Arizona Chickens

@DesertChic - that is so dang funny!! :gig:gig:gig Can't wait to try it out on some unsuspecting person!
@cactusrota - I agree - mine get to go out in the playpen but not on the ground yet.
@Geranium - nope didn't break your baby chickie - most likely a bug bite - especially a fire ant hurts these little guys. Chickens in general don't eat ants - dangit anyways! BUT just give her some space she'll get better - they are exceptionally resillient. Your new babies are precious. Watch that cuckoo maranas - has quite a come coming on!! A few years back I had a cuckoo cockerel and he was randy as heck trying to mount the poor older hens by the time he was 8 weeks old!!
Yep - we're starting that molt thing here too - way early for us. We usually start late October and go into January.
 
This morning I saw that the water dish spilled into the alfalfa in the nest box, which created a very wet, very stinky mess. I have a feeling it was the Delaware, she does some crazy things when she needs to lay her egg! I got the gunk out and am just waiting for the wood on the bottom to dry. I got some new pine chips to replace the alfalfa in there, it was time for some new bedding anyway. The hens are very upset that the nest box is not up to their standards at the moment.

I was out there doing some cleanup in my coop and pen this afternoon too, and cleaned out my nesting boxes. Man there were getting to be too many spider webs in the coop! I treated the flock to some nice weed's for them to munch on. They like the leaves off of them.
 
Thanks everyone! By bedtime she was walking around but she's definitely favoring her left leg. I'll check her crop in the morning. Hopefully a good rest will help things feel better, whatever she did. I'll keep them inside until they're 3 weeks. When I do move them out to the coop, it's entirely on the ground but with cinder blocks around the perimeter and pine shavings on the ground. I'm planning to keep them locked in the coop for a while before letting them out to their yard during the day, but the coop is 8 x 12 so they should have enough room for a while.
 
Fire ants are possible. They're all over the backyard. She's still hunkered down but has walked around a little and eaten.

I had both the big black ants and those smaller red one's like crazy here all over the yard this year! My chicken's wouldn't eat them. The ant's came into the run to steal food and they would take it back to the anthills. I had to follow the trail of ant's to find all of the hill's to put poison down so they would bring it down where the queen's and breeder's were. I had to fight them like that for about 2 month's to get all of the anthills where they were no longer active. I had to use the garden and poultry safe powder kind for ant's for in the run. They were biting the chickens and me!
 
You really gotta watch those small red ones, we actually have like 3 different native kinds of fire ants in Arizona. They aren't as aggressive as the imported ones, but THINK they are. I got a bait called Extinquish at the local Fertizona and it has worked wonders. You spread it out anywhere that you see ants foraging. Colonies that we haven't been able to get rid of for years have nearly disappeared. I was worried about using it, but since i can't free range my chickens, I can just spread where they don't go and it hasn't been a problem. Even the ants that go into the chicken pen, will go outside the pen too.
 

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