Howdy from the Arizona desert

[CircleStarRanch]

A quick intro here. My wife and I homestead (what many of yall call a smallholding) about 50 miles out into the desert, west of Phoenix, Arizona. We raise most of our own food including dairy & meat goats, meat rabbits, honey bees, and a garden. We also have a horse, a Sonoran Desert Tortoise, and 3 dogs. Our poultry includes 13 laying hens and a rooster, varying number of meat chickens (25 replacements coming this week), and 7 guinea fowl. My wife mostly minds and cares for the poultry. We are planning to add turkeys to our menagerie this spring.

I am on this forum mostly for the help I probably will need with turkeys! They are something totally new to both of us.

Thanks
-Dutch

 

[Marigold]

Hi Dutch and welcome to the forum. That's quite a setup you have there. It's always good to have yet another international member.

 

[MrsBiscuit]

Hello and welcome I have a cousin and her family who live in Phoenix - my goodness its hot! How do your fowl cope with the heat? And what do your bees forage on? I used to keep bees and my honey was very pale, quite delicate and slightly lemony in smell. It was mostly collected from wild and hedgerow flowers, including a lot of knapweed, and extended with tree pollens. I have zero experience of turkeys, unfortunately.

 

[CircleStarRanch]

Hello and welcome How do your fowl cope with the heat? And what do your bees forage on? .

We have to be inventive with the fowl. Over the past few years we have been out here we had a steep learning curve on heat. Of course the fowl are well watered, but we learned to water them with pans rather waterers. Anything plastic lasts us about 6 months before it cracks and leaks. We provide a number of foot baths for them. These are mostly glass pie pans from the thrift shop with water in them. Our fowl are all free-ranging during the day, but we keep the foot baths under shade screen in their run. This prevented the die-off we had in past years. They just go stand in the water to cool down. In 115 degrees F the water doesn't stay cool, but it mostly stays wet! We have our main bloom from about the end of February through April, and often again after the summer monsoon rains in July/August. The rest of the time I have to feed the bees sugar syrup and pollen patties.

Our way of life is very different here. We never have muddy conditions and all the damp weather health issues are non-existant. We only get about 6" of rain a year. That is divided between summer and winter "rainy seasons".

-Dutch

 

[chrismahon]

Welcome to the forum Dutch. We thought we had it hot here when the temperature hit 40C, 104F. Here they use pans full of water with a porous brick. The water evaporates from the brick and cools it. We now use plastic plant pot bases for drinkers -we tried bowls but the sun destroyed them very quickly here as well. Like you plastics here don't last very long and most of our feeders are now breaking up. Sorry but I know nothing about Turkeys either. We do have mud -in Winter the ground turns to slush and the roads are impassable.