Nevadans?

[americanvalkyrie]

It looks like you all had fun at the get together. I love being able to put faces to the names. I'm kinda jealous that we don't have more of a community here in the south but I did get to visit with Ke_ben on Saturday. I picked up some fertile eggs for a broody. I mentioned that I never see him post and he said the same about me! But, but, but...I'm on here lurking all the time. To bad there's no record of that unless you post. So...here I am...posting.

NevadaRon: That is so awesome. We kept two hives here in Vegas about 20 years ago. We had a neighbor who would come over and handle them for us so I never was able to experience that. I think in all the time we had them (about 5 years) we only had 2 random stings.

americanvalkyrie: I have struggled with disease myself in the past. I think that my birds must have gotten it from mice or wild birds. After culling and culling and culling...I finally came to the conclusion that since I had no idea how they got it, and kept getting it, my main responsibility was to ensure that I don't share with others. So, I have plastic booties for those visiting my flock to wear and bird netting to eliminate wild bird visits. I'm also very careful which birds leave my flock and how they leave it. Most birds are eaten. A bird that has shown ANY symptoms NEVER leaves my property alive. Full disclosure is essential! My heart goes out to you. I've been there and done that.

On a lighter note...my garden is growing! We have 40+ buckets that were all recycled! We collected from 3 Burger King restaurants almost daily for more than a month. We got recycled pipe and reused the soil from our old (5 years) raised square garden planters and in some peat, perlite, vermiculite and compost to freshen it up. We learned how to use the lid instead of using 2 buckets and we even have some buckets using collanders too, just like the global bucket website showed. My dad was a brick mason so we set up his scaffolding and have a vertical garden. We are still planting but are excited about the tomatoes, peas, beans, and squash that are already growing! I started a garden club with a group of people from church and we helped about 15+ people set up bucket gardens of their own. Everyone has stuff growing and are very excited about it. I worked at Star Nursery for 3 years and most of the plants that came back dead were from over-watering. I love that that is not possible with this system. I'm gonna get some photos together and post them so you can see what we've done. Thanks for sharing!

So now, when your birds come down with it, do you still immediately cull? I won't be breeding. I won't rehome any of these without fully disclosing the history to the recipient... which means they'll probably only be rehomed to the stewpot. Most of these are egg layers, with a few pets, like the cochin and silkies. Would you cull or keep, if this was you?

Congrats on the garden! I feel so AWESOME that this idea is spreading, and so many people are benefitting from it! I don't have my frost-sensitive plants going, except for a greenhouse full of nightshade seedlings. But my first round of potatoes are up, and I'm going to plant the second round tomorrow in containers. Round 3 will go in the ground, with frost protection onhand, just in case.

I would love to get photos from everyone who's successful with container or "alternative" gardens in our difficult climates, or in difficult settings like apartment balconies. I'd like to create a blog or website with success stories. So feel free to journal, maybe even include stories about your chickens if they're included in your growing environment. I know I'll be recording a lot this year... I'm even charting cost versus harvest. It won't be long before my family is sick of me saying, "Weigh that before you eat it!"

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Geez now I'm thinking that I should just pick up a few more of the large syringes (they are a dollar each at One Stop but if someone knows where I can get them cheaper...) and prepare the individual doses at home where I can control the amount of light getting to it and can keep it shook up and cold while dividing it up. That way the vaccine can be wrapped up ahead of time and tranferred right to your cooler for the ride home and you can let it warm up before you use it. I am sure bright sunlight would not be a good thing. Any extra can be kept in any cool sterile container, sealed tightly, wrapped and placed in the fridge (do not freeze!). I don't want to unwrap it now to read the expiration date but I will make sure I get this at that time.

I would like to pay up front for my 100 doses, though I will only need 13 right now. I can also pay for 13 syringes, if you want to go this route. And after using them, I can sterilize in alcohol to reuse. Just let me know if that's how you want to do that. If you're willing to do the extra work of filling individual doses, I'm sure that's the most stable way to transfer. Then the bottle can stay in your fridge.

 

[SunnyDawn]

It looks like you all had fun at the get together. I love being able to put faces to the names. I'm kinda jealous that we don't have more of a community here in the south but I did get to visit with Ke_ben on Saturday. I picked up some fertile eggs for a broody. I mentioned that I never see him post and he said the same about me! But, but, but...I'm on here lurking all the time. To bad there's no record of that unless you post. So...here I am...posting.

NevadaRon: That is so awesome. We kept two hives here in Vegas about 20 years ago. We had a neighbor who would come over and handle them for us so I never was able to experience that. I think in all the time we had them (about 5 years) we only had 2 random stings.

americanvalkyrie: I have struggled with disease myself in the past. I think that my birds must have gotten it from mice or wild birds. After culling and culling and culling...I finally came to the conclusion that since I had no idea how they got it, and kept getting it, my main responsibility was to ensure that I don't share with others. So, I have plastic booties for those visiting my flock to wear and bird netting to eliminate wild bird visits. I'm also very careful which birds leave my flock and how they leave it. Most birds are eaten. A bird that has shown ANY symptoms NEVER leaves my property alive. Full disclosure is essential! My heart goes out to you. I've been there and done that.

On a lighter note...my garden is growing! We have 40+ buckets that were all recycled! We collected from 3 Burger King restaurants almost daily for more than a month. We got recycled pipe and reused the soil from our old (5 years) raised square garden planters and in some peat, perlite, vermiculite and compost to freshen it up. We learned how to use the lid instead of using 2 buckets and we even have some buckets using collanders too, just like the global bucket website showed. My dad was a brick mason so we set up his scaffolding and have a vertical garden. We are still planting but are excited about the tomatoes, peas, beans, and squash that are already growing! I started a garden club with a group of people from church and we helped about 15+ people set up bucket gardens of their own. Everyone has stuff growing and are very excited about it. I worked at Star Nursery for 3 years and most of the plants that came back dead were from over-watering. I love that that is not possible with this system. I'm gonna get some photos together and post them so you can see what we've done. Thanks for sharing!

Hey vegaschick!!! Great to hear from you! I really miss hearing from our neighbors to the south. I would love to see pics of your container garden! The used scaffolding sounds like a great idea as well. None of my plants are outside yet except for the asparagus but I hope to change that this weekend. These seedlings are taking over and a few of them can go out now. I need to get a fence up around the garden area to try and keep the rabbits out. *OK, I hear you laughing! I hope to at least slow them down*

That's why I totally enclose my runs - so that wild birds don't mix with mine and bring in diseases!

ETA: Congrats on the garden vegaschick! I just love the taste of homegrown produce, and the tremendous satisfaction that comes from growing it.

Oh man!!! I will have completely enclosed runs but the small wild birds still get through it! I have seen them do it.

I'm starting to think that no bird leaves the house or garage brooder til it has completed the vaccination routine at 2 and a half months! Oh boy! This is getting more and more complicated!!!

 

[NevadaRon]

Birds can still get in the larger wire I have on top of the run. Maybe I will put netting over that to keep them out completely.

That's basically my setup - chicken wire covers the entre top portion and 4 feet down the sides. Hardware cloth is below that.

Fascinating!!! I am such a nature show freak but this is even better cause we know you! What do you feed them, corn syrup?

No it is just simple syrup - 4 lbs. sugar in a 1 gallon container.

Oh man!!! I will have completely enclosed runs but the small wild birds still get through it! I have seen them do it.

I'm starting to think that no bird leaves the house or garage brooder til it has completed the vaccination routine at 2 and a half months! Oh boy! This is getting more and more complicated!!!

Other than a couple of times right after I built it (and before I plugged the holes

), I haven't seen one single wild bird in my runs (knock on wood!).

 

[vegaschick]

The basic setup. We have a drip system in place and are trying to figure out how much/often they'll need watering. I suspect that we'll need to have it go every day in the summer + some will need to be topped off every few days. The soda bottles are little greenhouses for volunteer tomatoes we found in our compost (right side of picture next to wall). They will go to UT in a month or two for our garden there. We will be putting up shade cloth on the right side of the outer frame. Watermelons are planted in the blue tub on the bottom left side of photo. We made this tub a sub-irrigated planter using recycled apple juice bottles and empty veggie 6-pack containers to fill in the spaces and to act as wicks. If you look close you can see the tube that drains excess water. The little table will not stay there. It's just a very convenient space for seedlings and stuff I still need to find space for. The poles in the middle of the scaffolding frame are there for some hanging plants. I haven't figured out how that will work for watering yet. The paneling in the back is part of the chicken coop. We call it the Extension because someone gave us a chain-link dog run and we set it next to the coop and put sides on and a roof. My grapes and pomegranate tree are growing along the block wall, hidden by all the buckets. I have bird netting over this entire area because we let the girls have the run of it in the fall/winter time. The LOVE the sandy soil that is so crappy to try to grow anything in!



See? Empty hanging planters just waiting to be filled with herbs.



A zucchini plant with my first every nasturtium blossom! I planted them with almost everything to attract pollinators. I also used borage, sage and basil as companion plants.



Just cause it's pretty and I'm so excited about it!



Tomatoes!!! Don't be jealous...I bought these four plants, but they'll still taste homegrown! Heatwave, Grape, Early Girl and Hawaiian. I try not to be jealous when it's hitting a 100* here and you guys are worrying about freezing!



These tomatoes I grew from seed. Roma and FlavorMore. The FlavorMore seeds were from 2001 and they all germinated! I gave some away. I also have Brandywine and San Marcos (?) planted as well. Those are pole beans, mostly, behind the tomatoes and a cantaloupe in front.



Tomatillos. I have 6 buckets that sit on the plank above the tomatoes. They are awesome in salsa!



The pumpkins are growing like crazy! We had to give them space to climb. We put fencing along the wall for them to vine on.



More squash. I have regular and baby round zucchini, patty pan, buttercup, butternut and crookneck squash...all grown from seeds by me.



Okay! Now you can see the pomegranate and a little bit of the coop and extention too. The coop was made of an old wooden fence leftover when the neighbors snuck in a block wall behind it. I love the red and white pattern. It was red on our side and white on theirs. As you may guess, we recycle a lot here! Oh, and there's crookneck squash in the buckets and Inkheart is showing you her chicken butt. Sigh! They are sooooo sassy! Okay, I just threw this photo in to keep things "chicken-y"!



Lastly, here are my sunflowers. I'm gonna put the sunflowers, hollyhocks and pole beans along the outside of the chain-link garden fence. These are from black oil sunflower seeds I stuck in empty juice containers recycled by the kindergarten class I subbed. The one in the regular container was a volunteer from the reused soil. I'm kinda really excited about these too. They should get watered with the lawn. So easy peasy!




Well, now you know why I lurk. Once I get talking it's hard to shut up!

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
I was thinking I would use the bigger syringes then you could transfer to the smaller ones for vaccinating. Although filling 13 syringes would not be a big deal at all, filling a few hundred would be. lol Since you can store the rest of the vaccine until the expiration date you might want to take all 100 doses now. The problem is the large syringes only hold 10 ml, which is 20 doses. At that stage the plunger is pulled out more than 3/4s of the way so I'm afraid that it would be easy to accidentally pull it out the rest of the way. Although it is a tight fit so I am probably just being paranoid.

At 20 doses per syringe, it would take 5 syringes per person. That's $25 dollars for all of us (only 5 folks requested vaccine so it would be an extra $5 per person - $15 total for the 100 doses), not including gas, and I've already spent just under $100 on the vaccine with shipping. I'm afraid that it's getting a little tight around here about now.

I know there are sterile containers with screw lids available at the medical supply stores but they aren't cheap either but it might be a better alternative to trying to keep a bunch of mason jars sterile in transit or moving full syringes around.

Anyone want to volunteer to do the research on the best way to package this stuff up? Or maybe someone has another suggestion? Sorry to the rest of you that have no interest in this topic. Maybe we should start pming the details so you all don't get too bored.

I'm sure my rambling doesn't help any.

 

[NV Gunter]

Hi, I'm new here and when I saw this I just couldn't resist. So...
Hi, I'm from Nevada. Born and raised. I'm in the Carson area. So just thought I would pop in and say hi to my fellow Silver Staters.

 

[vegaschick]

re: wild birds. I actually HAD enclosed runs but the wild birds still got through the chicken wire. I put bird netting on top of the chicken wire and no more problems. I still have to do the deco block on top of the block walls in the garden so it's safe for the fall.

re: culling. If they are really bad (guck in their mouths or swelling eyes) I still cull. Sneezing puts me on alert and I watch them closely for bubbles in the eyes or anything else gross, those I separate and may still cull. It's really a personal choice. I don't breed or show. I let them live on my property even though they may be carriers mostly because it felt like whatever I did, they still got it. If I couldn't guarantee that it would end with culling those chickens and getting new ones, I had to focus on what I could control...not sharing with others birds. It's what I can do. I hope that makes sense.

ETA: I add ACV and garlic to my water to keep them strong and healthy.

I still miss my sweet and beautiful EE roo, Poe and my lovely Olivia. These were the hardest. I don't know that I'd do it again. Well, yes, we do what we HAVE to do, but it still sucks!




Again, brighter note! I wanted to share this photo of a bucket using a colander. I wrap newspaper around the pipe where it enters the colander to keep soil from filling that space. The soil around the colander wicks up the water.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
Cool!

The basic setup. We have a drip system in place and are trying to figure out how much/often they'll need watering. I suspect that we'll need to have it go every day in the summer + some will need to be topped off every few days. The soda bottles are little greenhouses for volunteer tomatoes we found in our compost (right side of picture next to wall). They will go to UT in a month or two for our garden there. We will be putting up shade cloth on the right side of the outer frame. Watermelons are planted in the blue tub on the bottom left side of photo. We made this tub a sub-irrigated planter using recycled apple juice bottles and empty veggie 6-pack containers to fill in the spaces and to act as wicks. If you look close you can see the tube that drains excess water. The little table will not stay there. It's just a very convenient space for seedlings and stuff I still need to find space for. The poles in the middle of the scaffolding frame are there for some hanging plants. I haven't figured out how that will work for watering yet. The paneling in the back is part of the chicken coop. We call it the Extension because someone gave us a chain-link dog run and we set it next to the coop and put sides on and a roof. My grapes and pomegranate tree are growing along the block wall, hidden by all the buckets. I have bird netting over this entire area because we let the girls have the run of it in the fall/winter time. The LOVE the sandy soil that is so crappy to try to grow anything in!



See? Empty hanging planters just waiting to be filled with herbs.



A zucchini plant with my first every nasturtium blossom! I planted them with almost everything to attract pollinators. I also used borage, sage and basil as companion plants.



Just cause it's pretty and I'm so excited about it!



Tomatoes!!! Don't be jealous...I bought these four plants, but they'll still taste homegrown! Heatwave, Grape, Early Girl and Hawaiian. I try not to be jealous when it's hitting a 100* here and you guys are worrying about freezing!



These tomatoes I grew from seed. Roma and FlavorMore. The FlavorMore seeds were from 2001 and they all germinated! I gave some away. I also have Brandywine and San Marcos (?) planted as well. Those are pole beans, mostly, behind the tomatoes and a cantaloupe in front.



Tomatillos. I have 6 buckets that sit on the plank above the tomatoes. They are awesome in salsa!



The pumpkins are growing like crazy! We had to give them space to climb. We put fencing along the wall for them to vine on.



More squash. I have regular and baby round zucchini, patty pan, buttercup, butternut and crookneck squash...all grown from seeds by me.



Okay! Now you can see the pomegranate and a little bit of the coop and extention too. The coop was made of an old wooden fence leftover when the neighbors snuck in a block wall behind it. I love the red and white pattern. It was red on our side and white on theirs. As you may guess, we recycle a lot here! Oh, and there's crookneck squash in the buckets and Inkheart is showing you her chicken butt. Sigh! They are sooooo sassy! Okay, I just threw this photo in to keep things "chicken-y"!



Lastly, here are my sunflowers. I'm gonna put the sunflowers, hollyhocks and pole beans along the outside of the chain-link garden fence. These are from black oil sunflower seeds I stuck in empty juice containers recycled by the kindergarten class I subbed. The one in the regular container was a volunteer from the reused soil. I'm kinda really excited about these too. They should get watered with the lawn. So easy peasy!




Well, now you know why I lurk. Once I get talking it's hard to shut up!

Wow! What an awesome setup!!! OK, trying not to be jealous but it's sooo very hard! Beautiful pics!!!

Hi, I'm new here and when I saw this I just couldn't resist. So...
Hi, I'm from Nevada. Born and raised. I'm in the Carson area. So just thought I would pop in and say hi to my fellow Silver Staters.

Hi Gunter! Welcome to the Nevada thread.

We don't get many true natives on this thread. Well there are a few but I'm not one of 'em. I always think it's so cool to meet a true native! Anyway great to have you here. We have a few folks out your way. I'll add you to the opening post now.

 

[sherylreno]

Hi Everyone! I'm trying to catch up again but there's too many posts right now. I did see the pics of the get together and the first thing I thought of when I saw Sunny waving was me saying hi back. Glad you were saying hi to me Sunny, it really put a very nice smile on my face.

Hi NV Gunter, welcome to the group and to BYC.

Kim, what a very nice set up you have there with your garden.

Mandy, the ranch looks great. It actually looks better from what I remember when we would drive by.

Ron, love the bees. Let me know how much your honey costs.

Missy, I would close my flock and not let any go out except for food but that is me.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE! DADADADADADADADADADADADADADADADADAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Wynnie was making some funny noises so I went and checked on her. She was sitting there like normal but she seemed different. I lifted her front up a bit and I saw a broken egg. My heart broke right then and there. I looked closer and the egg was empty. I felt around and yes, we have a baby duckling. A baby girl and she is one that is going to Missy's house once we get a girlfriend for her to go as well. This duckling is 3 days early so I'm thinking they are wrong with the hatch date for the Welsh Harlequin's since last month's hatchings were 3 days early as well. But the eggs in the incubator are right on time with the 28 days so far. So who really knows, this is nature after all. Oh and Wynnie is a perfect mommy too. She's pecked me 3 times really hard where I still have the mark a bit. I was so worry having a chicken hatch a duckling but now I'm all good.