Arizona Chickens

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Wanted to drop in and say hello. Just joined the BackyardChickens forum and live in Scottsdale with my wife Rachel and 2 daughters (7 years and 4 years old). We are, especially my daughters, excited to have chickens. We are very new to backyard chickens (so new that we don't even have any YET).
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I've been in coop designing mode for past few weeks and am excited for the Phoenix Tour De Coops this weekend as I need some inspiration for our chicken coop. 2 things I would love to learn from other Arizona peeps:

1) Coop Pics: Would love to see pics of your chicken coops. I would really like to build our own (planning on getting either 2 or 4 chicks in next few weeks) but not very experienced with tools and don't want some bad looking and possibly dangerous coop in our backyard. I found a guy on Craigslist who makes it (looks nice) and in going to Home Depot this week I definitely would not be able to build it myself cheaper (materials cost almost as much as his total price of $600). I think the pride of building it myself is really interesting to me and the route I am headed toward. About 2 houses away a few coyotes live in a big empty lot in a drainage ditch so I need to make sure our coop is predator proof as I've seen them at night walking our street and don't want our new friends to be dinner to them. Any advice on coop design for safety of our chickens while also being AZ heat friendly?

2) Getting Chicks: Where in Phoenix area (really big into buying local) do you get your chicks? I've heard mixed reactions from friends on local feed stores which ones are good and which ones to stay away from. Even though we live in Scottsdale completely fine driving 30-40 minutes or so to get best quality chickens that were taken care of properly before purchase. We are leaning toward Barred Rocks / Black Star. What do you have? My friend has a Rhode Island Red and he said when she lays its very noisy but funny. I think until we break our neighbors in the less noise the better and was told Barred Rocks / Black Star are next best option that are good with kids and good layers.
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Got great advice that with all chickens how you handle and take care of them early on determines how well they do with the kids and we will be great at that. I do believe though some breeds are just naturally better with both laying and people especially kids. Yes?

Looking forward to learning from you all and sharing our experience too!
 
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What kinds are your apple and plum trees? I've got golden dorsette apple and santa rosa plum along with bartlett pear. I'm looking for different varieties to graft on to increase the fruit sets, coarse I still need an expert to show me how to do the grafting. Anyone want to do scion trade, kinda like the seed box? Still need to get a nectarine tree.

My apple tree is also a golden dorsett. I think the plum is satsuma, but don't recall. I'm sure I still have the tag somewhere. Anna apples also grow here (my neighbors have a couple of them), and I think there is a strain from Israel that grows here also. I think the Permaculture Guild has information on fruit trees that do well here in the desert; I know you can get a list from the county extension, but I think the Permatulture folks list is newer.

Thanks for the info. I actually have a couple of books from dave owens aka the garden guy. They are crammed with garden and fruit tree info. I use to do everything off of what he said, when I had time of coarse.
 
arizonacaveman,
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We're glad you found our thread. It would be good to go back through recent posts and look at the BYC pages of our members. Many of us have pics of our coops. You should also get lots of good ideas from the coop tour. I would advise staying away from chicken wire and to think about hardware cloth or welded wire instead. Chicken wire isn't very effective at keeping out predators. Also, anything with openings greater than 1" will allow sparrows to enter your coop and they can be problematic here in southern AZ. I'd also advise getting at least four birds. They are social and if you get chicks, some of them can end up being roosters. Build bigger than you think you'll need. There's a bad condition that you'll soon encounter, exacerbated by visiting BYC, called "chicken math." Good luck with your planning!
 
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Thank you so much for the feedback (much appreciated). Regarding looking at pages, I was actually just doing exactly that and so far have gone back about 1 week of posts reading and looking at profiles. Very helpful.

Great point on the chickens and we are leaning with 4 and with the wire as I was going to use Chicken Wire - so you saved me headache on that one. I had not heard of hardware cloth before but now that I see it on Home Depot site http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 I had and assume this would be good type to get. We were thinking for 4 chickens the coop would be around 8' long by 5' wide by 6' height with 2 nest boxes. Does that sound good?
 
Quote:
What kinds are your apple and plum trees? I've got golden dorsette apple and santa rosa plum along with bartlett pear. I'm looking for different varieties to graft on to increase the fruit sets, coarse I still need an expert to show me how to do the grafting. Anyone want to do scion trade, kinda like the seed box? Still need to get a nectarine tree.

My apple tree is also a golden dorsett. I think the plum is satsuma, but don't recall. I'm sure I still have the tag somewhere. Anna apples also grow here (my neighbors have a couple of them), and I think there is a strain from Israel that grows here also. I think the Permaculture Guild has information on fruit trees that do well here in the desert; I know you can get a list from the county extension, but I think the Permatulture folks list is newer.

OK fine! I'll ask!

I've been perusing the Permaculture site & they are selling fruit trees.

Trees on PC site

Tammy & I have a list in order of preferance but see'n as I'm

"Black Thumb Mikey" [ominous] Dun! Dun! Dun! [/ominous]
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We'd like to know which varieties are the hardiest (& tasty-est)

Here is our list made up fromt he PC trees sale site:

In order of preference:
pears
grapes (crimson or flame depending on hardyness - these would be planted around the chicken coop which I son the north side of a 2 story house & gets almost zero direct sunlight)
nectarines
mayer Lemon (based on what Bryan from the PC site told us at eh Mad City Chicken showing)
blackberry (possibly - we didn't even know this was a tree - thought it was a vine)

Thanks for your input!
 
Arizona Caveman = Welcome!! I am also new. But am really enjoying and learning alot from this site. We have 4 chicks that we got locally at a hatchery in Chino Valley. We live in Prescott Valley. We got 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks and 2 Rhode Island Reds. The Barred Plymouth Rocks are definately my favorite. They are much more tamer than the RIR's. They come to me and will eat out of my hand. They are now all 6 weeks old. They were all gotten on the same day from the same place but the Plymouth's seem to be much less flighty. I have 3 kids and we are all loving this. It is suppose to snow today and am hoping to get them out in the coop within the next couple of days with a heat lamp. Good luck to you and if you need to know the Hatchery where I got mine - let me know.
 

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