated about 6 or 7 birds. At $9/tube, that gets expensive.

I order fly predators from Spalding Labs. I just got my first shipment for this year a few days ago and dispersed them yesterday. I am on a monthly schedule so they automatically ship. It is tricky putting them out here. We have so many quail, and they will scarf up the pupa and if the wasp hasn't hatched yet, bye bye wasp. I put them in bags and hang on the fence line near where I dump the pen cleanings. I went out and checked today, and one bag was empty except a few live wasps!! I think the wind flipped the bag up and the pupa all fell out, but I didn't see any lying on the ground. So they probably got eaten

Fortunately I did not put them all in one place. It is $28.95 a month for 10,000 for Spalding. That is expensive quail feed.

So all these extra costs related to raising chickens....people sometimes ask if I make money....yeah, right

I just go with the zemectrin gold for the tape worms. Its only one dose and I figure if your giving them chemicals its better once over 2 maybe 3 times and a shorter withdraw period. Dawg was the one I believed that suggested it when someone asked what to do after three treatments of the valbazen didn't work. I also hang my fly predators from a tree. I keep them in the bag and use a string, this makes it hard for the ants and keeps it away from all the dumb wild birds.

 

[City farm]

I had the privilege of meeting with @City farm

And @houdiniduck tonight!
...
.......and of course I was greeted by city farms duck's as I came down the sidewalk, lol!

What was strange was that the EE was sired by a non true to breed BCM, and the chick looks like a BCM chick!
To make things stranger, the white leghorn has a few tiny black pepper specks with feathered feet! Ooh my!

I won't be buying off Craigslist any more! ....I ended up with 2 roos instead of hens and they are not bred to sop standards! I really don't like when somebody tells me something and I'm not getting what it I'm told it's supposed to be!.. Well now that I read BYC and talk with other members, gratefully I'm learning quite a bit and still have more to learn.

Thank you for the oranges & the plant!!! If it was not so late we could of had roasted marshmallow's.
I will take photo's of the leghorn mx, chick later today.

 

[desertmarcy]

I just go with the zemectrin gold for the tape worms. Its only one dose and I figure if your giving them chemicals its better once over 2 maybe 3 times and a shorter withdraw period. Dawg was the one I believed that suggested it when someone asked what to do after three treatments of the valbazen didn't work. I also hang my fly predators from a tree. I keep them in the bag and use a string, this makes it hard for the ants and keeps it away from all the dumb wild birds.

Dawg53 told me to repeat in 10 days for the Zimecterin Gold.

 

[City farm]

Tiny, the jungle fowl, think she can lay an egg wherever she wants, she dug up a plant. Here she is singing her song to announce to everybody there is a prize.

here's the surprise.

 

[desertmarcy]

I had the privilege of meeting with @City farm

And @houdiniduck tonight!

...
.......and of course I was greeted by city farms duck's as I came down the sidewalk, lol!

What was strange was that the EE was sired by a non true to breed BCM, and the chick looks like a BCM chick!

To make things stranger, the white leghorn has a few tiny black pepper specks with feathered feet! Ooh my!

I won't be buying off Craigslist any more!

....I ended up with 2 roos instead of hens and they are not bred to sop standards! I really don't like when somebody tells me something and I'm not getting what it I'm told it's supposed to be!.. Well now that I read BYC and talk with other members, gratefully I'm learning quite a bit and still have more to learn.

There are good sellers and bad sellers on Craigslist. Heck, I sell on Craigslist and I know another show breeder here in town who does as well. But it is Buyer Beware. YOU are responsible for knowing the birds and what to look for and what to ask when you buy from CL. As far as bred to SOP standards, the vast majority of chickens out there are not. It is a small minority of chicken keepers who are interested in that and showing. We, the few, try to educate others as to the joys of working with well-bred birds. It costs no more to feed them. Some people are just interested in egg production and that is fine too.

Are you referring to Black Copper Marans that you got off CL? How old were they when you got them? If they were young, some people are not good at telling the sex of a young bird. Black Copper Marans are still a young breed for the U.S. They were only admitted to the SOP in 2010! Compare that to some of our old American Class breeds. Barred Rock admitted in 1874, White Rock in 1888, Rhode Island Red in 1904! There has been over a century of time of selective breeding in those birds. Marans are new, they are not "there" yet. The vast majority of BCM offspring are going to be culls. Just remember there are a lot of chicken propagaters out there and very few real chicken breeders. It takes decades of experience to become the latter.

 

[houdiniduck]

Here are the cuties, or some of them..
Here are the French Black Copper Marans..

these little boogers. so stinking cute. Mine are fitting in well. I can't wait for them to grow big and feather out to see what I got!

I had the privilege of meeting with @City farm

And @houdiniduck tonight!

...
.......and of course I was greeted by city farms duck's as I came down the sidewalk, lol!

What was strange was that the EE was sired by a non true to breed BCM, and the chick looks like a BCM chick!

To make things stranger, the white leghorn has a few tiny black pepper specks with feathered feet! Ooh my!

I won't be buying off Craigslist any more!

....I ended up with 2 roos instead of hens and they are not bred to sop standards! I really don't like when somebody tells me something and I'm not getting what it I'm told it's supposed to be!.. Well now that I read BYC and talk with other members, gratefully I'm learning quite a bit and still have more to learn.

It was great to meet you, next time we will have to have tea and talk chicken for hours, I could have stood there and talked for hours... CHICKEN PEOPLE LIKE MEEEEE! hahahahah

I got polish eggs for hatching off facebook and while they are all adorable chickens, you can tell they aren't pure breed like I wanted.... mehhh

 

[pipemum]

Finally, all 9 of my chickens are laying!!! The tiny EE chick that came in with my last batch of packing peanuts with the meat chickens laid a tiny blue egg yesterday. I really lucked out with her--as a packing peanut, she was probably supposed to be male (all the other were), and instead, I was sent a female with gorgeous black and white feathers with a beautiful lacy pattern, and a BLUE egg. Woohoo. Thank you, Ideal.

And, with the worming meds, I can't eat any of the eggs!!!!!!! I have a bunch in the fridge, pre-medicine, that I just can't make myself eat either...I read that there's a SMALL chance of a worm ending up in the egg, and I think I might just fall over dead and never eat eggs again if I cracked one open to find a worm inside.

How is everyone's garden coming along? Mine, well, I did it--demolished my garden space and moved the dogs in. Now I have to whole backyard to work with and beautify. It was surprisingly easy to destroy 7 years worth of improvements, and pretty freaking depressing. But it will be worth it, eventually.

I've planted a golden dorsett apple and Anna's apple so far. I plan on adding a dwarf peach and lemon and red grapefruit, also both dwarf varieties.