Arizona Chickens

[squeakyballs]

I have a plastic owlie that sits on the chicken fence. The hawk that took my chick couldn't have been more than 10' from it.

Although, they are more effective (at least for little birds) if you move them once in awhile.

 

[5pinkarrows]

TT! :

Oh man, I'm a bad mom. I just created the worst concoction ever.

Chocolate Icecream with Salmon Oil.

I figured it would be a good way to sneak some Omega into him.

The smell is making me gag.

He loves it.

Next time I'll use lemon sorbet... at least the flavors would... uhm... ugh.

BLECH!!!! That sounds awful. As long as he likes it, you are good, I guess. I make kefir smoothies for my family. Let me know if you need some kefir grains. Anyway, I put in kefir, organic spinach, raw local honey, fresh milled flax seed, frozen blueberries, and bananas. The LOVE them, and there are a lot of Omega 3s in the flax and probiotics in the kefir. My kefir grains are growing. It might be a good idea to feed the extras to the chickens this time. It's only fair since the dogs got them last time.​

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

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That was very nice of you to say. When I posted that link I went right to the source where I first saw the story, in the Daily Wildcat (UofA paper) which I had found while sitting in the Drs. waiting room. I don't follow political writers and subscribe to no political ideology. Yesterday was a terrible day. My wife works at the UMC ED/Trauma Center. I was terrified about how far this went.

 

[NoSkiveez]

Becky-Have you done a mite check? I had mites a few months ago and it started off thinking I had sick birds. It was a pretty bad infestation. I checked the vent area and hadn't seen any and when I was trying to figure out what was wrong I saw one crawl on to my chickens face and then found them everywhere, just not on the vent area.

5Pinkarrows- we homeschool for many of those same reasons. My son had never been confronted by gamg members until we got here. He had never seen drugs at his old school, had never felt like he had to get off the school bus and walk away from our house out of fear they would find out where we lived. I also never had to stand at my sons bus stop carrying a loaded gun in the event we needed to defend ourselves. So, we took him out of public school.

We took my daughter out at the same time and discovered that she had no grasp of basic math at all. I went back over some of her 100% papers and discovered they were almost all 100% wrong. They had all been school completed projects. We had to start from scratch with her. We teach a but differently than a lot of homeschoolers. She does her monday-friday with us and we give her basic math sheets for weekends for ger to "play" with. We do lots of creative writing and story boarding with her. We do cooking, cleaning, gardening, science (with my son we did eggtopsies last week with unhatched chicks. Sciences are always fun. We do bible study everyday for atleast 15 minutes. We do sewing and otger crafting along with the basics reading, grammer and all the good stuff required. With a small group we are able to accomplish more in one day than a public school teachers can. Plus, my kids can't get away with stuff here that they could in public school. We really love teaching the kids. What grades are your kids in Ginger? I wonder how many words I spell wrong in this post.

 

[mclevinson]

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Hey, if you ever have extras that your pets don't need I'd love to start up a batch again. Also in the market for Kombucha. Can trade handmade cold process soap

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

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I think I checked for mites. I lifted her feathers in a few places and didn't see any. Any tips for checking for mites?

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

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Hey, if you ever have extras that your pets don't need I'd love to start up a batch again. Also in the market for Kombucha. Can trade handmade cold process soap

This might double-post. I thought I already responded to this but it didn't show up.

I have extra kefir grains too and I'm in Gilbert.
PM me you phone number if you want some.

I had a scoby for Kombucha for awhile. It turned out to be too much work. Kefir is easy.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Beckyhsinglsc, be sure to look at your birds at night. Give it a while after sunset and check the birds and the roosts too. There are some mite species and ticks that hide in crevices during the day and come out to feed on the birds in the dark. Keep your eyes out for ticks too. Good luck!

 

[5pinkarrows]

NoSkiveez--That is so scary to read what you went through with your kids! I never actually had to deal with most of the things I listed, but you dealt with so much more. My oldest was just in a Montessori charter school for half of Kinder and most of 1st grade. That was enough for me. We have been doing it a while, so we are full into the chaos of homeschooling. My oldest is in 7th/8th, and my second is in 4th, but about to start a few subjects in 5th. We go by their level, not by what others around them can do. My third is finishing up preschool and will start Kinder in probably March. My 3 year old just has a bunch of preschool manipulatives like lacing, pegs, counting bugs, etc. that she calls her school. My almost 2 year old pretty much just destroys the house and makes a lot of noise while we do school. For Bible study, we now just work on their AWANA stuff. And you are right, we deal with stuff right away. They don't get away with it like they would in school. And my kids know how to socialize with people of all ages, not just their own. People always make me laugh when they ask about socialization. I want to ask them how they are going to socialize their school children. Plus, we all know that all socialization is not positive. Things like being bullied don't teach a kid to function in society, but it does change who the child is.

mclevinson--If you want to get the kefir from Becky since she is local, that would be fine. But, if you or anyone needs me to mail some, I would be glad to do that. No need to trade anything.

Gallo--Yikes! I really thought having chickens was simple until this site. How did we have them survive this long? I had no idea there were so many factors out to get them. I was just trying to avoid coyotes.

 

[NoSkiveez]

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I think I checked for mites. I lifted her feathers in a few places and didn't see any. Any tips for checking for mites?

Check again. Check around the vent, around the back of their neck (this is where I noticed the egg sacks glued to the feather shaft, under wing flaps. If you see any dead skin flakes, look under it for anything creepy crawly. Its easiest for me to mite check by having hubby hold the bird upside down and I check it. I used DE without much luck, but Seven Dust 5% took care of the problem right away. I treated every 10 days for 40 days to be sure all were gone. I first thought I had Mareks when we had the mite problem. If you have mites, a good coop cleaning on dusting day is always helpful.