Noob Needs Help - 2 Chickens and No Idea?!?

[ReadyRen]

Hi All,

I picked up / rescued these girls (I think) yesterday and need some help identifying them. I am told they are about 7 weeks old but that is where information ended.

Are they too young to identify sex?

They will be raised in the back yard in North Phoenix AZ. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I am thinking about picking up two more chicks so I have a total of four this year while I am learning. What would be the best way to introduce two more. Right now my thoughts are when I have my coop finished put them all in there together but keep them separated in their boxes until then. Does that sound like a good plan?

Soooooo many questions! If it's okay I will ask some of them here and follow up in other topics on some.

We don't have grass just a desert yard at this point, is there any precautions I should be aware of?

I have noticed some small bits of glass, and some seeds of a weed that is like a burr and sticks into my shoes in the dirt will those be a issue?

 

[Forever Green]

Hi - You can't upload pics until you've been on for a while. I'm not sure how many posts you have first before they allow you post pics.

 

[This_chicks_place]

When you have ten posts they will let you upload pics

 

[ReadyRen]

It didn't let me post them at first but then after I posed a message in another thread it let the post happen. I wonder if I will have to repost the pics or if it will automatically include them after the other posts.

 

[flnatv]

Looks like you need to repost them

 

[ReadyRen]

I'm up to 10 so this is 11. Lets see if they work this time.

 

[ReadyRen]

Not so funny!

 

[flnatv]

I do mine through photobucket...try that

 

[ReadyRen]

Trying using BYC to store the pics.

Ahh Success!!!!

 

[Barrdwing]

With those green legs, the chicks might be Easter Eggers. At the moment there's no color to the combs; they may be girls.

Regarding raising chickens in the desert: the seeds that you're finding stuck in your shoe are probably what we used to call "sand-spurs" or "goatheads"; they're nasty poky things that can blow out a bike tire, but so long as the chicks don't decide to eat them, they shouldn't be a threat. Not sure how much of a threat the bits of glass are.

Heat is the biggest threat to chickens in the desert. A fully-enclosed coop might get much too hot; you may need to get creative. Be sure your birds have plenty of shade (a good roof and shade-cloth on the south and west walls if nothing else) and lots of air circulation, and I'd recommend setting up a mister system on a timer to use when the weather gets warm. For winter, of course, you need to be able to close things up again so that they don't get chilled. Good old desert temperature swings!

When we lived in the Mojave, we built a coop out of wire-mesh dog pen panels wrapped with chicken wire, and placed it in the shade of some eucalpytus trees. It had a solid roof over half of it, and plywood panels on the south and west walls with eight inches of wall left uncovered at the bottom. The breeze could come in underneath the panels, so in winter we had to close that gap off. We had our mister system set to run for twenty minutes four times a day during the late spring and summer. It made a big difference: not only did it cool the air, but when the breeze came under the panels, it would blow across the damp sand and cool off the coop even more. The chickies did very well. They were bored by the lack of grass, but enjoyed scratching in the leaf litter for bugs, and in the spring they hunted down and devoured every weed that sprouted. I planted morning-glories around their pen to shade it and that worked wonderfully, although the chickens wanted to eat them!

If you plant morning-glories, be sure you DON'T use any of the blue-flowered varieties, they're poisonous! Go with red ones. I used "Scarlett O'Hara" and "Crimson Rambler". No fertilizer; I just dug some leaf litter into the sand, using litter from the chitalpa trees--they produce a ton of litter--and then planted the seeds and put a soaker hose over them. Worked like a charm.