Arizona Chickens

[GoldBarRanch]

I am in North Scottsdale and you are invited to come see our setup. Currently have 6 hens and 5 pullets, one of which just started laying.

This is what we started with as we only were going to have 4 chickens! :






That changed quickly:

I just love your little set up !

 

[azmotogirl]

Quick question for all you garden gods out there....... can pine shavings from the coop go into my compost bin? My husband seems to think they might have some chemicals in them that we may not want to end up in our veggie garden. We get the large bags from the feed store and I don't see any info on the bags.

Any info would be appreciated!

 

[GoldBarRanch]

Anyone want to help a newbie plan the garden/chicken corner?

I didn't know where to post this, so I figured I'd start with the local gang, since you all seem to know so much, and also enjoy snickering at the newbies! ;-)

Here's the thing: My loving husband has no faith in my ability to keep anything (plant or animal) alive and pretty (despite the fact that I cook for him and he is still around) so he doesn't want the veggie garden/chicken run anywhere front and center in our yard. He wants to basically hide it in a corner behind the shed, which is fine with me since there's some shade there, except that it doesn't seem like there's going to be much room for a garden too.

Since we don't have chickens yet, I'm planning the coop/run to account for chicken math. I want to start with 3 (so 5) laying hens, and since I know I won't be able to kill/eat/give away the older ones once they stop laying, I figure I'll need room for 8. When I'm home, they could free range, but I want to account for having to keep them fenced in the run while we're away/when I go back to work. For confined chickens, I read they need 10 sf per bird. So the coop will be 5 x7 and the run would be 8 x 10, plus they'd have room under the raised coop where I'm planning to put the water/feed. Does that sound right? Too much space? If I do it this way, I have very little room left in the corner for my veggie garden (a total of 48 sf, I wanted about double that). I also need room (how much? 2 sf?) for a worm bin and a small compost pile for the bedding and whatever compostable food scraps can't be eaten by chickens and worms (is there such a thing? I was thinking citrus and banana peels mostly). I have no idea how much space I need for a compost pile, whether it can be up against the wall of the chicken coop, or if I should do a single pile or a three-bin system. Any advice there would be great.

So yeah, I'm not even a chicken mom yet, and already the birds have way more space than the garden that's supposed to feed my family. I think I'm in trouble.... Anyone here sew chicken diapers for inside the house? (I'm joking... But then again... Wouldn't that solve the space issue outside?) Oh gosh help me.

Welcome LMS ,
Sounds like your doing your homework and think you will be snuggling with chcken very soon. Take alook at some of the coops here on the forum

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quick question for all you garden gods out there....... can pine shavings from the coop go into my compost bin? My husband seems to think they might have some chemicals in them that we may not want to end up in our veggie garden. We get the large bags from the feed store and I don't see any info on the bags.

Any info would be appreciated!

Well, I'm not a garden god, but I love the pine shavings for the compost bin. They really help moderate the moisture, they seem to rot relatively fast and they make it ever so much easier to turn with my compost crank. I also use them on some things for mulch.

 

[Phottoman]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Hi everyone. I'm brand new to this forum, I just signed up last week, and I'll do my darnedest to make sure I spell check everything before I post.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I was invited to this thread through in PM from [/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Gallo del Cielo[/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif], so thank you for that. I had no idea there were that many Chicken Farmers in AZ, but I should have known. I live between Kingman (the quick you-know-what stop between Phoenix and Las Vegas) and Bullhead City/Laughlin in the thriving Golden Valley. If you look on a map, north of Interstate 40, there is really only one way to get from Kingman to Bullhead/Laughlin, and that's on AZ 68. We live just north of marker 21.. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]My Lady and I are adamant supporters of the Mohave County Fair, and we are both Chairman(woman) heads of committees, she has been the Safety and Security Chairman for five years, I am a past Commercial Vendors Chairman and am now the Parade and Opening Ceremonies Chairman, plus she is the Chairman of the Committees. So we are quite involved.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I wanted to start a small entry into Chickens, but as we all know ... Chicken Math took over ... what started as two RIR two day old chicks too quickly turned into 24 chicks of various breeds, don't ask, I do NOT know all of what I have, but I DO know that we have five Leghorns, and only three of the chickens are named, and that's the first two, the RIR's. "Delicious" and "Delectable," and one still very small Runt (so named because of size), although I believe the Runt is a Banny, thus accounting for the size.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]My fist batch of ten were purchases over a week, and housed in a brooder box in my office/computer room, then I built a chicken tractor from plans I found on line, but I wasn't very happy with that. When they were about nine weeks old I went out and bough another batch of ten, plus I was promised a couple of roosters to be picked up a week later. These had names for a while. In order to know (at that time) which were the rooster, we made little bands for them from wire ties, one was green and one was blue, so they became Mr. Green and Mr. Blue.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]When these guys were about two weeks old we cut these off as they were getting to the point where they looked like they might be getting 'tight,' so rather than take a chance on them growing too fast, we cut those off and made new ones, but those were too loose, and fell off. I decided that we'd know soon enough who was a rooster anyway, so we left them off.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Then I built a second tractor, this one much larger and much lighter, and easier to move.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]At six weeks (and five weeks) old, they were just too crowded in the brooder box (remember, there were five Leghorns) and I decided they needed to be moved outside, but the new tractor wasn't done yet, but I moved them anyway.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]I spent a whole day enclosing the tractor (lower half) in chicken wire with the intent of finishing the coop in a week or so. They have plenty of shade with the floor of the coop in place (4' X 4' and two feet off the ground), and eight feet by four feet of running room, so I am not too concerned about them being crowded.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Anyway, I still have tons of work to do, both for the chickens and myself, but eventually everything will get done.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]OK, I've introduced myself.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif]Photto[/FONT]​

 

[pdx2phx]

Hi everyone....I've been checking emergencies and cures but my new little hatchling (today) has a loop of intestine hanging out of her pooper.

I feel really bad for it. It's sleeping with a surrogate mommy comfortably now. It sounds like this is fatal from research, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever heard of/had a different result? Any chance of tucking the loop back inside?

She doesn't seem like she's suffering, but if that changes we'll act. Does anyone have suggestions for our little one?

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Oh no! Poor thing!

I wouldn't know what to do.

 

[Mahonri]

Lost my first hen to the heat today.

She laid an egg at about 4:45 PM, jumped down from the nest box and died. One of my most beautiful, pretty Icelandics from my NYD hatch.

They've been getting cold, cold water 2-3 times a day but it got up to 111 today and it's going to hit 114 on Saturday.

Makes me sad.

Maybe I should just forget chickens.

 

[Memphisjourney2seramas]

Hi everyone....I've been checking emergencies and cures but my new little hatchling (today) has a loop of intestine hanging out of her pooper.

I feel really bad for it. It's sleeping with a surrogate mommy comfortably now. It sounds like this is fatal from research, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever heard of/had a different result? Any chance of tucking the loop back inside?

She doesn't seem like she's suffering, but if that changes we'll act. Does anyone have suggestions for our little one?

how big. It is probabley from the imbilical cord...belly button..spot. If it is small and not to dry I try to softly and slowly push it back in with a qtip. I also try to get the qtip wet so intestines do not still to the qtip. it usally works. I would keep it seperate from the other guys to make sure they dont peck at it and pull it farther out.

 

[AnotherKim]

Lost my first hen to the heat today.

She laid an egg at about 4:45 PM, jumped down from the nest box and died. One of my most beautiful, pretty Icelandics from my NYD hatch.

They've been getting cold, cold water 2-3 times a day but it got up to 111 today and it's going to hit 114 on Saturday.

Makes me sad.

Maybe I should just forget chickens.

Have you tried freezing two liter bottles of water and setting them out a few times a day. I don't know if it works for chickens, but that's what we did for our rabbits. The rabbits would lay next to them to stay cool. I'm sorry for your loss. I always hate it when pets pass away.